Opening Doors - A Woman's View of the 60's

 

Opening Doors: A Woman's View of the 60's

An Interview with Ina (Formerly Ina Gottlieb)

Flashback, August 9, 1970, Ina Gottlieb, in what may be a moment of. crowning enlightenment, sits regally in a wide-backed rattan papasan chair flanked on either side by not one, but two men, who could be just any men. Throne-like, it is the kind of chair that speaks of far off, exotic lands; island cultures, Bali perhaps, where children and people run naked and free, unscathed by modern bourgeoise society.  She too appears naked and pure, though dressed in what one might deem as appropriate attire for a restaurant on Miami Beach at the dawn of a new decade; a simple printed halter enhanced only by her own hand-made jewelry, neat shiny locks of hair, soft green eyes. By contrast, the men at her sides are bearded, almost scruffy, with their long hair and disheveled, mismatched clothing. The one on her right appears to be slouching, slinking away, as if the weight of the world was coming down hard on him. And perhaps it was.  This man was Jim Morrison, and already at the age of twenty-six, both his life and his art were on trial. The drink in his hand, one of many more to come, ominously foreshadows his drunken, bitter end in a Paris bathtub just a year later, as well as the notion that acid rock and the experimental era of the late 1960's and its hippie subculture were inherently self-limiting.  There are misconceptions about the "liberties" of the '60s because, while the era promoted individual growth for some, it was profoundly tragic for others.

For Ina, who legally dropped her surname in 1994, the '60's were good. Experimentation with sex and drugs in the 60's, along with her enviable six-month relationship with Jim Morrison, helped her to find her own voice  and break out of a mold that was set by her dictatorial father, and sheltered, unfulfilled mother who lived by the staid rules and standards of the 1950's. Ina, born April 27, 1942 came of age during the 60's, and not only joined in, but enjoyed this rebellious time along with other baby boomers of her generation. But, as Ina says during our interview, on November 8, 2002, "things can go too far." While the radical American revolution of the 1960's, as evidenced by Ina, was extremely positive and liberating for the individual, especially for women, it may not have been so good for society.  Since 1960, according to the U.S. Bureau of Statistics, divorce in America has doubled, crime rates have tripled, and social classes have become more deeply stratified, but that is a discussion for another day.

Today, I am speaking with Ina outside the sculpting and glass studio at the University of Miami where she creates her art.  It is a beautiful, crisp fall day in Florida. We are sitting on a bench by the water with the studio cats and their new kittens scurrying about. Ina, a single mother and retired Delta Airlines flight attendant is now devoting full time to practicing her art and, like a true artist and observer, she takes it all in with relish.  Today, in her first interview, Ina opens her own "doors of perception."

 

STACEY: I would like to start with the hardest question. Where the 1960's good or were they bad for women and society?

INA:  They were wonderful. It was a liberating period. T.V. had Lucy and Desi sleeping in twin beds with a nice in-between. Babies still came from storks and people were still living in a sort of a dreamland or make-believe world and the 60's just opened it up...

STACEY: Rigid, a rigid world.

INA: I don't know if I'd call it rigid back in the 50's. It was just this was this and that was that.  It was more black and white, and I think the 60's were about color.  It was very structured in the 50's; the family ate together at 6pm, you did the dishes, da-da-da, da-da-da, and with the 60's it kind of became in Technicolor, which was really coming in at the same time -- I'm just --all of a sudden --paralleling all of that.

STACEY: Like the Wizard of Oz!

INA: Yeah.

STACEY: Well, you're so bright! You're wearing magenta and your lips are color coordinated.

INA: This is calm for me.

STACEY That's calm?

INA: I didn't even realize I wore a bright colored shirt, because I'm a color person.

STACEY: You look like a color person.

INA: I just saw a marvelous movie which kid of sums up some of it now... The Banger Sisters Have you seen it?

STACEY: I loved it. I was going to ask you about it...

INA: I saw it. Hysterical. I was cracking up because there really is a lot of truth to it.

STACEY: So, you were one of them? They were Doors groupies.

INA: Well, they said they were. Who knows? Everybody did the Doors back then. When I met Jim, I didn’t know who he was. Jim Morrison of course.

STACEY: Let's save that for a minute. You were saying that the 60's were very positive because it was a release, there were new freedoms at the time.

INA: New freedom, people were trying new things, and like anything else, when you go from one side to another, it can go too far.  But it really was about peace, love and marijuana, or whatever it was. People got to explore things and openly talk about things that were always in the closets, and nobody ever talked about. They didn't talk about Aunt Martha being in the loony bin, type things. You couldn't say that maybe she was just having a good time.

STACEY: Maybe she was. Just like we are today.

INA: My brother just criticized me today, calling me a flirt. He tells me I'm a flirt all the time. I'm a touchy kind of person. You and I hugged when we first met, and we never saw each other before. When I told him that I was doing this today, in fact, he said: "Do you remember that period oat all?" I said, "Yeah, sure." He says, "Oh I was too stoned to remember it."  I was never a total stoned out creep. I was always the designated driver before they had a word like that. (Coughs) For whatever reason, I just did things in moderation, and I tried a few things, but you know I just have such a good time in my own life.

STACEY: Are you from Miami?

INA: I was born and raised on Miami Beach.

STACEY: And did you always live here?

INA: My dad built a house in North Carolina, and all my summers I went to North Carolina, so I had a down to earth background, and I was always a little bit different, even in the 50's. I never felt like I fit in the clique.  I had my mom’s '55 Chevrolet and I would get in the car, and as long as I was home at 6:00 in time for dinner, it was O.K.  I would go to the Everglades and explore, or go to the Keys, I was always visual and into nature.

STACEY: So, looking back at a snapshot of yourself back then, how would you picture yourself, or maybe you have a picture that you could describe.

INA: Well, I brought one today.

STACEY: Right, you with Jim Morrison and his bodyguard Babe at the Luau restaurant on Miami Beach (August 9, 1970). But I'm talking about you, when you were growing up.

INAL A part of me has grown so much and a part of me is really the same person. My favorite thing to do when somebody comes to town is to take them on an airboat ride in the Everglades or down in the Key. I'm still doing it. And I work from there in my art; my sculpture is influences from those periods; my paintings are of birds and fish. I'm working on a big screen filled with things from nature. Part of it is in the foundry Guld Art Show.

STACEY: Let's talk about your career. It was your career that led you to meet Jim Morrison. You had a career in the 1960s. Did most of your friends have careers? And your career has now changed right? You started out as a flight attendant, and now you are an artist...

INA: I was always an artist. I was born an artist. Always drawing or coloring or playing with clay. It was my imagination as put into reality; the reality being the finished artwork. I went to school in Richmond, Virginia to study art.

STACEY: So why did you become a flight attendant?

INA: Because I had to make a living. See, there are parts of me that have always been very structured.

STACEY: and I'm sure you wanted to travel too.

INA: I'm a gypsy also. I'm never home for very long at a time. I've traveled the world, and I've been very fortunate. I flew for Delta for 32 years and I'm retired now, for the past eight years.  I've kind of switched gears. I ‘m still getting on airplanes, but it's hard to still sometimes and not serve somebody something. Now I can afford to do my art all the time. I always did art, even while raising my son and having a job. I was involved in theater groups and school projects.  I made jewelry for the guys in the band (The Doors).

STACEY: Tell me about the guys in the band. You met them in 1970? I know it was after Jim's arrest in Miami because you met him on a plane when he was traveling here for his indecent exposure trial.

INA: It was 1970....I had been to that concert he was arrested for.

STACEY: In Coconut Grove?

INA: At the Dinner Key Auditorium. And, as I said, I had always done my art or photography, and I was very good at pushing my way up to the front to take phots'. I took a whole roll of film and later realized I didn't have the camera loaded right -- just that one time-- and I had NO pictures. Honest to God, he never exposed himself.  I was up front. I would have seen it if he had. That was before I met him, or even knew I would come close to meeting him.

STACEY:  So you're saying he didn't expose himself?

INA: No, he did not.

STACEY: So, why was he arrested?

INA: Because he was really drunk and disorderly exciting the crowd. You see back in those days the guys would do this (Stand up and pulls shirt through open pant fly). In college, the boys at the fraternity party would undo their zipper and pull their er shirt tail through, and that's what Jim did, and he was saying: "Oh, you want to see it? You really want to see it?" He never really exposed himself. And there was never one photograph of him exposing himself. Not one. But all those "Born Agains," and "Save the Whatevers" wanted to make an example of somebody, and he was the man.  He was way out there. He told me later on that he had been very drunk. He had a girlfriend that he had had a bad fight with before he left LA. He got on the plane and he was drunk, and he was late getting on stage. The crowd was very restless, and he was not a very pretty picture up there.

STACEY: You were mentioned by name in Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman's 1980 book, "No One Gets Out of Here Alive," (pg. 303) which leads me to believe that, at some point, you had a very strong influence in Jim's life. What do you think?

INA: I knew Jim for six months.  We had a six-month relationship. When I met him, I didn't know who he was because he had just grown a beard, and he was just a nice guy in first class traveling with this other guy.

STACEY: Was that his bodyguard? The one in the picture you've me?

INA: Yes, that was Babe, the one in the book and the movie. I always wanted to contact the writers, but I was always too shy to do that which seems funny to me to be shy. There were some things in there that were not true. Jim was a remarkable man. On nights when he was not too stoned, he would write in a diary. So there were records of his life.

STACEY He would write in a diary when you were with him?

INA: Yep. Sometimes, so he kept a record of everything. He studied classical music, classical art, he wrote poetry. And I think that's how they knew about me, plus, maybe Babe remembered me. I was mentioned in his notes and writing. All it ever said in the book was something about a stewardess - see back in those days before we were flight attendants, we were called stewardesses – and it just mentioned a stewardess he met on a flight. Then it talked about several things we did together. When I met him, I didn't know who he was, and that was kind of refreshing for me and for him. I wasn't all over him just because he was Jim Morrison. We didn't get a printout of the names of the passenger in first class back then, so I had no idea. He was just a nice guy that I was talking to, and he took my number, and he called me, and we started dating. He treated me like a lady - very much so, and I got to wondering what was going on because, you know back in those days, after the first date, you sort of got it together, and he didn't do that, so I didn't know what the story was... and on that end of things...

STACEY: Well, you were telling me on the phone that he was staying at the Deauville Hotel which was very close to your house?

INA: Yes, I grew up in a home on 63rd and Alton Road. It was the last address on Alton Road, and the Deauville was just a few blocks away on Collins Avenue. We didn't sleep together until almost a month later.

STACEY: A month? Really?

INA: That's the God's honest truth.

STACEY: And you were with him regularly?

INA: Pretty much. I would go out on my flights and then come back. I taught him how to waterski in Biscayne Bay and we were going out to dinner some place and we wound up back at my house and my parents were out of town and he says, "Well, you want to take a shower now?" At that point I almost had a heart attack.

STACEY: How old were you?

INA: Twenty-seven or twenty-eight (Pauses) Twenty-eight, I think. And you know it was wide open days back then. If you liked somebody, you just kind of did it. And I got really nervous and excited and there we were in the shower, naked for the first time together.

STACEY: I can't tell you all the questions my friends want me to ask you...

INA: Everyone gets around to it. O.K. You know they made him sound so awful in that movie. They made him sound impotent, and he was not.

STACEY: And excuse me, what about size -- you know for the Banger Sister's-style "Rock Cock" collection?

INA: (Laughs) I have always believed in quality, not quantity, and I don't remember anything but average. I also remember someone very gentle and sweet, and very exciting also. He was a very passionate lover, yes (Pauses)...

STACEY: Are you getting goosebumps?

INA: I'm picturing the first time he did this, and I don't remember if it happened again, but at just about the right moment he gave me a slap on the fanny, and I had never experienced that before. I was so shocked. You know, it didn't hurt me, but it was a definitely a little snap. He was a beautiful lover. His main problem was drinking, and I never really saw him doing drugs. He kept that very private from me, with Babe. And then you'd read that he was shooting up heroin and doing all this and I' thinking Where? I saw his whole body and I never saw any marks or tracks. I would have said, What's that?

STACEY: So you were with him for six months on a regular, everyday basis?

INA: Not every day, because you know he traveled, and I traveled. I would go back and forth to LA. In the book it mentions something I was involved in. He was dating this woman named Pam who is throughout the whole book. That was his number one lady. He was going to spend the night with me in my hotel because I had a layover from my flight out in LA. The night desk clerk, this guy we called the weasel, because he looked like a weasel, a short, little fat guy with a funny little pointy nose, wouldn't let Jim in the hotel in my room. So, Jim says, "Well I want to rent a room, and he plops down a credit card, and the weasel still wouldn't let him in. So, we wound up going to the hotel that he uses to, well this funny little place that he stays a lot at, and we were there intimately. There was a lot of yelling and banging on the door and it was Pam. She wanted in. I was about to die. He said, don't worry about it, she'll go away in a little while," and she was making a racket out there. She finally did disappear, but that was very awkward and embarrassing.

STACEY: Maybe it was the model for the Morrison Hotel? Do you remember the name?

INA: No, It's in the book.

STACEY: Jim got his start not far from there in Venice Beach writing poetry with a friend of his...

INA: You know the rest of the band put Jim down so much, yet they're so willing to make all this money off him. Jim had a feeling that your voice was just another instrument. Anybody could learn to play it, anybody could learn to sing like he did, but you know, after he died, nobody sang like he did. Nobody made it like he did because he was who he was.

STACEY: You hit on it. Jim Morrison was an icon of the 1960s.  He was sexy and full of life and passion and energy, and you heard in in his voice and in the lyrics. I was wondering if, during you six months with him, you had any insight into what drove him. For example, I understand that his father, who was a military man, died when Jim was very young, and some say that the Doors music was the beginning of the death cult music.

INA: Not only that, but Jim also pushed is life to the max. He pushed the death issue. I saw it happen one time. We took one of my girlfriends, Jim, Babe and I, and the four of us went to a black bar in a black neighborhood in LA, and Jim got drunk in the bar and started shouting, "nigger."

STACEY: A death wish?

INA: Exactly, he pushed it to the max, you know not just once or twice, and the book (No One Gets Out of Here Alive, Pg 303) says we (the stewardesses) got scared and ran out of there, but failed to mention that it was because he got drunk and started yelling the "n-word" when we were the only white faces in the bar. So that's how I know that he would push death to see how close he could come. He would push it to the max, and not just once or twice. Somebody called a cab, and we got him out of there. It wasn't just the girls that flipped out, like the book said.

STACEY: Did you ever talk to him about death?

INA: No, I didn't really realize what he was doing until after he was dead. I just thought he was drunk and disorderly one more time.

STACEY Everybody knows about Jim’s life from Oliver Stone's movie The Doors.

INA: Of course, He was a man who was bigger than life and Oliver Stone had to distort it even more. The made him fatter, they made him obsessed, more than he was. But he did push issues. He pushed a lot of issues.

STACEY: So, did you see that death wish in his personality?

INA: Yes, and that scared me. I didn't speak up for myself very well then. I just kind of went along with things.

STACEY: Earlier you called this a period of "Open Times" Let's talk about the sexual revolution of the 60s. What freedoms do you think were opened up during this period, specifically for women? I would call you the quintessential woman of the 60s having dated Jim Morrison, and honestly, I can't believe it took a month.

INA: It did. I have no reason to lie. I was really thinking he just wasn't that into me. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't understand. From speaking to other people who knew him, I think that if you acted like a lady, then he treated you like a lady, and if you acted like a whore, he jumped your bones, and I think that was why I was able to date him for as long as I did, because...(hesitates) well, I really don't know. And of course, then he ended up going off to Paris. I wasn't deeply in love with him or anything like that.

STACEY: How did it end?

INA: It just kind of dissolved. He was going off...you know all of a sudden you just don't get the phone calls you used to get.

STACEY: He was probably going through big personal changes during this period himself, with the lawsuit...

INA: it wasn't just a lawsuit. They wanted to put his butt in jail. He could afford the lawsuit.

STACEY: And also, during this period, people were starting to question his staying power. Rolling Stone writer Lester Bangs write that people at this time were starting to see him as a person of limited ability.

INA: In the meantime, his music holds today. It's in the soundtrack for the Vietnam movie Apocalypse Now.

STACEY: And what about Vietnam? what cultural changes did the war bring about in the 60's?

INA: I was too busy being me to have any real political opinions, other than thinking that too many people were dying. I did see little boys coming home from Vietnam for R&R on some of my flights, and the girls (stewardesses) had the audacity to ID them to see if they were old enough to drink. The were old enough to fight, but not to drink?

STACEY: Seems that some rules need to be broken.

INA: Right, and when they came back, first hey were soldiers, and then they found that people hated them for being soldiers, so they escaped into drugs, and the next minute they were hippies.

STACEY: Vietnam came through in his lyrics, songs like "Unknown Soldier."

INA: It still brings emotions to you today. I don't know too much music that can hold through all these years, decades. He had to have known something, and as I said, he studied classical music, he was very interested in all kinds of music and other cultures, even when he was here in Florida, he went out to see the Seminole Indians.

STACEY:  Well, he was doing a lot of peyote with the Indians at that time, wasn't he?

INA: I don't really know, because, as I said, he kept that drug stuff away from me. I saw him drink enough, and pass out at a party one time, and that was bothersome to me because I never liked that drugged out kind of thing. But when he had his head on right, he definitely was interested in other cultures and other people. He was not prejudiced. Why he did that "nigger" thing, I have no idea.

STACEY: Back to the issues of freedom, especially sexual freedoms for women.

INA: When I was growing up, I never knew that women had orgasms. It was never discussed. Nobody ever admitted to having masturbated or any of this stuff. You barely knew you period was coming. No one told you any of these things.

STACEY: They couldn't talk about it?

INA: Right, they were doing all these things, but it was very hush, hush. I remember my father jumping all over me because I would sit too close to a date driving home from a movie.

STACEY: When did that change?

INA: It changed during that period. I was in my 20's to 30's during the 60's. I was born in 1942, so that put me right in there. What was interesting to me growing up in the late 50's I somehow got into listening to the black music. I liked the blues, I liked the music, I discovered sex very young, in spite of all the lectures and all the curfews.  But you still pretty much keep sex a secret, even from your friends.  The girls didn't talk much about it. every once in while one of your girlfriends got pregnant and disappeared. I went off to college and there were some beatniks back then in 1961-1963. They hung out in the coffee houses, I never went, but I figured out how to sneak out of the dorm and how to do all this other stuff. Now today, shoot, you can have boys and girls together in the same dorm, on the same floor. Somewhere along the line it slowly evolved into this music, and I was one of the first to have tried marijuana.

STACEY: You say the sex evolved into the music? What evolved from the music?

INA: Sex.  I mean if you really listen to the old songs from the 50's and 40's they were singing about it. I t was just more subtle. Then there were the Beatles singing, “Why Don't We Do It in the Road" and The Rolling Stones singing, "I Don’t Get No Satisfaction."

STACEY: Sexual undertones were the core of Boogie Woogie music and Rhythm and Blues, and present even in songs like the Midnighter's "Work with Me Annie,” and Etta James' "Roll with me Henry."

INA: Right, and gradually women started being able to talk about sex like the guys talked about it, like they were singing about it.

STACEY So they were always doing it, but just weren't talking about it and then as music got looser, and the idea of sex became more socially acceptable they started talking and it progressed even further?

INA: Yeah. Women could then admit that they had sex with their boyfriend and there was talk about masturbation in music and in real life and all the normal things that go on between men and women. Women could suddenly talk about it. It was liberating for both women and men because for the first time men could show emotion. If a man teared up, it wasn't the end of the world anymore. He wasn't a faggot if he cried. I believe there were some really good things that came out of the 60's. People would judge people by who they were more, rather than y the color of their skin or where they came from, and people got more deeply interested in other people. Slowly things have changed. But it didn't happen overnight. It was a slow progression.

STACEY: People say the new sexual openness was and empowerment for women, a liberation, a freedom, bit for example, in a song like Janis Joplin's, "Ball and Chain," she seemed to be screaming out her vulnerability, her desire to get back some of the love, looking to get back some of what she was putting out, Some people argue that with sexual liberation, women were actually becoming newly submissive. Do you agree?

INA: Well, when you look at the way some women dressed in the 1920's, Jean Harlow, for example, you know it had always been there. Women have always known how to empower men with sex, it was just done more subtly. Basically, back in the 50's you were called a slut and a whore, so they kept it a secret, and today, it's no big deal. What's really amazing though is there is this friend of mine who is a wonderful gay man: very handsome, he has a wonderful job and he's in a sixteen-year relationship with another man. I met his parents, and I thought they were such wonderful people too. He agreed but said there's this other side to them (his parents) too. They refuse to ever meet his other half -- his partner. So, there are still hang ups today. And he's forty-five years old... but still, as they say, we've come a long way baby.

STACEY: Do you think "Free Love" was a good thing for women?

INA: Yes. I think it was good. I was never one of those women who was really into the women's liberation movement where I wouldn't let a man open my door.  In fact, now when I watch babies and toddlers, the little boys are just banging into things and the boys are playing mommy.  We're just born that way. So how could you expect, except for a few, for a woman to be acting like a man, unless they've chosen to push it that far, and why?  Why would you? Still, to this day, even if I really liked somebody, it would be very difficult for me, as a woman, to make the first move and call him up. I couldn't do that. Even my own son has told me, "Mom, come on, it's 2002, you can call somebody." But it still seems a little awkward. So that's just a little hang up of mine from back then, and still, I think it's nice for the male to pursue the female.

STACEY: Well, you were pursued by Jim Morrison.

INA: Right. He asked me for my phone number. I didn't ask him. My brother, as I mentioned earlier, still accuses me of being a flirt, and I just really like people. If I like somebody, I'm in their face asking question and my eyes do bat and I get excited about things I'm interested in, and it's fun. But I also get interested in women, not sexually, but as human beings and where they're from and what they do as people.

STACEY: A big part of the 1960's was about that sense of caring and communal togetherness. Coming out from a time, the 1950's, when people were so isolated, togetherness became what it was all about, but that was also the downfall for many people because they got caught up in... Well, let's talk about it.... Drugs. I must talk to you about drugs when we're talking about the 60's.

INA: It was so much a part of it.

STACEY: Yes, and there were three big deaths in the 60's

INA: Yes, and they were all twenty-seven years old.

STACEY: And their names all started with "J."

INA: Yeah. Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix.

STACEY: Drugs killed them all, but was there more to it? Do you think there was something they were trying to escape from, or were they all just caught up in that community?

INA: NO, I think they were all pushing things to the fullest. Experimenting. I think they thought they were above dying. I don't think they ever thought that if they did more of the drug they would die, I think they just did it without realizing they could die. Like little kids jumping off things... do they ever think they might break a bone? No. I think it was the same thing because I think they really enjoyed their drugs of choice, and it was so wide open that people were doing drugs that it was acceptable. Another flashback to a Rolling Stone's son -- when Mick Jagger sings about "mother's little helper." Well, back then you would go to the gynecologist, and he would say, oh, you're going through menopause dear. Here, take these pills, they'll make you feel better, and people were getting strung out on medications given by doctors, older people.  But they were putting down the kids for experimenting with drugs. And they were hooked so much on tranquilizers, valium, martinis at 5pm and diet pills themselves. It was socially acceptable. And then you had the kids letting their hair grow long, wearing raggedy clothes, exposing parts of their bodies with hip huggers -- which the kids are doing today.  I remember sewing up the crutches of my jeans to make them go lower! I couldn't get them low enough. The difference today is that the drugs are a lot stronger and scarier.

STACEY: And today the pharmaceutical companies are pushing prescription cure-all drugs through mainstream media, like television.

INA: Take about greed.  How much can they charge for that stupid little pill? I realized many, many years ago, listening to that Stone's song -- all the mothers were taking valium. I took one once in my life and it knocked me on my butt. I don't like pills. And these women were functioning on this all the time, and you know, the ups and the downs. That's why you had screaming mothers, and why you have screaming people today.  I'm really very straight.

STACEY: You said the drugs are stronger today....

INA: I just had a talk with some mothers of today about what they're going through with their kids. Kids today are taking tobacco out of cigars and lacing them with heavy drugs: ecstasy, cocaine, crack and laced marijuana.

STACEY: And what about LSD in the 60's?

INA: I did drop a couple of acid trips in the 1960's which enlightened me at that time.

STACEY: Those were the days of Timothy Leary, when they were doing it at Harvard...It wasn't that bizarre back then.

INA: I remember seeing a program on TV about it and I was curious, and it really actually did a lot of good for me. I remember I went to a rock concert at Gulfstream Park and I dropped acid and I went into this whole thing about a river and where it runs shallow and how fast the water runs through compared to when it runs deep, and I could see, and I played it into my life because, as I mentioned to you earlier, I did things a little differently than others.  I'm dyslexic so I was very insecure about certain parts of my life. I grew up in Miami Beach in a very affluent neighborhood. Through that acid trip I learned that I do more than most people ever think of doing. But back during the late 50's and early 60's I was very insecure because I couldn't spell well, and I was afraid to get up and read in front of people and by the end of that acid trip I really didn't give a damn what anybody thought.

STACEY: And what about afterward?

INA: I came home.  At Gulfstream Park I had gotten a press pass and got up close to get pictures of Jimi Hendrix and got all muddy, so I went to somebody's home to get a change of clothes. Later I went home, to my house, and got in. my bed and left my old dirty clothes in my car.  My mother thought I had come home from the rock concert completely naked. She was freaking out. So, I came down and for once I got my mom to listen to me. And I said, "Now, I'm going to tell you something, but you have to promise not to say a word until I'm finished."  And I went into this whole enlightening thing I went through on my acid trip - with my mother (Laughs) - and she listened to me the whole way through, and when I finished, she said, "That's very interesting Ina, and I'm very happy for you, but please don't do it again." And we never discussed it again. It was very funny. I didn't have any of those trippy things that people talked about. I was just a curious person.

STACEY: But you felt an "enlightenment?"

INA: Absolutely. I sensed things ahead of time, stupid things like thinking: "OK I should take the laundry in before it rains," and then it rains. You know you've got to listen to those things. I di trip more than one time.  The first time I ever dropped acid was out in Los Angeles. I went to see friends of a friend who were way ahead of anything we had seen in Miami. This guy, "Boozer," and his friends dressed in medieval clothes and were real hippie freaks. They were renting a house that looked like a miniature castle -- it was totally surreal.  Sometimes I'm like little Aunt Fanny. "I don't know how I got into this," and it turned to they were drug dealers. Guys back then were picking up chicks, little girls practically, teenager and having sex with them. It was wild, wild stuff. Anyway, that's where I first did acid. And when I first felt it coming on, we were at the speedway and there were some red-neck types, and we were the hippie-hippie freaks. We definitely stuck out. I remember this short, stocky woman's skin appeared to be stretching and then squashing itself back like something out of Alice and Wonderland. And this was in 1967, or somewhere in there. So really, when they talk about the 60's, it's the late 60's and into the early 70's. Some of it was a bit earlier, but it wasn't as wide open then, you know it was everywhere. 

STACEY: You're saying the hippie, drug era came to a head during this late period from '67 to '70?

Because it clearly died.

INA: It dissolved. Once again, it wasn't like just one day it happened and the next it was gone. And from life, I just kept evolving through these different periods. But I was always a little bit ahead.

STACEY: But was it the passion that dies? Janis Joplin, for example, started out with the band Big Brother and the Holding Company. She was together, she was breaking out, and then, during the late 60's she got heavily into the drugs, and then she died. Same thing with Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix. Do you think it was the passion that was not sustainable, or just circumstance?

INA: Well, with the 1970's came all that disco stuff.

STACEY: And disco killed everything! 

INA: (Laughs) But the hard-core rockers were still there. The Stones never got into all that. Just the other day I was at a Stone's concert.

STACEY:  Ina, you can still rock! Let's get back to the idea of the passionate creation of art. You're an artist. Do you think art can be pure in a material world? We create from the heart when we are most needy, and that with material success, need is driven out, and so is passion.

INA:  Sometimes; I guess a good amount of time, but that's because everything is so trendy. In today, bad tomorrow. I grew up in an affluent area of Miami Beach and then became a flight attendant. Businessman would hit on you, and there were hoity, tooth clothes and fancy clubs and fancy cars and inspire of my background, I found these people to be so phony and annoying. Most of them were just living on credit from the bank, spending money on one club this week and another club the next, whatever was in fashion.

STACEY: Sounds more like the 70's or 80's.

INA: No, this was back as early as 1965, when I started flying. I was always a bit down to earth, and I like good things. I liked to travel. I didn't have to have the best hotel, but I never spent any time in my room anyway. I was out seeing things and experiencing things.

STACEY: Were you flying domestic flights only?

INA: I flew for an airline that, at that time only flew domestically and by the time they added international flights I was a single mom. I started out with an airline called Northeast that Delta bought out in 1972, and then they merged. I mainly flew Miami, New York, Ft. Lauderdale, La Guardia or Newark. I saw so much of that fast life, flashing money, flashing this, flashing that -- flashing drugs -- that it became a time where these "yucky" men with pit bellies could flash drugs and girls would follow them. It was nose candy. That's what they called it, and these girls would go to bed with these guys just for their drugs. I just find that to be absolutely disgusting. I just wanted to spend my money traveling and exploring.

STACEY: Thinking back to Jim Morrison's music... You said that he spoke of his voice as an instrument. Do you think that somehow his success caused him to do drugs?

INA: Well, you know, all of us are a little bit shy at one point or another in our lives, and maybe drugs enabled him to come out. But it was such an experimental age. I remember on day getting in an elevator with Jim and these people recognized him and they were oohing and aching and asking for his autograph.

STACEY: How did all that attention make you feel?

INA: It was hard...it didn't get to my head.

STACEY: You were humble!

INA: I just didn't think about it like that, but I watched his reaction to it all, and he didn't know how to handle it gracefully. He had to give some flippant answer like, "Yeah, I made about 2-cents from that album." Some stupid, jerky answer. And he was straight at the time, and he didn't know how to handle that. But maybe it he had a little more in him...who knows? Then again, with too much he ended up yelling "nigger" in a bar, so I don't know what the full answer is here. I think the passion and the emotions were there within him and everybody has a little something they're angry about, or hurt about, or excited about, or in love with. That to me is what's important. 

My name is Ina. I used to be Ina Gottlieb. I was married twice. I had two other names, but I chose to use the name Ina because I never pictured myself as a Mrs. This or Mrs. That. I. like people to be people without having a title on their name and having such and overpowering brother and father who were always putting my artwork down, I had to find a way to identify my own self. And the way I die that was by legally changing my name to Ina. And that why I did that. Try explaining that to your father. I told him that I had married my art.

STACEY:  Not to be facetious, but are you now related to Cher?

INA: You understand, it was a very passionate thing, and it was a very personal way to find my own identity, and I can actually yell back at somebody now!

STACEY: Are you rebelling?

INA: No, I just wanted to find myself, and I have. I think the 60's was a part of that. You know, you could just go ahead and be yourself. And it was also about acceptance. Accepting others for who they were, no matter their race, color, sex, or hairstyle.

STACEY: Ina, you're a mother. Can you pinpoint any differences between your parenting style today and that of your parents back in the 50's and 60's?

INA: You know, I grew up with a very strict father. His word was it. You never talked back, you never asked questions.  You stayed in line, or you got hit. I'm sure he never changed a diaper, or burped us, or fed us.

STACEY: And he certainly wasn't in the hospital room when you were born.

INA: Oh No!! I think that's one thing that has changed over the years. It's OK for men to love a child, to be there and be supportive, to go to a PTA meeting, to change a diaper, to get poo-poo on you. You see wonderful fathers today, although I'm sure there are also very bad ones.

STACEY: Another positive influence of the 60s?

INA: Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, women didn't breast feed back then. Somehow that natural thing to do got lost -- even in the 60s people had trouble seeing somebody else breast feed.  One time on a flight a woman, once again, took things too far. She pulled out her breast on the plane to feed the baby and the two of them fell asleep like that, completely exposed. So, there's always taking things too far. Women didn't treat feed here in America, uh-uh, that was taboo, something for the lower class.

STACEY And you mom? Was she as strict as your dad?

INA: She tried to be because she tried to protect us.

STACEY: Was she being controlled by your father?

INA: My mother? Bu my father? Oh, absolutely. My mother was an artist and a dancer, and she gave it up at eighteen to marry my father.

STACEY: ...and you never would have done that?

INA: Oh No. I had a fight today with my boyfriend because of my independence. I used to think I never could stand up for myself because of the way I was raised, and one day I realized that I'm pretty damn strong. I do it my way.

STACEY: So, you divorced you first husband?

INA: I was married six months to a man.

STACEY: Is that who you had your son with?

INA: No, that was my second husband. We didn't last that long either. My son was two when we split. I was a single parent all these years and people always thought it was so hard on me to be a single mom, but it wasn’t -- I did it my way.  I dint have anybody to argue with over things like how to raise him (my son).

STACEY: Divorce was an option for you, as it is for many people today. It was probably not an option for your mother.

INA: Women were too chicken to do anything. Lots of women want a man to support them. I was just to head strong.

STACEY: But what do you think about divorce?

INA: I've always question myself, wondering if I jumped out too soon. My ex-husband is an alcoholic. He's been recovered since my son was four, and I'm very happy for him, and for my son, and for his family, and of myself. But basically, I was told that if I stayed with him, I was an enabler, and I was not going to live in fear that when I had a flight I'd come home and find him passed out and my toddler running around unsupervised, when he only had the responsibility for a couple of hours. He really loved his son, but he was that sick. I picked up a lot of wrong people in my lifetime. I am a mothering soul.

STACEY: It sounds as if you were that to Jim Morrison too, in a way.

INA: Yeah, back at that time he called me up late one night. He was writing this song "LA Woman," and he was asking my opinion. He really wanted to know what I thought about it.

STACEY: About the song?

INA: Right, "What do you think about this line, about that..." And I was so afraid to tell him what I really thought. I don't know if I really had anything to do with that song, but he really, truly wanted to know what I felt about what he wrote. And the music...he would always try to get me to sing. I can paint, I can do bronze, I can sculpt, woodworking, I can do a lot of things, but I cannot sing... (Laughs!) But he truly believed that you could train your voice.

STACEY: Ina, it seems you have found your voice. Thank you for sharing it with us.

INA: Thank you.