who here likes jack kerouac?

[oron]

Thanks for the poetry fragment--it was a line I'd forgotten--and your clear and direct answer, lushpup.

... um, i guess i just click in with the rhythm. the whole 'dig everything' philosophy and the 'balls on that' attitude.

Very nicely put, with the kind of energy, clarity, and down-to-earth language Jack would have appreciated. What Jack--and all the other Beats--cared about was Truth, especially emotional truth; warts-and-all emotional truth. They had no use for the kind of polite lies, social masks, and relational manipulations that were so prevalent in the closed, restricted atmosphere of the '50's in America. They wanted to explode all that and talk about what was really going on and how different it was from the communal fantasy. And they succeeded. The '60's happened largely because the Beats let the new generation see the sickness under the smooth pretty surface of the suburbs they'd grown up in: racism, poverty, discrimination, and social rules that forced everybody into the same straight-jacket. Once it was in the open, they thought, there would have to be a reaction.

There was.

Also, your extract was lovely and a good example of the pace and energy you were talking about.

Below are the opening stanzas of Ginsberg's Kaddish (a "prayer for the dead"), just to give you an idea what he's like.

Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on
the sunny pavement of Greenwhich Village.
downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking,
talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues
should blind on the phonograph
the rhythm the rhythm - and your memory in my head three years after -
And read Adonais' last triumphant stanzas aloud - wept, realizing

how we suffer -
And how Death is that remedy all singers dream of, sing, remember
prophesy as in the Hebrew Anthem, or the Buddhist Book of Answers

- and my own imagination of a withered leaf - at dawn -
Dreaming back thru life, Your time - and mine accelerating toward
Apocalypse,
the final moment - the flower burning in the Day - and what comes after,

looking back on the mind itself that saw an American city
a flash away, and a great dream of Me or China, or you and a phantom
Russia, or a crumpled bed that never existed -
like a poem in the dark - escaped back to Oblivion -

No more to say, and nothing to weep for but the Beings in the Dream,
trapped in its disappearance,
sighing, screaming with it, buying and selling pieces of phantom,
worshipping each other,
worshipping the God included in it all - longing or inevitability? - while it
lasts, a Vision - anything more?

"The flower burning in the Day." Enjoy.

ps. BTW, have you visited your "add a sentence" thread lately? Things are getting very strange over there....

[Edited by oron on 11th June 2002 at 19:02]

[lush_puppy]

I've been mulling over those Kaddish stanzas and they're really growing on me. At first it was just a blast of confusion but I'm really liking it now.

My copies of Dr Sax and Visions of Cody arrived sooner than expected!
Visions of Cody has an intro by Ginsberg written in 1972. This Ginsberg guy is becoming more and more intruiging. Someone told me he was the one responsible for that Skeleton song a few years ago, just before his ? Do u know if this is true?

Originally posted by oron
The '60's happened largely because the Beats let the new generation see the sickness under the smooth pretty surface of the suburbs they'd grown up in

That's a big call, but i like it! I see where you're coming from... a point i think i'll bring up in my next history class. I'll see if I can make it hold water for my teacher (hoping...)

listening to Ray Charles blues
should blind on the phonograph
the rhythm the rhythm - and your memory in my head three years after -

-sigh- ah, sweet sweet.

Cheers oron,
lushpup

ps- yes, the add a sentence link is getting a bit bushwacked! lol. i don't really want to add much- im just enjoying seeing it grow and mutilate. hmm, maybe just a word or too...

[oron]

I've been mulling over those Kaddish stanzas and they're really growing on me. At first it was just a blast of confusion but I'm really liking it now.

Yup. That's the way most of come to Ginsberg--slowly, battered at first by the noise but then gradually you break the noise down into sounds and then when you come back and put the sounds together, suddenly it's music, beautiful, lyrical, moving music.

My copies of Dr Sax and Visions of Cody arrived sooner than expected!

Hooray! My respect for Australia is renewed.

Someone told me he [Ginsberg] was the one responsible for that Skeleton song a few years ago, just before his ? Do u know if this is true?

I don't, no. Though it wouldn't surprise me. He started writing lyrics in the '60's for a band called The Fugs--cutting edge at the time and still surprising 40 years later. I'll try to check it out.

I see where you're coming from... a point i think i'll bring up in my next history class. I'll see if I can make it hold water for my teacher (hoping...)

"Hold water"? I guess I'm surprised because over here what I said is a given. Historians are all in agreement that the Beats were the forerunners of the Hippies and the source of most of the Hippie philosophy, though the Beats themselves--including Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Greg Corso--claimed that the Hippies had mis-read or misunderstood what they were trying to say.

I was there (yes, Virginia, I'm that old) and in my opinion, they're both right.

The Beats were concerned with breaking the bonds of silence and forced conformity that were hallmarks of the '50's in America, but they rebelled by withdrawing from society (which many Hippies did as well, but a good deal later when they had lost the political battle) and pursuing individual enlightenment, each in their own way.

The Hippies (by way of Abbie Hoffman, the founder of the Yippies, and Tom Hayden, founder of the SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] and principal author of the seminal Port Huron Statement) had soaked up the criticism, both implicit and explicit, that the Beats represented and then had simply taken it one step further: If these are the problems in American society (the problems the Beats identified), they asked, instead of withdrawing from that society, don't we have an obligation rather to become part of it and fix the problems? Thus all the political activity. This was already happening (the Port Huron Statement was 1961) before anybody in America even knew that there was such a country as Viet Nam, let alone how to find it on a map (the Tonkin Gulf Resolution wasn't until 1964); the unrest had already begun, the war just gave it a focus. And the writings of the Beats--especially Kerouac and Ginsberg--were the direct sources of that unrest. There isn't much doubt about that, I'm afraid--the lines of influence are clear. If your teacher thinks otherwise, s/he is sadly misinformed. And you can tell him/her I said so.

Cheers, lushpup. Go get em, tiger.

[lush_puppy]

howdy oron,

I finally asked my history teacher (after a long week of assessments) about the Beats being the forerunners of the Hippies. Well, um, she didn't really agree. Her opinion was that contraception began the hippy generation, hence the phrase 'swingin' sixties'. hahaha.
personally i think this is a rather narrow view point to hold. I don't think she put much thought into her reply. I guess it shows just how history can be turned around to suit the person, or the education system of a particular country!

I have some American billets staying with me and I was surprised to find out that they knew practically nothing about the whole War on Terrorism issue. They said that they had followed it soon after sept 11th, but had 'lost interest' now. This really surprised me. is it really like this over there? I'd hate to believe it. People down here follow it because it's physically happening fairly close to home.

anyway, still reading and loving jack...

the sound in your mind is the first sound that you could sing

mexico city blues

cheers,
lushpup

[oron]

Her opinion was that contraception began the hippy generation, hence the phrase 'swingin' sixties'. hahaha.

Yeah, well. I assume she was blowing you off with a joke, although a lot of people here believe that, too. It's a convenient way of dismissing the uncomfortable reality that the "serene '50's" (which is the way a lot of folks prefer to remember them) were "serene" only on the surface and at the cost of brutal segregation, institutionalized intolerance, and the wholesale destruction of any form of free speech, especially political speech. Contraception became an issue because a man named Bill Baird was getting thrown in jail for advocating it--so much for "free speech". "The pill", again, came later than people remember and its effect wasn't fully felt until well into the '70's. The "sexual revolution", per se, had little or nothing to do with contraception--it was a reaction to the puritanical sexual mores of the '50's, not to the freedom from worry about unwanted pregnancies. Believe me, we still worried.

personally i think this is a rather narrow view point to hold. I don't think she put much thought into her reply.

Good insight, probably, if depressing. If it wasn't a joke, it was certainly thoughtless.

I guess it shows just how history can be turned around to suit the person, or the education system of a particular country!

What do you mean by the last part? Why would it suit Australia's educational system to believe that the unrest in the '60's was the result of contraception? How do you think of Americans there?

I have some American billets staying with me and I was surprised to find out that they knew practically nothing about the whole War on Terrorism issue. They said that they had followed it soon after sept 11th, but had 'lost interest' now. This really surprised me. is it really like this over there?

I'm afraid so. Once the actual shooting war had been won and Afghanistan settled into the quagmire it's very fast becoming, most Americans moved on to other concerns. Most are only vaguely aware--if at all--that we're engaged in the Phillippines at present.

To be fair, we've had some serious concerns to turn to:

1)Bush (or The Shrub as he is sometimes referred to) gave away almost a $trillion to the biggest corporations and richest people in the country, turning a modest government surplus into a massive deficit overnight.

2)Reeling from both this and the sudden collapse of the bloated dot.com bubble, the economy went into a tail-spin from which it still hasn't recovered, thanks in part at least to--

3)The wholesale perpetration of fraud, theft, stock manipulation, insider trading, phony accounting practices, and outright lies by some of the biggest and most powerful corporations and banks in the country that resulted in the theft of $billions from ordinary taxpayers and investors, and destroyed--rightfully--all confidence in the whole system.

And that's just a small sampling. I could go on but I'm sure you get the point. We have MUCH to worry us.

Loved your line. Here's a little poem Ginsberg wrote about a visit he made with Jack and Greg Corso to see the poet William Carlos Williams.

To WCW

But I seen you again
in the Fifties..."Lotsa *******s
out there--" pointing thru the window
Kerouac drunk in the kitchen talking with Flossie
about old Bavarian beer garden
dances and 1910 medical Europe--

And I lied to you....

Ta, lushpup.

ps. What are "assessments"? Is that anything like tests?

[lush_puppy]

sorry i've taken so long to reply, i've been away at the coast.

anyway, thanks for the Ginsberg lines. I've gotten my hands on this book of Ginsberg's last poems. really enjoying it...

Pastel Sentences (Selections)

Mice ate at the big red heart in her breast, she was distracted in
love.

Bowed down by the weight of nebulae he crouches underneath the
hill.

A bat that's bigger than your ear watches you sleep while you dream
him there.

And I also found The ballad of the Skeletons, which is what i was asking you about earlier. So i sort of answered my question. I know he wrote the lyrics to that song, but I'm not sure about the music and production.

here's just a little bit

Said the Presidential Skeleton
I won't sign the bill
Said the Speaker skeleton
Yes you will

said the Representative Skeleton
I object
Said the Supreme Court skeleton
Whaddya expect...

said the Petrochemical skeleton
Roar ers roar!
Said the skeleton
Smoke a dinosaur

Said Nancy's skeleton
Just say No
Said the Rasta skeleton
Blow Nancy Blow

and here's just a short one that i like

Kerouac

I can't answer,
reason I can't answer
I haven't been yet
Don't remember
i'm on 14th St & !st Avenue
Vat's the qvestion?

Hope you like

What are "assessments"? Is that anything like tests?

they're just like assignments I guess. Like an essay, or speech or powerpoint presentation etc. We have about four in every subject, plus exams, and it all adds up to our final marks at the end of the year.


cheers
lushpup

[oron]

I must admit, with some shame, that I haven't read Ginsberg's last work. The lines you quoted are as interesting as ever, though, so you're pushing me out the door to find it.

The "Skeletons" I remember vaguely, but I doubt he wrote the music. Seems to me he couldn't read, but I could be wrong. The lyrics are typical of him, though.

The "Kerouac" is cute and funny and, in a way, poignant. In Jack's last days, he was often out of it, and the line "I'm on 14th St & 1st Avenue" must be a reference to one of the ways he tried to stay engaged: from time to time, out of nowhere, he would just blurt out where he was as if reminding himself. Occasionally he was wrong. Once he said in the middle of a conversation, "I'm in San Francisco", and Ginsberg had to remind him they were in NYC. Jack made light of it, but the truth was that the years of booze had fried his brain and decapitated his body. In that little poem is a lot of sad truth and genuine affection for the flaws and grace in an old friend.

Hope you had a nice vacation on the coast. I thought it was winter in Australia now?

So you have to write or present four essays in every subject? Wow. Our kids may have to do one in two or three subjects per semester, but that's it.

I'm still curious about why the idea that the pill generated the Sexual Revolution "fits" into the preconceptions of your educational system. Do Australians prefer to think of Americans as mindless hedonists? How do they think of us down under?

Well, I'm off to find the Ginsberg. Cheers.