Last night Allen Ginsberg phoned me from the dead.
How are you, I said.
I’m dead, he said.
What is it like being dead?
It’s nice being free of the timeless sadness of existence. But I miss bon bons, the flowerness of any given moment, and Japanese lampshades. What’s it like up there, in the world of the living?
Same old same old, I said. Endless war. Three wars, in fact. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Four, if you include Pakistan. Our roads are going to hell. The Pentagon sucks up trillions of American dollars and pours them down in the form of bombs. Shitty electrocuting showers. Feculent bottled water. Privately contracted thugs. People are hungry. There’s an ad on the radio asking people to donate food. You never know, the family next door might be going hungry. Poverty is pandemic. 42 percent of financial wealth is controlled by the top 1 percent. 37 million Americans are on food stamps. I miss your voice, Allen. You were always a force for the good.
That’s nice of you to say. I wish I could be there, too. But frankly, I like being dead. It’s like being high on laughing gas. The universe is a void, in which there is a sweet dreamhole. It’s the instant of going into or coming out of existence. But here, here among the permanently dead, the permanently non-existent, one is free of the sadness of birth, the sadness of changing from dream to dream. Can you dig this?
Yes, my time is coming. One thing though. If you no longer exist, who am I talking to?
You are talking to your imagination of me.
Oh yeah. That makes sense. I can dig that. Anything you miss about being alive? You know, like food, flowers, walking around in a body?
Well, sex obviously. The wiggle and play of my cock. Autumn gold. Wet glaze on an asphalt street. Holy sunlight. The great crystal door to the House of Night. Eyeball kicks on storefronts. The gaiety of tables in flirty restaurant rowdiness. The vast lamb of the middleclass. The crazy shepherds of rebellion. The rich rank smell of old apricots under October leaves. The breath in my nose. Auto lights in the rain. Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown visions. My books piled up before me for my use. My texts, my manuscripts, my loves.
Have you seen Jack or Neal? Are they there? John Lennon? John Keats? Shelley? Janis Joplin? Shakespeare? Christ?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re all here. Everybody’s here. But not in the way you think. The human personality is, after all, a very ephemeral thing at best. People die all the time and reinvent themselves. One way or another, dead or alive, it all comes down to yearning. There is yearning all over the universe. The universe is a universe of yearning. Not even the human imagination satisfies the endless emptiness of the soul.
So what is the difference between life and death?
Death is larger and larger loops. The dull sleep of idealistic brains. Life is work and frenzy. Insults and smalltalk. Threats and dollars. Thick men in dark hats. Wall Street cashmere hiding iron muscles of money.
That doesn’t sound so good.
Well, money was always a problem. Even in death I still think about it. And remember. This is a me imagined by you. You are in the realm of money. Hairy buttocks and brainwaves. Abandoned buildings gutted and blackwindowed from old fires. And you’re lifting lines of poetry from my big red book of Collected Poetry. Aren’t you?
Yes, it’s true. You got me. But tell me. What are ghosts?
Ghosts are animal trumpets below the abdomen. Visceral sensations of acute loss. Leaving us flying like birds into time. In and out of time. When you’re dead, time ceases to exist. I miss the tick of clocks. The elegant joke of Swiss cuckoos poking out to tell you it’s noon. Or three o’clock. Or the garbage truck at four backing up the driveway to take away crumpled plastic bottles and newspapers and pizza boxes with the cheese still stuck to the bottom. Ghosts are everywhere. They are the soot that falls on city vegetables. They are your own forlorn soul making itself at home in the void. They are your eyes weeping tears. Kennedy throat brain bloodied in Texas. That’s when the coup that took over America began you know.
Yes, I pretty much figured that was the case. Hey, guess what. Remember your pal Dylan? He’s coming up on 70. Can you believe that? Dylan as an old man? It’s a bit jarring to see that old jowly wrinkled face under a broadbrimmed cowboy hat. And those Texas swing jackets he’s taken to wearing are weird too. He performed in China last Tuesday. Just before Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei was arrested.
That must have been awkward. Did Dylan say anything?
Not that I know of.
Mmmm. Well, Dylan was always hard to figure.
I remember a movie in which you showed Dylan the grave of Jack Kerouac and said that’s where we all end up. Got any advice for me?
Sit down crosslegged and relax. Storm heaven with your mental guns. Don’t abuse the planet. Enjoy life. Prepare for death. Pogo to garage bands. Make haiku of birds.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Lettre de Seattle
Ma femme et moi avons été nourir une menagerie des petits animaux pour les derniers mois. Principalement écureuils, mais pas un peu d’oiseaux d’ailleurs, geais de Steller, muguets, moineaux, mésanges. Parfois, la nuit, nous verrons les ratons laveurs à notre fenétre, regardent vers nous avec une curiosité amusée.
Notre appartement est partiellement souterrain, de sorte que notre grande fenétre est de niveau avec le jardin et le trottoir. Notre chat aime assis sur le rebord de regarder tout se passe. Nous l’appelons “la television pour les chats.”
Hier, tout est arrivé à sa fin. Nous avons regardé une episode de Glee. Jane Lynch se mariait à lui-même quand il m’arrivait de regarder par la fenêtre et de voir un rat manger les grains que nous disperser pour les écureuils. Il était énorme.
J’ai pensé, d’abord, il pourrait être une opossum. Mias non, c’était un rat. “Uh oh,” j’ai dit. “Qu’est-ce que c’est”? m’a demandé Roberta. “Un rat.”
Roberta est sortie si vite que ma tête a pivoté. Elle est apparue sur le trottoir avec un grand sac en papier et une pelle et a commencé à creuser et à renverser la terre. Ainsi, une époque d’innocence et de l’intimité avec le monde de l’écureuil est venu à une fin abrupte.
Ce matin, comme je me préparais à faire un cours, j’ai vu l’un des écureuils me donner un regard de la stupéfaction. Je me sentais triste. J’ai dû resister à lui donner des aliments. J’espère que, pendant les mois que nous les a nourris, ils n’ont pas perdu leur capacité à trouver de la nourriture par leurs propres moyens.
Que les rats aillent se faire foutre!
Notre appartement est partiellement souterrain, de sorte que notre grande fenétre est de niveau avec le jardin et le trottoir. Notre chat aime assis sur le rebord de regarder tout se passe. Nous l’appelons “la television pour les chats.”
Hier, tout est arrivé à sa fin. Nous avons regardé une episode de Glee. Jane Lynch se mariait à lui-même quand il m’arrivait de regarder par la fenêtre et de voir un rat manger les grains que nous disperser pour les écureuils. Il était énorme.
J’ai pensé, d’abord, il pourrait être une opossum. Mias non, c’était un rat. “Uh oh,” j’ai dit. “Qu’est-ce que c’est”? m’a demandé Roberta. “Un rat.”
Roberta est sortie si vite que ma tête a pivoté. Elle est apparue sur le trottoir avec un grand sac en papier et une pelle et a commencé à creuser et à renverser la terre. Ainsi, une époque d’innocence et de l’intimité avec le monde de l’écureuil est venu à une fin abrupte.
Ce matin, comme je me préparais à faire un cours, j’ai vu l’un des écureuils me donner un regard de la stupéfaction. Je me sentais triste. J’ai dû resister à lui donner des aliments. J’espère que, pendant les mois que nous les a nourris, ils n’ont pas perdu leur capacité à trouver de la nourriture par leurs propres moyens.
Que les rats aillent se faire foutre!
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Words Fail
Yesterday morning on La Revue de Presse Internationale presented by Cécile de Kervasdoué, a Japanese journalist was quoted as saying “I returned just now from an overdue trip in the northwest region of Japan… Never have I been witness to such extreme destruction… as if human life had been eradicated with a single blow. In the middle of a pile of debris there was a sewing machine, a wig, a little Buddhist temple with photos in it, a pair of glasses and a toilet bowl… everything within view was broken, ripped, twisted, damaged… all which served to remind me of the words of the Japanese novelist Takeishi Kaiko when he visted Auschwitz: ‘I had the impression that words had lost their meaning, as if they had become as useless as dead leaves.’”
“What a dreadful pretention,” the journalist continued, “to have believed that my eloquence and words could help these devastated people. There is such a profound gulf, so completely irreconcilable, between those who have survived a disaster and others such as myself who have only been witness.”
“I wept and I wept some more and could not finish weeping,” a woman confided to the journalist in the midst of a mountain of debris.
“I would love to find the words to comfort her," said the journalist, "but it’s impossible, totally impossible: words have lost their meaning!”
“We love the beauty of the obscure,” commented the Vanguardia of Barcelona. “It’s a tendency inherited from Romanticism, which loved the mythic tragedy; and it is the drive of our western poetry.”
“Poetry is the echo,” said Rabindranath Tagore, “of the melody of the universe in the human heart.”
“Except for today,” commented the Vanguardia, “there are fewer and fewer places for these words.”
There is too much noise in the world. Too much self-interest. Too much greed. Too much materialism. Too many brutalizing industries. Too many mind-numbing TV shows. Too many cell phones. Too many cars. Too many guns. Too many dictators. Too many demagogues. Too much propaganda. Too much poverty. Too much predation. Too much bullying. Too much rudeness. Too much careerism. Too much narcissism. Too much corruption. Too much dogmatism. Too much hypocrisy. Too much too much too much.
Not enough joy. Not enough delicacy. Not enough wet dreams. Not enough rebellion. Not enough pure glittering water. Not enough trees. Not enough wind power. Not enough curiosity. Not enough crazy lazy drifting. Not enough housing. Not enough solitude. Not enough huckleberry. Not enough prairie. Not enough Japanese flowering cherry.
Not enough whales. Not enough nails.
Too many jails.
Not enough birds. Not enough herds. Not enough words.
Too many words.
Keith Richards called Allen Ginsberg a windbag. I don’t think Allen Ginsberg was a windbag. I thought he was incredibly smart. I miss Allen Ginsberg.
“What a dreadful pretention,” the journalist continued, “to have believed that my eloquence and words could help these devastated people. There is such a profound gulf, so completely irreconcilable, between those who have survived a disaster and others such as myself who have only been witness.”
“I wept and I wept some more and could not finish weeping,” a woman confided to the journalist in the midst of a mountain of debris.
“I would love to find the words to comfort her," said the journalist, "but it’s impossible, totally impossible: words have lost their meaning!”
“We love the beauty of the obscure,” commented the Vanguardia of Barcelona. “It’s a tendency inherited from Romanticism, which loved the mythic tragedy; and it is the drive of our western poetry.”
“Poetry is the echo,” said Rabindranath Tagore, “of the melody of the universe in the human heart.”
“Except for today,” commented the Vanguardia, “there are fewer and fewer places for these words.”
There is too much noise in the world. Too much self-interest. Too much greed. Too much materialism. Too many brutalizing industries. Too many mind-numbing TV shows. Too many cell phones. Too many cars. Too many guns. Too many dictators. Too many demagogues. Too much propaganda. Too much poverty. Too much predation. Too much bullying. Too much rudeness. Too much careerism. Too much narcissism. Too much corruption. Too much dogmatism. Too much hypocrisy. Too much too much too much.
Not enough joy. Not enough delicacy. Not enough wet dreams. Not enough rebellion. Not enough pure glittering water. Not enough trees. Not enough wind power. Not enough curiosity. Not enough crazy lazy drifting. Not enough housing. Not enough solitude. Not enough huckleberry. Not enough prairie. Not enough Japanese flowering cherry.
Not enough whales. Not enough nails.
Too many jails.
Not enough birds. Not enough herds. Not enough words.
Too many words.
Keith Richards called Allen Ginsberg a windbag. I don’t think Allen Ginsberg was a windbag. I thought he was incredibly smart. I miss Allen Ginsberg.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Say What?!!
Many thanks to Robert Mittenthal for recovering this essay for me.
Death Of The Liberal Class, nonfiction by Chris Hedges
Nation Books, 2010
I have enormous respect for Chris Hedges. I look forward each Monday to his column at Truthdig and have read, thus far, two of his nonfiction books: Empire of Illusion: The End Of Literacy And The Triumph Of Spectacle, and Death Of The Liberal Class. His writing is forceful, lucid, cogent. His insights into the social and political malaise of the United States are stunning and razor-edged. A graduate of Harvard, he has had abundant experience as a journalist, having spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News, and The New York Times. He has won the Pulitzer, and was quoted at the beginning of the movie The Hurt Locker, from his bestselling book War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning : “The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.”
Hedges, too, has become an addiction. At least since Reagan assumed office in 1980, I have had an unsettling feeling about living in the United States. I am quite positive I am not alone. Those of us in the middle class have felt under assault by an unregulated, predatory and corrupt corporate juggernaut and witness to the rapid erosions of benign government legislation designed to protect the poor, the environment, and education. One senses a profound, ubiquitous evil engulfing the globe with war, exploitation, and toxic nuclear waste. I need writers like Chris Hedges to explain the sources and perplexing behaviors of groups such as the Tea Partiers, Christian fundamentalists, devious, profit-grubbing corporate CEOs such as Tony Hayward or Jeffrey Immelt, who Obama recently appointed to head his outside panel of economic advisers. That’s like appointing the thug who just mugged you to be in charge of your retirement plan.
Obama is a mystery. I voted for him. Big mistake. The choice, once again, of the lesser of two evils, I knew Obama wasn’t a progressive, but a center-right, savvy politician, who would most likely support the kind of nefarious legislation Clinton signed into actuality when he was in office, noxious bills like NAFTA and the Telecommunications Act of 1996, but would, at the very least, end the insanely stupid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the abysmal dark stain on humanity that is Guantanamo. I was wrong. Obama turned out to be way worse than Clinton. Worse, even, than Bush. Hard to believe. But there it is: increased militarism, more erosion of our civil rights, more torture and human rights abuses, and the biggest bank robbery in history. So much for Obama’s “change you can believe in.” Yeah, right.
It would seem countraindicated to read books on political science and contemporary culture when times are this evil. Why make yourself more miserable by dwelling in it? But that’s not at all how I look at it. If I had a mysterious disease, I would want to know as much about it as possible, in order to feel a modicum of hope and control, even if it meant an immersion in information with the potential to make me feel worse. And so I read Hedges, and many others: Ted Rall, Henry Giroux, Morris Berman, Naomi Wolf, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Lewis Lapham, James Kunstler and Howard Zinn. And listen to lots of progressive radio: Mike Malloy especially. Stephanie Miller and her pal Hal Sparks drive me crazy. They continue to be apologists for Obama. Hedges has a very strong and particular appeal because he has been a witness to war and genocide. He has seen this things up close. He saw the Balkans dissolve into sulfurous, bloody ruin. He knows what fascism looks like. He knows what seething, internecine hatred can do. But when I read, in Death Of The Liberal Class, that the core qualities of corporate capitalism (the cult of the self, political cynicism, hedonism, abandonment of the urban centers) were promoted, fueled, and nourished by the Beats, I about fell out of my chair.
Say what??!!
You’ve frigging got to be kidding.
Hedges draws much of his argument from a book by Lawrence Lipton titled The Holy Barbarians. I have not read this book. It could be there are more compelling arguments to be found in Lipton’s book that support the idea of hedonistic amorality in Beat culture leading to the kind of rampant consumerism infecting contemporary life, but the central charges that Hedges lists are wobbly and unconvincing. Here is an excerpt:
Lawrence Lipton, who wrote a book on the Beats called The Holy Barbarians, argued that the Beats “expropriated” from the upper classes their arts, sings, and “privilege of defying convention.” The Beats, like the Bohemians who populated Greenwich Village after World War I, also flaunted a self-indulgent hedonism that mirrored the ethic of the consumer culture. Lipton called this “the democratization of amorality.” The Beats in the 1950s aided the dissipation of the intellectual class by abandoning urban centers, where a previous generation of public intellectuals such as Jane Jacobs or Dwight Macdonald, lived and worked. They romanticized the automobile and movement. Russell Jacoby points out in The Last Intellectuals that the Beats had a peculiarly American “devotion to the automobile, the road, and travel, which kept them and then a small army of imitators crisscrossing the continent,” as well as a populist “love of the American people.” The Beats not only bolstered the ethic of consumption and leisure as opposed to work, but also they “anticipated the deurbanization of America, the abandonment of the cities for smaller centers, suburbs, campus towns, and outlying areas.”
This is patent nonsense. It sounds like Lipton and Jacoby are basing their arguments on a very shallow reading of Kerouac’s On The Road. Yes, speed and movement are a large dynamic fueling the excitement and lust for adventure and life experience at the heart of Kerouac’s seminal novel, but it has nothing whatever to do with consumerism or leisure or the avoidance of work. On The Road is a clean, open celebration of spontaneity and raw, immediate experience. It is ferociously anti-materialistic and celebrates the joys of a life unsullied by Babbitry and pedestrian ambitions. It offers a vision of life based on feeling and fellowship. There is a great deal of compassion, sympathy, and above all humanity in the lines of this wonderful novel. There is nothing in it remotely sympathetic to the kind of regimented, predatory, depersonalizing obduracy of the corporate mindset.
The corporate appetite is pure, unadulterated id. It is reptilian. It is driven solely by profit. By greed. By ruthless competition. It attacks and eats everything in its path that it can use to further its growth. It has more in common with a Tyrannosaurus Rex chomping on the neck of a hapless hadrosaur than the HOLY GOOFS and desolate angels of Kerouac’s books, mad with energy, covered with sweat and throbbing veins saying “Yes, yes, yes,” to everything life has to offer. If that’s consumerism, I want in.
Hedges does not begin with the beats in his criticism of artistic complaisance among the avant garde; he goes further back in time to the art-for-art movement of the belle epoch and dada and surrealism of the early 20th century. He criticizes these movements for turning away from the social injustices of the working class and indulging in a spectacle of Bohemian whimsy and sybaritic excess. “Artistic expression,” he writes, “soon became void of social purpose. It created, as [Malcolm] Cowley wrote, ‘the religion of art’ that ‘inevitably led into blind alleys.’”
I would counter that with something Michael McClure wrote in Scratching The Beat Surface: “For the artist or animal there is but one religion. At first glance it is simple. As simple as the animal (a sessile polyp or sea cucumber) or as complex as the animal’s nervous system – as with a dolphin, a panda, or a man. The religion is being itself.”
Hedges argument is an old one. I have heard it many times before. Art must shoulder its burden of social injustice, fight for the liberty and dignity of humankind, elevate the masses with its message of fairness and justice for all, or relinquish its title to integrity and virtue. If art refuses these distinctions, it is of no value. It is craven and decadent. It merely feeds the narcissistic vanities of the bourgeois, furthers the ambitions of the powerful elite.
I could not disagree more vehemently. This argument fails to recognize the reality of art. Its truest essence. Art, in order to be art at all, must first be free of any and all forms of utility. It becomes a political force by virtue of its own internal dynamic. “It refuses,” wrote Herbert Marcuse in his essay “Art as Form of Reality,” “to be for the museum or mausoleum, for the exhibitions of a no longer existing aristocracy, for the holiday of the soul and the elevation of the masses - it wants to be real.”
Being real means being autonomous. Being dangerous and quiet and seditious as the breath in a clarinet. Being detached from the empirical world in order to bring forth another world. Being liberal and beautiful as the black air in Maldoror. Thick and muscular as the tongue of an adrenalin tiger exploring a stick of incendiary henna. Lush as a daydream and twice as brash. Volcanic. Spiral. Soaked in infinity. A castle of milk groveling in arbitrary taffeta. Hot as veins and labial as a red rag bristling with beets. “Art is transcendent in a sense which distinguishes and divorces it from any 'daily' reality we can possibly envisage,” Marcuse further elaborates.
No matter how free, society will be inflicted with necessity - the necessity of labour, of the fight against death and disease, of scarcity. Thus, the arts will retain forms of expression germane to them - and only to them: of a beauty and truth antagonistic to those of reality. There is, even in the most 'impossible' verses of the traditional drama, even in the most impossible opera arias and duets, some element of rebellion which is still 'valid'. There is in them some faithfulness to one's passions, some 'freedom of expression' in defiance of common sense, language, and behaviour which indicts and contradicts the established ways of life. It is by virtue of this 'otherness' that the Beautiful in the traditional arts would retain its truth. And this otherness could not and would not be cancelled by the social development. On the contrary: what would be cancelled is the opposite, namely, the false, conformist and comfortable reception (and creation!) of Art, its spurious integration with the Establishment, its harmonization and sublimation of repressive conditions. Then, perhaps for the first time, men could enjoy the infinite sorrow of Beethoven and Mahler because it is overcome and preserved in the reality of freedom. Perhaps for the first time men would see with the eyes of Corot, of Cezanne, of Monet because the perception of these artists has helped to form this reality.
Death Of The Liberal Class, nonfiction by Chris Hedges
Nation Books, 2010
I have enormous respect for Chris Hedges. I look forward each Monday to his column at Truthdig and have read, thus far, two of his nonfiction books: Empire of Illusion: The End Of Literacy And The Triumph Of Spectacle, and Death Of The Liberal Class. His writing is forceful, lucid, cogent. His insights into the social and political malaise of the United States are stunning and razor-edged. A graduate of Harvard, he has had abundant experience as a journalist, having spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News, and The New York Times. He has won the Pulitzer, and was quoted at the beginning of the movie The Hurt Locker, from his bestselling book War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning : “The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.”
Hedges, too, has become an addiction. At least since Reagan assumed office in 1980, I have had an unsettling feeling about living in the United States. I am quite positive I am not alone. Those of us in the middle class have felt under assault by an unregulated, predatory and corrupt corporate juggernaut and witness to the rapid erosions of benign government legislation designed to protect the poor, the environment, and education. One senses a profound, ubiquitous evil engulfing the globe with war, exploitation, and toxic nuclear waste. I need writers like Chris Hedges to explain the sources and perplexing behaviors of groups such as the Tea Partiers, Christian fundamentalists, devious, profit-grubbing corporate CEOs such as Tony Hayward or Jeffrey Immelt, who Obama recently appointed to head his outside panel of economic advisers. That’s like appointing the thug who just mugged you to be in charge of your retirement plan.
Obama is a mystery. I voted for him. Big mistake. The choice, once again, of the lesser of two evils, I knew Obama wasn’t a progressive, but a center-right, savvy politician, who would most likely support the kind of nefarious legislation Clinton signed into actuality when he was in office, noxious bills like NAFTA and the Telecommunications Act of 1996, but would, at the very least, end the insanely stupid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the abysmal dark stain on humanity that is Guantanamo. I was wrong. Obama turned out to be way worse than Clinton. Worse, even, than Bush. Hard to believe. But there it is: increased militarism, more erosion of our civil rights, more torture and human rights abuses, and the biggest bank robbery in history. So much for Obama’s “change you can believe in.” Yeah, right.
It would seem countraindicated to read books on political science and contemporary culture when times are this evil. Why make yourself more miserable by dwelling in it? But that’s not at all how I look at it. If I had a mysterious disease, I would want to know as much about it as possible, in order to feel a modicum of hope and control, even if it meant an immersion in information with the potential to make me feel worse. And so I read Hedges, and many others: Ted Rall, Henry Giroux, Morris Berman, Naomi Wolf, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Lewis Lapham, James Kunstler and Howard Zinn. And listen to lots of progressive radio: Mike Malloy especially. Stephanie Miller and her pal Hal Sparks drive me crazy. They continue to be apologists for Obama. Hedges has a very strong and particular appeal because he has been a witness to war and genocide. He has seen this things up close. He saw the Balkans dissolve into sulfurous, bloody ruin. He knows what fascism looks like. He knows what seething, internecine hatred can do. But when I read, in Death Of The Liberal Class, that the core qualities of corporate capitalism (the cult of the self, political cynicism, hedonism, abandonment of the urban centers) were promoted, fueled, and nourished by the Beats, I about fell out of my chair.
Say what??!!
You’ve frigging got to be kidding.
Hedges draws much of his argument from a book by Lawrence Lipton titled The Holy Barbarians. I have not read this book. It could be there are more compelling arguments to be found in Lipton’s book that support the idea of hedonistic amorality in Beat culture leading to the kind of rampant consumerism infecting contemporary life, but the central charges that Hedges lists are wobbly and unconvincing. Here is an excerpt:
Lawrence Lipton, who wrote a book on the Beats called The Holy Barbarians, argued that the Beats “expropriated” from the upper classes their arts, sings, and “privilege of defying convention.” The Beats, like the Bohemians who populated Greenwich Village after World War I, also flaunted a self-indulgent hedonism that mirrored the ethic of the consumer culture. Lipton called this “the democratization of amorality.” The Beats in the 1950s aided the dissipation of the intellectual class by abandoning urban centers, where a previous generation of public intellectuals such as Jane Jacobs or Dwight Macdonald, lived and worked. They romanticized the automobile and movement. Russell Jacoby points out in The Last Intellectuals that the Beats had a peculiarly American “devotion to the automobile, the road, and travel, which kept them and then a small army of imitators crisscrossing the continent,” as well as a populist “love of the American people.” The Beats not only bolstered the ethic of consumption and leisure as opposed to work, but also they “anticipated the deurbanization of America, the abandonment of the cities for smaller centers, suburbs, campus towns, and outlying areas.”
This is patent nonsense. It sounds like Lipton and Jacoby are basing their arguments on a very shallow reading of Kerouac’s On The Road. Yes, speed and movement are a large dynamic fueling the excitement and lust for adventure and life experience at the heart of Kerouac’s seminal novel, but it has nothing whatever to do with consumerism or leisure or the avoidance of work. On The Road is a clean, open celebration of spontaneity and raw, immediate experience. It is ferociously anti-materialistic and celebrates the joys of a life unsullied by Babbitry and pedestrian ambitions. It offers a vision of life based on feeling and fellowship. There is a great deal of compassion, sympathy, and above all humanity in the lines of this wonderful novel. There is nothing in it remotely sympathetic to the kind of regimented, predatory, depersonalizing obduracy of the corporate mindset.
The corporate appetite is pure, unadulterated id. It is reptilian. It is driven solely by profit. By greed. By ruthless competition. It attacks and eats everything in its path that it can use to further its growth. It has more in common with a Tyrannosaurus Rex chomping on the neck of a hapless hadrosaur than the HOLY GOOFS and desolate angels of Kerouac’s books, mad with energy, covered with sweat and throbbing veins saying “Yes, yes, yes,” to everything life has to offer. If that’s consumerism, I want in.
Hedges does not begin with the beats in his criticism of artistic complaisance among the avant garde; he goes further back in time to the art-for-art movement of the belle epoch and dada and surrealism of the early 20th century. He criticizes these movements for turning away from the social injustices of the working class and indulging in a spectacle of Bohemian whimsy and sybaritic excess. “Artistic expression,” he writes, “soon became void of social purpose. It created, as [Malcolm] Cowley wrote, ‘the religion of art’ that ‘inevitably led into blind alleys.’”
I would counter that with something Michael McClure wrote in Scratching The Beat Surface: “For the artist or animal there is but one religion. At first glance it is simple. As simple as the animal (a sessile polyp or sea cucumber) or as complex as the animal’s nervous system – as with a dolphin, a panda, or a man. The religion is being itself.”
Hedges argument is an old one. I have heard it many times before. Art must shoulder its burden of social injustice, fight for the liberty and dignity of humankind, elevate the masses with its message of fairness and justice for all, or relinquish its title to integrity and virtue. If art refuses these distinctions, it is of no value. It is craven and decadent. It merely feeds the narcissistic vanities of the bourgeois, furthers the ambitions of the powerful elite.
I could not disagree more vehemently. This argument fails to recognize the reality of art. Its truest essence. Art, in order to be art at all, must first be free of any and all forms of utility. It becomes a political force by virtue of its own internal dynamic. “It refuses,” wrote Herbert Marcuse in his essay “Art as Form of Reality,” “to be for the museum or mausoleum, for the exhibitions of a no longer existing aristocracy, for the holiday of the soul and the elevation of the masses - it wants to be real.”
Being real means being autonomous. Being dangerous and quiet and seditious as the breath in a clarinet. Being detached from the empirical world in order to bring forth another world. Being liberal and beautiful as the black air in Maldoror. Thick and muscular as the tongue of an adrenalin tiger exploring a stick of incendiary henna. Lush as a daydream and twice as brash. Volcanic. Spiral. Soaked in infinity. A castle of milk groveling in arbitrary taffeta. Hot as veins and labial as a red rag bristling with beets. “Art is transcendent in a sense which distinguishes and divorces it from any 'daily' reality we can possibly envisage,” Marcuse further elaborates.
No matter how free, society will be inflicted with necessity - the necessity of labour, of the fight against death and disease, of scarcity. Thus, the arts will retain forms of expression germane to them - and only to them: of a beauty and truth antagonistic to those of reality. There is, even in the most 'impossible' verses of the traditional drama, even in the most impossible opera arias and duets, some element of rebellion which is still 'valid'. There is in them some faithfulness to one's passions, some 'freedom of expression' in defiance of common sense, language, and behaviour which indicts and contradicts the established ways of life. It is by virtue of this 'otherness' that the Beautiful in the traditional arts would retain its truth. And this otherness could not and would not be cancelled by the social development. On the contrary: what would be cancelled is the opposite, namely, the false, conformist and comfortable reception (and creation!) of Art, its spurious integration with the Establishment, its harmonization and sublimation of repressive conditions. Then, perhaps for the first time, men could enjoy the infinite sorrow of Beethoven and Mahler because it is overcome and preserved in the reality of freedom. Perhaps for the first time men would see with the eyes of Corot, of Cezanne, of Monet because the perception of these artists has helped to form this reality.
Lost Work
I lost my essay on Chris Hedge’s indictment of the beats and surrealists in his recent publication Death Of The Liberal Class[which has since been recovered, thanks to Robert Mittenthal, and reposted; see above]. I found a link that took me directly to the edit page at my blog, deleted my Hedge’s essay (“Say What?!!”), and pasted in a new posting. When I noticed after I had made my new post that the date had not changed, I realized my mistake. I hadn’t made a separate file for that essay, don’t know why, no excuse for that, and looked to see if it had been saved as an “edit”at the blog. It had not. It was gone.
I apologize to anyone that may have gone looking for it. Though the most important information in it were two excerpts from Herbert Marcuse’s essay, “Art As Form Of Reality.” That was really the heart of the essay.
Out of curiosity, I went looking on the internet for articles or information about lost manuscripts. I remembered reading somewhere that the poet Jackson MacLow, one of my favorite poets, had lost a manuscript on the New York subway. I have no idea how I would deal with such a loss. I hope that MacLow’s involvement in Buddhist philosophy proved of some benefit.
A Wikipedia entry titled (aptly) “Lost Work,” popped up immediately.
I was surprised at the number of lost manuscripts listed at the Wikipedia site. Not so surprised about the number of lost work from ancient Greece, but very surprised to see so much missing from the Old and New Testaments of the Judeo-Christian bible. Things I had never heard of: Book of Samuel the Seer, History of Nathan the Prophet, Acts of Uziah, Gospel of the Four Heavenly Realms, Gospel of the Seventy, Gospel of the Twelve, and the Secret Gospel of Mark, “written for an initiated elite.”
I have long had fantasies of the discovery of a steamer trunk or wooden box in Harar, Ethiopia or farm in the Ardennes containing poetry by Arthur Rimbaud. So I was surprised to see a listing for a lost notebook of poems that Arthur had, presumably, lent, or entrusted, to a schoolmate. I wonder if he worried that his mother would discover it, and so had entrusted it to his buddy, whose parents might be a little more liberal than Arthur’s stern mother.
I have also long had fantasies of biographical or - better yet - autobiographical work concerning Shakespeare. I did discover a listing for a lost play, Love’s Labour’s Won, presumably a sequel to Love’s Labour Lost. Also, an Ur-Hamlet, written by Thomas Kyd.
Another later play attributed to Shakespeare, The History of Cardenio, was known to have been performed by The King’s Men, a London theatre company, in 1613. It was attributed to William Shakespeare and John Fletcher in 1653 in a Stationer’s Register entry by the bookseller Humphry Mosley. Mosley, however, had falsely used Shakespeare’s name in other such entries, so the authenticity of this listing is dubious.
A lot of Incan quipu were destroyed by the louts that were the Spanish Conquistadores. The quipus, also called (wonderfully) “talking knots,” were recording devices which consisted of colored, spun, and plied thread or strings from llama or alpaca hair. Information was encoded by knots in a base ten positional system. Each quipu might have from a few to as many as 2,000 cords.
Speaking of conquistadores, there is also an interesting story about several missing pages in Herzog’s Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes. The pages were thrown from the window of a bus after one of Herzog’s football team-mates threw up on them.
Maybe the oral traditions got it right. You can’t lose something stored in your brain. Unless, of course, you lose your brain. Losing your mind is one thing, but losing your brain is another. The idea is to share your knowledge with other people. Pass it on. That way, nothing gets lost. Work is transmitted by tongue and ear. Far more reliable than pixel and paper.
Or talking knot.
I apologize to anyone that may have gone looking for it. Though the most important information in it were two excerpts from Herbert Marcuse’s essay, “Art As Form Of Reality.” That was really the heart of the essay.
Out of curiosity, I went looking on the internet for articles or information about lost manuscripts. I remembered reading somewhere that the poet Jackson MacLow, one of my favorite poets, had lost a manuscript on the New York subway. I have no idea how I would deal with such a loss. I hope that MacLow’s involvement in Buddhist philosophy proved of some benefit.
A Wikipedia entry titled (aptly) “Lost Work,” popped up immediately.
I was surprised at the number of lost manuscripts listed at the Wikipedia site. Not so surprised about the number of lost work from ancient Greece, but very surprised to see so much missing from the Old and New Testaments of the Judeo-Christian bible. Things I had never heard of: Book of Samuel the Seer, History of Nathan the Prophet, Acts of Uziah, Gospel of the Four Heavenly Realms, Gospel of the Seventy, Gospel of the Twelve, and the Secret Gospel of Mark, “written for an initiated elite.”
I have long had fantasies of the discovery of a steamer trunk or wooden box in Harar, Ethiopia or farm in the Ardennes containing poetry by Arthur Rimbaud. So I was surprised to see a listing for a lost notebook of poems that Arthur had, presumably, lent, or entrusted, to a schoolmate. I wonder if he worried that his mother would discover it, and so had entrusted it to his buddy, whose parents might be a little more liberal than Arthur’s stern mother.
I have also long had fantasies of biographical or - better yet - autobiographical work concerning Shakespeare. I did discover a listing for a lost play, Love’s Labour’s Won, presumably a sequel to Love’s Labour Lost. Also, an Ur-Hamlet, written by Thomas Kyd.
Another later play attributed to Shakespeare, The History of Cardenio, was known to have been performed by The King’s Men, a London theatre company, in 1613. It was attributed to William Shakespeare and John Fletcher in 1653 in a Stationer’s Register entry by the bookseller Humphry Mosley. Mosley, however, had falsely used Shakespeare’s name in other such entries, so the authenticity of this listing is dubious.
A lot of Incan quipu were destroyed by the louts that were the Spanish Conquistadores. The quipus, also called (wonderfully) “talking knots,” were recording devices which consisted of colored, spun, and plied thread or strings from llama or alpaca hair. Information was encoded by knots in a base ten positional system. Each quipu might have from a few to as many as 2,000 cords.
Speaking of conquistadores, there is also an interesting story about several missing pages in Herzog’s Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes. The pages were thrown from the window of a bus after one of Herzog’s football team-mates threw up on them.
Maybe the oral traditions got it right. You can’t lose something stored in your brain. Unless, of course, you lose your brain. Losing your mind is one thing, but losing your brain is another. The idea is to share your knowledge with other people. Pass it on. That way, nothing gets lost. Work is transmitted by tongue and ear. Far more reliable than pixel and paper.
Or talking knot.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Big Aluminum Door
Each time we open the big aluminum door to our storage space I get profoundly discouraged. So many boxes, so many books. How are we ever going to reduce it? I have more books than the library of congress. I was born long before laptops. Long before computers became household items like refrigerators and toasters. I won’t say buffalo were still roaming the prairie, but uniformed men operated elevators, gas was 15 cents a gallon and the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in a cave in Khirbet Qumran.
Today it’s early spring. Buds are beginning to burst. Leaves are beginning to appear. Tremors of green. I feel, I don’t know, old. But if I paddle through to the end of this paragraph and open the door I begin to feel differently a ship sails across the sky and a plaster lion falls out of the back of my mind. As you can see, I like to smear words across paper. I am Jackson Pollock. I am a pink towel on a chrome rack. I am an oasis for your tired eyes. I am a naked taxidermist reflected in the serene water of an indoor swimming pool full of incandescent fish. Fish that I have put there. With words. Yes, words. You can’t slam wool it’s too soft. And I don’t know what I’m saying I’m saying rejoice among the begonias. Let the world wade through your eyes.
Some emotions are too vague to describe with words. You have to use drums, or cash registers. There is a full spectrum of emotion in the human voice: use that. Sing. Hum. Murmur a strange deep reflection. Waves of revelation, like propositions of oil.
I hear a siren. I wish I had a siren. I love the color red. Especially when it spins around on my head and is unofficially violet.
The problems of existence burden the blood like sticks scattered among the ivy. This is why it’s good to act on impulse. Do everything on impulse. Even when you have to accept the consequences and remorse bites and your suitcase won’t close. You’ll have to take something out.
I hate traffic lights. Don’t pack any traffic lights. We won’t need them where we’re going.
The horse is old. Here is my diagnosis: the horse is old.
But the day is young and beautiful. So beautiful that we must go slowly, savor every minute. The roundness of life is a wheel of power. It measures the wind with an extra scrotum. Reflections in a broken mirror. A table of laughing people. John Mayall on the radio.
I seek autonomy. Pirate treasure buried in cinnamon sand. I rejoice among the begonias. I kiss the moon. I dig a hole and plant a name. Its implications undulate in ink. Its name is legion. Its name is wild. Its syllables are visceral. Sticky as the keys on an old piano.
The logic of increase alters the jingle of syntax. Chiaroscuro is indispensible. The very air feels tangible. Serious as two o’clock in the afternoon.
Today it’s early spring. Buds are beginning to burst. Leaves are beginning to appear. Tremors of green. I feel, I don’t know, old. But if I paddle through to the end of this paragraph and open the door I begin to feel differently a ship sails across the sky and a plaster lion falls out of the back of my mind. As you can see, I like to smear words across paper. I am Jackson Pollock. I am a pink towel on a chrome rack. I am an oasis for your tired eyes. I am a naked taxidermist reflected in the serene water of an indoor swimming pool full of incandescent fish. Fish that I have put there. With words. Yes, words. You can’t slam wool it’s too soft. And I don’t know what I’m saying I’m saying rejoice among the begonias. Let the world wade through your eyes.
Some emotions are too vague to describe with words. You have to use drums, or cash registers. There is a full spectrum of emotion in the human voice: use that. Sing. Hum. Murmur a strange deep reflection. Waves of revelation, like propositions of oil.
I hear a siren. I wish I had a siren. I love the color red. Especially when it spins around on my head and is unofficially violet.
The problems of existence burden the blood like sticks scattered among the ivy. This is why it’s good to act on impulse. Do everything on impulse. Even when you have to accept the consequences and remorse bites and your suitcase won’t close. You’ll have to take something out.
I hate traffic lights. Don’t pack any traffic lights. We won’t need them where we’re going.
The horse is old. Here is my diagnosis: the horse is old.
But the day is young and beautiful. So beautiful that we must go slowly, savor every minute. The roundness of life is a wheel of power. It measures the wind with an extra scrotum. Reflections in a broken mirror. A table of laughing people. John Mayall on the radio.
I seek autonomy. Pirate treasure buried in cinnamon sand. I rejoice among the begonias. I kiss the moon. I dig a hole and plant a name. Its implications undulate in ink. Its name is legion. Its name is wild. Its syllables are visceral. Sticky as the keys on an old piano.
The logic of increase alters the jingle of syntax. Chiaroscuro is indispensible. The very air feels tangible. Serious as two o’clock in the afternoon.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Barista Blues
A barista of my acquaintance recently told me an interesting story. A family stopped by for some hot chocolate on their way to the ballet. The hot chocolate was made, served, and paid for. The family left. Later, they called to complain that their three-year old daughter had burned the roof of her mouth on the hot chocolate.
What intrigues me about this story, aside from the sheer imbecility of these people, is their assumption that the heat of the hot chocolate was the fault of the barista. What do they not understand about the word ‘hot,’ first of all, and why would they blame the barista for their negligence and inattention in not warning their child that things that are hot have the capacity to burn, and recommend blowing on the chocolate first, so as to cool it a bit, the way everyone else does? What strange, inexplicable mental process acquitted them of their own fully evident ineptitude and prevented them from learning an important lesson in the raising of a child?
It is becoming increasingly evident that we live in a culture of unaccountability. George W. Bush starts an illegal war in Iraq, a war premised on lies, and nothing happens. Two passenger jets slam into the World Trade Towers, and no one is fired for gross negligence. Wall Street perpetrates the greatest heist in world history, which results in millions of lost households, not to mention a sharp rise in hunger in the U.S. (45 million, to be exact), and the only person to go to jail is a two-bit rascal named Bernie Madoff. Meanwhile, some of the figures most centrally involved in the Ponzi scheme that has helped bankrupt the United States, such as Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, and Henry Paulson are given positions in the Obama cabinet.
The mind boggles.
Whistleblowers such as Army Private First Class Bradley Manning, Karen Silkwood, Sherron Watkins, Joe Wilson, Daniel Ellsberg and FBI special agent John Roberts are humiliated, harassed, arrested, tortured and sometimes murdered. But the thugs and thieves and incompetents that find themselves in positions of power and wealth go free.
Has it always been like this? Has human history been as corrupt and vile as it is now?
My barista friend tells me that the public has changed in the last few years. They’ve become more demanding, mean-spirited, and crabby. There are people that demand that their coffee be served at an exact temperature. I am not exaggerating: an exact temperature.
There are customers that complain about too much foam in their cappuccino (or not enough), expect to get service when they’re blabbing away on a cell phone (as if the barista were required to read minds), demand that their ice tea be diluted so that the ratio of water to tea is meticulously adjusted according to whether it is Guangdong Oolong, Moroccan mint, or black Darjeeling, calibrated according to tthe temperature of the water, the ambient temperature of the room in which it is served, level of humidity, atomic weight of the spoon, and specific gravity of the mug.
When did people get this fussy? Is it because this is one of the few areas of their life in which they have some tiny measure of control? The easiest way to get attention? A way to postpone going to work? A way to fill the void of black tepid despair fuming radioactive waste at the core of their empty, toxic, neurotic lives? A way to exercise control over another set of human beings all waiting in line and growing impatient by the second?
One thing is sure: if the moron who just ordered a vanilla cappuccino drizzled with caramel syrup sits down at a table, twitters a message of stunning banality to Bono or Yoko Ono while admiring their reflection in the window and spills some of their cappuccino on their lap, they won’t blame themselves, they’ll blame the barista.
What intrigues me about this story, aside from the sheer imbecility of these people, is their assumption that the heat of the hot chocolate was the fault of the barista. What do they not understand about the word ‘hot,’ first of all, and why would they blame the barista for their negligence and inattention in not warning their child that things that are hot have the capacity to burn, and recommend blowing on the chocolate first, so as to cool it a bit, the way everyone else does? What strange, inexplicable mental process acquitted them of their own fully evident ineptitude and prevented them from learning an important lesson in the raising of a child?
It is becoming increasingly evident that we live in a culture of unaccountability. George W. Bush starts an illegal war in Iraq, a war premised on lies, and nothing happens. Two passenger jets slam into the World Trade Towers, and no one is fired for gross negligence. Wall Street perpetrates the greatest heist in world history, which results in millions of lost households, not to mention a sharp rise in hunger in the U.S. (45 million, to be exact), and the only person to go to jail is a two-bit rascal named Bernie Madoff. Meanwhile, some of the figures most centrally involved in the Ponzi scheme that has helped bankrupt the United States, such as Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, and Henry Paulson are given positions in the Obama cabinet.
The mind boggles.
Whistleblowers such as Army Private First Class Bradley Manning, Karen Silkwood, Sherron Watkins, Joe Wilson, Daniel Ellsberg and FBI special agent John Roberts are humiliated, harassed, arrested, tortured and sometimes murdered. But the thugs and thieves and incompetents that find themselves in positions of power and wealth go free.
Has it always been like this? Has human history been as corrupt and vile as it is now?
My barista friend tells me that the public has changed in the last few years. They’ve become more demanding, mean-spirited, and crabby. There are people that demand that their coffee be served at an exact temperature. I am not exaggerating: an exact temperature.
There are customers that complain about too much foam in their cappuccino (or not enough), expect to get service when they’re blabbing away on a cell phone (as if the barista were required to read minds), demand that their ice tea be diluted so that the ratio of water to tea is meticulously adjusted according to whether it is Guangdong Oolong, Moroccan mint, or black Darjeeling, calibrated according to tthe temperature of the water, the ambient temperature of the room in which it is served, level of humidity, atomic weight of the spoon, and specific gravity of the mug.
When did people get this fussy? Is it because this is one of the few areas of their life in which they have some tiny measure of control? The easiest way to get attention? A way to postpone going to work? A way to fill the void of black tepid despair fuming radioactive waste at the core of their empty, toxic, neurotic lives? A way to exercise control over another set of human beings all waiting in line and growing impatient by the second?
One thing is sure: if the moron who just ordered a vanilla cappuccino drizzled with caramel syrup sits down at a table, twitters a message of stunning banality to Bono or Yoko Ono while admiring their reflection in the window and spills some of their cappuccino on their lap, they won’t blame themselves, they’ll blame the barista.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
