Beat
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not political legislators, who implement change after the fact. Art exerts a profound influence on the style of life, the mode, range and direction of perception. Art tells us what we know and don’t know that we know. (William Burroughs)
I was down at the creek at the bottom of the hill behind my house. I took my camera and looked around. Space. Quiet. I was listening. Trying to quiet the noise of my own thinking. Too much trying-to-understand. Not enough Being. It’s time to cool off. The end of school always leaves me feeling blown-out. I need to practice listening.
It’s difficult to explain the muddiness, the irrelevance, the pointlessness of anything I can think of to say. It’s a writer’s problem. I was looking for a word, an edge to grab. I lost my grip. I was out on my bike - the bike is a meditation machine - on a road cruise. There. It was Kerouac’s word. I’m beat. That’s all.
I got to wondering what Kerouac would have done with a weblog. He offered some advice to writers:
BELIEF & TECHNIQUE FOR MODERN PROSE
LIST OF ESSENTIALS1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In Praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. Youre a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
As ever,
Jack [Kerouac]
source:
“Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials” from a 1958 letter to Don Allen, in Heaven & Other Poems, copyright © 1958, 1977, 1983. Grey Fox Press.
There’s a lot of stuff broken and in need of repair around here at the moment. Living in the country a few hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle brings challenges that can’t really be ignored. Summer is short and sweet. Intoxicating endless daylight for two months. I come unhinged. There’s magic in it. With plenty to do, the joy of getting the days and nights mixed up is beyond telling. For anyone who cares to look in, keep an eye on my recent photos. The edge of nowhere is where the work is now.
A little more Kerouac:
…And for just a moment I had reached the point of ectasy that I always wanted to reach, which was a complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on, with a phantom dogging its own heels, and myself hurrying to a plank where all the angels dove off and flew into the holy void of uncreated emptiness, the potent and inconceivable radiance shining in bright Mind Essence, innumerable lotus-lands falling open in the magic mothswarm of heaven. I could hear an indescribable seething roar which wasn’t in my ear but everywhere and had nothing to do with sounds. I realized that I had died and been reborn numberless times but didn’t remember because the transitions from life to death and back are so ghostly easy, a magical action for naught, like falling asleep and waking up again a million times, the utter casualness and deep ignorance of it. (Sal Paradise, Ch. 10, On the Road)
Beatific.
Graham Wegner wrote,
OK, Doug, your photo feed is the perfect thing to try out on my new Pageflakes page. It actually makes me want to remember to get the camera out more often and document my immediate surroundings. What is mundane and everyday to me might be really interesting to someone else. Your pics help to put me in your environment to some degree - although I have never even seen snow in my whole life!
Link | May 27th, 2006 at 3:51 am
Doug wrote,
You’re right about what’s normal to one person being interesting to someone else. In the summer we’re invaded by swarms of tourists who ask us very funny questions. They seem to show up with the mosquitoes and the wildfire smoke. The tourists are starting to appear, so I expect the other stuff is not far off. I could do without any of them - snow is the great equalizer.
Link | May 27th, 2006 at 8:14 am
Mark Ahlness wrote,
Doug, thanks for the great thoughts and pics! Enjoy your summer (is it over yet? - ha). I think there are not many in the working world who experience a more powerful and intense annual ending to their jobs than we teachers do. I’ll be there in about 24 days - but who’s counting? - Mark
Link | May 29th, 2006 at 7:16 am
nani wrote,
ah, you’ve got my heart now…you’ve quoted kerouac. i thought he had become too passe to reference but he really did have a lot to say about the craft of writing and the creation of language.
Link | May 29th, 2006 at 9:24 am
Doug wrote,
Nani, I was born in the 50’s, and I can’t change the influences that worked on me. I’ve resigned myself to the possibility that a lot of what happened then may seem prehistoric now. When I was digging around through the “beat” references to write this, I found a quote from Bob Dylan, “I read On the Road in maybe 1959. It changed my life like it changed everyone else’s.” Me, too, about 15 years later.
Link | May 29th, 2006 at 9:49 am