60 years ago youth were better seen and not heard. Or at the most just sent off to die or kill for their country. Nobody took young people, and especially not young wanderers who just wanted to experience life for the sake of experience, seriously.
Then came the Beats. Depraved artists bumming their way from New York to San Francisco. "Who wandered around and around at midnight in the railway yards wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts," as Ginsberg wrote in HOWL. They refused to accept life as a series of drudgeries and responsibilities and jobs leading to a quiet, subdued death. They refused to accept authority. they refused to accept silence. And goddamn were they heard.
If it weren't for Kerouac's road days we wouldn't have had the 1960's cultural and artistic explosion, a period you have to accept as the closest thing America ever came to an artistic renaissance. You wouldn't have had Lear and Kesey and all dropping acid and searching for enlightenment and then wouldn't have had Steve Jobs as he was one of the stoniest acid head transcendentalists in the history of America.
Wouldn't have had Bob Dylan screaming about injustice. If it weren't for the beats popularizing jazz and poetry who knows if the mainstream culture would ever have embraced its descendant rap. Certainly wouldn't have this explosion of new sports and lifestyles far outside the straight and narrow, wouldn't have a nation where people are encouraged to protest and eschew the status quo. We wouldn't have America.
Maybe that's why James Franco starred in HOWL last year, at his peak, and why ON THE ROAD is one of the most anticipated movies on its way out - and how it's turned Kristen Stewart back to the provocative exciting young actress she'd been before those rotten vampire movies.
Just check out the trailer and thank god this will hopefully be a harbinger of where our youth culture is heading (Bieber and Kardashians be damned):
Our buddies at Huck Magazine put together this sick little video to show the evolution from beats to today's protesters and pose the question what's next? As our budding revolutionaries and innovators and outside the box thinkers start to make their presence felt by this world hurtling everyday towards self-destruction, what will we do next?
And while you're at it, polish off a couple of those great beat masters:
TROPIC OF CANCER - Pre-beat but the great inspiration for them all.
NAKED LUNCH - A heroin nightmare, complete with visceral and vivid sexuality and depravity
ON THE ROAD - Yeah, you gotta but
BIG SUR - this is Kerouac's finest. Imagine watching yourself going insane from drinking too much. And being unable to stop it. But at the same time having enough mind left to write down a painfully brilliant play by play of the end. Yeah. A-fucking-mazing.
HOWL - It's linked to up. Yeah. you gotta read it. Between all the lines about terror and motherfuckers screaming and whatnot are some of the most amazing poetic lines ever. My favorite stanza is "Storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light." Just say that a few times. Faster. There it is.
Visit the City Lights Bookstore and grab a drink - or 5 - next door at Tivoli.
Just learn about Neal Cassady. Seriously. This man is truly one of the last great American heroes.
And to mix it up, see how it started, the homosexual murder mystery that first brought them all together - just released this last year, AND THE HIPPOS WERE BOILED IN THEIR TANKS is a novel co-written by Burroughs and Kerouac about a real event in their lives and what it lacks in writing ability it makes up for in the hints of the greatness to come out of both those men.
So next time you get laid without strings attached, set off for an adventure for no purpose other than the desire to have an adventure, smoke a j or sit down to write about stream of consciousness youth angst and confusion, make sure to pay some respect to the beats. And maybe you'll find you are one - just a couple generations removed.
Because as we've seen in MAD MEN, Don Draper wanted to be a "beat" - he just wasn't good enough at the artistic side. Pay attention to all the reading, all the people he feels awkward around, and all the writing and such he does secretly and in his bed at night. And even the women he picks. Yup. Draper's a Beat in disguise as a suit.
I don't know about you but that makes me feel a bit warm and fuzzy.
- Ryan
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