“...the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!” ~ Jack KerouacAm I too old to still be drawing inspiration from Jack Kerouac? I still draw inspiration from Dr. Seuss too. And Kurt Vonnegut. Whatever heals over that raw and urgent feeling you have in youth must have short-circuited in me, because I'm still wide open.
"Who put canned laughter into my crucifixion scene?" - Charles Simic
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
When I Get Dry, I Go Back To The Well
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Don't ever lose that feeling Spencer.
ReplyDeleteHaving just finished On the Road, its striking what a different place America is now then it was in the 1950's. Then we had a young country--a country that felt it could do anything, that was empowered and confident. In On the Road, the guys need some money and they just pull over at a farm or a diner and--BOOM! They've got work and money for a week or two. IN times like those, you had cultural heroes like Jack Kerouak and Neal Cassady and cultural icons like the car and the open road. People were alive!
ReplyDeleteNow you read articles about how kids would rather converse on Facebook than take a roadtrip. This generation's got Ipods that can store 4,000 songs but hasn't produced more than a half-dozen bands capable of creating an album worth downloading. The country's demographics are skewing older. More conservative. More scared. Less real life and living going on. "Lost in a world of ghosts," as Oliver Stone might say.
But when USA was tops--it was Kerouak, Cassady, Kesey and the greats. Its not immaturity to to read and emulate those guys--its just not where most of this deadwood country's at anymore. And that's their problem!
as Mr Vonnegut used to say...
ReplyDelete"Think of that"...