As those of you who read my Twitter might have noticed, I’m revisiting the Beat Writers. I went through my Beat phase in high school, which is when most people of my generation read Kerouac and get grand ideas of crossing the country and living off nothing and writing about it. I was no different. My senior year English teacher went to college in Athens in the late ’70s when the music scene was taking off and had a real thing for the Beats, too. He lent me a few books of Kerouac poetry once. I didn’t read much of them, unfortunately. And another one of my writing teachers seemed to gain a new respect for me when he learned I had read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test numerous times. Oh, and when I quoted Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” in a writing exercise.
But I have since thought that liking the Beat Writers is akin to listening to the music of the Doors – initially it’s all very inspirational and possibly even spiritual to the listener, and seems extremely poetic and “speaks” to you. Then you grow up some more and think, “Whoa, they were a bunch of drunken buffoons.” (Thank you Philip Seymour Hoffman/Lester Bangs.) Both group produced some great stuff, don’t get me wrong, but, you know… in one way it hasn’t fared the test of time and seems really self-serving. I got the same feeling when I watched Rent. All I wanted to do was scream at them “Stop griping and get a freakin’ JOB!”
Regardless, I’m revisiting the Beats for a project I’m working on, so I’ve been flipping through my Kerouac books (Kerouac was the only one I actually liked. I thought Ginsberg was a weirdo who couldn’t write anything more than about the fact he was gay and everyone else in the scene was too esoteric/political/ridiculous for me to take to. I’m giving John Clellon Holmes a shot, though. I think he’ll be more accessible. He seems more fly on the wall) and I came across a note I wrote in the margins of The Subterraneans.
Kerouac is describing the appearance of the Subterraneans (Ginsberg’s name for the Beat Generation), “… the central exaggerator of subterranean hip generation tendencies to silence, bohemian mystery, drugs, beard, semi-holiness and, as I came to find out later, insurpassable nastiness…” In the margin I had written “ironic mustache!” Yep. Sounds like pretty much everyone who has ever worked at WUOG. And Ironic Mustache should be the name of the next band I try to start. Anyone game?!
Hipsters really don’t change from generation to generation. They have the same thoughts, desires, and fears as all previous hipster generation, they just get called different things. The only real difference I can see is that today’s hipsters aren’t rebelling. The lifestyle is totally acceptable by mainstream society, and the hipster’s parents will even foot the bill. At least for a time. They had a bohemian period, too, once, why shouldn’t their kids?
A few years ago I had dinner with a musician/actor/writer friend of mine. He made the comment that he felt he wasn’t “bohemian enough.” To which I laughed and said, “What, because you hold down a job? That’s not disregarding bohemianism, that’s just being realistic!” He felt that since he wasn’t upholding the “traditional” idea of bohemianism meant he was failing as an artist. Well, artists are supposed to reflect the thoughts, ideas, and emotions of “the people,” right? So how can you do that for “the people” if you aren’t doing what they’re doing? If it’s just you and your college dropout friends banging away on guitars in your bedrooms or hosting kitchen poetry slams, that’s all well and good but after a time you’re just reflecting each other, and it gets really redundant. And ramen noodles are just nasty after too long.
Maybe I just wish there were more ridiculously wealthy people in the world who could be patrons and just pay my talented friends to make music and design stationary and write plays without being concerned about where the rent money is coming from.
I’m vereing off into a whole other level, so I’ll stop. End of the night, the “rebellious” generations of yesteryear are nearly identical to the ones today. Sometimes even down to the fashions. No big surprise there, I just found it funny. To know the past is to know the future.
