Saturday, July 10, 2010
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
a) What is the topic you are interested in pursuing and why?
I am interested in studying the changes and influences drugs have made on the writings of San Franciscans. With how mind-bending some of these works can be, I find it very interesting to understand which ones are influenced by drugs, which ones have influenced drugs/drug use and which ones are purely religious (but you might otherwise think the author was on drugs). (note: drug use includes alcohol)
b) How does this topic relate to San Francisco materials or frameworks read for the course? Which of the readings are particularly relevant to this topic?
Jack Kerouac is always the forefront in my head, and I suppose with him the entire beat generation (read: lots of Ginsberg and Cassady and possibly Huxley)
c) What are some of the other materials you will need or want to read and/or inter-connect to cover this topic?
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (because I'm lame and haven't finished it yet), On The Road, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, etc...
d) What is your provisional “thesis” (hypothesis) at this point concerning this topic and these materials?
The idea of diversity is big in SF and diversity seems easily achieved through radical experimentation, the beat generation seemed to grip this by experimenting with their minds, bodies and souls in more ways than (but definitely including) using drugs and alcohol, and transgressing beyond a single style of religious thought, mixing influential deities from the East and the West.
(This is way too long and bulky and awkward but its kinda just a sprawl of thoughts on what should be in my thesis...)
e) What problems or limitations do you anticipate in pursuing, framing, researching, and writing on this topic?
I'm honestly not sure how much information there is out there on the specifics of who was on drugs while they were writing, so I might be limited to researching what drugs they were inclined to do in the general time span slightly before/during the writing process. That section might end up being mostly hypothetical.
I am interested in studying the changes and influences drugs have made on the writings of San Franciscans. With how mind-bending some of these works can be, I find it very interesting to understand which ones are influenced by drugs, which ones have influenced drugs/drug use and which ones are purely religious (but you might otherwise think the author was on drugs). (note: drug use includes alcohol)
b) How does this topic relate to San Francisco materials or frameworks read for the course? Which of the readings are particularly relevant to this topic?
Jack Kerouac is always the forefront in my head, and I suppose with him the entire beat generation (read: lots of Ginsberg and Cassady and possibly Huxley)
c) What are some of the other materials you will need or want to read and/or inter-connect to cover this topic?
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (because I'm lame and haven't finished it yet), On The Road, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, etc...
d) What is your provisional “thesis” (hypothesis) at this point concerning this topic and these materials?
The idea of diversity is big in SF and diversity seems easily achieved through radical experimentation, the beat generation seemed to grip this by experimenting with their minds, bodies and souls in more ways than (but definitely including) using drugs and alcohol, and transgressing beyond a single style of religious thought, mixing influential deities from the East and the West.
(This is way too long and bulky and awkward but its kinda just a sprawl of thoughts on what should be in my thesis...)
e) What problems or limitations do you anticipate in pursuing, framing, researching, and writing on this topic?
I'm honestly not sure how much information there is out there on the specifics of who was on drugs while they were writing, so I might be limited to researching what drugs they were inclined to do in the general time span slightly before/during the writing process. That section might end up being mostly hypothetical.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
A little bit late, but the best I could do....
I think it is really interesting to look at and think about San Francisco as a mining city, considering I have never done that before. I guess it just never really crossed my mind, even though it is such a big part of our Western history – we are the golden state! Brechin has a lot of ads in this book, but the ones that really stuck out for me were the ones about mining (mostly though not entirely in the first section). My personal favorite is the robed California with a mining candle on her head literally cracking the earth in two for her gold, while mining equipment circles her like some sort of holy trinity (28). The breaking of the world seems to be a popular image in all of the depictions of mining, with the potential wealth gain of the act far outweighing the potential environmental destruction, or so it seems. In the modern world I don't think ads like that would survive for very long without a more uplifting message, but then again we're a little bit more enlightened now in the ways of preserving our ecology. I think as much as the media shapes popular thought, so too does popular thought have to shape the media. If advertisements about the glories of destroying our planet through mining and kicking Japanese people out of the country came back in style, for instance, I do not think mining or racism against Japanese Americans would increase... in our modern economic crisis though, I wouldn't be surprised if someone jumped on a gold mine and the advertisements for mining did start again... but that might only come to be if our earth wishes there to be more gold... not just the miners.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Eat your pepper out, Brautigan.
Okay so, considering the format is not formal I do not intend my writing to be formal. Who cares anyways? These are the beats.... So I'm going to start this off by saying I don't like Brautigan much at all... but I'm still going to write about him because I found one poem that is simply adorable.
"
Haiku Ambulance
A piece of green pepper
fell
off the wooden salad bowl:
so what?
" (43)
So what? It's brilliant, it definitely needs an ambulance. If nobody was counting, that's 16 syllables up there - 1 short of a Haiku. It's like the important limb, the what (or the "Aha" moment as some people like to say), has been hacked off already so we don't even get to think about it. Then, all form and function is removed: the first line already breaks the haiku with an extra syllable that is all the more jarring coming from a single word, and then the poem steps firmly into the "long" second line with only one syllable.
After that there is a quasi-normal line (7 syllables) followed by a "so what?" So when this silly poem fell, what of it? It is certainly an odd one, but it makes me smile on the inside. With every rule being broken it's hard to focus on the pepper itself. Does the pepper even matter?
We all know it does not.
"
Haiku Ambulance
A piece of green pepper
fell
off the wooden salad bowl:
so what?
" (43)
So what? It's brilliant, it definitely needs an ambulance. If nobody was counting, that's 16 syllables up there - 1 short of a Haiku. It's like the important limb, the what (or the "Aha" moment as some people like to say), has been hacked off already so we don't even get to think about it. Then, all form and function is removed: the first line already breaks the haiku with an extra syllable that is all the more jarring coming from a single word, and then the poem steps firmly into the "long" second line with only one syllable.
After that there is a quasi-normal line (7 syllables) followed by a "so what?" So when this silly poem fell, what of it? It is certainly an odd one, but it makes me smile on the inside. With every rule being broken it's hard to focus on the pepper itself. Does the pepper even matter?
We all know it does not.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Previously written...
... over the summer. I wrote this for another class (America and Americans) but I thought it was applicable so here it is. (On a side note, I don't think this is the final version of the essay I wrote, but it's the latest copy that I have...)
William Lawrence
America and Americans
The Art of Howling
Fifty years ago, Alan Ginsberg wrote his “Howl” for freedom. He howled at his country, and at it's politics, he howled at his compatriots, and at their enlightenment. He howled at himself, at Carl Solomon, and at the Divine Eternity. Howl is of protest and understanding, commitment and separation. It is as if he is howling “America, I am you, but you are not me!”
The astonishing first lines of the poem portray a nation of haggard intellectuals, broken but illuminated, crawling to salvation. He speaks of individual deeds and beatific ideals, of drug binges and spiritual realizations and orgies and alcohol and “cock and endless balls” (10). He tells us of freedom, and of the people who experience it. He points out how our society limits our freedoms by teaching us to live up to some vague ideals imposed by and for someone nobody will ever meet. By stating the obscene in such a passionate way he shows us that these acts of madness are really just acute acts of total freedom... of the American dream.
What is the American dream if not freedom? And freedom of all things! The ideals of freedom stand firm throughout howl, in religion, in love, and in sexual particularity. Ginsberg's open admittance of homosexuality and sodomy brought the poem much scorn, but as an open and honest act of freedom his words prevailed. The importance of freedom of sexual choice and freedom of religious choice is immeasurable - neither is tangible, but nothing drives a man (or woman) in a more profound way.
When I say the poem received a certain amount of scorn, of course I'm referencing the legal happenings that led to Farlinghetti's arrest and subsequent release. Howl was, and still is too provocative, as we've proved recently by refusing to air a recording on the 50th anniversary of the poem for fear of divine (FCC) retribution. The strong views expressed in the poem were let off the legal hook by being approved as scholarly, not trashy, and well within first amendment rights. This case was a very well defined victory in the beat culture, and is talked about rather frequently... which makes one wonder why we are scared to flex those same rights fifty years later.
The first part of the poem is all about glorifying what would otherwise be considered sin, and engrossing the reader in a world where only freedom matters. By the second section of the poem Ginsberg howls: “...Moloch! Moloch the loveless!” At his readers, “Moloch the incomprehensible prison!” (21) Moloch is the demon that sacrifices children. Moloch is America. He sums up what America is to him and his peers then, as a list of complaints. Though his words are firm he speaks of it in a dissociative manner, not linking himself to Moloch. The greatest minds of his generation is what America really is to him, even though the indomitable machine of our policy rends our nation's public and private image.
Moloch is then very metaphorically lifted to heaven on the hard work and sacrifice of its victims, and a river of American dreams flows out and away. He screams of dreams committing suicide and of his mad generation. In the last few lines (of part two) he howls in despair at the dream Moloch has professed to take away – similar in intensity to his ecstatic Holy footnote in which he praises everything.
Ginsberg admits to being mad (though not as mad as Carl Solomon) in the third section. Carl Solomon was a mental patient, and though not an Author in his own right when he met Ginsberg, Ginsberg obviously thought very highly of him and he was considered quite the intellectual. He basically points at Carl Solomon and says “this is what America can do to you!” He equates Solomon's dementia with the general hysteria in the nation at large, with his mom's dementia, with his own dementia. Where America is his bedfellow, and keeps him up all night coughing.
Howl is about the American struggle. About how stifling the government is even if the country is free. It's about what the true cost of freedom is – nothing is free. It's about solitude and injustice, rights and reason – it's a test of American logic and faith, and spittle on the machines turning cogs. The footnote then, is a simple declaration of love for and interconnectedness with everything in his world. From the magical to the mundane, the downtrodden to the seraphim, everything is holy. It's as if he's making amends and tying up loose ends, he even switches to using real names instead of unique deeds to define characters.
He praises the world, and all the places the beats felt at home. He praises the understanding of identity (“Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles”(28)), and hipsters and drugs and jazz. He praises his American dream. He even praises skyscrapers and the “vast lamb of the middle class,” (28) no matter how sarcastic it's backed by fifteen times Holy and three times poetic segments of angst. He might not agree with everything that is going on in the country, but he agrees with, and praises the founding principles. We need to get back to what makes our nation great... it's Freedom.
The land of the free and the home of the brave. Are we really either anymore? Do we have the freedom to do as we please, without being treated as terrorists, in light of the government's response to events of terror? Do we have the bravery to stand up to what our country does wrong, and speak openly of it, as Ginsberg did in this historical poem? Are we afraid to point out the social injustices our nation is committing? The torture, the war on terror... the war of blood and oil... will we be able to stop any of it? It is so easy to blame the government, and blame politicians, and blame big business and the wealthy, but if we don't stand for what we believe then who will? Do we retain enough of the freedom to fight, as Ginsberg fought?
Do we, as a whole country, remember the meaning of democracy? These are the questions that come to my mind fifty-something years later, when I read this inspired poem. I also wonder if my generation will ever meet someone who is as truly patriotic, brave and free as Alan Ginsberg was.
William Lawrence
America and Americans
The Art of Howling
Fifty years ago, Alan Ginsberg wrote his “Howl” for freedom. He howled at his country, and at it's politics, he howled at his compatriots, and at their enlightenment. He howled at himself, at Carl Solomon, and at the Divine Eternity. Howl is of protest and understanding, commitment and separation. It is as if he is howling “America, I am you, but you are not me!”
The astonishing first lines of the poem portray a nation of haggard intellectuals, broken but illuminated, crawling to salvation. He speaks of individual deeds and beatific ideals, of drug binges and spiritual realizations and orgies and alcohol and “cock and endless balls” (10). He tells us of freedom, and of the people who experience it. He points out how our society limits our freedoms by teaching us to live up to some vague ideals imposed by and for someone nobody will ever meet. By stating the obscene in such a passionate way he shows us that these acts of madness are really just acute acts of total freedom... of the American dream.
What is the American dream if not freedom? And freedom of all things! The ideals of freedom stand firm throughout howl, in religion, in love, and in sexual particularity. Ginsberg's open admittance of homosexuality and sodomy brought the poem much scorn, but as an open and honest act of freedom his words prevailed. The importance of freedom of sexual choice and freedom of religious choice is immeasurable - neither is tangible, but nothing drives a man (or woman) in a more profound way.
When I say the poem received a certain amount of scorn, of course I'm referencing the legal happenings that led to Farlinghetti's arrest and subsequent release. Howl was, and still is too provocative, as we've proved recently by refusing to air a recording on the 50th anniversary of the poem for fear of divine (FCC) retribution. The strong views expressed in the poem were let off the legal hook by being approved as scholarly, not trashy, and well within first amendment rights. This case was a very well defined victory in the beat culture, and is talked about rather frequently... which makes one wonder why we are scared to flex those same rights fifty years later.
The first part of the poem is all about glorifying what would otherwise be considered sin, and engrossing the reader in a world where only freedom matters. By the second section of the poem Ginsberg howls: “...Moloch! Moloch the loveless!” At his readers, “Moloch the incomprehensible prison!” (21) Moloch is the demon that sacrifices children. Moloch is America. He sums up what America is to him and his peers then, as a list of complaints. Though his words are firm he speaks of it in a dissociative manner, not linking himself to Moloch. The greatest minds of his generation is what America really is to him, even though the indomitable machine of our policy rends our nation's public and private image.
Moloch is then very metaphorically lifted to heaven on the hard work and sacrifice of its victims, and a river of American dreams flows out and away. He screams of dreams committing suicide and of his mad generation. In the last few lines (of part two) he howls in despair at the dream Moloch has professed to take away – similar in intensity to his ecstatic Holy footnote in which he praises everything.
Ginsberg admits to being mad (though not as mad as Carl Solomon) in the third section. Carl Solomon was a mental patient, and though not an Author in his own right when he met Ginsberg, Ginsberg obviously thought very highly of him and he was considered quite the intellectual. He basically points at Carl Solomon and says “this is what America can do to you!” He equates Solomon's dementia with the general hysteria in the nation at large, with his mom's dementia, with his own dementia. Where America is his bedfellow, and keeps him up all night coughing.
Howl is about the American struggle. About how stifling the government is even if the country is free. It's about what the true cost of freedom is – nothing is free. It's about solitude and injustice, rights and reason – it's a test of American logic and faith, and spittle on the machines turning cogs. The footnote then, is a simple declaration of love for and interconnectedness with everything in his world. From the magical to the mundane, the downtrodden to the seraphim, everything is holy. It's as if he's making amends and tying up loose ends, he even switches to using real names instead of unique deeds to define characters.
He praises the world, and all the places the beats felt at home. He praises the understanding of identity (“Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles”(28)), and hipsters and drugs and jazz. He praises his American dream. He even praises skyscrapers and the “vast lamb of the middle class,” (28) no matter how sarcastic it's backed by fifteen times Holy and three times poetic segments of angst. He might not agree with everything that is going on in the country, but he agrees with, and praises the founding principles. We need to get back to what makes our nation great... it's Freedom.
The land of the free and the home of the brave. Are we really either anymore? Do we have the freedom to do as we please, without being treated as terrorists, in light of the government's response to events of terror? Do we have the bravery to stand up to what our country does wrong, and speak openly of it, as Ginsberg did in this historical poem? Are we afraid to point out the social injustices our nation is committing? The torture, the war on terror... the war of blood and oil... will we be able to stop any of it? It is so easy to blame the government, and blame politicians, and blame big business and the wealthy, but if we don't stand for what we believe then who will? Do we retain enough of the freedom to fight, as Ginsberg fought?
Do we, as a whole country, remember the meaning of democracy? These are the questions that come to my mind fifty-something years later, when I read this inspired poem. I also wonder if my generation will ever meet someone who is as truly patriotic, brave and free as Alan Ginsberg was.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
IT STARTS....
This begins my blog for LTEL 155B, Section C, Fall 2008 (my first Fall as a Slug).
May our trails be eternally slimy and stretch on for eternity!
May our trails be eternally slimy and stretch on for eternity!
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