Ginsberg's ghost

[imomus]

I've found myself this week in the middle of a certain kind of New York conversation, the kind I used to hunger for, lively conversation about art and projects and ideas and ambition and politics, falling silent. It's not that I don't want to be in the conversation. It's not that the terms of the conversation make no sense to me. It's not even that I'm still a bit jet-lagged and tend to get tired early in the evening. It's just something to do with feeling bored with the way these New York conversations, these American conversations, are framed. I feel like, no matter how much I agree, I won't agree. No American definition of the good life will match mine. I want to opt out of the terms and framings of these conversations even before I get into them. These days I seem to prefer processing things visually; I find that more interesting. I'm sitting in a bar, and there's conversation, but I notice that there's an abacus lattice in front of me, and I want to concentrate on that. Or there's music playing, but the peripheral sounds (rain, ventilation, machinery) are more interesting. The landscape out the window of the plane is more interesting than the film. Silence is more interesting than speech. I just want to look at what people are wearing, watch a crane elevator moving up and down its metal spine, silhouetted against the western horizon.

At moments like this I think of Allen Ginsberg. I think of that gimmick he had -- and it also wasn't a gimmick -- of launching into a mantra at any given moment. Here's one, his Vajra Mantra. It's a lovely recording, a serious and sensuous pronunciation of holy syllables. And I think of Ginsberg's self-awarded license to pronounce these syllables as a strategy, in part, to avoid other syllables. His embrace of Buddhism might have been, amongst other things, a way for Ginsberg to be post-American, a way out of all sorts of conversations with people at universities, rallies, in cars and cafes, wherever; a way out of small talk which would ultimately just confirm certain American fixed ideas, and also confirm him as an American Jew. By becoming some sort of satyr-devotee, by mixing cultures and invoking gods who were non-gods, Ginsberg could escape all that rubbish, all that restricting clutter. I wish I had a gimmick like that! I wish I could break out a small electronic shruti box and just start chanting! Where do I need to apply for the license to do that? Do I need to be a 1960s person? An eccentric? A famous poet? A visiting lecturer?

Ginsberg is a man I admire a lot. He's dead, of course, and now we have Devendra Banhart, a sort of "fashion Hindu", in something approximating the same cultural space. Now, all sorts of objections could be raised to Devendra -- and what's he doing in the men's fashion section of the New York Times, anyway? What kind of transcendence is that? -- but I'm not really interested in any of them. Anything that lifts America away from its dull denims, its dreadful protestant practicality, is fine by me. A use of fashion that lifts America away from itself -- away from its endless small talk about the weather and projects and success -- towards a recognition of the wisdom of India is, well, a correct use of fashion. The ghost of Ginsberg is there, doing good work.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

reading this feels scary, a real bummer to be american. what should america talk about, what can we talk about? i can relate man, i talk about the weather, projects, success to some level with every one i know and dont know, i have other cares too, but these topics always come up over and over. why is there nothing to say. i'm finding my self speaking less and less, looking listening, the things i have to talk about dont excite me again, yet. and the things other people talk about are the same

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You know, one of the reasons I enjoy Japan so much is that I don't speak Japanese. Maybe there's some way to un-learn English. If not written English, at least spoken English. That could liberate someone from a lot of tiresome boxes. Then we could all communicate with singing, or sex, or looking, instead.

[neciegabby.livejournal.com]

oh, hip hip hooray, i like these ideas, and they made me smile. i like the idea of encountering things that way, processing visually, noise-ily. oh and another thing i really like about ginsberg is how he would interupt himself with his own gross noises - coughing up phlegm into a microphone, hacking coughs without apology, etc. theres a mantra in there somewhere maybe, a booger mantra.

[300letters.livejournal.com]

Some of us New Yorkers prefer the conversation of light and shadow to the overly verbose barroom culture. Although taken in a larger John Cage way they can be quite interesting pop songs.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

We should all become kids again because kids can communicate with eachother even if they don't talk the same language I've heard. Atleast kids younger than 5-6 years or so.

[dr-deadmeat.livejournal.com]

I've seen older people do that. Large doses of Ketamine seemed to be the key.

[dr-deadmeat.livejournal.com]

I have a fair bit of fondness for Ginsberg, but I always feel that essentially he was a conman and a huckster. I don't mean that in a wholly pejorative way either - the grifter is an important US cultural icon, and the mindgames of the salesman contain a lot of interesting pyschological insight and hidden linguistic mechanisms etc. It's always been a powerful force in that strand of US counterculture, e.g. the English conman chap whose name I forget right now who introduced Leary to LSD... and more recently Terrence McKenna, the biggest psychedelic showman of them all, who talks in explicitly free market capitalist terms about dealing with the metaphysical 'entities' he encountered in his drug experiments.

[niddrie-edge.livejournal.com]

You both capture my feelings about Ginsberg well.

I used to think he was a flake and a conman, especially with all those "working for the CIA" rumours but recently I have been reappraising his importance on culture and on my own life. Yoko Ono will have to wait.

He seems to be a custodian for a lineage in a sense, being an important connector of people and events. His quips about having fucked Whitman by proxy due to a teacher/lover he had carnal knowledge of being three fucks removed from Whitman's lovers. His interpretation of Bob Dylan as a trickster/changeling. His love of Blake and the Romantics. His active encouragement of Kerouac and Burroughs.

I read recently that he and Gary Snyder felt some karmic guilt for actively encouraging a generation to take sometimes dangerous psychedelics. They had to take responsibility for some damaged minds and lives.

Watching a documentary, "What happened to Kerouac" recently, I was deeply moved by Ginsberg's take on Kerouac's search for the core of experience and its infinite sadness. Something he expresses at times in his own recorded "songs".

[tassellrealm.livejournal.com]

I'm sure Alan Whicker often had similar feelings.

That's part of the business of being a transient passenger in an ambient world.

I don't necessarily think it need have anything to do with autism.

Decades ago when I was into Northern Soul I used to live in a timeless zoneless dayless nightless motorway cafe blur.

Later on when I became an international model it was pretty similar but a lot more comfortable. I love the interzone way of things. Airports, Motorways, Trains and Boats and Planes.

I hate being rooted. I hate the mentality that goes with rootedness. I spend most of my time in London convinced that I'm just a tourist.

[framework.livejournal.com]

It gets tiring talking about "what you do." I could go on for hours with a friend. But when someone I don't know asks me "so, what do you do?" I usually just say that I sit around all day and that I eat a lot (which is true). Sometimes I even say that my parents give me money and I don't work (Which is not true, but it shushes the curious more easily than "Oh, I don't want to talk about what I do." "why?" "Don't feel like it." "Why not?" "AARGGHH"). Can't put a finger on it, but I'm just so tired of explaining my career trajectory to random strangers who try to make it their business, and I'm tired of being interrogated about those things. Why should someone know what I want to do with myself or who I think I am - do they want to take my soul or something? It's as if people are trying to pick holes in my life or catch me in lies regarding my career, and somehow the asking feels condescending. Like, most people do not want to know what others do - they want a chance to hype what they do in response, to "market themselves." But that is what I think of as a New York Conversation. "So, what do you DO?"

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

Aah! Thank you for the electronic Shruti Box.
*adds it to the sonic arsenal*

[yanatonage.livejournal.com]

The wisdom of India? What wisdom would that be?

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

The wisdom of shitting on the street proudly and freely.

[mcfnord.livejournal.com]

Once i picked up a young drifter who was dying of AIDS. I'm not particularly naive or shallow, but whenever I would say something vapid and meaningless, he would start coughing uncontrollably. It was his involuntary mantra.

[(Anonymous)]

Your definition of Post-American seems to be what American is. You can pretty much adopt whatever from whereever and for the most part people don't care.

America from its start was a global nation - not to get all preachy and Super America Is Awesome, but it's the truth. When you grow up and go to school, you automatically learn about the entire world because you're in classes with kids whose families come from nearly every continent on earth. Also, you grow up hearing stories about your ancestral homeland, where some family still is, etc. You're automatically tied to the world as a whole.

Post-Americanism sounds like regular Americanism, at least in the congested NY Metro area. It surprises me all these art critics insist this globalism and internationalism is something new ... as far as I remember, it's always been around here.

With the advent of the internet, the same thing has only gotten more intense. This just sounds like another case of nothing.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Post-Americanism sounds like regular Americanism

Yes, it does. We've had these "post-Americans" from our very inception; America is unimaginable without them.

Americans are by definition uprooted, so we don't deplore "rootedness" (whatever that really means) as Europeans might, who grow up amid the tradtions and artifacts of the past. Perhaps Europeans take them for granted; a bit spoiled by being surrounded by such riches, viewing their legacy as a burden rather than a boon?

I think we Americans (or at least the Americans described above), while relishing the dynamism of this ceaseless cultural cross-pollination, sometimes crave this admittedly oft-idealized state of rootedness because we live in a rootless, fluid society, devoid of any universal traditions. The rootless future many Europeans seem to desire is where we've grown up—and I can speak from experience when I say that relentless novelty becomes tiresome after a point, unsatisfying.

But hey—good luck just the same, Europe. Maybe you have what we lack: a rich cultural foundation that might prevent you from making a complete hash of things. Fluidity and dynamism may be another matter, though.

[nomorepolitics.livejournal.com]

It's just something to do with feeling bored with the way these New York conversations, these American conversations, are framed. I feel like, no matter how much I agree, I won't agree. No American definition of the good life will match mine. I want to opt out of the terms and framings of these conversations even before I get into them.

Although I think that beatnik culture has mostly become Americanized in the same sense that you describe here, I agree. I find that in many of my conversations whatever I say is put through a matrix of accepted "American" or "Canadian" ideas. My ideas are matched with similar sounding, though completely different ideas, and either accepted or rejected according to those terms. It seems that many people here don't really listen, or perhaps they can't hear because they have never stepped out of this accepted way of thinking. I tend to find myself repeating things, often without any achievement at true communication. And like you I often fall silent, becoming bored with talking to myself.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

The branch that doesn't flex, breaks.

[frontporchmafia.livejournal.com]

Oh, what a good post. I'm so thankful that I've found you for this reason:

You teach me something new(literally)every post. But not only that, but that you have a walking type brilliance that is willing to share.

So,yeah. Go Momus.

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

i heard a refrigerator sing today.

[charleshatcher.livejournal.com]

How insular, inflexible, insipid and insolent post-Americans seem. Not very much unlike pre-post-Americans. Thankfully I'm post-post-American.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

It is written that whoever is the first to become Post-Postist will be awarded the coveted Golden Eyepatch (that is, until the Post-Post-Postists start coming along, of course).

[nato-dakke.livejournal.com]

maybe you're turning autistic later in life?

also, it makes sense that you'd love the so-called post american, who is in his/her rejection of cultural values, precisely the most american ideal... after all, you've always loved the post-japanese japanese (the only ones who bother to learn english). Rejection of the japanese cultural values is precisely the most american ideal.
Look at Murakami Ryuu's "Almost Transparent Blue" for a hint as to where the thoughtful, directionless youth culture of japan grew up.

[lillianleitzel.livejournal.com]

Here is a certain kind of New York story for you: so I just discovered your journal this morning, I think, and added it, and I read this post, and I was struck by the idea of this man who sees things the way you describe, who sits in a bar and concentrates on an abacus lattice, or on the sound of rain, and then I left my apartment and went to meet this guy I am quite mad about and who is mad about me I think but not really available, and I think we are just to be friends, and we talked and hung out over wine, and it was lovely, but that’s all it was, and then I got on the train to go home, a bit heartbroken, and started crying. I was alone on the train car but then I looked up and see you, the same man whose journal I had just read a few hours before, and you sat down close by and leaned back against the seat and I thought, how odd, there you are, and I wondered what you were seeing and hearing right then because it was probably not what I was seeing and hearing, and then I felt better, felt more again like the world is full of possibility, and stopped crying. The end. And thank you.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ah, how wonderful!

I was probably snoozing on the train, because I was tired after work. Or, if it was the B train, I was planning a blog piece about the Chinatown Chinese, because, despite having lived amongst them for two years, I feel like they're very mysterious people. Or perhaps I was wondering if I'll have to visit the Armory Show tomorrow alone... I'm getting sick of doing stuff on my own.

[(Anonymous)]

In the latest-but-one London Review of Books Michael Newton has a piece called 'Tsk, Ukh, Hmmm' in which a guy tries to forget a language.
There is no link, you should read the LRB anyway.

[(Anonymous)]

At last, a glimmer of light hits your one good eye. Then you go and spoil it by focusing in on the "dull denims" and the "dreadful protestant practicality".

[(Anonymous)]

http://www.focusing.org/tae.html

[ex-mimic736.livejournal.com]

I read this entry while watching Grizzly Man.

[(Anonymous)]

This is the cusp of the bubble, the top of the froth...

Must be damn hard to be a European in the US these days... Read an article in this month's In These Times, in which a former NSA chief called the invasion and occupation of Iraq the greatest foreign blunder of the US because it has effectively killed off NATO... Europe withdrawing from the madness/no good outcomes of this war...

See you're withdrawing, too, Nick... and as the atlantic gets ever wider, those things that were common (or in common) now seem strange and tinny...

-that, and performance fatigue, too...

hope the good weather on Saturday was a balm, and you can get out of Breuer's box for a bit...

[goldenmelodies.livejournal.com]

Wow! That Devendra picture is the best thing I've seen today!

[d-g-m.livejournal.com]

PJ O'Rourke wrote a very funny chapter on India in "The CEO of the Sofa". It was aimed at a teenager who wanted to visit there to develop spiritually. He recounts his own time there from his own perspective.

[(Anonymous)]

Look Around You. Look Around You. Just Look Around You. Wherever you are, Whatever you do, LOOK AROUND YOU. Have you found out what we're looking for? Correct. The answer is: Post- America

[tassellrealm.livejournal.com]

Maybe the emergence of this Post-American thing can be seen as a weak admission that Great Caesar Bush is not going to go.

The only real way to be Post-American is to Exit This Roman Shell.