renaissance man
Today we awoke at mein farter’s, and I drove Teresa to work. All thanks to train strikes. After dropping Teresa off I decided a cafe and some reading was in order. So here I am, at Grounds Café, by the lake, in Milton Park.
I just wrote a few Kerouackian book reviews, for my Goodreads.com account.
And that got me thinking about the author, and his life and times. And how they relate to, inform, and connect, with my own life.
I love Jack like I love Tom Waits, whose early work – from his Closing Time debut to some time around or after Swordfishtrombones – is the realisation of something Kerouac himself dreamed of; the Beat word set to jazz, or American contemporary music.
Waits combines and in some areas amplifies many essential Kerouackian qualities. And Jack was as much poet as author. Both he and Waits are alchemists of language.
Kerouac and Waits share that love with the Proustian detail of everyday life, the synaesthetic kinetic appreciation of language, it’s rhythms, flavours, and so on.
Some detractors of Jack Kerouac’s work almost have valid point, in amongst their criticisms, to do with a certain juvenile immaturity. It’s that zesty energy and the as yet undimmed naive hopes of youth. Captured so well in the several of his more oft-quoted words, such as:
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!”
On The Road.
That this is a kind of approach to art and life that best suits a younger person doesn’t even really need any thinking about. That it’s an outlook or m.o. that can rapidly pall as one grows into a more settled adult life is equally true and obvious.
And therein lay many issues for The Beats and their bastard offspring. But to simply leave it at that would be doing Kerouac a great disservice. Truman Capote’s infamous put down of Kerouac’s style – “That’s not writing, it’s typing.” actually says way more about a Capote – his snobbery and lack of feeling – than Kerouac.
Kerouac was always a troubled and complicated soul. Brought up in religion, attracted as much to Jazz, Buddhism and certain kinds of intoxication or thrill seeking – be that through sex or booze or drugs – and unsure where or if he fitted in: the poetic jock, the Catholic Buddhist, the Canuck blue-collar hobo amongst middle-class (or even better off) intellectuals.
His struggles in all these areas are – unsurprisingly – manifest in the very fabric his writings. The conflicts between tradition and innovation, order and chaos.
A lover of jazz, he sometimes described his writing as ‘spontaneous bop prosody’. But just as jazzers’ apparently free flowing improvisations actually require a great deal of due diligence (having acquired skills to enable the ability), and are actually built from learned and repeated elements – scales, riffs, motifs, melodies, etc. – and generally conform to numerous other sets and subsets of order and structure, so too is Kerouac’s writing infinitely more than mere typing.
More than anything it’s a lifelong meditation on such themes as he was conflicted over: past vs future, and how to live in the present, authority vs freedom, spontaneity vs rote, the spirit vs the body, and so on. All expressed with a passionate and broad ranging love of life and language.
Some of Kerouac’s generation managed the evolution into middle age and old age – Kerouac died at 47, in ‘69, looking older than he actually was – better than others. But all are marked by it. And many that survived it, apparently better than Jack himself, can seem rather compromised or jaded in how they finally got through.
If Tom Waits was Kerouac’s male realisation of a Beat musical dreams. Joni Mitchell is the female incarnation. And she too shares this troubled legacy of a certain kind of Beat artistry of the era. As The Beats paved the way for The Hippies, and this whole era – full of dreams of a better world to come – but also chronicling the passing of other worlds. And all of this only to be subsumed into the machinery of a world dominated by less poetic visions.
The whole Beat to Hippy period can look naively foolish now. But it still has, esp’ in certain areas, both continuing relevance and undiminished charm. Kerouac belongs to a whole wave of writers and artists straddling the passing of Old America, and the birth of a newer generation.
I feel, with the re-writing and publishing of my thoughts on some of Jack’s writing, that it’s high time I dipped back into his ouevre.
I still have an amount of his writing I’ve either not read yet, or really engaged with. Plus there’s a desire to revisit certain works – e.g. Doctor Sax – and see what I make of them now.
One thing’s for sure. In my pantheon of kindred souls and inspirations, St. Jack is up there, forlorn and flawed, undoubtedly. But real, genuine, poetic and powerful, nevertheless.
I still love ya’, Ti Jean!
Certain kinds of romantic poetic soulful types, from those who find fame – for whatever that’s worth – to those who pass unnoticed in obscurity, are apt to be subjected to bouts of depression. In all honesty, I think that comes with the turf! And I think that’s partly why I love Kerouac, ‘warts ‘n’ all’!
Here’s a telling quote from Beat-era lady, Carolyn Cassady (wife of Neal Cassady), often referred to as a Muse for Beat writers:
“I kept thinking that the imitators never knew and don’t know how miserable these men were,” she told the novelist Gina Berriault in 1972. “They think they were having marvelous times — joy, joy, joy — and they weren’t at all.”
Well, that doesn’t surprise me at all. The sadness is always there, in plain view, to my mind. And in fact it’s one of the many reasons I relate to them, Kerouac especially so
For those less familiar with Jack’s life, the Wikipedia entry on him is worth a read. Find that here.
Tom Waits wore a very similar looking shirt quite a lot! Love Jack. Love Tom!
With two new books of Kerouac writing winging their way to me today, I’m ready to get On The Road with Jack again.
I bought a set of Penguin sci-fi book cover postcards a long while back. I must admit I was rather disappointed with the set, overall.
But I have chosen a few to frame and put up around the home. These are picked mainly for aesthetic reasons, rather than being sci-fi lit I particularly like.
I’d have like it if the two could coincide. But they don’t so far. Never mind!
The CDs on the bookshelves just below are discs I got free one way or another (with magazines, or off Freecycle). And are discs I’ve been keeping out of my main collection… segregating them on the basis that they’re mostly pop-culture shite!
Not sure why I ought to do wi’ ‘em, tbh.
Alright… so I’ve survived a thimble-full of Baileys, and the single dosage of beer. What have I learned from this?
First of all, I can control alcohol intake. But I’d be a fool to merrily return to the free range consumption of liquor. I intend, instead, to resume my tea-turtle stance for a good long period.
If, come say summertime, or something like that, I’m still under control, I might take the experiment a step further. How so? A bottle o’ wine… perhaps? That’d be a real test. As it’d entail maintaining control over time. Ie not just slugging the whole bottle.
But for now, it’s back to abstention. And very happily so. It’s saving me money. It’s undoubtedly good for my health, both physical and mental/psychological. and I’m joust enjoying the sense of control.
My star rating for this is based, primarily, on how much I’m enjoying this new Play-Tone mini-series, from the Hanks, Spielberg and Goetzman team that brought us Band, Pacific, and other superb WWII media.
It’s taking me longer to warm to the cast than it did with Brothers and Pacific. But I’m starting to thaw on that front. But everything else, and most especially the lengths to which the production crew go to bring this story to life, is terrific.
I’ve grudgingly taken out an £8.99 p/month Apple TV sub, just so’s I can watch this as it comes out. I resent having to do so. But hey-ho. Buy any beans necessary, as the Vegan Anarchist Front might say…
Tonight I watched episode three, and already we’ve seen characters built up just to be killed off. But the the ‘Bloody Hundredth’ did earn that soubriquet with an eye-watering loss of life.
For tonight’s post this is merely to register the fact I’m watching the series, and loving it. I’ll prob either expand this post, or add more on the topic, as the episodes drop. We shall see?
But for now? Yep… loving it.
Oh, and it was based, it would seem, on this book:
Watching Pvt. Ryan lead to me reading a Stephen Ambrose book on D-Day. And viewing The Pacific was a prelude to reading With The Old Breed and Helmut Fur Mein Furher… er, I mean… Well, you see where I’m going with that?
Just caught my first snatch of this series. I think I’ll go back to the beginning and watch it all. It’s very beautiful and moving.
After it, there’s a new series with the highly watchable Simon Reeves, Wilderness. Definitely going to be watching that.
Another fab’ church…
And some pretty divine light!
This is a funny old place, with a church without a tower, and a tower without a church.
What a great place. I love finding these old churches.
I’ve bought a can of beer. And beer with alky-hole innit.
This is significant. As I’ve been tea-turtle for quite some time now. I haven’t been suffering maddening lusts for booze. I did have another minor ‘lapse’, a few days ago, and have a thimble-full of Baileys.
The Baileys was pleasant enough. But, rather gladdeningly, I didn’t want any more. It was nice. But not too nice.
Now, a few day later, I want to see what happens if I have a single beer. Can I maintain my control? My equilibrium? Can I resist a gradually-building turning to horribly-inevitable descent into addiction.
It sounds almost comical. But it ain’t. Not by a long bleedin’ chalk! It’s feckin’ serious.
Non-alcoholic and low-alcohol beers have been helpful. I find I like them. But I’m not crazy about them. And they kind of help put the flavour aspect of alcoholic beers in a new perspective.
Alcoholic beers taste ok. But it’s the alcohol that, rather sneakily, becomes the driver. You can kind of kid yourself you’re being discriminating. Well – in fairness I guess you are? – but there’s something revealing about removing the alcohol.
What I’m getting at is that returning to booze, and beer in particular, I’m slightly disappointed by it. Not in a major league way. It’s just a reminder that it’s not all that…
Anyhoo… I picked Shore Leave partly cause it just jumped out at me, and partly on account of the Tom Waits song by that name. And I’m enjoying it. I just hope I’m not enjoying it too much?
Bought some me delish Lu French lemon flavoured cakey things. I thought they were flat biscuits. Turns out they’re quite chunky!
From the side they almost look a bit like Chinese dumplings. They don’t taste that way at all, needles to say (that’s a Patridgean pun!).
So… will I survive?
I bought some Jim Fitzpatrick Thin Lizzy prints, for my 50th birthday, over two years ago now.
I only remember ordering two? Jailbreak and Nightlife. But I have three! The third is the cover for Chinatown.
I’ll have to go back and check my order. Did I simply forget this one, or was it a gift? I somehow suspect the former. Because I do recall Jim Fitzpatrick wrote a note that went along with the order. And this mentions the inclusion of a free gift: a small black-and-white print of Phil Lynott himself.
I bought the prints direct from Fitzpatrick. It’s nice to have had some kind of direct connection with Thin Lizzy, who I never saw live.
The prints are on special paper that has a Jim Fitzpatrick monogram embossed upon it. They are giclée, or so-called ‘fine art prints’. All are signed by the artist.
The frames, in stark to contrast, are from B&M. And are dirt cheap. But they do the job. One thing that isn’t right, with any of them. And that’s the internal card frame/mount. I never know what to call this; it’s the thick cardboard window that sits inside the main outer frame, and both protects and also frames the print.
I suspect I will ultimately create bespoke card window mounts for all of these prints. As none of them are displayed to their best effect, as is. The worst of the three is undoubtedly Chinatown, as pictured directly above.
Frequently I’m confronted with scenes – on this day (and many similar occasions) it’s stunningly gorgeous skies – that my iPhone’s camera totally fails to capture. It’s really frustrating.
The photo at the top of this post, above, is the best of the many wherein the camera is focussed on the screen, not the view beyond. I keep/include this example, crap as it may be, because it does at least go part of the way towards capturing the colours in the sky, which were simply sublime.
Yesterday I picked Teresa up, mid-shift, as a drop I made was right next door to where she works, and the timing’s were perfect: dropped off the packages, drove to her workplace – literally seconds, as it was right next door – and there she is, walking out of work chatting with a co-worker.
From this point onwards, and for about the next hour or more, there was an absolutely sublime sunset. One unusual feature of which was a visual phenomenon I’ve rarely if ever seen before, and desperately wanted to capture. A perfectly vertical ‘column of light’. But, alas, due to the crapness of the iPhones’ cam’, I was unable to.
One of the most annoying things about this iPhones’ camera is that 99% of the time it’ll focus on the car windscreen, not the landscape beyond. This is so infuriating! Above and below are two rare instances where this didn’t occur.
Of maybe 30-40 attempted shots, the few here are the best. And, frankly, they fail miserably at capturing the awesome majesty of this incredible sunset. I really must get a better camera!
The most annoying part was the cam’s complete failure to capture the ‘column of light’ effect that was the most singular aspect of this particular evening’s display.
The ‘Flying V’, or arrowhead of cloud, was all that remained of the spectacular display, by the time I’d dropped my last delivery. This was also the first moment on the route that had found me stationary and with a view of the sky not totally blocked by buildings. So I took the above shot. But by then the really spectacular display was over.
The thing was, that the only times I had an unimpeded view of the skies were between drops, whilst driving. And on this occasion it was frustrating how, at no point, did a natural opportunity for a decent photo opp’ occur.