Though you can rightfully qualify what I’m calling myself next in terms of my lack of published creative output, poetic or otherwise, I’m certainly not alone in being a writer and poet affected, if not in some small way influenced, by the work of The Beats.
Jack Keroauc
Howl one of the most celebrated, recognised, deconstructed and instantly poignant poems of the last century, cemented Allen Ginsberg’s place in the records of Western poetry probably until the fall of any civilisation that remembers him. So too, Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, the kind of book whose narrative millions of artists – writers or otherwise – might wish they were apart, if not the author of.
It’s incalculably pertinent then for those and many other reasons, that Hollywood has decided to finally give Ginsberg, Keroauc, (William S.) Burroughs, (Lucien) Carr, and no doubt Neal Cassady (On The Road‘s Dean Moriarty) space in its production houses for three films based on some of the defining Beat moments. There is more significance to this however, than merely breathing The Beats into film.
For example, it’s the fact that the decisions to do so have been made at a time when we look to the arts, to new or ‘old-new’ thoughts to lift us from gloom, and provide spontaneity in a time where planned, rational governing of our societies – or at least, financial system – ignite that flame for another way of thinking.
This is what The Beats were about, providing a rationale, or perhaps irrationale which a generation could reference when post-WWII, the intellectual undercurrent carried a need to break out and escape the bonds of being ‘beat down by the planned and ordererd.Far greater than our need at the moment perhaps, but the point remains the same.
During times of recession, economic slow down, apathy to conformity (the UK’s Euro Elections), we crave the need to ride out from closed doors creatively and be subject to an alternative way of living, or at least considering our lives and the world. For anyone with knowledge of Dadaism, the roots are there to be seen even earlier than The Beats in the 20th Century, but what it all boils down to is exactly as Martin Halliwell says in the piece I linked to earlier:
These new films emphasise that tensions between conformity and personal freedom are as resonant now as they were in the 1950s…
And, regardless of when the films are released, and the socio-economic conditions of that time, we should recognise both what Prof. Halliwell says, and once again be receptive to what The Beats brought us. And, more importantly, be excited by a new look into the lives of artists who laid out artistic and social ideas well worth a timely reference.
Beats Revisited
Though you can rightfully qualify what I’m calling myself next in terms of my lack of published creative output, poetic or otherwise, I’m certainly not alone in being a writer and poet affected, if not in some small way influenced, by the work of The Beats.
Jack Keroauc
Howl one of the most celebrated, recognised, deconstructed and instantly poignant poems of the last century, cemented Allen Ginsberg’s place in the records of Western poetry probably until the fall of any civilisation that remembers him. So too, Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, the kind of book whose narrative millions of artists – writers or otherwise – might wish they were apart, if not the author of.
It’s incalculably pertinent then for those and many other reasons, that Hollywood has decided to finally give Ginsberg, Keroauc, (William S.) Burroughs, (Lucien) Carr, and no doubt Neal Cassady (On The Road‘s Dean Moriarty) space in its production houses for three films based on some of the defining Beat moments. There is more significance to this however, than merely breathing The Beats into film.
For example, it’s the fact that the decisions to do so have been made at a time when we look to the arts, to new or ‘old-new’ thoughts to lift us from gloom, and provide spontaneity in a time where planned, rational governing of our societies – or at least, financial system – ignite that flame for another way of thinking.
This is what The Beats were about, providing a rationale, or perhaps irrationale which a generation could reference when post-WWII, the intellectual undercurrent carried a need to break out and escape the bonds of being ‘beat down by the planned and ordererd.Far greater than our need at the moment perhaps, but the point remains the same.
During times of recession, economic slow down, apathy to conformity (the UK’s Euro Elections), we crave the need to ride out from closed doors creatively and be subject to an alternative way of living, or at least considering our lives and the world. For anyone with knowledge of Dadaism, the roots are there to be seen even earlier than The Beats in the 20th Century, but what it all boils down to is exactly as Martin Halliwell says in the piece I linked to earlier:
And, regardless of when the films are released, and the socio-economic conditions of that time, we should recognise both what Prof. Halliwell says, and once again be receptive to what The Beats brought us. And, more importantly, be excited by a new look into the lives of artists who laid out artistic and social ideas well worth a timely reference.