because i go to beatnik school, this is my homework. don’t read it unless you really want to.
have decided the tumblr will be my notebook for kerouac class. and if that is too much technology for monsieur burke he will just have to deal with it. slash i’m gonna print it out anyway so whatevs…
oh, beatnik school. i kind of love that i go to pretty much the only certifiable beatnik school in the country or world even. in terms of lineages, mentalities, vices, breakthroughs…and the flaws we just have to contend with and examine, and hope we do better with ourselves - next time.
if jazz was a rupture in the idea most people had of “music”, then beat writing was a rupture in conventional literary styles of storytelling. what a huge cultural shift in consciousness for one time period. must it be all or nothing, though? can you have a musical revolution without a literary revolution - and a political revolution?
but we’re too cynical now. our parents had nothing to really be cynical about. they grew up in some weird repressed but prosperous era, then everyone revolted against everything and everything changed. is anything really different now that’s preventing us? maybe, maybe not. the beats were certainly living in conditions different from today. i wonder what they would think.
what would kerouac have thought of all these wars? i know he got all conservative and crazy at the end of his life but that’s just because he didn’t really get hippies and feminism. which is okay.
reading his journals really does make me miss massachusetts in a weird way that i’m pretty sure only kerouac can make me feel - i mean, on the road makes me nostalgic for places i’ve never been and probably will never see. but the fact that we’re from a couple towns apart just lends a different kind of resonance to what he’s writing. the kerouac biography even mentioned my town on the first page! i love it.
i also like reading the journals to see his mood swings, how some days he’s super optimistic and working hard and other days he’s like “fuck this i hate life but i’m gonna write 10,000 words anyway” and then gets drunk and talks to people and hits on chicks and then starts writing again. and then gets restless and wants to go somewhere but then stays. all these cycles. i think his whole life was cycles like that. but whose isn’t, really?
[also he did live eventually. moved the cycles somewhere else.] THIS WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO SAY THIS AT ALL. oh MAN totally wrong typing fail writing brain fail right there.
—> what it was supposed to say was “although, he did leave eventually. moved the cycles somewhere else.”
hahaha. anyway, i think kerouac suffered from being completely unable to express emotions to people in a normal way sometimes. because i really don’t think he was inherently a douchebag, although some actions would say otherwise - like not acknowledging his own daughter for 9 years. that was a pretty shitty move on his part. but i think ultimately he just got too freaked out about how to deal with people, and himself. add being famous & alcoholic to that and shit doesn’t go so well.
meanwhile his mother took care of him from the day he was conceived til the day he died.
jack kerouac: the original buster bluth??
YES.
[End of Part 1]
