ginsberg. howling.

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, 

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix"

Allen Ginsberg making an entrance.

Within a couple of lines the reader is mesmerised by a lucid representation of a particular sub culture which he and fellow beats poets inhabit and are enticed  with an almost hypnotic meter.

The poem is utterly personal and as such it is written in an entirely un-self-conscious manner which is often brutally graphic; yet wonderfully graphic.

We are taken on a trip [:)] through the thoughts and hopes and lifestyle of the beat generation. The initial picture that is painted is far form positive with all this imagery used, but despite the appalling conditions he is almost proud of it. He suggests that they do as they please and have open minds [bare barins to heaven] to potential experiences. This is contrasted later by making reference to the system which had him locked in a psychiatric ward. A system whose inhabitants' have be subjected and controlled. "bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination" this indictment of the people to recognise the ills of cap[italism and reject the system in the face of obvious injustices has been prevelent in several of the previous texts I have evaluated.
A large part of the piece deals with this system. Where capitalism is metephorised with 'Moloch' and where 'moloch' stands for all that is wrong. To take a small sample of his greivances of the capitalist system; love for material objects 'oil and stone', whos soul is 'electricity and banks' and whos 'blood is running money' there are a great many others besides.

This is read alongside Burroughs' 'The Job' - Burroughs being a contemporary of Ginsber, both part of the beat generation.

My initial reaction to Burroughs is one of sympathy, not that he would want it. He has so successfully fried his brain through drug addiction that he has managed to convince himself and many others that his thoughts are enlightened rather than deranged. Maybe I miss the point, maybe I intend to. He clearly displays a prolonged paranoia, inhabiting a sort of continuous k-hole, which centers around control... thinking normal points beyond normality so they become somehow dark and oppressive  Take his stance on the written work. He postulates that it is a virus. A virus born from the spoken work illness. An illness which caused mutation in the throats of apes. Which caused severe illness in women and more malignant characteristics in male apes accounting for the comparative weakness of women. This is interesting stuff.

Then there is the fold-in cut-up 'technique' of writing; I find this laughable, conceptually i can see how one might argue its value, however, in reality it is complete nonsense. Burroughs feels it breaks down the 'word' as a viciously powerful control system virus... I just think it's pretentious nonsense. Going through an arbitrary process is not creative... truths are not exposed, control is not wrestled from the Man, mostly is just rubbish, sometimes it may say something, but even then it is merely fortuitous rubbish.

I feel i am picking on him a bit here, he does raise some interesting questions. And his fear of control is increasingly pertenent in a world of global power-struggles against a backdrop of contrasting politics... with some willing ideological powers, less willing tyrannies and abject indifference the issues of control are real and worrying. But you have to look in the right places... huwai and apple would be a good place to start... ubiquitos products which are immensly powerful tools in the wrong hands....

freedom from both real and perceived threats and control systems.

A freer time..It feels like there was almost more opportunity to shape society and the world they lived in than is available today or maybe they were simply more naiive... today, depressingly, much of the world and subsequently, much of our life-paths seem almost enevitable.

Well, that is a sad thought to end on... but it is a thought that has helped motivate me for the past few years... A reaction to this sad realisation initially drew me to London, which perpetually drives me to travel the world and which will drive me forward to forge a path which is much less expected. Rio de Janeiro? Could be!