Beat

Harlan Ellison wrote this book, Deathbird Stories I think it was called, that actually had this warning, this kind of caution to the consumer preface that told of the emotional content of the book, said [well, okay, READ] that Harlan would not be responsible for the negative psychological effects that reading this book all in one sitting would involve. When I first read the "reader discretion is advised" warning, I thought that he was being really pretentious, that he had finally cracked and committed the one major sin that artists cannot do in order to truly be artists: he finally thought that he was the best at what he did. But then, then I read the book. And no, not all in one sitting. He was right, reading that beautiful, horrible tome all in one sit-down would have driven mortal men insane, would have made stone statues weep. I barely survived the experience, and now I want to read the book again.

Speaking of books, I am about ten pages away from finishing On The Road, by Jack Kerouac. I have been about ten pages away from finishing it for a good six or seven months now. Just like I have been halfway through Roots for about three years. I don't know, I just can't bring myself to finish it. I don't want to leave the world of Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise behind [where the Hell did Jack come up with these names?]. I've read lots of other books in between, some Herman Hesse, some William Shakespeare, and even some Stephen King, but I don't know... I always come back to Jack, eventually. I even went so far as to buy a spoken word tribute to the man, William S. Burroughs himself contributing tracks, a picture of Jack hanging by the door to my dorm room.

The point, is the beat. I dig the beat, I love it, it thrills me, I have become a drummer. Nobody can shout "Blow, man, blow!" but at the same time they can just feel the beat and dig the vibe and have a grand old time knowing what they know, and feeling what they feel, and letting life take them for the ride that never ends. I've always written poetry in the beat style, the message important, the individual words important, but the structure determined by the rhythm of the words themselves, the phrases, the sentences, the thoughts all framed by the beat rather than the archaic rules of some long-dead poet, like the sonnet or the sestina. Hold on a second my brothers and sisters, I'm going to go and put Jack down. I just saw the glorius travel diary sitting on my shelf next to Neil Gaiman and Leonard Cohen, and I have to finish it. Just one moment, please.

It took more than a moment, but you knew that , and I knew that, so there's no use in pretending that I was going to be gone any less. So I finished the book, left Sal and Dean behind, finally, ready to get on with my own life, my own writing, the beat of my own soul. So I figure that this little peice, this thing that makes no sense but at the same time makes all the sense in the world can kind of serve as an introduction to what follows, a preface, if you will, to my own meandering beat prose, full of, what did Skakespeare say? "Sound and fury, signifying nothing." Which isn't entirely so, but will have to do until God himself comes down from the mountain and tells us what it's all about.

Dec 7/1999 7:26 AM