Indy-rock manifestations. Thurston Moore‘s new band Chelsea Light Moving recently released this Burroughs hommage (with an interesting compilation of WSB footage as accompanying vid – can you spot Allen in the footage?) (regrettably, this particular film collage is no longer available but you can hear Chelsea Light Moving performing “Burroughs” here, here and here)
Not to be out-done, here’s Being There with “To Allen Ginsberg”
and here’s another (“machine version”)
Margaret Wood, Georgia O’Keeffe’s former caretaker, recollecting her famous charge, this week in the Albuquerque Journal:
“Allen Ginsberg arrived with his partner Peter Orlovsky. They admired the late afternoon light as they compared the nature of words to actions. O’Keefe declared that talk was easy but that it was action that got things going. Ginsberg countered that words often inspired people to action. He and Orlovsky climbed the ladder to the roof to watch the sunset.
More of her intriguing memories here.
Talk and political action – Allen’s protege, our friend, Eliot Katz has been regrettably on the side-lines (with a nasty bout of Lyme disease) of late, and so hasn’t been able to participate as fully as he might have wished. Nonetheless, as interviewer Levi Asher points out, “the side-lines can offer a good perspective for observation”. Read Eliot’s observations on Occupy Wall Street (lessons from the past and strategies for the future) and the heritage of Ginsberg (and of Abbie Hoffman) here.
Ellen Pearlman, whose “Nothing and Everything – The Influence of Buddhism on the American Avant-Garde 1942-1962” was featured here a few months back, has an engaging conversation with Jade Sharma, this month in the Brooklyn Rail.
and Lawrence Ferlinghetti‘s “Cross-Pollination” show (also recently featured here) gets a sympathetic review, by Michael J Ybarra, in the L.A. Times. Catch Ferlinghetti’s own ruminations on the art-making process here.