Allen Ginsberg’s 1978 Naropa class on Jack Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues continues and concludes here with an exercise that Allen liked to do – in-class improvisation – (see earlier examples here and here)
AG: The Empire State Building… ?
Student (David Patton): The Empire State Building… has an unfulfilled dream at the end of the flagpole.
AG: Okay. But we can get something more concrete than “unfulfilled dream”?
Student (DP): Well, that is concrete though, (they originally panned) a zeppelin dock..
AG: Oh.
Student (DP): … at the end of the flagpole.
AG: Well, then I’d say “An unfulfilled dream of zeppelins at the end of the flagpole. Or “The Empire State Building has a zeppelin dream at the end of the flagpole” would be the funniest of it – put it all together. The essential word – the zeppelin, the dream, (it’s a dream – you’d say unfulfilled )- “The Empire State Building has a zeppelin dream at the end of a flagpole,” then you’ve got a really witty line.
Student (Tiff Miller): The Empire State Building of paper cups with holes in the bottom.
Student: The Empire State Building (houses a) popcorn theatre.
Student: The Empire State Building has soap bubbles for windows.
Student: The Empire State Building is made of bandaged dust.
AG: Bandaged dust? That’s pretty good. You got the point. Bandaged dust. And that’s real – there is such a thing as bandaged dust.
Student: The Empire State Building has old gum stuck on the bottom.
AG: Of?
Student: It.
AG: Its desks. Old gum stuck on the bottom of its desks or something, or maybe “it.”
Student: Stuck on the sidewalk with gum.
AG: Okay.
Student: The Empire State Building rocks half-drunk
AG: Half-drunk on what?
Student: (on drink)
AG: I’d put “The Empire State Building rocks half-drunk on Monday champagne,” or something. Something a little… complete it – don’t leave a hole in terms of the rhythm and in terms of the picture. Do you know what I mean? Just try and complete it so that it’s all solid all the way through. “Endless grape dirigible stars” – there’s something complete and final about it. It’s opaque, but it’s complete. So when you’re making up a thing like that, try and round it off with some concrete little thing at the end. So you don’t have to…so that it would be impossible to ask a question, you know, what kind of drunk? So knocked-out crazy that you…
Student: The Empire State Building (serves) the window-washers’ cocktails. Complete.
AG: Okay. Yes.
Peter Orlovsky: I like to meditate in the Empire State Building for two hours – in 1990
AG: Oh, yeah. That’s completed it. See, it needed something like that – “in 1990.” The whole thought process needed to close itself by proving it was possibly impossible until 1990, and making itself a little prophecy. By saying “1990” it makes a little prophecy. Dig? And if you prophesy something like that, some kid’ll see that and think it’s funny and he’ll go and meditate there in 1990.
Student: The Empire State Building is the legacy of the dull grandmother.
AG: Okay. Legacy.
PO: The leg of a grandmother.
AG: Yeah. You need something. Legacy was a little bit abstract, see? You needed something like “leg” or, I was going to think of it … what was it? Is there another word we could have for “legacy”? Can you think of another one? “Dull grandmother” will do. “Dull” is a little….
PO: Abortion?
AG: No. Can you think of another word for…… what you meant by “legacy”?
Student: Well, I haven’t the vaguest idea what I meant.
AG: So free-associate by “legacy.” Or “legacy of a dull grandmother.”
Student (2): You could (say)…”expensive stupidity”
AG: What does dull grandmother spend her money on, (besides Empire State Buildings)?
Student: Indulgent grandchildren?.
AG: Ah. Well, “indulgent” you have again. But she indulges and they indulge … What do they indulge in?
Student: Meditating in 1990.
AG: What?
Student: Not that.
AG: Well, (what do) dull grandchildren and dull grandmothers indulge in? What sort of things? (either material things or behaviour activities.)?
Student: What sort of things do they do? Well…
AG: Dull grandmothers best.
Student: The dull grandmothers themselves?
AG: Yeah.
Student: The great pleasure of dull grandmothers is to spend money.
AG: On what?, please.
Student: On the … a lot of times, on the desire of the grandchildren.
AG (increasingly frustrated): Will you please give me an example of a desire in material form of a grandmother or a grandchild and stop generalizing!!
PO: Chocolate, sweets, candies.
AG: No, Peter, it’s from him.
Student: Cheap sex.
AG: (to PO): It’s from his head, not from yours!.
Student: Well, cowboy suits.
AG: Okay. So “The Empire State Building is the cowboy suit of a dull grandmother.” That’s simple. Something like that. In other words, get the concrete thing. “The Empire State Building is the cowboy suit of a dull grandmother” would be dazzling.
So what you do is you fill in the blank of a generalization. “Indulgence” (doesn’t have) a concrete-enough clock to it as a word. (to Student) Does that make sense at all? Despite my screaming.?
Student: Oh, scream away.
AG: Okay. I just want to get to that point because the whole point is concreteness – composing the image of out concrete elements – you know, pipes, toes, cowboy suits. The thing I was thinking of was a tea caddy or something like that. A tea setting. A silver tea set or serving tea in the afternoon. Dull grandmothers. Cookie or.. I don’t know what kind of cookies dull grandmothers serve, but I was wondering what your dull grandmother, or in your mind a dull grandmother would come up with as an artifact. It’s artifact s(is) what I mean by concrete things. Go on.
Student: The Empire State Building is …
AG: Anything that pops in your mind.
Student: … alright, a little boy’s erector set dream.
Student: The Empire State Building is a grand amount of a billion tons of oily asphalt.
AG: Oh, that’s not bad. “A billion tons of oily asphalt” is good sound. “A billion tons of oily asphalt.” The assonance is nice – “billion tons of oily asphalt.” So that’s good. So you do it on the sound, actually. That’s the key – to get (or) arrive at the particulars by going along the waves of the vowel sounds. By hearing vowel sounds and accepting the vowel sounds that are concretions.
Were you just making it up just then?
Student: Not really.
AG: The billion tons of oily asphalt.
Student: Yes and no.
AG: Did you write it last year or something?
Student: No, no, oh yeah, just in the last few seconds there.
AG: Okay, but where did you get the “asphalt”? At what point did the “asphalt” come?
Student: The “asphalt” came by knowing that the Empire State Building is so far away from here to get there you got to… for me, you know…
AG: Yeah.
Student:: go on..the road and …
AG: Oh, I see.
Student: … and that’s where the asphalt….”
AG: But when did it come to you, the “asphalt”? While you were composing the sentence? Or had you the “asphalt” before?
Student: a way before.
AG: You mean it came as the last thing in your mind? Or the next to the last? Did it come before “oily”?
Student: Um, yes.
AG: And then when did you think of “oily”?
Student: When did I think of “oily”?
AG: I think “oily”….
Student: “Oily” is the last thought.
AG: Yeah, I think “oily” is the best. I mean it was the thing that made it most vivid to me. When you got to “oily” I thought, “That’s got to be a winner, no matter what he says. Even if he says ‘oily air’ or something.” But to have concretized it into asphalt I thought was great. Brian?
Student: (Brian): The Empire State Building is full of (oily frogs)
AG: Olive frogs?
Student (Randy Roark): The Empire State Building is a linoleum suitcase.
AG: Rosalie?
Student (Rosalie Robison): The Empire State Building is filled with ice cream..
AG: Um.
Student: The Empire State Building is a moon chord
AG: Moon chord? That’s nice.
Of all of them the “oily asphalt” seems to be the one that related what was the most far-out but at the same time the most near-in. Far-out in the sense of verbal construction and oddness – near-in in the sense of direct relation to what we were talking about – the Empire State Building. The dirigible dream was related. The frog wasn’t very much related, I didn’t think. And a couple of others weren’t related. The thing is to think along the lines of the technique, because it’s a definite technique. You think along the lines of free association – what rises in your mind related to the Empire State Building. And that free association rides along like one of those bobsled races – along the channels of vowels. Slides along on….
tape and class concludes here
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately eighty-two-and-a-half minutes in and concluding at the end of the tape