The 1994 St Marks Poetry Project Holy Soul Jelly Roll celebration continues continues this week. Ed Friedman introduces the next performer, David Amram
EF: Next to perform is David Amram. He’s a musician who has played with musicians in.. you know, throughout the world, playing all kinds of musics. I remember him most fondly from a New Years Eve here or New Years Day reading where he really led the audience in improvised song for about twenty minutes. And that is one of the great things about David’s work, the feeling about improvised music and how closely that parallels poetry and improvised forms of writing. Please welcome David Amram.
DA: It’s really great to be here and to see all of you. Back in Spring of 1957, poets Philip Lamantia, Howard Hart, Jack Kerouac and myself gave the first jazz poetry reading ever, in New York City, at the Brata art gallery, about three blocks from here. In 1959 we did the film Pull My Daisy, about a block and a half from here, and to say that we were underground, or beneath the underground, would be an understatement. If we had thirty or forty people that was a humungous crowd. So we’re really so happy to see everyone come out and honor poetry, music, (and especially, to see the young people, because those of us over sixty, who have been doing it for a long time, try to keep the flame alive of some of the beautiful music and the beautiful people who inspired us when we were in New York City, thirty or forty years ago, to encourage us). And we were told, ‘No don’t, you can’t, forget about it, see a psychiatrist if you want to be an artist. It’s a waste of time to continue.” To try and pursue our dreams, only for the sake of doing it (and our day jobs were a badge of honor) but we knew, at least in our hearts, that we were artists.
I’d like to play a piece now to celebrate the spirit of the evening from the Khyber Pass. where Pakistan and Afghanistan meet. Jack and I used to sit up all night and talk about all that stuff. In addition to the two flutes, you’ll also hear the three flutes played at once. That’s done very often in the United States on The Gong Show (sic), but in many parts of the world it’s not peculiar or unusual, it’s an everyday way of making music. Because music is its own language, and every human being has their own song, their own heartbeat, and their own poem to express. [David Amram plays, concluding approximately thirty-nine- and-three-quarter minutes in] thank you. thank you.
Since brevity is the soul of wit and many of us smarter are known for our long non-stop interminable James Joyce Proustian bebop infinite raps, I’ll do one more short piece which celebrates the collaboration of musicians, painters and poets back in the 1950s. Some of the people here tonight, Al Aronowitz, the wonderful writer who wrote the definitive articles about Jack in 1960, (and) one of the most intelligent and brilliant people in New York City – he’s also a great poet as well as a great musician, Cecil Taylor. Who’s here? So many of the old friends are here (from) when we did the first jazz-poetry reading. This is a song written with… the lyrics by the unlikely team of Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac – and I wrote the music, back in 1959. The beginning part wil be done spontaneously as well as the middle and most of the end. Jack used to call that spontaneous rap, but you have to remember, especially those who are ethnofunkologists here this evening, that the first jazz-poet that we know of was Homer, certainly the first rap artist when he wrote the Iliad and the Odysssey and he rapped out the entire thing on a boat with someone playing the lyre and somebody else remembered it and wrote it down. And the same goes for Socrates or Plato there, and down through history, people have always improvised. And when I write symphonies, they’re based on the experiences of life, just as Jack wrote his work and Allen wrote his work, and so many others, on the experiences of everyday life, to honor and to beautify what we are gifted with, what Rauschenberg used to call “found objects” or “finding the diamonds on the sidewalk”. So there’s so much out here in New York City and around the country. I hope all you young writers and poets and artists will take some hope and go for it – take a chance. And if you mess up, don’t worry about your critics because they’ll either retire or expire and you can still continue to be creative.
Well my daughter Alana’s here with me on this beautiful October night/ and we walked down 10th Street there were so many people on the sidewalk we said “Good lord, that is really out of sight!” / It seemed incredible after all these years to see all of them emerging from their basements of doom and gloom/ to see a room full of shining faces, I guess the Great Creator, he or she, must know surely what they’re doing/ Well it’s wonderful to know, since my daughter and my other daughter and my son said, “Daddy, you’re a sap”/ because you’re so hung up with Bela Bartok and Tchaicovsky and Charlie Parker that you don’t ever listen to any kind of rap/ Well, I had MTV, you see, it was something that certainly graces all of our homes/And after you’ve turned on that dial and seen some of the stuff it makes you feel even more alone/ Well rapping’s a natural thing and spontaneity is too/ so take a chance it doesn’t mean you’re certifiably crazy/ because if you have a rhyme and have some fun for nothing at home you can do it when you hear “Pull My Daisy”. .. (Amram turns to the piano and performs “Pull My Daisy”). (“Pull my daisy/tip my cup/All my doors are open..”….”lay it on the needy”). – “Well when Jack and me and Neal and Allen and I wrote this song back in 1959 way before in Washington Square where we were the other night/ (it’s. not Washington Square, its Washington Church but you and all of us are sharing in the holy light/ Because being with you shows that it’s true/ that what comes around finally gets its due/ And I can tell you from the length and the depth/ when I talked to Cecil Taylor, he said “Don’t hold your breath”, meaning “Don’t wait for joy to come/ Just be sure and get it done”/ And that’s what Jack and me and Neal and Allen did/ And that’s why we’re here tonight to celebrate they did/ because the poets, don’t you know it, keep us alive because they really throw it/ not to the establishment to laugh at itself/ because they put all those negative images back on the shelf/ So if you want to know what the meaning of “Pull My Daisy” is/after thirty-seven years I’m not sure myself/ But I know it only means that you can have a good time and enjoy every ride/ So when you ‘re sitting alone/ you feel inspired to write a poem/ turn off the tv and turn the typewriter on/ You can write a poem and then write a song/ Because creativity is natural you see/ It’s meant for all and the way to be/ Well that really doesn’t sound too crazy/ the thoughts of mine about “Pull My Daisy” – (“Pull my daisy/tip my cup/All my doors are open..”….”lay it on the needy”) – (Amram breaks into scat singing) – (‘that’s the way we used to scat sing back in 1953/. And when Jack came from Lowell, Massachusetts came to New York City and travelled all over the world/ and when On The Road was published and his literary flag was finally unfurled/and Gilbert Millstein in the New York Times gave it a fantisimo review/ All those up-tight martini-drinking English majors that became literary critics didn’t know what to do / And Jack went to those New York City 1950 literary. cocktail parties in his brown tweed coat with patches on his sleeve/ trying to play that literary game but pretending he was an Edwardian English literary gentleman (just like ol’ Prince Charles or Lady Di (sic) also pretending that they should be be on the throne, but really they should be all alone because they don’t even know where they have gone) – and Jack, alone, with himself, sat in despair, while in the air, Truman Capote, in a fit of jealousy, on the Tonight Show, said it wasn’t writing, it was typing/ And now Truman Capote in his white coat is up in the Great Tonight Show in the sky while Jack’s eleven books are translated in fifteen languages all over the world. So for all of us here on Tenth Street and Second Avenue tonight/ being in each other’s presence is truly out of sight/And you can form your own painting, symphony, ballet/or do anything in your own specific way/And don’t worry about other people with demands / we all just have to learn to become each other’s fans/ So whether you want to write, paint, play, sing/ or crawl out your window-box over the fire-escape in the great gloomy New York City in the great October night before the cool winter comes/ sharpen up that imaginary rototiller before that window-box next Spring / In the spirit of the Poetry Project and spontaneity, let’s all Pull our Daisy!”
David Amram’s performance can be heard here from approximately forty-two-and-a-quarter minutes in until the end of the tape
to be continued