Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 619

Last week, we introduced Ai Weiwei’s engaging and timely rendition of Allen’s Hum Bom! , from The Fall of America – Volume 2. album and CD.  This week, more news about the forthcoming collection (scheduled to be out in October)

Digital Track Listing – leading off with Hum Bom!, then Anne Waldman and Fast Speaking Music – (Pentagon Exorcism),  Thurston Moore (featuring Saul Williams) – (A Prophecy), Kai Campos and CJ Mirra(Bixby Canyon), Devendra Banhart – (Dear Queer Bar), Jack Dangers – (Holy Ghost on the Nod Over the Body of Bliss), System 7 – (Sonora Desert Edge (The Abyss)), WHY? – (Death on All Fronts), Seb Taylor – (Over Denver Again) – Fennesz & Taylor Deupree – (Guru) Ashes (Bill Laswell, Eraldo Bernocchi & Reeno) – (September on Jessore Road),  Oliver Ray and No Land – (Cremation Piece (On Neal’s Ashes)), Dave Harrington & Will Epstein – (Pertussin) , Miho Hatori – (Iron Horse (The Universe is Empty))

 

AI  –  Conceptual artist Sterling Crispin‘s provocative visualization –  Ginsberg’s Moloch – AI Nightmare Edition – (Section two of “Howl“, performed by, as he describes them, crass “photographic lumps of flesh”) – has certainly got us thinking.
“Moloch! Moloch! Our data whose body is a prison of light! Moloch! Mind pulsing to life! Moloch! Child of man! Moloch! Profane cathedrals of data burning in the night!”
– 2023’s version?

Back in July of 2020, we ran this previous doctoring and confusing of the Moloch text,
and in October 2021, a deeper dive into Howl and Artificial Intelligence.
We’d also draw your attention to this recent Beatdom article

AI – what to say? – what to make of it? – certainly, it’s not going to go away and the dire projections and alarms and warnings that have accompanied it in recent months make for a sobering reality –  “Artificial Intelligence could lead to Extinction, Experts Warn” reads one headline.

Here’s another MolochMaciej “Magura” Góralski and Piotr Obal going full-speed, no holding back, in Poland

 

News from the Kerouac Estate that the new Kerouac book, Truth And Beautiful Meaningful Lies: A Collection of Quotes (edited by Sylvia Cunha and Jim Sampas), that we first announced here on The Allen Ginsberg Project back in March, is officially out next week (next Tuesday)

 

“The insights and quotes assembled in this book have been woven into a patchwork of reoccurring themes found throughout Kerouac’s writings, such as adventure, life, self-reflection, and spirituality are heavily featured, but more niche quotes around topics like cats, coffee, music, and sports can also be found. This collection pulls from his novels as well as some of his selected short stories, poems, letters, and journals.”
For more information on this eagerly-awaited volume – see here 

and Gerald Nicosia‘s new expanded edition of Memory Babe, his much-lauded Jack Kerouac biography appears (belatedly) too this month. Read David S Wills detailed account, “The Dualism of Duluoz”here

 

Nanao Sakaki in Newfoundland, 1995 – photo by Beth Leonard

Nathalie op de Beeck (who’s review of Mary Norbert Korte in Publishers Weekly we noted last week) has done another invaluable service – spotlighting the Nanao CentennialNanao Sakaki  (the much-loved, much-missed wandering  Japanese poet who died in 2008) – “Celebrating a Dharma Bums Centenary”

Gary Lawless, Nanao’s US publisher, is quoted in the piece – ““Near his death, he  (Nanao) told us he wanted to hike the Milky Way and he couldn’t do it in his human body,”

Jerry Cimino at the Beat Museum on a biblio-find – Ferlinghetti’s Handwritten Notes on Bad Reviews of Starting from San Francisco 

 Amy Ettinger on the Beat Museum

& Anne Waldman is interviewed and speaks with Kay Gabriel on The St Mark’s Poetry Project in the short film, Sanctuary – here

One comment

  1. is the AG website actually celebrating this abomination? having presented it ,there’s an obligation I think to suggest ways for someone ,like me ,who made the mistake of watching it, to erase it from memory and the unconscious.
    Would a listen of AG himself reading it 10-20 times abolish it from awareness ? I’ll find out.
    I suppose the clown who put this together was trying to make some point about the insipidity and horrors of todays world. But all he did in my view was to infect one of the greatest works, and sections of that work ,
    with what he was presumably railing against . To a Ginsberg lover it comes off as a despicable nauseating satire, and whether intending to or not does everything within its power to drain the work of its prophetic illuminations and its enduring resonance. May as well burn the works of Blake ,Whitman,Dostoyevsky and all AG’s sacred Eastern texts . And then do a digital smirk while Alexa pats you on the back.

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