Friday the 13th – but don’t worry, black cats are a positive symbol too. David S Wills in a brief note, back in 2017 in Beatdom – “Beat Poets and Their Feline Friends“, cites this line (from Allen’s journals) – “Truth climbs upon the bed like a black cat purring”. The truth will come out. It may take some time but the truth will come out.
Kerouac week this past week, beginning on Monday (with Alexander Cheves’ piece in The Guardian – including commentary/remarks by avid Kerouac collector, Jacob Loewenthiel). “Running Through Heaven” continues at the Grolier Club. And yesterday, (Jack’s birthday), the auction at Christies of the legendary On The Road scroll (quite accurately described as
“a 20th-century masterpiece, the most iconic artifact of the Beat Generation and one of the most significant and celebrated artifacts of American literature” – not to mention (upcoming) the auctioning too of the original typescript scroll for The Dharma Bums, alongside several other Kerouac (and Beat-related) items see here)
Last night, this – Bob Dylan’s handwritten lyrics for “The Time They Are A-Changin‘” fetched two million dollars!
The scroll (original estimate between two-and-a-half million and four million) sold for ten million dollars! (country singer, Zach Bryan was the purchaser)
Jerry Garcia‘s legendary “Tiger” guitar, crafted by luthier Doug Irwin reached a record-breaking eleven-an-a-half million dollars!
and David Gilmour’s “Black Strat” fetched even higher, (selling for just over twelve million!
– quite literally, ‘the most expensive guitar ever sold”!)
still on the subject of rock (tho’ not – as a necessary counterpoint), not of avaricious speculation), Country Joe MacDonald died last week. Here’s his last interview.
Here’s his obituary
Ed Sanders remembers him here
and more counter-cultural recollection – the polar opposite of the ongoing Christie’s event – the Counterculture Museum in San Francisco currently has a new exhibit up, focusing on
The Diggers. (the Diggers, with their optimistic, hopeful, communal, notably anti-capitalist, vision)
That was “the Sixties”. So. “Trying to make an inventory of experience, consciousness, impressions, struggles, emotions, loss of reason, ethical and moral calamity (in order)
to (similarly) “make sense of this time..”, Anne Waldman writes – (continuing her understanding of Allen’s practice, Allen’s vision – “making the world safe for poetry“)
Anne Waldman is interviewed by Isabelle Sakelaris for Interlocutor – (in a piece well worth reading) – here
and (part of the Ginsberg Centennial) – Tuesday through Thursday:
