From a July 3rd interview (with Mary Reynard for the Earth Network) at Naropa Institute, Boulder, Colorado, July 3. 1991 (sic) – see here
AG: Tomorrow is July 4th and I wonder what I think about the fireworks and what they symbolize they do symbolize – liberation?, a fight for liberation? – they also have come more and more to symbolize bombs bursting in air, war, and they’ve also come to symbolize just high times and having a lot of high-tech fireworks and a big spectacle where everybody says “AH!” and a picnic, and in America, nationalism seems to be total chauvinism at this point, an unmitigated pride vanity accompanied by great aggression and the erosion of liberty. I mean this seems to be the people that wrap themselves in the flag of nationalism that seem to be the greatest aggressors on the Bill of Rights in the Constitution.
Then, in addition, there have been an attempt to destabilize and dismantle the Constitution and the First Amendment, I believe, guaranteeing free speech, by amending that, so that you can’t demonstrate opposition to the government by burning the flag, so it’s like substituting a shadow or symbol of the Constitution for the actual Constitution and then trying to destroy the Constitution. When Bush (sic) proposed a congress.. constitutional amendment to play with flag burning. So that’s kind of weird, yeah, you see. It’s Orwellian double-think, double-talk, that’s come to total up-front practice, and hardly anybody seemed to notice.
MR: Do you think that there’s a general lack of awareness politically in our society, even on the 4th of July are people aware of what it is they’re celebrating?
AG: I think there’s a great deal of awareness of that it’s a nationalistic holiday, and I think the people here will be celebrating it as a family grassroots day rather than as a nationalistic chauvinist day, though I don’t know what.. obviously over the rest of the country all the instruments and propaganda machines will be making it a.. you know, a celebrate-our victory-in-Iraq (sic) occasion. and trying to make it into a nationalistic occasion. But the question that we were focusing on was how are the same people who are trying to be nationalistic, who are nationalist chauvinists, how are they undermining the foundations of democracy?
Centennial (AG) if not Semiquincentennial (USA) celebrations continue to evoke positive feeling. Upcoming in London next month – Sunday July 12 – a major gathering at the Southbank (Queen Elizabeth Hall)
and the following days at The Swedenborg House – “Blake, Ginsberg and Ah Sunflower! – Film Music and Conversation
More information – see here
and throughout the year Ginsberg Centennial events continue.
Kerouac news – the latest book from Rare Bird/ Sal Paradise Press, Someday We’ll Build Cabins (originally scheduled for the Spring) is due out early next month – Someday We’ll Build Cabins, “a book of letters revealing the inner desires and turmoils of Jack Kerouac after his rise to literary acclaim in the 1960s”, comprises the letters of Jack and Jacques Beckwith and Lois Sorrells Beckwith. The book has been compiled and edited by Beat scholar, Bill Morgan
“In 1960, Jack Kerouac began a correspondence with New York artist Jacques Beckwith. Their shared vision: to build cabins in the woods, retreats from a world of war, dishonesty, and literary pressure. Kerouac wrote, “I want to live in the woods where I don’t even have to think about this evil world of wars and dishonesties.
But while Beckwith realized his dream, Kerouac was thwarted by alcoholism, lawsuits, constant travel, marital strife, and the burden of caring for his mother. These letters reveal the deeply human side of the Beat legend-his frustrations, distractions, and restless longing for peace.”
Jonah Raskin gives the book an advanced review – here
“Do we really know all there is to know about the so-called ‘King of the Beats’, as the tabloids dubbed him. Do we, for example, know about the utopian dream that he shared with the artist, naturalist and skilled carpenter Jacques Beckwith, and with the poet Lois Sorrels Beckwith, to build cabins in the woods…I thought I knew everything about Jack, and then I read this book and discovered sides of him that I really didn’t see or understand..Jack Kerouac -Someday We’ll Build Cabins opens wide a barn door to a world that’s little known and that ought to be more widely heralded.”
Gordon Ball, whose recent volume Ginsberg & Beat Fellows: A Personal Record, Photographs 1966-2022 was noted here last month is interviewed by Simon Warner (the 51st interview, no less!), on Warner’s invaluable Rock and The Beat Generation – see here
SW: How do you first become associated with the Beat Generation writers?
GB: I met Allen at a party at Panna Grady’s 1966, but did not do so effectively until Barbara Rubin got us together on the farm she was getting for Allen in upstate NY 1968. Our first meeting was actually depicted in the book ’66 Frames.
SW: When did you first really connect with them and how did you become integrated into that circle?
GB: Peter, Gregory, many others, came to East Hill Farm, as covered in book of that title.
SW: They obviously came to trust you as a cameraman. How did you build their trust?
GB: I don’t know that I built it. At the farm, we had a common purpose; working with Allen on books, but as Bill Morgan says [yes, Bill again] in his introduction to the new book, I was seen as a friend, not a photographer from outside.