Beatific Details

I recently finished reading Bill Morgan's 2007 biography of poet Allen Ginsberg I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg. It's a good read, and especially interesting because it focuses on material that became available only after Ginsberg's death in 1997, taken from his personal journals and archives.

It helps to already know something about Ginsberg's life and times before reading this biography, since it tends to skim over famous events from Ginsberg's life in order to put the emphasis on the new material never before released. The biography brings to light a number of aspects of Ginsberg such as:

- His basic insecurity. Ginsberg was always bold and socially uncompromising in public settings, often appearing to relish shocking people with his rude disregard for societal conventions. Yet his journals reveal that he was often filled with confusion and self-doubt in private.

- Ginsberg had a long term relationship with Peter Orlovsky (above left) that has often been cited as a role model of an enduring homosexual romance. However Ginsberg's journals reveal that their relationship was much rockier behind the scenes than the public ever saw, including incidents of violence.

- There are also details revealed that portray other figures of the beat generation in a different light. Jack Kerouac is shown as being sharper in his final alcoholic phase than he is usually given credit for. Neal Cassady, previously thought to have had only a brief homosexual affair with Ginsberg, is revealed as having had a much more extensive sexual relationship, much of which was conducted in secret because Cassady was married at the time.

- Although Ginsberg was so famous that to this day he is the only modern poet that most Americans can recognize from a photograph, this book says Ginsberg was secretly jealous of the fame of rock stars and wished he could be one himself. He also apparently had a lot more private (non-sexual) interaction with Bob Dylan than was previously known.


Incidentally, when I told Springfield Republican columnist and Dylan obsessive Tom Shea (above) that I was reading this book, he told me a bit of local Ginsberg lore that I hadn't known. Apparently just after Ginsberg's death, Dylan played at Smith College in Northampton and dedicated the song "Don't Think Twice" to his old friend. Shea also reminded me that Ginsberg appeared onstage at the Springfield Civic Center in 1975 playing finger cymbals during the all-star encore for Dylan's "Rolling Thunder" tour. I was at that show and recall spotting Ginsberg standing on stage. Here is a picture of Dylan and Ginsberg at the grave of Kerouac in Lowell, Massachusetts taken the day before the Springfield show.

So while I think I Celebrate Myself is a good read for the true beat generation fan in search of formerly unavailable details, the general reader would probably find this book lacking in its overview and more in-depth than they would require. 

Old Pine Point

Speaking of local history, here's some pictures of the Pine Point section of Springfield that people have sent me. Here is the late Yolly Nahorniak on Boston Road in 2008.

 



This is State Street just before you get to Saint Michael's Cemetery, where the road splits into Berkshire and Boston Road. The neighborhood gets its name from a huge, ancient pine tree that once stood at that fork in the road, but not in the lifetime of anyone now living. The date of the photograph is unknown. I believe both of those structures shown in the picture are still standing, one is a gravestone seller (as it apparently was back then) and the other in recent years was a car lot. Dig the trolley tracks. 

An undated photo of a cemetery worker in Saint Michael's.

 



Good advice from a St. Michael's resident. 

 

Dylan's Tarantula

A Bad LiteraryHoax

 
 

I consider Bob Dylan to be one of the great poets of modern times. Some people have claimed that he's not really a poet but just a songwriter. Yet, from a historic perspective there is really no distinction, since originally all poetry was intended to be sung. In fact, all good poetry (except free verse) should be able to be set to music, whether or not the poet ever actually composed any for the poem.

In any case, I think it is very possible to consider many of Dylan's songs as musical poetry, especially songs like Mr. Tambourine Man or some of the stuff from Blood on the Tracks. It was this admiration for Dylan's songwriting that made me glad to have the chance recently to read Bob Dylan's first book, the intriguingly titled Tarantula.

Alas, to my surprise the title is the most interesting part of the book, which overall is an unbearable, incomprehensible bore. The Wikipedia has this to say about this "novel" which might be better described as just a collection of words.

Tarantula is an experimental novel by Bob Dylan, written between 1965 and 1966. It employs stream of consciousness writing, somewhat in the style of Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg. One section of the book parodies the Leadbelly song "Black Betty". Reviews of the book liken it to his self-penned liner notes to two of his albums recorded around the same time, Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited.

This is not accurate, the liner notes on those albums were far superior to anything in Tarantula. Nor is the comparison to Kerouac justified, his stream of consciousness novels were never this sloppy or obscure. The Wikipedia continues:

Dylan would later cite Tarantula as a book he had never fully signed up to write: "Things were running wild at that point. It never was my intention to write a book." He went on to equate the book to John Lennon's nonsensical work In His Own Write, and implied that his former manager Albert Grossman signed up Dylan to write the novel without the singer's full consent.

It's good to know that Dylan didn't really intend to write a book, because he didn't really write one. The one comparison between Dylan and Kerouac that is accurate is that the worst insult ever hurled at Kerouac, delivered unjustly by Truman Capote, does in fact apply to Dylan, "That's not writing, that's typing." 

Nor is it fair to compare Tarantula to the witty and intelligent John Lennon book, since Tarantula is neither. Tarantula is an obvious rip-off and a bunch of nonsense that Dylan typed up to justify a contract he never wanted to fulfill in the first place. It was then released by a greedy publisher just to make a quick buck. Again from the Wikipedia:

Although it was to be edited by Dylan and published in 1966, his motorcycle accident in July '66 prevented this. Numerous bootleg versions of the book were available on the black market through 1971, when it was officially published. In the early 21st century, it was translated into French.

 The "early 21st century" reprinting was no doubt done for yet another round of rip-offs designed to cash-in on the 2003 release of Dylan's second book, the infinitely superior Chronicles.

 

In sharp contrast to Tarantula, Chronicles shows Dylan to be every bit as good a writer as one would have hoped. In his autobiography Dylan writes with passion and insight about subjects he cares about, and leaves one wishing he would write more.

But one would never wish for another Tarantula. In 2003 Spin magazine did an article called the "Top Five Unintelligible Sentences From Books Written by Rock Stars." Dylan came in first place with "Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns."

But is the book really completely worthless? In a literary sense yes, it is. But socially it may have had some value when first released. No doubt many people bought it simply to carry it around and look cool while sitting in coffeehouses and pretending to read it in hopes of starting conversations with interesting and sexually attractive people. Hey, books have been purchased for much worse reasons, and by less deserving authors.

Proud Turnout

 

I continue to be impressed by the great turnouts reported nationwide for the "Tea Party" protests against the increasing deterioration of our liberty and financial security. Despite the attempts by some major media and the political class to downplay the protests, you can be sure that today in the White House and the halls of Congress they are nervous. I was especially impressed by the turnout in Springfield.

And as usual, Deadhead Ann Coulter was right on target:

I had no idea how important this week's nationwide anti-tax tea parties were until hearing liberals denounce them with such ferocity. The New York Times' Paul Krugman wrote a column attacking the tea parties, apologizing for making fun of "crazy people." It's OK, Paul, you're allowed to do that for the same reason Jews can make fun of Jews
-Ann Coulter

 
Clean Past

 I saw this old fashioned washing machine at the Carriage Shops in Amherst. It had a date on it of 1888.

Better Than Jail 

On King Street today I ran into my friend Alex. He was in rehab with me. The device on his leg is to allow law enforcement to monitor him. 

 

 

You may think he looks young to have already been through drug rehab, but frankly I was surprised to see in rehab the number of people at 20 who had been through drug horrors I didn't experience until I was 40.

Today's Video

Members of the Amherst band ZEBU bouning to explore the strange while doing a Marvin Gaye cover.

 

Dylan and the Dead

A fruitful collaboration.

While killing time waiting to meet with my addiction councilor the other day, who should come up to me than the popular Springfield Republican columnist Tom Shea!

What did we talk about? We talked about writing, as well as politics, but you just can't talk very long to Tom Shea without the subject turning to music. He was full of praise for the Grateful Dead, especially for the important role he felt they played in the revitalization of the career of Bob Dylan. Shea is a huge Dylan fan.

Many observers were surprised when Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead teamed up for some major tours together in the 1980's. While they both came up pretty much at the same time in the mid-60's, Dylan and the Dead were not true musical contemporaries. The Dead were all about psychedelia, and Dylan never really had a psychedelic period. He did some crazy word-play that was very much in tune with acid consciousness, but musically Dylan never sounded trippy, which made the Dead seem an odd choice for Dylan to use as his band.

But as Dylan has recounted in his autobiography and elsewhere, his bond with the Dead was more personal and inspirational than musical. He formed a close personal friendship with Jerry Garcia, but more importantly the Dead helped Dylan overcome the fact that he was pretty much burnt out artistically at that point in his career. 

Years of personal trauma and drug use had left Dylan alienated from his own muse, unable to put himself in the mindset to perform his own songs with any passion. Working with the Dead, who were great admirers of Dylan and whose free form improvisational style gave Dylan the freedom to do musically anything he wanted, enabled Dylan to revive his spirit and make a major creative comeback.

When Garcia died in 1995, Dylan paid Garcia the highest public complement he ever made to another musician. He said that Garcia had "understood what it was like to be me" and coming from one of the 20th century's most mysterious figures, that was very high praise indeed.

Here's a ticket stub I saved from when I saw Dylan and the Dead. 

One thing Tom Shea asked me about was whether I saw anyone on the scene in Springfield who could be considered as someone who might transform Springfield for the better in a big way. I was saddened to realize I could not. I suppose a Tim Rooke mayoralty would be a good thing, but I'm not sure I consider Rooke (below) truly a transformational figure. 

Maybe that special someone who will bring back the glory that was once Springfield is a person not yet known, but who will rise from the streets to inspire us all. If so, I hope they will make their presence known soon.

For decades this tower atop one of the buildings from the former state hospital complex in Northampton looked down upon the city from Hospital Hill. 

The other morning I passed where they have just completed tearing that building down, and found the tower lying on the ground in the morning mist.

 



These cuffs in the window of the Hampshire County Courthouse make it clear that not all who enter that building do so voluntarily. 

Northampton is a very queer friendly community and some households want to make that very clear. 

Amherst College Drum Circle 2007

Keeping the beat.

 



Last night in front of the Robert Frost Library at Amherst College, just as the sun was going down, there was a drum circle ritual going on. Back in the day when I used to go to Grateful Dead shows, there were always drum circles in the audience, where the beating of the drums would go louder and louder and faster and faster, building into a wild, hypnotic, clothes optional Dionysian frenzy. 

The Amherst College drum circle was more restrained than that, at least while I was there, but it still was a lot of fun. A whole bunch of drums of every size and shape were laid out on the lawn. All you had to do was walk up, pick out the instrument of your choice and join in the beating of the drums.

This was the weirdest looking drum, it resembled a mutated teapot with boll weevils all over it. The sound it made was like coins shaking in sand.

This guy was really good, both at drums and playing the flute.

Hey, I'll bet you didn't know that I play a hell of a mean tambourine!

It was a great way to experience the dusk of the day and I hope they will hold a drum ritual every week, at least until it gets too cold.

A Bob Dylan poster is prominently on display in the window of Newbury's Comix in Amherst.

It's weird to consider that you could have walked around Amherst over four decades ago and probably also seen a Dylan poster somewhere on display.