Thirty years ago I remember saying to my Beat brothers at the Cedar Tavern in Greenwich Village that I thought Vanity of Duluoz was right up there with Jack’s greatest works. And they all looked at me like I was crazy and said, “Yeah, but nobody else thinks that.” 🙂
Years later, Duluoz has gotten its due.
What I’m sayin’ here is — Pic is better than conventional wisdom has it. And funnily enough, years after I said that, Tom Waits told Mojo magazine in 2020 that it was his favorite Jack book! “It’s written like a Mark Twain story, all in phonetic black jargon.”
If you don’t know — this novella was a key moment in the evolution of one of America’s greatest writers. It was written over the summer / fall of 1950 as he was struggling to get his On The Road vision on the page.
Shortly after writing it, in Dec. 1950 he received the now-legendary “Joan Anderson/Cherry Mary” letter from Neal Cassady that broke open his storytelling narrative voice which led to the famous Scroll version three months later.
I know it sounds crazy, but I think the oft-dismissed Pic is one of Kerouac’s most fun (and quick) books. Everything Jack wrote was a thinly-veiled version of himself. This is the only time he ever wrote as someone else entirely — a precocious, adorable, funny, adventurous, wide-eyed 10-year-old African-American boy from North Carolina.
His whole oeuvre, his whole raison d’êtra, his whole “Duluoz Legend” (the breakthrough idea of telling one epic story of one person’s life at his particular point in history) was about writing in the real first person. Pic is Kerouac’s very first work written in first-person (after the third-person Town and The City, Orpheus Emerged, The Sea Is My Brother, et al) and the only book to step into another skin entirely — a key evolution in the author’s expanding execution.
I’m not saying Pic is Road — but it does contain many scenes he either used (in a different form) in On The Road or in the Scroll version or elsewhere that never stayed in the published editions. There’s the longest take of the Ghost of the Susquehanna; there’s the Prophet of Times Square and other vivid New York scenes; there’s the most detailed bus trip description of his many times riding in one; and there’s the whole story of two “brothers” going “on the road” together.
This is the only time this stunningly gifted writer ever branched into another voice. And boy, I love it!
And just to clarify the “stunningly gifted writer” part if anybody doesn’t get it, and I know some don’t:
What I might suggest anyone do is read the On The Road Scroll and Old Angel Midnight and The Dharma Bums and Big Sur and get back to me. Kerouac captured a compassionate vision of the world, and an embrace of all peoples — black, white; gay, straight; rich, poor; city hipsters and country farmers. He articulated the wanderlust that so many have, whether they act on it or not. He wrote prose like a poet, and novels like a storyteller sitting next to you in a bar (as he himself described his goal as a writer).
His output was a herculean effort in a very short 47-year life that was filled — except for about one week in 1957 — with mostly rejection. There’s a body of work here that’s rivaled only by his fellow giants. Besides being a novelist, he was a chronicler, an historian, a poet — a visionary in the sense that he saw the future and knew the value of what he was doing — and that people are still devouring what he created is proof he was right. I mean, You’re reading about him Now!
It was a Van Gogh-like commitment in the face of all rejection. And God-damn-it that hard booze and insulting dismissals mowed him down in mid-life.
And in this whole massive masterful output, Pic has not gotten the props it deserves — just like John Lennon’s “Sometime In New York City” didn’t. As a Lennon fan, I was always perplexed by the accepted conclusion that this album was no good. I had it. I listened to it. I knew it was great. In fact, it rocked!
And so, like everybody else in Jackland, I’d dismissed Pic (until I reread it recently) because … it was dismissed. It’s barely touched on in any of the biographies. Sure, it’s unfinished, sure the dialect may not be a perfect linguistic transcription, but this is his Catcher, his Huck — his comical, colorful young-person’s voice and story.
I’ve said (as I’m sure others have) that On The Road was Huckleberry Finn in the 20th century. In fact, even Jack described this early attempt at Road as, “a kind of Huckleberry Finn of today.” Only thing is — Huck was written in dialect, and Road wasn’t.
This is the only time this monster talent tried a long-form dialect piece. Besides the Midnight /Sax /Vanity variety of voices he captured . . . here he is a thousand miles out of his comfort zone — not writing in his native French, nor his mastered English, but actually “becoming” the black American he confessed to wanting to be in On The Road — “At lilac evening I walked with every muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver colored section, wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night.“
And there’s this neat symmetry how this first first-person novel perfectly mirrors the last one he wrote (Vanity of Duluoz) in that they’re the only two books addressed throughout to one person — Pic to “Grandpa” and Vanity to “Wifey” — the most direct one-on-one communication from author to imagined reader.
I’m not sayin Pic is Toni Morrison or James Baldwin or Langston Hughes — but I’ve never read Norman Mailer or Tom Wolfe or Hunter Thompson even attempt this kind of range.
It’s a testimony to his creative courage and ear-to-hand gifts that he went there long-form — that he inhabited this other place. Whether he caught every phrase just right, I don’t know or care. I “got” it. I was there with him. I was that kid. Going On The Road. Discovering New York. Digging the Ghost of the Susquehanna. Savoring all of America that he was gulping in for the first time. Appreciating how this was Jack’s Road vision . . . just before he Scrolled it.
And he had (wisely?) returned to it in the last months of his life — dashing off a quick ending that doesn’t satisfy but at least didn’t leave it mid-tale.
Which brings us back the goddamned tragedy of him dying. Alcoholism is as much a biological disease as cancer. I’m so sad John Lennon was taken from us by a mental disease, and Jack by a physical one.
Where would he have gone as an author?
I like to think Pic was a hint of one of the places this master storyteller might have taken his readers in the decades he and the rest of us were robbed of.
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Here’s a reading on the bus trip chapter from Pic that I did at Lowell Celebrates Kerouac in 2016 . . .
For most of ’80s I lived in Phyllis & Eddie Condon’s palatial apartment on Washington Square North. The NYU Program Board from where I ran the concerts was in the Loeb Student Center on Washington Square South — about a 3-minute walk away — if you didn’t dawdle in the continuous circus that was Washington Square Park. I halfway lived over there in what was my first “office” — and could do anything I wanted.
At this point I knew very little about American politics or how government worked at all, having grown up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
The first time any of this entered my fort-building hockey-playing childhood was the Watergate hearings that preempted all four of our TV channels that summer of ’73. Then there was the newsflash of seeing the giant “NIXON RESIGNS” headline in a newspaper box in as big letters as the “WAR IS OVER” or “MAN ON MOON” headlines I’d seen in books — and realizing this was the first historic event of my young conscious life.
We were taught virtually nothing about American politics in Canadian schools. Prolly about as much as Americans were about Canada. I knew they had Presidents, and George Washington was the first, and 1776 was a big deal for some reason, but that was about it.
Unlike all my friends in Winterpeg, after reading Rolling Stone and other music magazines, I knew I wanted to live in America — a universally unpopular opinion in a small Canadian prairie town. As soon as I finished my mandatory service in high school, myself and a couple buddies loaded up the van and drove to Californey with visions of bikini beaches and waving fields of pot dancing in our heads.
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The First Presidential Candidate
At one point on that crazy trip we were down in San Diego and climbed over the wall to sneak into their famous zoo there. Just after we got inside, who should come walking right past us in that spring of 1980, but Presidential candidate John Anderson! The white-haired bespectacled Republican had just started running Independent as a counterpoint to Reagan’s ultra-right-conservatism. But we weren’t really too hip to the details. All we knew was he was throwing a monkey wrench into American politics and that was good enough for us.
My fellow Canadian runaway, I’ll call him Joey, was about the only other person I knew who was really into American politics & culture, and of course we’d never seen a real-life American Presidential candidate in the flesh before and rushed right over in our 18-year-old enthusiasm and shook the hand that shook the hand of P.T. Barnum and Charlie Chan. Even got me a bumper sticker from his entourage of maybe a half-dozen people — my first bone fide campaign ephemera!
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World War III
A week or so after that, we found ourselves in yet another first — hanging with a real-live Vietnam War veteran — something that just didn’t happen in Winnipeg.
We were at his house somewhere around L.A. on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. It was only 5 years since the end of that failed war, and a few more since Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, and we all knew the government lied to us and was up to no end of nefarious no good. This vet was much older and wiser than us, and had fought in the heart of one of their most heinous lies, and he was filling our impressionable young minds with fresh sinsemilla and juicy details of the latest conspiracy theories.
He kept all the lights low as though he was still hiding in the dark in the jungle. And as he was regaling his wide-eyed captives with elaborate tales of how the world really worked, the silent flickering rabbit-eared TV in the corner suddenly broke away from the regular late night broadcast with Breaking News of a secret rescue mission to free the American hostages in Iran that had gone horribly wrong. Or was it really an invasion? Helicopters crashed, soldiers were dead, and another war maneuver by the U.S. government had ended in death and disaster. We sat up for hours in a pre-CNN world manually flipping the round channel knob to get any information we could. We were sure, in our vividly stoned Everything-Has-Meaning minds, that there was a grand “reason” why we were hanging with a real front-line war soldier the night World War III started.
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The Reagan–Carter Debate
A few months later — the fall of 1980 — was the Presidential debate between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Rayguns. In more Le Grande Synch Dept.: It just so happened that their one-&-only debate was scheduled on one of The Grateful Dead’s only two nights off during their 8-show run at Radio City Music Hall — which I was attending pretty much all of.
I knew I had to experience this because it seemed to be a very big deal in this new country I found myself — one month into what would become a decades-long Adventure in America. And I was determined to understand this place.
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I went to the historic counterculture Judson Church residence hall on Washington Square South and watched it on a big tubed 1970s TV in the common room full of smart young politicos making observations so far beyond me that I realized I was an utter neophyte in a very complex but exciting world. I still remember where I was sitting — on the right side, about half-way back — as I listened for the first time to a roomful of funny, wise-cracking American college students with politics and history surging thru their veins. I’d never been immersed in that culture before — or even really knew there was such a culture! Politicos — in the flesh! “So this is what that world’s like!”
I barely had a clue who the candidates were — but I knew if that crazy right-wing geezer got elected things were gonna be really bad.
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And that was about it. 1980 thru ’84 was a sex drugs & rock n roll frenzy in college in Greenwich Village — while still pulling off 13 As and cranking out NYU in 3-and-a-half years insteada 4 so I could pay them less money and get out into the real world sooner. During those years I rarely spent any time thinking about politics. Reagan was President, yuppie greed was “cool,” and it was all pretty depressing. Plus, I thought the whole science of politics was so far beyond me — and it seemed like something we had no control over anyway. Turns out I was wrong on both fronts.
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The Moment Everything Changed
One day in early 1984 — yes, that “1984” that living under Reagan really felt like — I was finishing up some stuff in the concert production office on the main floor of the Student Center, when I heard someone talking through a loudspeaker coming from LaGuardia Place — the little sidestreet off Washington Square South. But loud speakers and loud noise were pretty much the norm around Washington Square Park — there was always crazy shit going on.
Then all of a sudden there were huge cheers for something — bigger than normal. So I got up from my desk and walked into the lobby — which was about 8 feet above street level — and through the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows I laid eyes on my first political rally.
There was a man standing on a little stage at the end of the street with his back to Washington Square Park, facing south down the urban canyon packed with enthusiastic faces. I can’t remember if he was on a trailer or if they did some quick stage set-up or what — cuz I don’t recall anything being there when I walked into the building. But now the whole block was filled with excited, fist-pumping rock n roll people. And they were cheering for what some guy was saying — not what he was playing. But it sorta made sense cuz the dude looked kinda Kennedy-cool and was riffing with some cocky Mick Jagger confidence.
I’d been working in rock n roll since I was 15. I knew this scene. The stage, the PA, the crowd, the cameras, the screaming fans. Done. Except I was looking at somebody who could be running the country.
This was the same crowd — the same energy — the same showmanship — as everything I’d ever done in my life. It’s showbiz, man. But this was for the man who could be the leader of the free world. That’s even bigger than The Rolling Stones!
Turns out the guy’s name was Gary Hart. This was not the “Monkey Business” campaign — that was 4 years later. This was his first — which was actually a lot like Bernie Sanders’ in 2016. He was a little-known Senator from a non-major state who galvanized the young while going up against the obvious party favorite — Walter Mondale — who’d been Vice President 4 years earlier and was the de facto nominee.
I got swept right up in it. The underdog’s struggle. The new ideas. The new voice. The challenge to the system. The “volunteers of America.”
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Looking out that window, on that unexpected sunny spring afternoon in Greenwich Village — my life changed.
I walked down the steps into the cordoned-off street in open-mouthed awe — taking in something I “knew” but had never experienced. Like Judson Church, I remember exactly where I stood against the building next to the old white-haired guard I knew who let me stand there, as I looked left to the rock star on the stage, and then right to the block-long crowd listening and cheering. This was rock n roll. This I understood.
These people had the same passion in their faces, the same guttural thrill in their cheers, the same intangible electric energy as all the best music shows I ever worked or attended. It’s a buzz that can also be felt in a large sports crowd when the home team scores. Or in a Baptist church on a Sunday morning. There’s a few places to experience this collective positive-minded celebratory energy. But a political rally is definitely one of them.
And I’ve been actively participating in every primary election since.
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As I riff this reflection in September 2016, a new alternate reality of this energy has manifested in rallies by the most prominent bigot since George Wallace or David Duke (who supports him). I’ve even heard some scary seething in some Democratic ranks this campaign. This fear-based conspiracy-centric vitriol may have been part of the political world in every cycle since forever, but it’s never been this extreme.
We’re living through an existential crisis as a nation — and there’s no grand simple quick fix. But one place we can start is — not being part of the problem: Focusing at least equally on positive things — and not the negatives about somebody you hate. Being pro, and proactive. Not no, and not active. We gotta change the vibe in the room. We’re better than this.
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And this politico / historian / storyteller’s long-range viewfinder tells me a year from now we’re gonna be in a much better place. I’m already living there.
And 50 or 100 years from now every voter alive is gonna wish they’d lived through this Shakespearian campaign. So soak it in. Be part of it. Live it. There’s never gonna be another one like it. And we’re gonna win in the end. 😉
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Holding up my hand at the swearing-in as I became an American citizen.
Or for a whole Adventure book written in this same colorful language about a slightly different subject — check out “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac.”
The 2016 Presidential and Congressional elections will be a win for Clinton because . . .
— Trump continues to be unhinged for the next 3 months;
— his racism / bigotry comments & viewpoint continue to reappear;
— there’s a 3-month continuous drip-drip-drip of negative Trump business stories;
— the Republican party will not fully employ its party-based ground operations due to Trump’s negative perception with voters and within the party brass;
— Trump’s rally yahoos aren’t really registered active voters;
— moderate Republican voters stay home;
— moderate Republican women secretly vote Hillary;
— independents and swing voters turn out en masse to stop Trump;
— independents and swing voters break for “the first woman President;”
— Democrats turn out for a third Obama term and second Clinton administration;
— Obama’s favorables stay above 50%;
— the debates will be a slaughter, and he’ll be humiliated worse than Ford in ’76 or Quayle in ’88;
— Trump’s tax returns are leaked;
— the voter suppression laws recently struck down in 5 states (including swing states North Carolina and Wisconsin) result in many more Democratic votes . . .
if those things happen — not one of which is far fetched and all are, in fact, quite likely — November 8th will be a hell of a night! 😀 Even ConspiracyBoy won’t be able to say it was rigged.
How Trump could win — (meaning a higher voter percentage than either Romney or McCain received)
— he’s significantly under-polling due to respondents not willing to admit (even to anonymous pollsters) to voting for a known racist;
— a serious non-debatable negative Clinton revelation appears (about either Hillary or Bill);
— Trump hires and then actually follows the advice of top strategists and pivots to a traditional general election campaign for President;
— he becomes a reasonable, stable, convincing centrist — ie; he becomes / plays the character of a President, and people buy it;
— the Republican establishment comes around and strongly supports him, including delivering their ground game votes / organization;
— he finally launches an air attack (TV & radio ads) that turns out to be effective;
— with the aid of local redneck Mike Pence he catches on in the economically depressed rust belt;
— he’s somehow perceived to win one or more of the debates;
— Obama’s favorables drop below 50%;
— there’s a series of terrorist attacks at home and/or abroad — but again, this could help her as the more experienced, sane & stable candidate.
And just as I said above of the Clinton wave — how none of those events are far fetched — frankly, all of these are far fetched, or at least unlikely, or are external events Trump has no control over.
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If Gary Johnson gets 3% of the final vote or Jill Stein gets 2, it’ll be almost news.
When I tried starting this story last night immediately upon arriving home around 4 AM . . . this was all I got writ —
Republicans are loons …
😀
But boy, I just had the greatest time! Sheesh! This was like the 4th of July for a week! As I said before — now I know why they’re called political parties!
Somehow the definitive moment for me was dancing at night in the fountain at the Public Square, led by a super-skilled drummer named Freedom who I just became friends with a couple days earlier.
It was right before Drumpf’s speech on the final night and security had secured the week, done their job & it was pretty much over, and Freedom picked right up on the freedom and started a tribal, festival-like, Grateful Dead dance party at the very heart of the city. Just one of the many people I met here who I’ll probably be friends with for life.
The post-drum circle group hug – courtesy of the great photog Jeremy Hogan
Another definitive moment was experiencing Trump’s speech on 4th Street, which was interestingly/ironically being broadcast by MSNBC.
You could read into this that Fox didn’t set up a giant screen viewing area to broadcast their party’s words to the city. But MSNBC thought people should see this! 😉
4th Street is a one-block-long narrow former (Kerouac?) alley that’s evolved into a pedestrian street lined with bars & restaurants on both sides. It’s the coolest block in the city and was the go-to place for everyone not in the arena.
The street was pretty much packed from one end to the other, and what was funny/striking was how unenthusiastic and non-responsive people were. The paid prop poobahs inside would cheer and applaud each line on cue, but outside it was mostly falling on deaf ears. In a street full of Republicans.
Here’s one’s reaction at the table next to me . . .
And these two were standing in front of me for a bit . . . reading their phones . . .
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This should have been like being in the crowd at a home team’s victory — like Cleveland just celebrated last month with the Cavaliers basketball team bringing the first national championship to the city in 50 years — but instead it was like being at a home team loss. The silence was deafening as the applause-track from the arena played to nonplussed indifference. In Cleveland. To Republicans.
These conventions are like the Woodstock of politics. Every star in the political world is here, there’s non-stop “shows” on multiple stages all over the festival site (city), and people are partying like there’s no tomorrow. Which, in the Republican’s case, is true.
Instead of smiling I was busy telling Chuck Todd how he was Tim Russert’s living legacy. And boy did he appreciate that.
Mika & Joe
Me on MSNBC behind Al Franken 🙂
Van Jones doing a beautiful riff with the crazy Infowars guys.
Fellow Canadian David Frum — who observed Cleveland is like Toronto in the ’60s and early ’70s … lakeside city with great old architecture, and relatively untouched.
And another David spotted in the mix
John Lennon’s guitar he played Revolution on as well as The Beatles’s last gig on the Apple rooftop — at the “Louder Than Words” politics & music special exhibit at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Another reporter captured in the afternoon sun-speckled wild
With Hugh Hewitt. Fraternizing with the enemy 🙂
Another smart young political reporter whose name I can’t remember, but I never forget that face. p.s. – just remembered – Olivia Nuzzi. 🙂
Joy Reid having a good time on 4th Street
With Robert Smigel and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog
MSNBC host Chris Hayes – taken by the great Beat photog Jeremy Hogan
The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza
And the Post’s Dana Milbank
Meeting all the Washington Post writers, I had a good entry line with, “I’m a big fan and longtime subscriber …” which always seemed to buy me extra time and a genuine connection. These guys who can stay so focused and get the story with new angles and insights and deadlines day after day, year after year, impresses the hell out of me and makes me laugh every time I see someone dismissing the MSM.
Others seen on the scene but unsnapped — Rick Santorum; NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt; their super-professional campaign reporter Hallie Jackson; former RNC Chair Michael Steele; Jonathan Capehart; Howard Fineman; Campbell Brown & Dan Senor; Politico’s bespectacled Mike Allen; Mother Jones writer and breaker of the Romney 47% story David Corn; Republican strategists Mike Murphy, Barry Bennett, Jack Kingston and Alex Castellanos; Roland Martin, Larry Cutler, Ron Fournier, Joan Walsh, Tucker Carlson, Samantha Bee, and that enormous Repugnant pig Frank Luntz.
One thing I found for sure — every writer or senior Republican operative I talked to all week saw the same writing on the wall. More than one of them used the phrase “This is a shitshow” to describe what was happening, and the party chairman of one of the largest states in the union put it simply — “We’re fucked.”
This was the demise of the Repugnant Party I came to witness — and boy, the Donald did not disappoint!
Plagiarism, disconnection, disloyalty and dictatorial were the words to sum up each of the four days in sequence.
I’ve been in a lot of crowds at a lot of awe-inspiring concerts & other large-scale events over the last 40 years and know what happy fans look like. The delegates and others leaving the arena looked like they were walking out of a funeral. They should have been dancing in the streets after their team just put on the greatest show on earth . . . yet they were stumbling as though they just wanted to get home and bury their head under a pillow.
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I’ll add more photos (and thoughts) to this as time & energy allows. Took a Jack notebook fulla notes and 500 snaps. I’m sure there’s a couple good ones in there. 🙂
And I just have to mention — from his countenance on TV, I always thought David Frum was some depressingly dour frump. But he was prettymuch the friendliest, funniest, most talkative, interesting, coolest guy I met from the other side in Cleveland. It just goes to show ya — people aren’t always what they seem.
And a shout-out has to be made to my Beat brother Ken for not only hosting my 24-hour madness for a week, but being an Adventure Buddy and cameraman-in-a-pinch!
Ken, Freedom & me, in the fountain in the Public Square, 10PM Thursday night
As the crazy circus rolls on that is the Repugnant National Coronation of their favorite racist bigot who is now their official “standard-bearer” after years of less obvious assholes — the playful sense of humor of many sensible and silly Americans is still on display. In places.
Multiple Uptight Citizens Brigade Theatre-like groups have been staging sketches and songs on the streets all over town.
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And another group brought hundreds of tennis balls to protest the convention banning them (!?) while allowing people to open-carry guns.
As you can see by this photo, as is pretty much always the case, the cops outnumber the protesters about 10-to-1. It’s the strategy of “overwhelming force” — so nobody even thinks of doing anything wrong.
Note the pink & yellow tennis balls being held high
Beeg protest (!)
There has been nothing I’ve seen resembling actual violence or real threats by any civilian in Cleveland, but the cops have been overhired with our tax dollars and get all dressed up in their hot & heavy Play War gear every morning, and after a couple days of smiling and playing nice, they’re now ready to crack some heads and kick some ass.
Check out these stormtroopers!
What was once a cool, friendly, welcoming scene has devolved into an over-policed aggressive unfriendly vibe.
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Do you know who Robert Smigel is? He created the TV Funhouse cartoon shorts on Saturday Night Live, and the puppet character Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog, and he and I spent some time together at a Kerouac event at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery many years ago where he absolutely killed making fun of us as Triumph. Really funny guy.
He’s been out on the campaign trail at Trump rallies (for instance saying to a heavyset Drumpf supporter, “I think he needs to build a wall between you and McDonalds,” which made even the guy laugh) and doing his level best to keep people lighthearted during this ugly period in American history.
He organized a comedic parody of a protest at the Public Square — one of the designated gathering places in town — with such inflammatory protest signs as . . .
And positively positive absurdist messages like “God Hates Morning People” . . .
We were there for this, and it was obviously a really funny joke “protest” playing on the Jesus freaks [who are everywhere here] and other peaceful sign holders.
But the cops obviously missed the joke. The Square was peopled with nothing but Smigel fans, curious bystanders, and about a bunch of official (and non) reporters with cameras. Again, maybe because they feel like they have to do something since there’s 50 million of them everywhere doing nothing but standing around in the 80 degree sun, they called in reinforcements and systematically cleared the entire square, pushing people back using bikes, riot gear, and barking voices.
On the stage platform was a satiric comedy routine. A gag. A goof. But they brought in the armed forces. Although they didn’t fire, it was painfully reminiscent of the peaceful May 4th protests at Kent State, the site of which I just visited Monday. This was authorities in uniforms not at all understanding what was happening in front of them — and overreacting.
I guess they got all dressed up in their war gear and had to show these pranksters their muscle.
And a very strange sub-set among the citizens-assembled are both young and older mostly males walking around filming what they see and describing their strollabout. If you overhear them they’re describing things as though everything in front of them is terribly nefarious, and disaster is about to strike. They’re narrating their reality as a death trap, and damn but they’re going to have their cameras rolling when Armageddon hits in the next few seconds.
But besides even the cops and camera loons, if there’s one thing that’s killing the buzz in downtown Cleveland it’s the Jesus freaks with bullhorns yelling at everyone. I didn’t know the guy, and neither did anybody else know, but he seemed to be generally about peace & love, not unlike a lot of his other fellow longhairs. But listening to these bloviating blowhards he sure sounds like some mean judgmental fascist dictator who was telling everyone they weren’t as good as he was. The whackjob extremists yelling about him seem to have gotten The Bible about as wrong as some Muslims have gotten the Qur’an. It’s no wonder so many people are turned off religion these days.
As a Christian friend of mine said of these assholes, “Welcome to the U.S. ‘Christian Right’ … aka anti-Christ.”
You can read about the two days leading into the convention here.
Monday July 18th
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Holy shit! What a first convention night in Cleveland! This town is throwing A PARTY! Wow!
I mean, the cops and all levels of security are being so freakin nice!
At one point, ’round midnight, I needed to know if this certain exit from the Quicken perimeter was the only one, and I go over, and this Secret Service agent spends 5 minutes figuring out the answer for me.
Unreal.
I’ve seen police forces here from California, Michigan, Texas, Georgia …
and there’s armies of them!
After three days at the core of it, tonight, once, I heard the only cross words spoken between two people. It was between a local and a Republican supporter. And frankly, the guy on my side was out of turn. He was just taking out his anti-Repugnant anger on this one guy. But I’ve been around thousands of people, maybe tens of thousands, for days, and have only heard this one angry exchange between any two people.
How many huge political gatherings can you say that about?
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Bizarrely and depressingly, I decided to start my day by visiting the nearby site of the Kent State massacre in 1970.
When people talk about how bad things are in our country today — at least the National Guard aren’t shooting unarmed student protesters.
The university has done an amazing job of honoring the fallen, with the spots where each of the four died permanently marked off, and interpretive signs all over the area that walk you through each step of that terrible day, plus an entire museum dedicated to it that’s spectacularly tastefully and effectively rendered. It brought me to tears. And I can’t have been the first one — because look what they have for viewers in the film room.
And it seems like the lessons have been taken to heart. I had a lengthy discussion with the Deputy Police Chief about all things security, and at the end when I asked if I could get a picture with him, he asked if I minded if he put his arm around me while we take it.
Which was proceeded by hanging with leading alternative / anarchist presidential candidate Vermin Supreme.
And me and my convention buddy Ken even got some quality one-on-one time with the Donald himself!
Where there had been really no protesters to speak of during the entire weekend leading into the convention — when the town was as full of delegates and reporters as it would be during the convention — by Monday all the characters and costumes were out in full color.
And the thing of it is — this is Prankster protesting by committed Groucho Marxists. Abbie Hoffman would be proud. I mean, there was even a Kesey-like psychedelic Thunder Machine.
This is not a rocks and Molotov cocktails crew — it’s more your flowers in the ends of gun barrels. And comical condoms.
The convention and city have become a giant art show with installations all over town — both official —
and un —
There are characters . . .
and clowns . . .
The real (insane) Roger Stone, backed by the real intrepid “Roger, stoned.”
I mean, at times I couldn’t tell if I was hanging with Pranksters or protesters.
Or exactly whose convention I was attending.
At one point I said, “I think there’s more Democrats in this town than Republicans.”
Ken, Panther, Freedom, and your friendly Beat peacenik
But for sure there were the best political reporters and minds in the country — including the great John Stanton who knows more about the details and machinations of American politics than I’ll ever master in a dozen lifetimes. This guy is such a hero of mine — and I’m so glad I got to tell him so!
And besides us writers on hand, the whole scene is being captured and broadcast live to the world on things like this $100,000 steadicam.
But of course nothing says “democracy” like miles of steel fences . . .
and platoons of cops with cameras on their heads!
As our two friendly Beat reporters on the beat capture the corner table at the corner bar at the key corner in all of Cleveland — 4th & Prospect — ending the night like the Fourth of July with fireworks, calliopes and clowns.
Lesson One going into the streets of Cleveland — as hipped by my poli-warzone-brother Mitch — If you hear fire crackers, don’t assume they’re fire crackers. Get behind cover.
Roger that.
Mitch and I met in 1983 thru him being a music reporter in Winnipeg and me managing to some success one of the local bands he loved. What usually happens with relationships is — they stay in the realm they were formed. He and I shared that rock n roll crazyworld … but gradually learned we were both history buffs … and hardcore politicos. We’ve spent a thousand hours talking and arguing politics in person and over the phone from Toronto to New York — and that was before the internet! I was calling him with payphoned reports from D.C. during Bill Clinton’s first inauguration — a quarter-century ago. Then we roomed together within eyesight of the Lincoln Memorial through the week of Obama’s inauguration — he making his newspaper deadlines, me making my email dispatches — which you can read here — and Michael Lang even used in his Woodstock book! — and now here we are together again — 30-something years after our first crazy Prankster Road Adventure began — with the perfect recent rainbow arc from the beginning of Obama to the end of the Republican party.
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This is one of the three great elections in my lifetime.
’92, ’08, and now ’16.
I first came of political age in the fall of ’83 . . . while running the NYU concerts … when one day outside the Loeb Student Center was a Gary Hart rally. I’d never cared for, or understood, American politics before, but suddenly here it was in front of me — cheering people, a star on stage, big production, camera crews — it was like the rock shows I was producing — except with a person who was going to potentially govern our land.
Suddenly I got it.
This is rock n roll — except about everything else I give a shit about. I love dancing and all that … but this is how government is decided. And I’ve been part of it ever since. Back in the ’80s and ’90s I was registering more people to vote than anybody I knew. And they were all like, “Why is this Canadian the one doing this?”
Eventually I got married, became an American, and proudly vote and participate in every election in both my countries.
DAY ONE IN CLEVELAND — Saturday — July 16th
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Somewhere in New York State on the drive down from Toronto I suddenly got passed at 80 mph by the local Toronto news crew CP-24!
A good sign that Le Grande Synch was already locked in. 😉
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And then damned if I don’t end up right next to my Toronto brothers again, zipping through the city! 😀
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BREAKING BOOZE! The hosers are in town!
I love this place. And have had nothing but a good time here since I first hit it with John Cassady to go to The Grateful Dead show at the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame . . .
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Here’s John at the exhibit listening to one of his dad’s raps from an Acid Test …
So this has always been my touchstone in town and the obvious first place I went to get grounded with the newly-landed landed gentry of Republican delegates.
With the minor modification of the streets being filled with police and skies filled with surveillance helicopters.
And there was something else you couldn’t miss circling in the sky all day . . .
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I started talking to a nice couple from Kentucky who’d just left the Rock Hall and were beaming in the beauty of it all. It was a soaring jam on the Beatles, Elvis, the Stones, and how great the museum was.
I just got back from a month in Greenwich Village and Woodstock, and before that nearly another month with the Merry Pranksters in Wonderland, and I’m quite used to strangers stopping strangers just to shake their hand, as Robert Hunter put it. People who greet each other with a hug and not a handshake. People who get the Grand Prank of Life and are surfing the ripples of light. It’s the enlightened, as I see it, that one should soak in by the lifetime.
But suddenly this seemingly lovely Kentucky couple, obviously mistaking me for someone else, segue from Elvis on Ed Sullivan into, “Mike Pence is a great V.P. choice. (!) He adds a lot to the ticket. He’s got a lot of experience and has been fighting for all the important stuff for a long time.”
And suddenly I realize – “We’re not in Woodstock anymore.”
Kansas is in the house.
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But not many other people are!
On the Saturday leading into the convention — downtown was a ghost town.
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And this is right at the main Public Square in the center of town . . .
And these streets are not blocked off!
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And speaking of dead roads . . . this town is the freakin’ poster child for the decimation of the infrastructure in this country! With the Repugnant congress blocking anything that’s good for the country in hopes people will blame Obama, and a Repugnant Ohio Governor toady who goes along with their bullshit, a lot of sidestreets here are like driving through a war zone … right after the war. There are pot holes you could hide a keg in.
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And all the news crews are here to cover it . . .
Including my favorite —
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And CNN has certainly planted their flag loud and high . . .
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And in just about the best news from my first day’s recon — besides learning that my shuttlecraft bike is the way to get around town — is that the best single block in all of downtown Cleveland — Positively 4th Street — is just outside the security perimeter. (!) This one short narrow block has nothing but bars & restaurants, reminiscent of the French Quarter or Greenwich Village or North Beach.
And who should I find occupying it, of course, but my other favorite news network . . .
I can’t believe my favorite network has taken over my favorite street in Cleveland. 🙂
I wonder if ol’ MSNBC’s outside of the security perimeter, like me, because they were not credentialed for this auspicious embarrassment. 😀
I can tell this is going to be the block I’ll be spending some considerable time on. 😉
In other news — I talked to cops, state police, & secret service, and even in their buzz-shaved heads and starched-stiff uniforms they were as friendly to this longhaired biking freak as could be. Even told me I could ride on the sidewalks!
I don’t intend to be storming the Bastille or jumping any fences, because they’ve deputized an army of out-of-state cops and cleaned out their jails for miles around and are prolly just itching to fill the new vacancies. But all the ones I talked to were as friendly and helpful as a concierge in a 5-star disaster.
Mind you, the expected protestors haven’t really started to make their presence felt. In fact, these were the only ones I saw in a whole afternoon and early evening of biking the entire downtown . . .
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And here’s Willard Park, with its giant FREE rubber stamp, that’s expected to be one of the gathering spots, but as you can see, protesters seem to be holding their fire for now. 🙂
And here’s The Mall park, with the Fountain of Eternal Life, in front of the Key Tower (behind me) — the tallest building in Ohio that you see with its pointed top in every skyline photo — and it’s completely dead despite the name of its fountain.
The Key Tower
Then damned if I didn’t run into the CP-24 guys again! 🙂
Went up and talked to them and confirmed it was them blasting past me on I-90 and that they were indeed the only such vehicle covering the event. We said we knew we’d meet again. 🙂
And until we do, dear reader, it’s time for this cowboy to get back on the horse — my faithful bike, Ranger — and ride into the sunshine.
Day Two — Sunday — July 17th
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Even with the overlay of 3 more police officers being killed in Baton Rouge, the streets of Cleveland remain calm, controlled and festive. Locals are celebrating summer, delegates are being feted at the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, and the police are being applauded.
Positively 4th Street (where the above cop shot’s taken) is the obvious go-to strip — and may end up looking more like Mardi Gras by week’s end. But as the convention begins, it seems like there’s more journalists and police here than there are people to protect or report on.
I mean, they’re so desperate for anyone to talk to, they’re even talking to me!
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And a beautiful thing to these eyes is that all the protests I’ve seen so far are about Love — and would make John Lennon proud.
“Love can heal what hurt divides”
Or check out this billboard of Donald and Ted on one of the main streets downtown . . . 😀
And as crazy as it may seem to some of us, there are people here proudly out of the closet for Trump.
But me, I’m just digging on the people, the political buzz, and the architecture . . .
One hand on the new Key Tower, the other on the old Terminal Tower
At one time (the 1930s), that Terminal Tower (on the right) was the fourth tallest building in the world! And I heard tell there’s an observation deck at the top that you may see pictures from before this Adventure is over.
And check out the front of their gorgeous main library — complete with this brightly colored temporary art installation of various animals that’s over town . . . and Ranger my trusty steed hitched up to the front rail. 🙂
But besides the great architecture and city, there’s also all the best political reporters in the country. I was super stoked to get to spend some time talking about writing with one of the journalist pillars in American letters, The Washington Post’s Dan Balz. And like the natural consummate reporter he is, he ended up asking me more questions than I did him. 🙂
And here’s this bar/restaurant on 4th Street The Post has turned into their headquarters for the week. Wonder if they let in subscribers?
And here’s political hound dog Chris Matthews waiting to go on the air. I was definitely in the background of some of his broadcasts yesterday. 😉
You can see him on the right below.
And here’s a cool action shot of the anchor turnover — as Chris Hayes is coming in and Chris Matthews is checking out.
I even got to go for a little walk with the TV & radio host Michael Smerconish who I’ve long loved for his honest, logical, centerist, non-ideological way of thinking. I told him about Jon Anderson being on his show years ago. “The singer from Yes!” he exclaimed, brightening right up. And I mentioned how he riffed “Smerconish” into an improvised song that day, and Mike goes, “Boy, you’ve got a good memory!” 😀
Then there was the very last reporter of the day I talked to, Mitch Potter from The Toronto Star!
We finally got together about 9PM . . . and did nothing but power-riff politics until 2 in the morning. 🙂
“Put your good where it will do the most,” …….. as Ken Kesey said, and Wavy Gravy recounted in the luminous new documentary, Going Furthur.
This movie is really funny — and not in a you-had-to-be-there way. A huge part of the Merry Band of Pranksters’ essence (as Ken Babbs first dubbed them) was their playfulness and sense of humor. The Pranksters were pioneers in a lot of ways — and one of them was being the first people to not take Pranksters seriously.
Lord knows we’ve all seen lots of Merry Prankster documentaries of various stripes over the decades, and except for the actual Key-Z Productions coming out of Ken’s barn, none of them were made by bone fide Pranksters on The Bus. And yes — “bus” in relation to Furthur is always capitalized — because it’s the capital, the captain, the first Bus that inspired it all from Magical Mystery Tour to what’s filling festival parking lots all over America this summer.
This film crew didn’t just show up for a couple days and collect some footage. They lived on it for three months, start to finish, on the 50th anniversary tour in 2014, celebrating the historic Neal Cassady-driven trip across the country in 1964.
And something happens to you when you’re surrounded by Pranksters morning, noon and night. First of all, distinctions like morning and night stop being relevant. It’s recess all the time. It’s improv theater every waking hour. It’s play time whether your eyes are open or shut. And what a play it is!
This is a movie of a road trip worthy of Jack Kerouac, the author at the core of everything the Pranksters did. They went On The Road alright — embracing that wanderlust that Kerouac so passionately first captured — but taking it Furthur. And on boy, did they.
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Besides everything else — anyone who’s a fan of filmmaking is going to be dosed with several hits of Wow! watching this. The cinematography, the editing, the sound editing, the collages of images, the characters, the costumes, the soundtrack, the settings . . . this is as 21st century storytelling as you get.
This is the cinema vérité of madness that was captured and pioneered in America by the Maysles brothers and D.A. Pennebaker — but as edited by Darren Aronofsky on a Terry Gilliam adventure. This is not “chaos cinema” but it’s certainly cinema of chaos. It’s filmed improv with kooky characters a la Curb Your Enthusiasm or Christopher Guest movies — except it’s all on the road and with an even wilder storyline.
“Went fast because road is fast,” Kerouac wrote Cassady immediately upon finishing On The Road, and these two Canadian and one American filmmakers applied that same aesthetic to telling this Road story. Zoom! But it also wisely takes the uninitiated on a vivid ride through the backstory.
There’s vintage footage of Neal Cassady, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, the Acid Tests, The Trips Festival, prototype Grateful Dead, getting crazy at Kesey’s house in La Honda, and what psychedelic light shows were like when they were first being invented — all seamlessly blended in and out of current-day footage of Wavy Gravy, Ken Babbs, George Walker, Zane Kesey, Anonymous, Lee Quarnstrom, Alex Grey, Sam Cutler, Peter Shapiro, Furthur guitarist John Kadlecik, the Wizard of Wonder, and all in locations like the Woodstock reunion at Yasgur’s Farm, the Gathering of The Vibes, Phases of The Moon, the nation’s capital, Manhattan, and Kerouac’s hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts.
The unsuspecting viewer’s taken on a helluva trip — from Kesey’s first dose in Menlo Park to the Burning Man desert full of today’s raging rangers — from hand painting the first Bus with their hands to wiring the new Bus for bands — melting ’60s footage into contemporary scenes being goofed and pranked from New York to San Francisco. And boy does it work!
There’s George Walker expounding on the participatory philosophy behind the first Acid Tests.
There’s original Prankster Roy Sebern explaining how he first misspelled Furthur on the front of The Bus.
There’s Wavy Gravy talking about hanging with Neal Cassady — “The man is doing ten things at once and nothing twice.”
There’s Sam Cutler reminding us with a twinkle and thick British accent, “What’s the meaning of enlightenment? The ability to lighten up.”
There’s performance artist Alexander Polinsky sharing, “If you’re as open to playing as the Pranksters are, you’re gonna find that friends are everywhere.”
There’s the spirit of everything Ken & the gang were about ……. playing out ………in real time, in the present time.
And besides all the Prankster background and foreground — the film takes a trip through the “festival culture” that’s exploded in North America in the last few years. It’s not about simply going some place to hear a series of bands on a stage — but in direct lineage from the Pranksters — it’s about participation, and breaking down the barrier between performer and audience so both are one, as Kesey first scripted with the Acid Tests, and is now playing out every weekend in hundreds of locations by thousands of people from teenagers to octogenarians.
Then the film trips through the power of psychedelics, which is very timely with all the new scientific research coming out on the positive effects that people like Kesey knew about a half-century ago. Ken also used to carry around a giant ball of hemp to public appearances — often saying, “The first state that legalizes it will have a huge jump on the rest of the country” — as the state budget directors in Colorado, Washington and Oregon are learning just how right he was. I wonder how much longer until governments catch up with psychedelics and what millions of people have known for decades?
“Jack writ The Road — but this is The Road writ large.”
This movie is not just a Jack & Neal road trip buddy picture. This is a huge ensemble cast of disparate people each having their own personal breakthroughs. You can take acid, or go to a Tony Robbins weekend, or have a child. There are a lot of paths to new self-awareness. But throwing yourself onto a psychedelic Bus with a bunch of strangers under madhouse conditions visiting crazy festivals is — as proven in this film — a sure-fire baptism by fire. No one in this movie came out the other side the same person. And the tears shed and hugs long held upon departure showed the heart of this scene.
Just as Kesey’s first Bus inspired generations to have wild collective Road Adventures — this film will carry the torch Furthur still, and light the way for those who could use a flash to spark their flame. As Kesey said, “I’d rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.” And the light he’s been pulling towards him for 50 years is shining out through this movie screen and illuminating a very colorful and beautiful world we are currently living in.
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Going Furthur will be on the festival circuit and featured in special screenings around the world throughout 2016. Check the GoingFurthur.com website for screening details.
Somewhere in the Universe, Pranksters are gathering.
It’s fireworks, calliopes and clowns, And everybody’s dancin’ . . .
On fifty acres through country woods, with ponds and trails and fields and split-rail fences and immaculate stables and barns in fresh but classic rusty red . . .
Now designed for 2-legged wild wooly wanderers,
in a cluster of buildings with labyrinths of interconnected rooms that you can never really figure out how they tick-tocked jam-rocked together . . .
Offices and bedrooms and kitchens and lounges with stages and spaces with nothing but lights and screens and projections and bands and dancers to fill the air.
Characters in masks … Jackson Pollock splattered costumes … faces in flowing colors . . .
Days and nights and daze and knights, and strangers stopping strangers just to hug them tight.
As more and more Pranksters fall into the scene,
From wherever they’ve been — A communal gene.
Twanging & twinkling — tootling & toasting —
30 people put on a play.
30 musicians play all day.
30 buses from far away.
And 30 photos in this tray. 😉
As a Prankster drone captures an uncapturable krewe . . .
With women pirates capturing the island.
“Our women pirates are the finest to ever sail the seven seas,” sez the Wizard of Wonder with authority.
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As a UFO comes in for a landing . . .
And there’s a micro-bus that could fit inside the first bus’s pocket . . .
And there’s a Wizard behind it all — and that’s all you need know.
There’s Canadians . . . Jacksters . . . Dawgz . . . & cats from Lewis Carroll to Shakespeare’s acts.
Doctors and lawyers and chefs and sculptors . . .
Cooking with gas in their midnight threads . . .
Smiling faces in swirling spreads . . .
Colored lights casting circles of rainbows . . .
And jammin till dawn in the Gathering Room with rock players, bluegrass, country, and blues . . . Sculpting in air with many a muse . . .
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A 30-second walk though hallways and doorways of the mystical labyrinth into . . . a big barn jam! With top-of-the-rock bandleaders, becoming one band, and taking a trip without leavin’ the land.
And there’s that UFO again!
There’s that girl you met at the Bernie rally. There’s that dude you met in Chicago. There’s that ongoing conversation about the greatest movies ever made. There’s the kitchen krewe with more mouthfuls of magic, As more beer & ice tumble in coolers.
Around the corner, back out to the tent, Off in the distance, who knows where we went.
There’s buses galore, and RVs and Airstreams . . .
There’s Jerry above us in the hovering dreams . . .
. . . now a cat . . . and a rabbit . . .
and you know where you’ve fallen . . .
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As another new ensemble rips up the stage . . . one more one time lineup . . . with a sax wailing in the jewel eye center . . . then 3 drummers take off on a cascading riff … as the room rides the rapids in a stage-front shift . . . into a jammin’ 10-minute 10-piece Shakedown Street that shakes down the house at 3AM . . .
And there’s the filmmakers from tour … premiering their vision . . .
and the Oregon light show twisting the noodles . . .
as the psychedelic string artist spiderwebs up the landscape . . .
“There’s a whole lot goin’ on that I don’t know anything about,” I remember thinkin’ slurpin’ Slurpees flippin’ thru Rolling Stones back at the 7-11 in Winterpeg in the mid-’70s. And here it is. That world come true. That family gathering of like-minded Adventurers . . . The ones who don’t fit where the pace is slow . . . The ones Jack described as “Go Go Go” Who live by the hug, the only greeting they know.
Blissful adults channeling joyous children . . . “The hardest working hippies in show-biz . . .” Evolved players evolving evolution . . . Dancing bears in peaceful revolution . . . Nothing as expected around any corner . . .
Surreal is real. Surprises status quo.
A box becomes a boat. A stage becomes a movie. A dancer becomes a butterfly.
Now suddenly it’s a barn stage peak — People kickin’ up dust, raising up Spirits. One More Saturday Night. Chaos. Perfect lose-mind-ness.
Transportation provided. Gone. Boom! Done. Into that other world. Not this one. The Other One With Cowboy Neal at the wheel Dancing in Never-ever Land.
It all started waking up on New York et al election day in Ken Morris’s house in Cleveland the day after we pre-scouted the city for the upcoming Republican Implosion. I mean, Repugnant Convention. There were 3 different messages in my in-box about a just-announced Bernie rally tomorrow in Bloomington — where I just happen to be heading for a major Merry Prankster reunion.
A month ago I had hipped the Wizard of Wonder, who was hosting these blooming festivities, that a Bernie rally might happen when we’re all together, as Indiana was the only state on the primary calendar that week. Sure enough. Boom! It’s the one day before we all decamp to the site of the 3 day Acid Test. {story on that forthcoming 😀 }
Merry Pranksters are pretty much all Berners, and I tell them when I arrive that tomorrow will basically be — just get-up-and-go. Doors open at 5PM, and it’s in this smallish but gorgeous old 3,000-seat theater. We’ve all seen Bernie’s arenas-full of supporters, and Bloomington is a giant Greenwich Village, an Austin, an S.F., a packed and passionate town of progressives on the prowl. So this venue’s gonna be way too small and this thing’s gonna get crazy. Gotta be there first thing.
True to my woird, I jingle-jangle in the morning maniac music, believe me, but then the ol’ Gets Things Done brain kicks in and I get the hell out of Wonderland and over to said site.
And as I arrive near it around 11AM, the car in front of me is from Missouri. Then a car cuts in at an intersection from Florida . . . and we’re all in this super-slow line to the only parking lot on the Indiana University campus — and I’m thinkin, this does not look good.
But The Spirits are with me, and I bolt around the parking lot that I got to know when I was here with John Cassady and Walter Salles for the Mid-Western premiere of On The Road, and sure enough there’s an open spot right in the key corner closest to where I’m going. Boom!
Outta the car quick-as-a-bunny, and power walk to The Auditorium, which I also knew cuz it’s the building right in front of the theater where On The Road was screened. And this morning there’s all this steel fencing for the incoming crowds, and it’s actually two lines, one going each direction away from the front of the building.
Everybody who arrived, starting with the first person at 7AM (!) had lined up on one side, and there’s maybe 50 people in it as I’m arriving at around 11:15. But the remarkable thing is, there’s about 6 people just starting to sit down at the front of the other empty fenced-in line. These two hip chicks, Taylor and Allie (known for the most beautiful eyes this side of Zooey Deschanel) have figured out that this line is equal to the other line, except nobody’s sitting in it yet! I come right up just as they’re plunkin’ down, and they gimme the lowdown how this gate’s gonna open at the same time as the other — ‘cept there’s nobody here but us! Boom! Done! I’m the 7th person in line for Bernie in Bloomington!
Then a few other people arrive on our side, and pretty soon we got a pretty cool little crew in this 8-foot wide steel-fenced pen, and we’ve got the whole front of it to ourselves. Of course I start talking to these friendly Berners, and I’m tellin’ ol’ 21-year-Zac beside me how I’m in town hanging with the Merry Pranksters, and how they helped form The Grateful Dead, and how I’m expecting a bunch of them to come to the rally in full costume. But he’s never heard of them, or Ken Kesey or anything. Super smart guy, computer programmer or sumpthin, I think he called it Informatics, but I might as well have been tellin’ him Civil War tales.
But then all of a sudden these two 19-year-old babicious freshmen, say, “You talkin’ about The Grateful Dead?! We like them.” And then one of them holds up Bob Dylan’s Chronicles! Like — she’s got it with her in line! And she’s taking a course in Bob Dylan. Which is coming right on the heals of her “History of Rock” class! Kids these days! And her friend is sitting there reading Naked Lunch!! I pull out a couple copies of my book to show them, and they freak out. And while they’re sitting there reading them, the Chronicles girl gets on her phone and I figure I’ve sort of lost her attention pretty quick, but then a bit later when she gets up to hand me the book back, she says, “I just ordered it on Amazon.” 🙂
And then at some point, me and Jim Canary get together — the guy who preserves Jack’s original On The Road scroll — and he tells me about this huge exhibit happening in Paris later this year and that I really must go to. Here we were together again riffin’ Jack at the very place we first met — the world-famous Lilly Library as it was co-hosting the On The Road premiere.
And then somewhere in here the freakin’ Secret Service show up. Word probably got out that Hassett & Canary were in the same place at the same time.
Or maybe it was that Presidential candidate — cuz the next thing you know they’re hauling in metal detectors.
And ol’ Zac sez — “They can’t be very secret if it says secret service right on their clothes.”
And in this rainy, stormy weather these bastards later confiscated everyone’s umbrellas as we entered! — like the Secret Service couldn’t handle a freakin’ umbrella attack.
And all this other stuff was goin’ on, including these college kids playing cards. I mean, physical 52-card card cards. They asked me if I knew how to play Euchre. (!) They’re all digitally wired and haven’t watched a TV show on a TV in their lives and have phone screens the size of bread loaves — but were sitting there playing with playing cards! Two different groups of them!
And then there were the light-saber kids fighting around the fountain . . .
. . . and this official Bernie merch tent was set up out front . . .
with unquestionably the coolest political buttons and shirts that have ever appeared on the campaign trail . . .
And they set up a big screen and speakers for the overflow crowd outside — with the coolest slogan —
. . .using the postal abbreviation for Indiana . . .
. . . as the line continued to form, all around the fountain square, then all the way down the street, then around the far corner, and down the hill, and back up the far side, then around the tennis courts, and people were still arriving! I’m guessing maybe a tenth? of these people got in?
And I’d keep goin’ off on my observational roamabouts . . .
and circle back and hang some more with our killer crews at the front of the line …
That’s brother Zac with the yellow top holding his new merch score with a bunch of his krewe . . .
And here’s Eliza the Dylanhead, with her two besties, front of the line, top of the day.
And on a deeper level, we’re having this debate about what’s gonna happen to all the energy Bernie’s mustered should he not get the nomination. Will they stay inspired and mobilized and work to elect like-minded Democrats to the House and Senate and continue to steer the party to its proper place on the left? . . . or will they Bern out and fade away. I’m concerned it’s going to be the latter, and I challenge all of them to not make it so. But sad proof that I may be right was when the Bernie volunteer coordinators came by, like this woman with this super-cool shirt —
trying to recruit volunteers from the hardest of the hardcores at the front of the line, and not a single person ever responded to two separate appeals for help. Mind you, it was finals time on campus.
And then there were the proudly beaming faces of the white supremacists. I mean, Trumpsters.
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
After nearly six hours of having the most sidewalk fun I’d had since hanging outside Abbey Road for an afternoon, they finally opened the gates and we dashed up the stairs to the indoor security phalanx — the whole airport security empty-the-pockets / metal detectors / magnetometers wand-scanning routine, including making you hold any buttons you were wearing in your hand to show them (?!), and then as soon as you’re thru that, it was this kind of crazy “festival seating” rush of democracy-loving kids that flashed me back to KISS concerts in the mid-’70s — where as soon as we had our ticket torn at the door — ahh, simpler times — we ran like hell for the front of the stage. But here we are doing it for a Presidential candidate!
I love life. 🙂
Eliza and her two friends had come through one of the metal detector shoots right at the same time I did, and “Oh, Great! Hey! Ya made it!” as we’re laughing in giddy joy and running to the promised land. Apparently the ushers had been sending the first arrivees into the theater off to the far side aisles, and as I came in I could see there was absolutely NO ONE down at the front of the stage yet. (!)
I don’t know how the hell it went down exactly in the flash of the moment — but I noticed the direction lady usher at the top of the center aisle got momentarily distracted, and I just blew right past her and ZOOMED straight down that muthrpuckin aisle, Dead center, just like I did at Radio City when I snuck into my 2nd ever Grateful dance in 1980. BOOM! And Eliza’s keepin’ right up with me, and her two too, and ZOOM! We make it! Front row center! I grab the aisle seat, as is my wont, and they fall in right beside me, and voila! Front Row for the The Revolution!
And now it’s the whole pre-show hang . . . in a comfy-seat in a poor-man’s Radio City, but they’re tryin’. And over the PA they blast Neil Young’s “Keep On Rockin In The Free World” — not once, but twice! And this fellow Winnipeg Kelvinite is fist-pumping the air to the Beat, knowing that everyone behind me looking at the stage can see this energetic arm punching out the rock that is the core of this revolution.
They also play Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” … twice, refraining the great visual ad from earlier in the campaign; and Willie Nelson’s “On The Road Again” which always evokes Jack to this booksmith, as Eliza’s telling me about seeing Willie and the now late-great Merle Haggard together in this very venue just a few months ago.
Then somebody texts her that they just saw her on CNN, which, since we were fairly inseparable, might mean I just had my 5 seconds of fame right there and I missed it. 😀
On one of my many walkabouts, I checked out the media row along the mid-house horizontal aisle — and, I know it was the day after his devastating New York loss, but still . . .
there were a lot of empty seats where there shoulda been a reporter.
Shortly before showtime, they brought in 5 rows of people to fill the bleachers behind Bernie’s podium. I’d seen the bunch of them gathered in the lobby on one of my surveillance scoutings,
and they told me they’d simply been picked out of the crowd as they came through the lobby. I was there when they were taken through the back door into the theater, and there was absolutely no arranging of them according to age or race or gender. It was just in whatever way they filed through the door, with no manipulation of who sat in the front row, or right behind Bernie, or in what pattern of faces.
And while on one of these reconnaissance missions, a middle-aged woman came walking down the aisle toward me, looking at me kinda strange, and said, “Are you one of the Merry Pranksters?” (!)
I don’t know how in the hell this world works, but it sure works fast!
Showtime — on the rail
There were only two warm-up speakers — the main student organizer; and the head of the Dems in Indiana, who was a middle-aged black near-Baptist-preacher who did a riff on how he wasn’t into Bernie at first. But then he looked into his history of fighting for the little guy, “And I started to feel the Bern,” [big cheer], then I learned about his position on banking reform, “And then I was definitely feeling the Bern,” [bigger cheer]. And he does about ten variations on this, and then “I saw him winning 17 states and having the longest line for any event in I.U. history, I now I’m feelin’ the Bern all over!” he says as he shivers n shimmies [crazy cheering].
And finally, about 9 hours after I left the house this morning on this mission, The Man appears! White hair and all!
No teleprompter, just a variation on a campaign speech he’s been givng daily for the last year. The only time he’d look down at his notes was, for instance, sharing the specific stats and names of businesses from Indiana that’ve moved to China or Mexico since certain trade deals.
I keep thinking of and referring to his “speech” as “a performance” or “a show” because it really was one. Including a lot of audience participation. “27 dollars!” He had the place in the palm of his hand from the standing ovation when he first walked on stage.
The guy has it down. There was either a laugh or an applause line roughly every minute of the nearly 90 he talked for.
And I have to say it wasa helluva speech — a colorful articulation of pretty much every Progressive position. And in most cases, I’d like every one of them to be the Democratic platform. Sure wish I could have seen a Hillary speech right after this to compare & contrast.
And speaking of Hillary, at the first and every subsequent mention of her name, a loud boo instantly arose from the assembled. 😀 By about the 5th time, it had become a joke, and people were booing and laughing at the same time at our goofing on our cue.
Bernie’s got the timing and delivery of a professional comedian, and has a lot of sure-fire laugh lines that have prolly worked in every city he’s appeared. Of Hillary not releasing her quarter-million-dollar speech transcripts — “Getting paid that much, that must be a pretty fantastic speech! That must solve all of America’s problems.” (laughter) “That must be some Shakespearean prose!” (bigger laughter)
“And then there’s my good friend Donald Trump,” (laughter). “My wife and I were never invited to his wedding.” (bigger laughter)
“Trump has come up with a whole new way to deny climate change. He thinks it’s a hoax . . . created by the Chinese. (laughter) I would have thought he’d think it was caused by Muslims or Mexicans.” (bigger laughter)
“I have a major announcement to make here tonight. I am now going to release the transcripts of all my Wall Street speeches. Here they are,” as he dramatically throws an armful of nothing in the air. (big laughter) “They never offered me $225,000 for a speech. I’ve got my cell phone on. I’m just waiting for a call from them.” (bigger laughter)
Bernie throwing nothing in the air
But this also kind of manifests one of the problems with his speech / campaign. Members of Congress are prohibited from accepting money for speeches or any kind of appearance. He keeps saying it like he’s some pure guy — but since he left Vermont, for the last quarter century he’s held a job that prohibited him from giving paid speeches. There was this and a lot of other holes in many of his two-paragraph-long diagnoses of our ills and how we would fix them. That’s definitely a downside I can see his non-supporters seeing.
On the other hand — he rattled off more real and important things that need to be changed — and at least someideas of how to fix them — than any other candidate I’ve heard over the last year: including passing a law that if a corporation needs a bailout, the CEO is prohibited from getting bonuses; and that marijuana should be reclassified as a schedule 2 drug, and not in the same class as heroin. (big applause on campus 🙂 )
Purchased at the official Bernie merch table
And he talked powerfully about our incarceration problem — and how we have the most imprisoned people of any nation on Earth — spending $80 billion a year to keep 2 million Americans behind bars. “Criminal injustice is a crime in America,” he Ginsbergianly put it. And of course this gets another standing ovation.
He talked about how we’re the only industrialized country to not guarantee healthcare for all its citizens, and how seniors are having to split their pills in half because they can’t afford them, and this whole very real plight of the uninsured elderly brings Eliza beside me to tears.
Women are making .77 cents on the dollar that men are . . . public colleges should be free like they were when he went to them in the ’50s and ’60s . . . we have money for wars but not inner cities . . . immigration reform must also include Native Americans . . . we need to live with nature and not destroy it — because it will destroy us . . . (and at this point I can hear Kaiya, Eliza’s friend, sobbing her eyes out) . . . we should be making solar panels mandatory on all government buildings . . . and every one of these points got a separate standing ovation, anywhere from 10–100% of the audience.
At one point during a smidge of silence, what sounded like a 5-year-old girl, squeaked out, “I love you, Bernie!” that got a huge laugh and more applause.
And the whole thing built to this sermonistic climax — “Families looking out for each other always trumps greed. Love trumps hate.” —> into a jumping-up standing ovation.
This was John Lennon as a politician.
Which I never realized until I sat in front of him for a whole sermon on the trail. What a religious experience. Certainly delivered, received and perceived like a prophet.
Even by me — a political pragmatist. This guy’s special. I really haven’t seen this before. He’s got Jesse Jackson or Obama’s oratory skills, albeit in a completely different style; combined with a Lloyd Benson or Joe Biden maturity; a Ralph Nader or Jerry Brown philosophical approach; an early Howard Dean or Gary Hart fervor; an essential Paul Tsongas or Bob Kerry sense of humor; and a Bill Bradley or Dennis Kucinich appeal to college students.
It’s quite a blend. And I love a good blend.
see, also: Dead, Grateful
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The speech is over, and people flood the front of the stage because he walks forward and not to the wings. And I’m right there, “on the rail” as my live concert practitioners say — and the whole front-of-stage area becomes packed with people who rushed in to feel the Bern, not unlike the joyous sardine end of any great rock concert.
Bernie comes down into the orchestra pit and walks the wooden rope-line barrier, and I actually get to shake his hand at a nice slow long pace, giving him the double hand wrap around his one, and looking right through his glasses into his eyes, telling him, “Thank you, brother.”
And right after he passes, and heads back up the stairs and waves a final farewell, the guy we were hanging with in our front row foursome is suddenly bawling his eyes out! Apparently Bernie not only shook his hand but gave him a bit of a hug, and the guy’s totally losing it, sitting and shaking face-in-hands on the orchestra pit divider, with his girlfriend consoling him, and I’m kinda like, Whoa!
That made it all three out of the three people sitting next to me being overcome with emotion to the point of tears.
It really was that good. I wonder if three out of three people next to me at a Hillary rally would be moved to tears?
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And in the It’s-Not-A-Real-Adventure-If-You-Don’t-Get-Chased Dept.:
As I’m looking at my three new BFFs in their hyper-dramatic state, this security woman I’d interacted with earlier, and had been standing along the side wall with the other various types of cops, was suddenly leaning over the orchestra barrier into the open space of the pit about 15 feet from me, with two tall white uniforms behind her.
“Excuse me, sir,” she says, leaning out into the open pit to catch my eye and pointing full-arm directly right at me.
These were the last words I’d ever heard anyone say to me for quite a while . . . . . and they’re still echoing.
I’d had my eye on the wall-hanging Blue Meanies who had their eye on me as I was, clandestine as I could, shooting the hell out of the show with my you’re-not-supposed-to-use-it camera. I knew there was every chance they were gonna come for me at the end . . . and at minimum erase the pictures — or maybe worse.
But there was no way I was gonna let this night end badly!
Without saying a word of goodbye to my linemates, I grabbed my coat from the seat, and booked it up the aisle, with a kinda slight crouch to make myself smaller. I got half-way up and hit the back end of the exiting crowd that were snail-inching their way out. I lingered and pretended like I was just gonna hang there in the line for a while . . . feeling their surveilling eyes and approach behind me; and as I know so well — do not turn around and look behind you. Pretend like you don’t know they’re after you. Then after a few seconds fake-out delay in this aisle, I cut over thru an empty row to the next aisle to the left, and snail along with those people for a few seconds, again acting that I’m just naturally slowly leaving, not running or anything, suddenly stuck in the cattle-call crowd. Then I break and cut thru another empty row, now getting to the nearly last aisle, which is fairly open, and speed-walk it to the top of the audience bowl, and Boom! — spot the lower hidden exit in the dark, zip down those steps cuz now I’m in an unobservable tunnel, thru the next doors, into the lobby with hundreds of other departing Berners. Again — don’t look back to any other exit where they might be coming towards me, but power-walk thru the lobby to the nearest exit to the outer lobby, and finally see the nighttime darkened glass doors, with one last line of black uniformed Secret Service staring us down as we leave. I listen for walkie-talkies’ going off — “Stop that long-haired guy in the jean jacket!” — but I hear / see / feel nothing, and just blast past the bullet-proof jest — into the blooming raining Bloomington night, heart racing a thousand miles an hour, and heart beating even faster for democracy.
