21st Century Beatniks versus Hieroglyphic Caricatures
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There’s long been a debate about the word “beatnik” — originally coined by a sensationalist San Francisco gossip columnist in 1958, playing on the Yiddish suffix “nik” and the first Russian satellite launched in September ’57, colloquially known as “Sputnik.” Jack and Allen & company hated the word back in the day as it was a pejorative noun for the cliché of unemployed do-nothing scatterbrain dropouts that the older generation thought anyone who read On the Road or Howl must be.
But over the decades, the caricature has faded away. The goofy poster-child beatnik, Maynard G. Krebs, played by Bob Denver on TV’s Dobie Gillis show, went off the air in 1963 — 60 years ago. In more recent decades the word has evolved into simply becoming shorthand for “the Beat Generation writers” … which is 27 letters and eight syllables … versus “beatnik” which is seven and two. That’s really why the evolution happened. 🙂 It’s just shorter and simpler.
Personally, I prefer, and use, “Beat.” And over the decades, I’ve explained the difference between “Beat” and “beatnik” to innumerable people — but for the last many years I just get a blank stare back. People don’t know what I’m talking about. And they don’t care. It’s getting to be — What’s the point? Just about nobody anymore knows there ever was a negative connotation to the word. It might be a good idea to stop keeping alive some interpretation that ceased to exist back when John F. Kennedy was President.
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Some old-school Beat Gen peeps still hate the word — but these days when most writers and reviewers and journalists and scholars and historians use “beatnik” they’re referring to Kerouac, Ginsberg & company in as favorable a light as any of the old hardcores see them. People have forgotten the goatee goofball cliché — but remember the god-sent groundbreaking geniuses.
It’s only people who hold onto this ancient hieroglyphic caricature of “beatnik” who are offended. Nobody else even knows it existed. Except when one of these old-timers brings it up! 🙂
The cliché is a dinosaur — bones in an empty museum nobody visits. I’ve been going to beatnik events pretty regularly all over North America and Europe for 40 years and don’t remember ever meeting one of these clichés even once. They don’t exist.
Since the word is not going to be banished from our lexicon, we’ve got to embrace it, own it, and make sure the modern usage embodies the best of what being Beat is: openness in written language, honesty, sympathy, optimism, environmental respect, the value of the individual, advocating for and practicing a life of creativity and self-expression, embracing adventure, saying “Yes!” more than “no,” working together with like-minded explorers, and creating art out of one’s own life experiences.
Another thing that Beat or beatnik means is — hard work.
The idea of beatniks being lazy is 180 degrees off the mark. Kerouac has over 50 different books in print — and he died at age 47! Gawd knows how many poems Allen Ginsberg wrote in his 70 years but there are dozens of volumes full of them — not to mention his nonstop public appearances. William Burroughs wrote 15 novels, 25 novellas, and there’s 15 books of his letters, journals and interviews. Lawrence Ferlinghetti opened a bookstore and publishing house, nurtured both for decades, and both are still thriving 70 years later. Across the street, the Beat Museum has become an institution in San Francisco since 2006 because of the hard work put in by the founders and employees every day since. And besides everything else Allen did, he also founded a university in Boulder in 1974 along with Anne Waldman that has employed hundreds of teachers and taught thousands of students.
These are not do-nothing no-goodniks.
Beatnik is cool. Beatnik is a good thing.
Jerry Garcia & Janis Joplin, who were both living in the city where the word was coined, called themselves “beatniks” until the day they died. In fact, one of the very last letters Janis ever wrote was to her confrère Myra Friedman at Albert Grossman’s office in New York saying, “I finally remembered that I was a beatnik.”
Here she is referring to herself as “just a regular old beatnik on the road” on The Dick Cavett Show in June 1970 —
I just got off the phone with S.A. Griffin, a lifelong Beat poet & practitioner, who casually referred to our collective as “beatniks.” He didn’t mean it as a pejorative any more than Barack Obama did when he referred to the Beats in his 2020 APromised Land memoir as “beatniks.”
The Beat Museum called the last big Beat summit ever staged “The Beatnik Shindig” and the museum sure as hell doesn’t look down on the Beat writers or practitioners.
The fact that someone uses that word should not be misconstrued as an insult.
Diane Di Prima, the great writer, teacher & spirit-force who was part of the scene since the late ’50s and stayed part of it until her passing in 2020, called her autobiography Memoirs of a Beatnik.
When Helen Weaver, the esteemed translator and Kerouac’s girlfriend in 1956, wrote her earnest autobiography, The Awakener, published by City Lights Books in 2009, she referred to herself and all the old gang getting back together for the NYU conference in 1994 by writing, “we beatniks are senior citizens.” She dates back to before the term was coined, and lived through all the decades afterwards, and when she was summing up her life with Jack, Allen & company, she herself described their collective as “beatniks.”
Ed Sanders, who, sitting next to Jack on the William Buckley show called him “A great poet,” titled his book Tales of Beatnik Glory not Tales of Beat Glory.
When one of the most beloved bars & sites in Beat history, Vesuvio’s in North Beach, right next to City Lights Bookshop and Kerouac Alley, had their big 75th anniversary celebration in 2023, sure enough, the bullseye center of North Beach history referred to themselves as the “Beatnik wonderland.”
In Robert Shelton’s career-altering 1961 review of Bob Dylan in The New York Times, he raves about the “bright new face in folk music” who’s “one of the most distinctive stylists to play in a Manhattan cabaret in months.” The very next sentence begins, “Resembling a cross between a choir boy and a beatnik ….” Shelton is praising Dylan in every word of this review. He’s obviously not comparing him to a beatnik as a put-down.
On Donovan’s joyous 2004 tribute album Beat Cafe, he climaxes the title song by singing “beatnik café” over and over — not “beat café.”
In photographer, scholar, professor & Beat confidant Gordon Ball’s excellent memoir East Hill Farm: Seasons with Allen Ginsberg, he describes his journey’s motivation as a search on “the streets of San Francisco for beatniks.”
When John Phillips, the leader of the Mamas & Papas, was talking about putting together the legendary 1967 Monterey Pop Festival for the Criterion Collection interviews, he said of his own backstory — “I consider myself an old beatnik. I really grew up in North Beach with Kerouac and Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg, and people like that were my main influences.”
Jean-Marc Barr, who slayed as Kerouac in the film Big Sur, and who cites him as changing his life causing him to go On The Road, and after spending a year completely immersed in the Big Sur world and clearly revering Jack & all his compadres, he refers to them as beatniks in this amazing interview answer:
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Jonah Raskin, who many know for his books on Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman & others and for being the book reviewer at the San Francisco Chronicle for years, just referred to himself as a “beatnik” in his tribute to Ferlinghetti.
When Daniel Yaryan formed the popular Beat and neo-Beat publishing and show-producing entity in California in 2008 and went on to publish Ferlinghetti, ruth weiss, Jack Micheline, Jack Hirschman, David Meltzer, Jerry Kamstra, S.A. Griffin and so many others, he called it Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts — not “Beat Ghosts.”
The esteemed film scholar and New York Times reviewer Elvis Mitchell astutely connected the main characters in Tarantino’s recent masterpiece Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to the beatniks in a way I didn’t even think of — prompting both Brad Pitt and Quentin to riff on it – Brad in depth – there’s “no hassle in the castle, man” – then Quentin, impromptu, revealing his knowledge of Jack & “the holy goof.”
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In Kerouac’s centennial year, one of the most prominent film critics in Canada, Richard Crouse, penned a praising tribute to Jack in the nation’s largest-circulation newspaper, The Toronto Star, including the lines, “The lure of the open road wasn’t just its new-found accessibility. Kerouac wove beatnik romanticism into every phrase, creating a new kind of travel writing, loose and fresh, that sparked the reader’s imagination.” Again, this is a writer with a passion for the Beats writing a well-sourced article in a major publication where he correctly uses the modern meaning of “beatnik.”
Since roughly 2019 there’s been a big Kerouac & Kesey fan in the writers’ room at the gold standard of game shows, Jeopardy, with an inordinate number of clues where the answer was “Who is Jack Kerouac?” And that erudite hardcore Beat insider reaching 10 million viewers an episode knows that “beatnik” is not a pejorative.
Jeopardy, July 8th, 2021
So, off the top, that’s — The Beat Museum, Vesuvio’s, Jeopardy and Barack Obama; original Beat Gen participants Diane DiPrima, Helen Weaver, Ed Sanders & Gordon Ball; self-identified beatnik musicians Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, Donovan & John Phillips; and two of the leading film critic / scholars in North America, Elvis Mitchell & Richard Crouse. None of these people are using “beatnik” as an insult.
There’s been a billion negative portrayals of “hippies” over the last 50 years. In fact, that word started out, like “beatnik,” as a putdown – as in – these people are not “hip” – they’re baby hip wannabes – teenyboppers – hippies … babies. But that doesn’t make hippies or the word or idea uncool in my book. I’m a hippie. “Hippies” have been most of my best friends for the last 50 years.
Just because the straight world tries to pimp the word as a negative doesn’t mean they win the definition.
1950s puritans tried to ban Howl — and that only ended up making it world famous. The government developed LSD for possible mind-control of enemies … until a few Pranksters got a hold of it and turned on the world. The establishment tried to push propaganda like Reefer Madness — and reefer is now legal or decriminalized in 44 states and the entire country of Canada.
When the straight-streets attempt to redefine our world and mores in their warped vision, it doesn’t work out so well for them. The truth, and what is right and good, wins out in the end. The old world establishment wanted to keep Blacks from sitting at lunch counters, women in the kitchen, and gays out of wedding chapels. And similarly, the world has moved on from their attempted put-down of “beatniks” to where the term now refers to the influential writers who are still affecting the world decades after their passing — and no one even remembers who the putdown bigmouths were.
English is a very malleable and constantly evolving language. Think of the gazillion words that mean such different things today than they did back in the 1950s when “beatnik” first had a meaning — gay … hipster … trip … dose … crack … cookies … eggs … shade … gaslight … ghost … goat … woke … cancel … Karen …
And the point was proven this past week in the global flurry of heartfelt tributes after Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s passing (Feb 22nd, 2021). When journalists, poets, scholars and fans worldwide used “beatnik” while gushing their praise on the publisher of the Beats and host of their clubhouse in North Beach, City Lights Books, they were not implying a long-forgotten cliché, but referencing the most respected & recognizable group of his peers.
If you polled a thousand North Americans about the meaning of the word “beatnik” I bet 90+% of respondents who ever heard the word would say it meant a group of writers from ’50s.
To this day, I meet people who are Beat and have never read a word of any of them. But I’ve never met a cliché “beatnik” – except as a character on Halloween or something.
It’s a mindset.
When Ken Kesey was asked, “How does somebody become a Prankster?” he answered, “We just recognize each other.”
Merry Prankster Anonymous with On The Road‘s Big Ed Dunkel
Rather than poo-poo the term — one that is already accepted — we need to embrace it. Wear it. There shouldn’t be a negative knee-jerk reaction every time a person uses that word as though they’re intending to denigrate the writers of the Beat Generation — because they aren’t.
We’re now decades into the 21st century, and the word is simply a commonly accepted term for the collective.
If somebody wants to call me a “beatnik” – fine. We’re good people.
I’m a 21st century beatnik . . . and havin a helluva high time.
Instead of a pocket notebook we’ve got pocket phones. Instead of hitchhiking Route 66, we’re surfing the information superhighway. What was once black & white has become full swirling psychedelic color. Poetry readings in cafés can now reach the whole world with live-streaming video. Instead of throwing up on peyote we can micro-dose on locally-grown magic mushrooms. And marijuana comes in a thousand flavors!
Those old beatniks would be ecstatic to see all the evolutions and modernizations — including of language — of the worlds they first celebrated. We’re still going Furthur . . . and . . .
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is Dead, Long Live Lawrence Ferlinghetti!
Howling Allen Ginsberg got shot out of history’s atomic canon and never stopped flying Ferlinghetti prints the poem as news hysterical naked and gets busted for publishing obscene odes
the law fought the poem and the poem won
without this greeting at such great beginning there would be no Beat Generation heard ‘round the world and I would have descended a very different staircase and would not know my wife nor most all my friends
Ferlinghetti climbs down from the gaunt tree of war and with his poet’s eye sees fists of Hiroshima and Nagasaki blossoms shadowboxing in the dark and declares god a fraternity of one hung up on eternity a frightened lonely child pissing himself
the poet’s dog lifting his leg knows that democracy is deconstructionist porn for masturbating objectivists and as of this writing the poet himself has shed his bony skin and is no longer making this carnival scene
and from those of us here still snapping in ripe time most gratefully and lovingly we bid you good night sweet paperback prince may choirs of scat seraphim sing thee to thy authentic angel headed rest everything ends lost and found as rebirth and revolutionary wonder
Here’s a beautiful inspiring story about proactively engaging young people in democracy. And I mean young people under 18!
It’s a story about generosity and generations, empowerment and inclusion, doing the right thing, and putting your good where it will do the most (as Ken Kesey used to advise).
It’s told by a fellow Canadian Prankster Brother who’s technically named Dale Topham, but is known in preferred circles as “Gubba” — which this New Yorker expanded to “Gubba Gubba Hey!” to refrain a certain hometown punk band.
As Brutha Gubba tells it . . .
In the most recent Canadian election [2019], I let my 11-year-old granddaughter, Cora, choose how I would cast my ballot.
It started because I was in an unusual muddle about whom to vote for. I generally vote Liberal in Canadian elections. In 1963, my first time voting, I supported Lester B. Pearson, then became a full-fledged member of Trudeau-mania (for Justin’s father Pierre). Since then I don’t believe I ever cast a federal vote for anyone but a Liberal, right up to supporting Justin Trudeau his first time out in 2015.
But Justin disappointed me in spades. Once he was elected he changed 180 degrees from opposing to supporting the Trans Mountain Pipeline [bringing dirty tar sands oil across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean]. And then he used political pressure to intercede in a case against a Quebec-based construction company.
It was clear to me that for the first time in my life, I would not be voting Liberal.
To muddy the waters further, our Liberal candidate, Terry Beech, was far and away the best choice of those running in my riding! He’s a hard working young man who’s on the right side of all the issues I care about, but all he could do was promise to apply whatever pressure he could when those issues were discussed.
When the election was called, the Conservative candidate was Heather Leung. About a week into the campaign, some film surfaced of her making extreme anti-gay remarks from a Christian religious right point of view. They were so bad that she was kicked out of the party immediately.
To make this tricky choice even harder, the NDP Candidate, Svend Robinson, was once our long-standing Member of Parliament. He was also the first Canadian MP to declare himself openly gay, but had left politics about ten years ago when he was convicted of stealing an expensive ring from an auction house. Now he was back looking for my support. From a philosophical point of view, I would tend to support the NDP over the Conservatives, but a jewelry thief? I think not!
Among all these flawed choices, there was a young woman representing the Green Party. She looked like the best candidate to me, but the Greens got less than 2,000 votes in our very populous riding last election. To me, this looked like throwing away my vote.
So there I was.
In other news — once a week I would pick up my granddaughter Cora after school and take her to her climbing class, about a 20 minute drive. All the street-side political signs turned our conversation to the election. I told her about my dilemma with Trudeau, and she told me they were having a mock election at her school, and that they were going to be learning about the issues and about what the parties were representing. I told her that if she could figure out who to vote for she should tell me! And we both laughed.
Over the next few weeks we talked about what she was learning. She told me if the election were held today, she would vote Green, and said it was mainly because of their position on environmental issues and climate change. I said her reasoning was very sound and that I thought young people would probably make better choices than their parents.
And that’s when thelightbulb came on!
I told her then and there that I would give her my vote in the real election, and that if she ever changed her mind from Green (she never did) just to let me know and I would vote for whomever she said.
I told my wife Rene what I had promised Cora and that I would be voting Green. Every time we discussed it, Rene would say something like, “You know Terry Beech (the Liberal) is the best candidate in our riding,” which I would counter with, “… but I just can’t support Trudeau!” Obviously she was still going to vote Liberal, as we always do.
On election day, as we left the polling station, she asked me, “Did you vote Green?” I said “Yeah.” And she said … “So did I.” Boy, was Gubba happy! And I couldn’t wait to tell Cora!
For the record, our Liberal candidate won, the jewelry thief came second, and the ousted religious zealot came third. Our Green candidate came fourth with over 4,000 votes — but more than double what she got last time.
My granddaughter is so proud & pleased that she was involved. She’s always been very adult and we treat her that way. And now she’s voting before her time and feeling the power of having her voice heard and counted. Of everything we’ve happily given her over the years, we all three agree this was maybe the best present ever.
~ = ~ = ~ = ~ = ~ * ~ = ~ = ~ = ~ = ~
Giving the gift of the vote.
We’re always reminded that “people died” so we could have the right to vote. Well, now you can give it to somebody who doesn’t have the right — and nobody has to die!
It’s such a mind-flippingly beautiful twisteroo Prankster concept — giving the power to the purity of smart young people who see the world with unpolluted eyes to suss the good guys from the bad, the good ideas from the baloney. Adults listening to pundits or their pub pals sure haven’t been installing the most evolved visionaries … or even functionaries. So how ’bout if we go ahead and let some fresh voices in the choir.
Vote swapping is already something gaining popularity in both the U.S. and Canada the last couple elections — how about giving the gift of political engagement to someone younger who will get in the habit of using it including long after the gift-giver is gone.
From the chapter — “Fun & Loving on the Campaign Trail 2020 — A Prankster’s Primary”.
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The next day — Tuesday, February 4th, the day following the night of the Iowa caucus vote-counting debacle — I pulled off three rallies: Biden, Tulsi & Amy. The order I caught the candidates all week was in direct correlation to the order they appeared in Nashua.
The New Hampshire primary is the New Orleans Jazz Festival for politicos. All the best performers are playing all day long, every day, for a week! The only challenge is figuring out which stage you wanna be at. 🙂
For this 12 noon Joe Biden rally I got there at 11. This is key. Always arrive an hour early, wink-wink, jot a note.
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One bizarrely cool thing this 77-year-old grandpa does is frequently sprinkle “man” into his dialogue like you’re listening to Dizzy Gillespie or something. He so often seems like a patently unhip old geezer, but man, sometimes this cat sure can swing!
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After the rally was over, all the candidates (except Bernie) held meet-n-greets after their show (speech) — but Joe just sorta wandered over to the ropeline and started talking to someone, then just kinda began drifting along the front of the crowd, very impromptu.
A bald Secret Service type guy immediately came out to Joe’s side. I’d seen him standing at the back earlier and he looked so much like the strategist and Lincoln Project cofounder Steve Schmidt, I thought it was him.
Then for some reason, Joe picked me out with his eyes in the second row — I wasn’t right on the ropeline.
I’m sure my visage reflected positivity. And he looked over two people’s shoulders and stared me right in the eye and said, “What’s your name?” reaching out his hand. I was kinda caught off guard, but … “Brian. . . . I was at your first inauguration.”
“Yeah, so were a lot of people,” he said, but not dismissively, rather, celebratory with his beaming smile.
“I hope to be at your next one,” I Irishly twinkled back.
And the other people in the thick crowd kinda moved aside as though he and I knew each other or something and gave us space. “You’re the one guy in this race who’s gonna know what to do from day one,” I told him.
“And you’re the one guy who knows that. Tell your friends,” he said with a laugh. And just then a staffer showed up, so I handed him my camera, and Boom!
George Walker: “Your election comments were brilliant and as good as anything by anyone I read anywhere. You should be getting paid for this. You nailed it all the way through. Sometimes I would disagree with something you said, and then a couple weeks later I’d realize, ‘Oh yeah, Brian was right about that.’ And you wouldn’t just say things, you’d explain the thinking and facts behind it. Anybody can just say stuff — but you would always back it up. I looked forward to reading your new posts and comments every day. Something would happen in the news and right away I’d wonder what Brian would have to say about it. Professor Walker gives you an ‘A’ on your coverage.”
Cynthia Johnson: “Brian has been my virtual Xanax over the past few weeks. Any calm I’ve felt is because I trusted his data and his take on things, even as I distrusted most conventional wisdom. Thanks again, Brian.” and “Thank you for all your hard work and brilliant cheerleading to keep us all sane and hopeful during this process. Thank you for your devotion to Democracy and to America. You are truly what we used to call in the HHH campaign way back in ’68 – A Great American (with dual citizenship!) Much love to you my campaign trail road buddy. We made it!” To which Monica Bein replied, “Well said & totally agree about our Merry Politico buddy.”
Laurie Jones: “I am celebrating now. Now. Thank you Brian. You helped me stay solid in the hard weeks and months so these last three days were not stressful.”
Cyndie Henderson: “Your posts are informative and down to earth. Enjoyed the whole experience.”
Helen North: “It’s great that you have kept this photo and you can now share with us all …. you did an amazing job Brian at keeping us informed …. and sharing your enthusiasm for politics with us …. you even educated me quite a lot in the last few weeks in regards to American Politics ….. great photo of you and the President of the United States !!!!”
Johnny Walker: “Thank you for an astonishing effort at helping to make this remarkable day become a reality. Thank you Thank you Thank you.”
Carrie McCarthy: “Thanks again Brian, for the continued honest and accurate reporting that was especially helpful to the sensitive souls that found watching traditional media too stressful.”
Eric Douglas Augustsen Mani: “I thought I should congratulate you in a campaign well fought for. So many got out there and let their voices be heard and largely because of the efforts of people like you. It is with that in this late Swedish morn I raise my cup of coffee to you and wish you CHEERS!!! Peace & Love Our planet thanks you the children, the animals, the fish at sea, Mother Nature thank you!!!” also — “YES!!! YES!!! Healthcare!!! You did it Brian my beacon of light through he thick Orange haze of uncertainty!!! A new day!!!”
Deanna Waters: “You have such a positive outlook on life and a sense of adventure. Bravo!”
Brian Stevenson: “Man, you and I got to meet someday Brian! Let me say that your optimism and hope in your writings including your great new volume, and your current writings around this recent election, were and still are lighthouses for me. Thank you.”
No matter if you’re in a solid blue or solid red state — let alone a swing state! — every single vote that goes into the national kitty is one more voice — yours! — that history will record as voting against and putting an end to the former racist-in-chief.
You want to feel good after election day in November.
You want to fully enjoy the moment this nation will celebrate on that night, and on January 20th, and every day going forward. And you don’t want that gnawing guilt in the pit of your stomach that you know you didn’t really do everything you could.
And boy — it’s gonna feel so good when you do it. 😉
And it’s free! And it’s fun! And it changes the world! And how often do you get to do that?
Yes — you can Vote — including in advance and by mail-in — but here’s a bunch of other proactive things you can do as well —>
Talk to your friends and neighbors not just about how trump is an obvious criminal conman sociopath but about the ways you think Joe Biden has been good. Also, help them out by making sure they’ve got a plan to vote: Vote411
If you’re an American citizen living outside of the country, you can still vote. Here’s how you can can do it from abroad — https://www.votefromabroad.org/
Talk to your third party leaning friends, or those who tend to cop out with the old “they’re all the same” b.s., and politely explain how hate mongering and racial bias attacks have skyrocketed nationwide since trump’s election; how only one party is trying to deny and dismantle democracy and disenfranchise people’s votes; how the lies he told about a virus he knew was deadly caused America to have more than twice the number of coronavirus deaths than any other nation.
Put up Biden/Harris signs in your front yard or apartment window. When one person does it, it often prompts others to, too.
You can volunteer to phone bank for an hour from your home. You’ll get to talk to some cool people you wouldn’t otherwise, and bank some votes that may otherwise have been squandered. Updated Biden phone call volunteer webpage will get posted here when it’s up, or do a Google search.
Check in with people you know who don’t have a car and offer to drive them to their polling station.
You can send your own customized creative postcards if you wanna go old-school funky & personal. There’s a cool group coordinating this called Postcards to Voters — https://postcardstovoters.org/
Also old-school but still effective — write a well-written letter to the editor of your local newspaper. Since less people do that now, you have more of a chance of getting printed, and/or having a nice published web link you can share around.
You can call your senator and register how you want him or her to vote. Phone the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121, and an operator will connect you directly with the Senate office you request. Or here’s a website that will connect you —https://www.senate.gov/senators/How_to_correspond_senators.htm
Feel free to copy and share, and add your own personal touch if you want.
And if anybody has any other good ideas beyond simply voting, by all means let me know.
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Here’s a good 2024 piece you might enjoy and wanna share — “Why I Love Joe Biden“
A lot of people got discouraged during 2016 — first the Berners supporting Sanders in the primary, then most of the nation with “the perfect storm” of the November electoral college disaster. Twice in my lifetime has this antiquated 1700s electoral college voting concept resulted in the loser of the vote becoming President. And both those times resulted in the #1 and #2 worst Presidents in modern history (by a long shot) that this country ever had the misfortune to have.
There is no other elected office in America you can win without winning the actual vote — and it just happens to be the most important one. Maybe this was a good idea back in the horse-&-buggy days, but it sure ain’t democracy now that everybody can actually vote.
Citizen participation goes back to … well, the Greeks (if you were a white native-born male 2,500 years ago), or women in America for the last hundred years, and minorities kinda mostly since 1965 (except since 2013 when the Roberts Supreme Court dishonorably and despicably rolled back the Voting Rights Act), and all of us who choose to be involved in the primary process since 1972. A lot of (particularly young) people seem to think the political world started in 2016 … and for them it’s been nothing but a disaster.
This is a terrible thing — and we’ve got to collectively work to re-engage and fix as best we can a flawed system.
In these pages I’m going to share some Adventure Tales about engagement in politics. It’s a helluva fun pursuit — and the winner gets to run the country! And speaking of running, there was a great documentary in 2007 called Run Granny Run about the inspirational Granny D from New Hampshire who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004 at age 94. In it she said a line I’ve repeated often — “Democracy isn’t something we have, it’s something we do.”
That should be carved into marble in Washington somewhere. At least I’ll carve it into this paper and maybe your brain.
“Democracy isn’t something we have, it’s something we do.”
And we’ve all got a lot to do! 4 in 10 Americans think Donald Trump is doing a great job as president. (!) This makes zero sense to 6 in 10 Americans, but what this book is going to hopefully help do is get those 6 in 10 back to being passionately involved in the grand experiment that is America.
We’re each here for only a small sliver of time. I have many friends who have been engaged in politics and governance for longer than I’ve been alive; and I’ve got many younger friends who are still going to be involved in it (hopefully) long after I’m gone. But we each have to be engaged proactive stewards for the wee window we’re here.
Perhaps this is a good time to talk about age. According to my birth certificate from Kenya, I mean Calgary, I am supposedly 58 years old as I type this in early 2020 — but obviously there’s been some mistake because I feel like I’m 18. And I think the same drunk clerk was in the records office for a while because I know a bunch of people older than me that will swear on a stack of On The Roads that they are not the age their birth certificate says they are.
One of them is my 80-year-old stage partner, George Walker, who just put a new roof on his house by himself while simultaneously rebuilding a 1939 Furthur bus called “Farthur” to take On The Road in 2020. I also perform regularly with Jack Kerouac’s principal musical collaborator, David Amram, who is a still-improvising & wailing jazz cat at age 89. And I finally tracked down and interviewed Locke McCorkle who had the house in Mill Valley where Gary Snyder and Kerouac stayed that prompted the Dharma Bums adventure, and he told me that even though he’d just stopped racing motorcycles at age 85, he felt like he was 35. So, everybody reading this book who’s under 90 years old, there’s no excuse for not having full engagement in this life.
And this also relates to the current leader of the Democratic Party, Nancy Pelosi, who turned 80 in March 2020, as well as three of the four frontrunners in the Democratic primary — Joe Biden (77), Elizabeth Warren (70), and Bernie Sanders (78) — who are all bounding and bouncing with the same kind of vibrancy as Granny D or the jazz cat or the guy up putting on the new roof. 70 is the new 30, and 80 is the new 18.
The Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh also turned 80 in March 2020 and is actively involved in Get Out The Vote (GOTV) actions — as are all the members of Dead & Company.
If smart people in their 70s and 80s have not given up hope, have not become cynical, are still working hard every day to make the world a better place, that should be instructive to anyone in their teens or twenties or thereabouts that giving up is not an option. Or wise. Saying of candidates and political leaders “they’re all the same” is a cop-out and abdication of the rights and powers of citizenry. Just ask Granny D.
I was born and raised in Western Canada in a world with a mocking disdain for everything American, and anything from the East. I didn’t fit in in the least — left as soon as my “finish high school” box was ticked, never looked back, and became an American by choice as soon as I was able. I served nearly 30 years in Manhattan, and am now back in the land of the red-&-white outside Toronto, with the minute-by-minute madness of Manhattan no longer taking up every day of every week of every year, and time and distance to reflect on that massive round-trip road trip.
Although Americans love to pride themselves in being “#1” at everything — their system is the worst for democracy. In Canada (and the U.K. and a lot of other countries) a national election is called — and the whole thing’s over in six weeks — and costs 1/1000th what 2020 will cost America, not to mention the thousands of hours of print and broadcast and social media reading about the bickering between any two people.
But what America has is characters, drama and stakes. And as a friend said at the end of yet another great Grateful Dead show back in the Jerry days — “That’s why I keep comin’ back.”
Who wins these elongated and compromised elections gets control of the biggest property on the Western World gameboard. And when I say “compromised” — what I mean is gerrymandering and voter suppression and the candidates’ requirement of taking big money from big business (codified by the anti-democracy “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision of 2010) in order to buy media ads and hire staff in 50 states to coordinate more fundraising to pay for more fundraising.
America is leading the world in democracy-destroying gerrymandering — at least in the 37 states that allow it — where the state government fences in all the voters of the opposing party to one or as few congressional districts as possible, then gives the whole rest of the state to themselves. This is reason #1001 why getting involved in your state government is as important as engagement in a presidential election. And I may as well say it — it’s actually more. And you know what’s even more important than your state government? Your city government. I know it ain’t sexy, and it ain’t gonna be all over the TV and social media, but who your mayor and city council is makes a bigger difference in your life than who your president is.
I know in people’s heads they see the face of the president as the political person overseeing their life. But the counterintuitive truth is your quality of life, in general, is determined far more by your city council than your federal congress. Whether your water’s clean, your power’s on, you don’t get robbed on the way to the store, you’ve got paved roads to drive on, whether the literal and metaphorical trains run on train, what your property taxes are (which generally takes more of your income than your income tax) — all that stuff that really is your life is more your city and state governments than it is federal — so if any of this sinks in at all let it be for you to give as much of a damn about who runs your city as Washington. Sadly, municipal elections usually have less than half the turnout of the already low federal election participation — which was 61% of eligible voters in both 2012 and 2016. Those people whose names you probably don’t even know, get elected by about 20% of your neighbors, and have more to do with your day-to-day quality of life than all the presidents of your life combined. Or thereabouts.
But of course if this book was about mayoral elections, you wouldn’t be reading it. It’s about “the show.” Which we love. It’s the big one … with the leg-kicking Rockettes and half-time rock stars and fireworks of exploding heads every night on the TV sets of America. Not the preseason. Not the regular season. Some people watch that stuff — but everybody tunes in for the playoffs. Which, in U.S. Presidential politics, means from the summer conventions through the November elections. Or many don’t really tune in until the first Presidential debate in late September (usually) — but it’s the same four years as every Summer Olympics when we wave our flag and wear our team jersey and celebrate the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat.
And every election I’ve lived through was (rightfully called) “the most important election of our lifetime.” I dunno why that is or why it’s true, but it is. Well, maybe ‘96 wasn’t when Bill Clinton was just holding serve against the Roll–Hemp ticket. I mean, Dole–Kemp. We’re always at war or some damn thing. But in 2020 there is a proudly overtly racist fascist sociopath in the White House who’s cultivated a cult of straight-arm saluting devotees committed to re-electing “the greatest president we ever had.”
And so here we are.
25 different men and women from all demographics and backgrounds and philosophies threw their lives into the ring to be the 2020 Democratic nominee. At least this part of the grand game is a healthy democracy. Voters can choose from longtime socialists like Bernie, or longtime businessmen like Bloomberg, or practical centrists like Joe Biden, or non-politician outsiders like Andrew Yang.
I’ve been On The Trail on way or another since first seeing third party candidate John Anderson in 1980, to catching every candidate in New Hampshire in 2020 — 40 years On The Road as another Adventurer coined it — and you’re holding a good chunk of it in book form for the first time. Throughout this process of writing lots of new pieces up through March of 2020, I also found old clippings of stories past, old photographs & buttons, rediscovered old memories, and followed a paper trail of typed tales back to when computers were only props on Lost In Space.
Now there are trolls and bots and memes and apps, and as the old saying goes — “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on” — is more true than ever. We are all living through a redefining of what democracy and even “truth” is.
I’m glad you’ve joined in this Adventure, and hopefully reading this book will inspire you to get involved and create your own stories for eternity.
for Andy Clausen and all the poets of eternity wrapping a present of the past for the future
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Sleeping three or four times a day, An hour or two a shot; Vivid dreams in shutdown streams — Solo swimming in sunlight — Surreality surfing in twilight as Adventures soar when the subconscious scores.
Stopped drinking To go with stopped smoking; But waking with muscles like I just chopped wood, If a woodchuck could chuck you know I would!
It’s all gone digital, It’s all gone Dada; Reality’s nada — Keepin’ a Beat … when there’s none to hear!
Ran out of pot months ago, Just when it became legal! In the whole continent-wide Oh Canada I find myself locked in — a big evergreen jail with the politest of prisoners All holding the door open, but … no one leaving. “Welcome to the Hotel Canada!” That’s when I stopped smoking?!?! Been hiding my stash for 40 years, And now that it’s legal as 40 beers, I don’t even bother ordering it from menus With more pages than IHOP!
But keepin’ track of the dineros Saved in sober scenarios, As I watch movies with De Niros About inspiring heroes Gambling on truth And regaining their youth.
In the upside down Of the cockeyed clown Running mad all over town Telling us even the postman’s in on it.
No more gas in the car No more cars On The Road; No more peeps for a crew — What would Cassady do?
The Twilight Zone Is now my Real-Life Home A desolate future right on cue — What would Rod Serling do?
Now Doctor Fauci’s writing scripts Of a future that used to be fiction.
Why are we here? . . . And why aren’t we there? And how long will it be Our social cupboard is bare?
It was interesting for a week, For a dream, for a Test, But I’m not waking up And I’m not getting dressed!
I’m also not drinkin’ . . . Or puffin’ or snortin’ Or poppin’ or droppin’ Or mixin’ or fixin’ to die just yet.
The yellow flag’s flapping, The time-keeper’s napping; The frame’s been condensed, Intermission’s commenced, But nobody’s loading the reel.
So let’s get real Get goin’, get down, get busy, get crazy, “Get back to where you once belonged.”
In this big gift of time, Never before and never again Will we have all this space — This lesson in Zen.
To sculpt our meaning To write our work To play our truth In this cosmic quirk.
To paint our lives On a canvas so big You can’t even see the frame!
In a play so long You can’t remember its name; In a performance so rich You’ll never be the same.
So take the baton And conduct your song; What could go wrong If you play it long?
Now’s The Time Bird Parker sang, Now’s your chance To spring your sprang —
You don’t need nuthin’ But the time you got, And you don’t need others Cuz you got a lot,
To paint with colors And paint with light, And check off dreams And do ’em right.
It’s once in a lifetime Lockdown lore; Once in the nighttime Fingers soar; Life during wartime Lions roar — This is the time You were born for.
So play your play And write your rights, Let’s make today Your night of nights. .
Or here’s the joy of the connection between the most fun cultural movements of the 20th century — How The Beats Begat The Pranksters & Other Adventure Tales from London to New York to Toronto to San Francisco and lots of other side Trips. 😉
Or here’s a whole multi-faceted portrait of the First Family of Beat — On The Road with Cassadys & Furthur Visions — which completes the sequentially written only-one-of-its-kind Beat Trilogy.
And of course there’s also the Epic Adventure of sneaking my van backstage at the big Woodstock ’94 festival — Holy Cats! Dream-Catching at Woodstock — the only Woodstock since ’69 that worked — including parking & living right behind the main stage for the entire weekend. The book peaks with a 100-page acid trip for the climactic Bob Dylan / Peter Gabriel night. 😉
“Democracy isn’t something you have, It’s something you do,” 94-year-old Granny D shared for eternity.
Love isn’t something you receive, It’s something you give.
A smile isn’t something you see, It’s something you shine.
Truth isn’t something you know, It’s something you share.
A hand isn’t something you hold, It’s something you offer.
Wealth isn’t something you hoard, It’s something you GIFT.
A word isn’t something you utter, It’s something you keep.
We’re only here for a sliver of time, Though when you’re young it seems like forever.
You’ve got one reputation, And one occupation — To do the right thing For all whom you know And all whom you don’t;
To do the kind thing For the stranger among us As the partner beside us;
To be the heart in the darkness, The spark with the kindness, With the will of a warrior And the love of a mother.
Support your sister, support your brother, Support your elder, support your younger; The more harmony we sing, The farther our voices carry.
Compliments are free to give, But worth a million to receive; So share your love with those you know, And those you know to believe.
Your happiness is no one’s job But your own; Every day, and every night, Do the work that makes you right.
Follow your soul and follow your heart, Only you know – what sets you apart; Butknowyou do, when you quiet your mind, Uncover the truth only you can find.
The sooner you practice forgiveness, The longer you’ll live in the light; The faster you run from malicious, The stronger your beam will shine bright.
Don’t count on your next life — enjoy the buffet, Don’t put off till tomorrow what’s sizzling today; Give it your all and give it your best, Cuz this go-round is the real Acid Test.
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Here’s the piece set to some catchy upBeat world-beat funky-cool music by Gabriel Walker —
.This new poem will soon be in the international collection —
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From the Ancestors: Poems and Prayers for Future Generations
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a double album and book project — including 33 poets, musicians, singers, healers/curanderas/shamans from 20 countries, in 19 languages.
Release date is November 10, 2020.
Besides myself, folks included are —
Anne Waldman, NYC/USA
Ron Whitehead, Kentucky/USA
Andy Willoughby, England
Birgitta Jonsdottir, Reykjavik Iceland Joy Harjo, Muscogee (Creek)/USA
Dr. Hilaria Cruz, Oaxaca Mexico/USA
Doris Kareva, Tallinn Estonia
Tanya Lind, Iceland
Iris Lican, Sintra Portugal
Michael White, Tennessee/USA
Jaouad El Garouge, Morocca
Thomas Bellier, Paris France
Aprilia Zank, Germany
Chryssa Velissarous, Greece
Vesa Lahti, Finland
Al Paldrok, Parnu Estonia
Frank Messina, NYC/USA
Amber Lee, NYC/USA
Aurelia Lassaque, France
Giulio Tedeschi, Italy
Wilfred Hildonen, Norway/Finland
Lee Pennington, Kentucky/USA
Greta Render Whitehead, Kentucky/USA
Bengt O Bjorklund, Sweden
Jeanette Aslaksen, Sami/Norway
Jaouad El Garouge, Morocco
Thomas Attar Bellier, France
Jared Zarantanello, USA
Patrick Latanga, Congo
Rani Whitehead, USA
Himeko Narumi, Japan
Theo Dorgan, Ireland
Seda Suna Uçakan, Turkey
Producers Ron Whitehead, Gabriel Walker, Matt Thomasson, Bill Hardesty, Yunier Ramirez. Executive Producers sonaBLAST! Records, Michael White, and Ron Whitehead. a sonaBLAST! Records and released for the global literary renaissance.
Recorded, mixed, and mastered by Gabriel Walker, Bill Hardesty, Matt Thomasson at Logan Street Recording Studios. Music Composed and Produced by Gabriel Walker.
Music co-Produced by Matt Thomasson and Bill Hardesty.
Mastered by Kevin Nordstrom.
Book produced and edited by Ron Whitehead.
Cover art by Wilfred Hildonen.
Profits from this project will go to Kentucky Refugee Ministries/KRM, a non-profit organization in Louisville, Kentucky dedicated to providing resettlement services to refugees and promoting self-sufficiency and successful integration.
I spent the afternoon getting all gussied up in my black velvet tails and Ben Franklin knickers with knee-high socks topped off with a top hat, accented with colorful Obama buttons, and everything underneath my waving homemade Obama pennant flag with a little red & white Canadian one on top. All I needed was a clanging bell and some rolled parchment.
Heading into the Election Night, for the first time in my life, I was the most popular person in Harlem! Looking like a “Hear-ye, hear-ye!” town crier from the American Revolution, I was carrying Obama’s flag into battle — lighting up faces of people who still hadn’t come close to learning English. Shopkeepers were waving, and mothers were pointing me out to their small children. Passing pedestrians were either breaking into huge smiles or full-out hollering, “Obama!” It was dusk on the final day of The Nightmare From Texas, and minorities may have been happier than anyone that the lying war sap’s reign of error was finally ending.
Riding the subway through Harlem in black velvet regalia — facing beaming white smiles from dark African faces, shining and sharing across the aisle like Washington would soon be if all goes according to plan. A little boy beside me was admiring my buttons, and finally says in the cutest voice, “All Barack!” So I reached in my bag and found a button for him just before he got off. And some guy was watching me do this, and he pulled out his keys from his pocket and wound off his little Obama key-chain and handed it to me across the subway car. It’s the coolest thing and I’ll cherish it forever. And so I looked in my bag and found another button and hand it across to him. And there was some guy standing nearby smiling as he watched all this go down, and the guy I just gave the button to hands it to him. A crowd got on right after that and we all got separated — but within seconds all us strangers had just given each other something for nothing. America was changing right before our eyes.
