Tuesday 15 July 2008

The underground movement

It's been a couple of gruelling days of work with a full immersion in the Sixties, what London was like then, bookshops, events. The movement. I have always been fascinated by avant-gardes, experimenting, the creative poet who is always photographed in black and white in a cloud of cigarette smoke. It's in the Beat generation poets that I first found my desire to travel, be creative, but most of all to "belong". That's when I learned concepts like "us" and "you", "you" obviously being not quite as good as "us". "Us", obviously never existed, but it felt like it did, and then it would all dissolve, long nights talking, painting, getting drunk together, and surreal dawns, going back to too much light to sustain that dream. The "leftovers" of that world today seem a bit sad to me, I met a few, the spark was gone, they were made of a buzz that once gone, left empty shells. No interest in the new. It's been a strange journey for me going through all those names, Ferlinghetti, Corso, Trocchi, Mitchell. But inspiring too. I'll read them again, reaching for a much wider concept of "us".

2 comments:

sage said...

Interesting take on the "beats." I read a Jack Keuroac bio a decade or so ago--it really didn't sound like that good of a life--I know he was considered the "conservative" in the group. What kind of project are you working on?

franvisions said...

It's part of my work to stumble across interesting stuff... can't be more specific than that!