"Aftermath: The Philosophy of the Beat Generation"

by Jack Kerouac, Esquire magazine March 1958

"The Beat Generation, that was a vision that we had, John Clellon Holmes and I, and Allen Ginsberg in an even wilder way, in the late forties, of a generation of crazy, illuminated hipsters suddenly rising and roaming America, serious, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere, ragged, beatific, beautiful in an ugly graceful new way--a vision gleaned from the way we had heard the word 'beat' spoken on streetcorners on Times Square and in the Village, in other cities in the downtown city night of postwar America--beat, meaning down and out but full of intense conviction--We'd even heard old 1910 Daddy Hipsters of the streets speak the word that way, with a melancholy sneer--It never meant juvenile delinquents, it meant characters of a special spirituality who didn't gang up but were solitary Bartlebies staring out the dead wall window of our civilization--the subterraneans heroes who'd finally turned from the 'freedom' machine of the West and were taking drugs, digging bop, having flashes of insight, experiencing the 'derangement of the senses,' talking strange, being poor and glad, prophesying a new style for American culture, a new style (we thought), a new incantation--The same thing was almost going on in the postwar France of Sartre and Genet and what's more we knew about it--But as to the actual existence of a Beat Generation, chances are it was really just an idea in our minds--We'd stay up 24 hours drinking cup after cup of black coffee, playing record after record of Wardell Gray, Lester Young, Dexter Gordon, Willie Jackson, Lennie Tristano and all the rest, talking madly about that holy new feeling out there in the streets- -We'd write stories about some strange beatific Negro hepcat saint with goatee hitchhiking across Iowa with taped up horn bringing the secret message of blowing to other coasts, other cities, like a veritable Walter the Penniless leading an invisible First Crusade- -We had our mystic heroes and wrote, nay sung novels about them, erected long poems celebrating the new 'angels' of the American underground--In actuality there was only a handful of real hip swinging cats and what there was vanished mightily swiftly during the Korean War when (and after) a sinister new kind of efficiency appeared in America, maybe it was the result of the universalization of Television and nothing else (the Polite Total Police Control of Dragnet's 'peace' officers) but the beat characters after 1950 vanished into jails and madhouses, or were shamed into silent conformity, the generation itself was shortlived and small in number."

not worth reading, or,

ON THE SEPTEMBER NIGHT, THE START OF THE SONG—DARK—

oh, sprite, siren, get yerself out and get down, get out and get down, find yerself where yu can’t go any farther, or sing any more, and sometimes the strings you wrap around your waist and the coat you pull tight around your shoulders they keep you from breathing, they stop your breath from working, they make it all broken –

o she can’t hear me

NEAR THE OAK TREE BY THE HILL, ROCKS IN THE DIRT

I went out on the porch there, and I took my guitar and I took my drink, and I played and sang timidly, you could hear it for miles I’m sure, the ants and the crickets and cockroaches all listened, the dogs and the horses heard, they all looked at me with their shining eyes, the porch light above me was dull but the moon up there was full in the sky, it’s like the man said, ISIS AND THE MOON SHINE ON ME.

happy thoughts

along the course of the conversation we gradually separated, she was the dock on the sea and I was the boat that lost its tether and floated away into the ocean, encroaching on the edge of the world there in the unknown -

the wall that no-one knows

I love this picture, that dude is pure artistic force

make of it what you will

"HE WAS SHOT IN THA NECK? HE COULD BE DEAD ALREADY. IMAGINE HES DEAD AND WERE JUST SITTIN HERE CHILLIN."

"DONT TALK LIKE THAT FOO MY HOMIE AINT DEAD. HES ALIVE. HES OKAY."

"BUT THATS REALITY."