Let's all go to Rockland

Sorry for the slew of short posts. I'm just trying to crank out material so that I have relatively frequent updates. Longer, better thought out out posts will come soon.

This is a fact: I am not Allen Ginsberg. I do not want to be Allen Ginsberg, but in some ways I am disappointed that I am not Allen Ginsberg. No one is Allen Ginsberg anymore. Now, I'm sure that this is painfully obvious, because as of 1997 he is permanently in a state that could be described as "dead." Now, death didn't stop Paul McCartney, as he is still performing and receiving media attention to this date, but from most people, Allen Ginsberg included, being dead makes you no longer existent.

Not being Allen Ginsberg means that I will not be tried for obscenity. In the last sixty years, we have pushed the boundaries of obscenity to the point where "Birthday Sex" is completely radio friendly. Had it been released in 1956, the same year as "Howl," Jeremih's court date would be right after Ginsberg's. Today, "Howl" wouldn't shock anyone. I could write a poem about smoking the sperm of endangered species of owls while caressing my masturbatory broomstick while fondling an eight year old boy in a back alley of Kuala Lumpur, read it on the streets, and people would hear it and say "that's been done before." Today, everything is obscene, meaning that nothing is obscene. Getting high on peyote in your Nob Hill apartment and seeing the face of Moloch in a hotel facade is, well, if not commonplace, at least not too out of the ordinary. I'm with you in Rockland, but so is everyone else. All the limits have been pushed; Dada has happened, 4'33" has happened, the Beat Generation has happened, flower power has happened, punk has happened, free jazz has happened. They have all happened. It is time to move on. We can't keep trying to write beat poetry. We can't keep trying to be Ornette Coleman. We can't keep smelling bad and driving colorful VW buses. We can't keep not being able to play bass but still be the bass player in a band.

If we're going to keep asking "what is art?" then we need to do things that haven't been done instead of imitating what was once pushing the limits.

And is a blog by an aspiring science fiction writer who thinks that his dead car was a spaceship pushing the limits? No. Like I said, I am not Allen Ginsberg. None of us are. So let's forge our own paths, and if they lead into obscenity, then more power to us.