I guess I will have to watch the movie just to see what they did with it. U got a link or a quote from Levi about it?By Johnson’s lights, Kerouac discovered his “voice” on November 23, 1951, following an uproarious Thanksgiving Beat reunion
The Voice Is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac, By Joyce Johnson
one could write much more than a few paragraphs on that site and that scene (especially if one was into the n.y. poetry scene), but ultimately that wasn't the nature of my wander through silence . . . . at least not the primary nature of it . . . .But who is Ned? And why did he suddenly appear in your desert reverie? You and Ned must go way back, right? Well, no . . . And that's the odd thing about this wander you hit upon. You're meeting not only silent rock, but also a few poets who happen to live on its shape, as it looks at this moment of forever-sculpted stardust. Old poet souls. You met Ned due to his poems on a screen, of all things. True story. The rock is wired now.
You stumbled onto a crazy poet site, a place that took up Kerouac's torch after all the years-- where poetry twists and tangles around itself, and long strings of poems wring themselves inside out and punch each other in the head, bathe in torrents of radiance and swim muddy rivers of rage, wander all over canyons of mind and back deserts of creation. Sometimes the poets fall out and argue for days-- long, sprawling threads about the nature of "reality," but they always come back to paint the sky new colors of breath. It's one hell of a long, mind-bending bash onscreen.
The Screen. It's everywhere, and everyone peers into glowing boxes. And though you detest the idea of it, the Screen shows real potential at times (whatever "real" means). And it's the oddest thing. Poetry floods cyberspace. Everyone's a poet, with screen names like "Whitebird," or "AxDeath," typing anything imaginable in a text box, from lines of simple, mundane glory to wild freakout, A to Z, it all comes out in the wash. And lots of adolescent gushing too-- "my tears are raindrops on your dusty moon." A billion screams into a soulless metal machine. We won't be denied!
And that's how you met Ned . . . and others. A great zig-zag. Like when you zagged into the dark June mists of coastal Oregon to meet a long-time hippie jazz singer, her screen words too immediate and images too rich to ignore, and her voice golden as playful truth-- "the truth shall set you free." She sang into the mic for a live show put on by the local radio station, some comical cowboy hit-the-dusty-trail number, and little kids danced merrily in circles in the studio, little Buddhas in light. And for a few minutes there was no needless brutality in the world.
The great zig-zag . . . You met a professor named Mark, who lived near the dreemy orange salt breezes and slender palms of Santa Barbara's coast. He looked like Mark Twain, with bushy white hair and mustache, and was a published poet-- was paid for poems. Hard to believe in this heavy metal age of anti-art. His tract house was lined with oil paintings, about half his own. He played guitar and a few other instruments, and penned scenes of back road Americana, colorful, tragic figures passing through, and he had a thing for the French Impressionists. He used to teach at the University of Nevada at Reno and was drawn to your screen scribblings on the Nevada desert, scattershot as they are. A crude attempt at rock art. He was humble and generous, and insisted that you keep going.
Yes, he got that right.(and "god," apparently... george shearer was god) ....
Neal knew time and motion.Writing Is Easy; You Just Open a Vein and Bleed
the quote investigator
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