Weddings and Mothers and Kittens and....Skip? These are a few of my favorite things

So many nice things have been going on here lately that it's going to be impossible to get it all down (write everyday Laci!), but here is a little snapshot at least. First things first, Alan and I have made it official and got married last Saturday. I don't see the need for the state to confirm our feelings for one another and so we saw the day instead as a gathering with friends and family to celebrate our continuing love for one another. Things were absolutely perfect and I could not have imagined anything being different (except for some more sun maybe. French weather competes with Texas weather on the fickle scale). Both of our mothers were able to be here, which is quite the big deal seeing as one lives 500 miles away and the other over 5,000. My mother brought over little Skip who, despite being attacked the night before the wedding, was still able to be there in all of his cuteness and will be living with me and Alan now.  Our kittens are getting bigger and sound like little monsters running up and down the hall at night but what better alarm clock could someone ask for really?Things are going wonderfully now and -a first for this blog- I have pictures to prove it.

 Alan looking....intimidating. Me looking....confused.

 The guests of honor.

 Mother and me at Geberoy, named one of the most beautiful villages in France. We agree.

Final Version of Simon and Garfunkel/ Jeremiad Paper

Hi- This is the semi-final version of a paper that I'll be presenting at the AFEA conference in Angers this Friday. Super nervous, but excited too. I would love some comments :)

I've just played a bit of Simon and Garfunkels “ The Sound of Silence” for you. I, personally, enjoy the song very much; beyond my enjoyment however, the song is interesting in several regards, as a testament of alienation, as an example of reactions to the tumult of the sixties, as a comment on technology's effects on society, and so on . Today, I'd like to talk about the Bible and prophets, of the idea and function of the prophet within the song using as an interpretive lens the concept of the American Jeremiad as articulated by Sacvan Bercovitch in his 1978 study, The American Jeremiad. "The Sound of Silence" (sometimes called "Sounds of Silence") was written by Paul Simon in February 1964 shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy. The first version, heard on Simon & Garfunkel's 1964 debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.- who's cover touted the album as “exciting new sounds in the folk tradition” was indeed that- a quiet, mournful folk song. It was nothing dynamic or earth-shaking, muscially at least, and the album itself was somewhat of a flop, rising to spot 30 in the U.S. after whichSimon and Garfunkel split up for the time being. The song wouldn't find its place in the canon of American music until record producer Tom Wilson decided to re-release "The Sound of Silence" that same year with overdubbed drums , electric bass and electric guitar . This version of the song reached Number One on New Year's Day 1966, Simon and Garfunkel reunited, released another album entitled “Sounds of Silence” ( with the electric version of the song) and went on to become of the most popular duo that they are. I'll discuss a bit more about the song's historical placement later, but right now I'd like to more on to a closer analysis of the text itself.

I’m deeply interested in Biblical elements within the lyrical structure of the song, as well as the impact and importance of mid-1960s American culture, in particular the youth culture’s response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Expanding the idea of the Jeremiad from its origins in Puritan and Colonial Studies into the arena of post-WWII culture and popular music, I assert that the song can be understood as a complicated sort of Jeremiad that replaces ideas of religious deviation with those of individual alienation and social tension, addressing both ailments but ultimately offering little in the way of a solution to either. Keeping in step with the form of the Jeremiad, “The Sound of Silence” is “able to make sense out of existence as long as adversity is to be overcome, but in the moment of victory it is confused” (Miller 33). Teeming with keen and poetic expressions of both social and personal alienation, with isolation and a thwarted, but fighting, hope for eventual renewal—indeed with the “lurid and gloomy eloquence” that characterizes so much of Biblical prophecy—the song exhibits a feeling of crisis created by the distance between possibility and reality. The anxiety of this distance expresses itself in the exhorting lyrics, which, when juxtaposed against hymn-like musical components, serve to further this anxious dissonance.

What exactly is a Jeremiad? In short form, it is a work that accounts for the misfortunes of an era as just penalty for great social and moral evils, but holds out hope for changes that will bring about a happier future.It is rooted in the Old Testament books of Isaiah and Jeremiah, taking its name from the latter prophet, who in the seventh century B.C. attributed the calamities of Israel to its abandonment of the Jewish God and its turn to pagan idolatry, calling on the people to repent and reform so that they might once again enjoy divine blessings. Although European forms exist, in America, the Jeremiah gained its foothold in colonial Puritan discourse, specifically between the years of 1660 and 1690, and was best articulated by preachers such as Samuel Danforth and Increase Mathers who stressed the need for a return to a stringent individual and social morality if the settlers were to maintain the favor and blessings of God. In current scholarship, the term has been expanded to include not only sermons, but other texts, such as captivity narratives, letters, covenant renewals, as well as some histories and biographies that rehearse the familiar tropes of the Jeremiad formula. I argue that musical expression, particularly “The Sound of Silence,” can also situate itself among these texts.

     The Jeremiad, as understood by Bercovitch, “is at once lament and indictment of the community’s sins and exhortation to return to the true faith.” It also “exhorts to action and cautions against headlong zeal.” Although anxiety is a key feature in such a text, by the end there is always the hope that, if the community does indeed reform and return, peace, prosperity, and salvation are assured, and that there exists in the present day “a spirit, now slumbering be able to be awakened.” This exhortation comes from a person, set apart from the rest of the community, who serves as an intermediary between a divine authoritative message source and the intended audience” (Stoda and Dionisopoulos 31).

Within “The Sound of Silence,” it is easy enough to see the narrator as this intermediary and the divine message source in the first few lines as a “softly creeping” nighttime vision that visits the anxious speaker with familiarity, as his “old friend.” One is reminded of the story of Pentecost in the book of Acts, of the “last days” where God pours out his spirit on all flesh, where sons and daughters prophesy and young men see visions and old men dream dreams (Acts 2:16-17). Following these dreams and visions, however, there comes a crisis, according to the Bible, of a magnitude never yet experienced on Earth, where the sun is turned to darkness, the moon to blood and only those that call on the name of the Lord will be saved. This is the Jeremiad in short form: Crisis abounds and yet hope exists, salvation is possible but never promised. Its very function is to “create a climate of anxiety that helps release the restless ‘progressivist’ energies required for the success of the venture…anxiety is its end as well as its means. Crisis is the social norm it seeks to inculcate” and in this state of crisis the hope for better prospects.

The future, though divinely assured, is never quite there yet. And so we see it play out the same way in the song, lyrically as well as musically, as voices rise in volume and intensity, most notably, on lines such “hear my words that I might teach you, take my arms that I might reach you” before falling again on “ but my words like silent raindrops fell and echoed in the wells of silence” . Paul Simon said in a 1984 Playboy interview that the song, although dated, can “be quite effective” as “it caught the mood of the time: alienation.” This alienation manifests itself in very strong words as the crowd are addressed as “fools” . One is quickly reminded of the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:22: “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, 'Raca,' is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell”. In light of a biblical lens, the mixture of anxiety and alienation has put the speaker in quite the serious position.For all of his attempts at connection, his displays of concern, for all of his outpouring of words, some very strong indeed, despite even his physical attempts to reach those around him, he never quite succeeds. His anxiety remains his own, the “I” of the speaker and the “you” of the people never merging into a “we.” His words fall like silent raindrops, numberless, anonymous and soon washed away, and he remains alone both physically and in his divine awareness of the gravity of the situation. His arms remain empty and his words fall on deaf ears. Those who have ears to hear have indeed not heard at all. The seeds he has tried to plant have not taken root. They have been eaten by birds, fallen amongst rocks and thorns, scorched and withered, not by the sun, but by the “naked light” of silence. Nothing has taken root (Mark 4: 1-12) because the audience the speaker is reaching to is as much the same one described by Isaiah 6: 9-10: “they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understand; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven.” These are people who are “talking without speaking, people hearing without listening, people writing songs” that are divorced from a physical existence, that “voices never sing.” The crop that the speaker is trying to plant among them produces no fruit. Perhaps this is understood by the last stanza where there are no longer any “I”’s there, “I” referring to the speaker. The prophet seems to have abandoned his quest and disappeared altogether; and yet, there remains hope as his words are softly whispered, both on the page and in the recording of the song, among the silence. This whispering implies a physical closeness, breath moving on an attentive ear as a hidden message is passed carefully along.

Has the prophet succeeded? No, or at least not for sure. But in the tradition of the Jeremiad, they seldom do, preferring instead to remain suspended in between the anxiety of how life is at the present and the hope that it might someday be transformed. Success consists more in maintaining an atmosphere of crisis within which there remains the possibility for reform and renewal, be it spiritual or—as in post-18th century Jeremiads—social in nature, in which “‘providence’ itself was shaken loose from its religious framework to become part of the belief in human progress a regional past substituted for a Biblical past, and fulfillment translated from its meaning within the closed system of sacred history into a metaphor for limitless secular improvements.” At the foundation of such exhortations and desires for social renewal is a “vision fed on the distance between promise and fact.”

This distance between promise and fact, between possibility and reality that propels the creation of the Jeremiad is highlighted by the knowledge that “The Sound of Silence” was first recorded on March 10th, 1964 and the lyrics only completed after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. While the counterculture itself had not yet blossomed, the youthfulness of the president and the hope that he seemed to embody, especially among young people, did constitute a community. Avenues for social and worldwide service such as the Peace Corps and the possibility of progress on social issues like civil rights ( leaving out the actual intentions or reality behind them) contributed to an atmosphere of hope and change that were indeed shattered by Kennedy's assassination, leaving a nation looking for answers, for whys, and at least, according to Paul Simon, not finding them. “Sounds of Silence” is not simply a song about this assassination, but it would be ill considered to not mention its effect on the writing of the song. One must attribute for the song's continued popularity however. It has been used in numerous films, spanning quite a large number of years, from The Graduate ( of course) in 1967 to 2009's The Watchman . In 1999, Broadcast Music Incorporated ranked it as the 18^th most performed song of the 20^th century. In 2013, the group's 1966 album “Sounds of Silence” was among 25 recordings from the 20^th century selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress. While its historical setting is no doubt important, beyond the specific historical setting of 1964 it contains other significant and still-felt emotions: the alienation of the individual, especially in times of crisis, the distance between men, between promise and possibility and the faint hope that still exists beneath all this separateness if such silence can be overcome.

The Sound of Silence as an American Jeremiad

A rough draft of a paper I'm working on. Feel free to leave comments or suggestions.  :)

This paper addresses the role of the prophet within Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence” using the lens of the American Jeremiad as articulated by Sacvan Bercovitch in 1978’s The American Jeremiad in which he traces the evolution of the jeremiad from the early 18th century to the early 20th century. Also of interest are biblical elements within the song as well as the impact of mid-1960s culture, particularly youth culture after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Continuing Bercovitch’s train of thought into the arena of post-WWII culture and popular music, I assert that the song can be understood as a complicated sort of Jeremiad that addresses both individual alienation and social tension without offering much in the way of a solution to either ailment. Teeming with keen and poetic expressions of alienation both social and personal,isolation and a thwarted hope for eventual renewal, the song exhibits a feeling of crisis created by the distance between possibility and reality. Hymn-like musical components juxtaposed against exhortive lyrics further this dissonance.

From a cultural standpoint, it is particularly interesting that this musical expression of alienation was created in a time very much characterized by movements built along different social and racial lines certainly, but nonetheless dependent on a sense of shared values and enacted on a scale much larger than that of the individual.

The jeremiad as understood by Bercovitch «takes its cue from the biblical prophet Jeremiah and the particular form of Puritan sermon and is at once lament and indictment of the community’s sins and exhortation to return to the true faith.» At the end, there is always the hope that, if the community does indeed reform and return, peace, prosperity and salvation are assured. This exhortation comes from a person, set apart from the rest of the community, who serves as an “intermediary between a divine authoritative message source and the intended audience” ( Stoda and Dionisopoulos 31). This divine message source occurs in Simon and Garfunkel’s song as a “softly creeping” nighttime vision that visits the anxious speaker with familiarity, that is his “old friend”. One is reminded of story of Pentecost in the book of Acts, of the “last days” where God pours out his spirit on all flesh, where sons and daughters prophesy and young men see visions and old men dream dreams ( Acts 2:16-17). What cannot be overlooked is that following these dreams and visions there comes a crisis, according to the Bible, of a magnitude never yet experienced on Earth, where the sun is turned to darkness, the moon to blood and only those that call on the name of the Lord will be saved. This is the Jeremiad in short form: Crisis abounds and yet hope exists, salvation is possible but never promised. Its very function is to “create a climate of anxiety that helps release the restless 'progressivist' energies required for the success of the venture.... anxiety is its end as well as its means. Crisis was the social norm it sought to inculcate” and in this state of crisis the hope for better prospects. The future, though divinely assured, is never quite there yet. And so we see it play out the same way in the song. Paul Simon has said that the song, although dated, can “be quite effective” as “ it caught the mood of the time: alienation”. The speaker, for all of his attempts, for all of his outpouring of words, despite even his physical attempts to reach those around him, never quite succeeds. His anxiety remains his own, the “I” of the speaker and the “you” of the people never merging into a “we”.   His words fall like silent raindrops, numberless, anonymous and soon washed away, and he remains alone both physically and in his divine awareness of the gravity of the situation. His arms remain empty and his words fall on deaf ears.  Indeed, by the last stanza, there is not even any more “I” there. The prophet seems to have abandoned his quest and disappeared altogether; and yet, there remains hope as his words are softly whispered, both on the page and in the recording of the song, among the silence. This whispering implies a physical closeness, breath moving on an attentive ear as a hidden message is passed carefully along. 

Has the prophet succeeded? No, but in the tradition of the Jeremiad, they seldom do. Success consists more in maintaining an atmosphere of crisis within which there remains the possibility for reform and renewal, be it spiritual or- as in post 18th century Jeremiads- social in nature in which “ 'providence' itself was shaken loose from its religious framework to become part of the belief in human progress a regional past substituted for a biblical past,  and fulfillment translated from its meaning within the closed system of sacred history into a metaphor for limitless secular improvement”.  At the foundation of  such exhortations and desires for social renewal is a “vision fed on the distance between promise and fact”. This distance between promise and fact, between possibility and reality that propels the creation of Jeremiads is highlighted by the knowledge that The Sound of Silence was first recorded on March 10th, 1964 and the lyrics only completed after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. While the counterculture itself had not yet blossomed the youthfulness of the president and the hope that he seemed to embody, especially among young people, did constitute a community. Promises and the possibility of progress on social issues like civil rights ( leaving out the actual intentions or reality behind them) were indeed shattered by the event, leaving a nation looking for answers, for whys, and at least, according to Paul Simon, not finding them. Sounds of Silence contains all of this: the alienation of the individual, the distance between men, between promise and possibility and the faint hope that still existed beneath all this separateness if such silence could be overcome. 

French Doldrums

It's springtime here. The flowers just came up one night out of nowhere it seems. Red poppies that will die within a few hours of being plucked up, yellow daffodils that remind me of the ones that used to grow at Nonnie's and Poppy's house, little purple ones that Alan put in my hair one day when we were walking and got lost in the woods near the house. Its beautiful, really. Skies more perfect and blue than I've ever seen before, fixed clouds in the back, floating in the front, over seas of green farm fields and yellow flowers and church steeples in little villages so much like a storybook its crazy, I know there's a boulangerie on the corner there and on Sunday the people will line up at  the best one and wait for their baguettes and go home to lazy family dinners with plenty of time and more than enough wine. So why do I just not feel quite right, admist all this beauty? Part of it is my natural predilection towards laziness. Sleeping in the last two mornings, I did set an alarm last night but the alarms in this house have a way of never going off, no matter how many of them you set. I need to work more on my thesis, but for what? Graduate school here stinks compared to Austin. I'm not intrigued, not motivated and it won't matter anyways because no U.S. college will accept this degree, and for good reason. Part of me is bored. How many times can you mop up dog piss and fold clothes before it just gets old. I swear the old dog has some built in poofer where she goes around and simultaneously ejects hair and piss into any inconveniently out of the way crevice she can find. And then I feel like shit, cleaning, when I come across pictures of her when she was young and black in the face and her eyes are glowing and her teeth white and strong. And I forgive her for pissing now, in her 14th or so year, everywhere in the living room, for ruining the curtains and wanting to sleep all day on her worn bed and never go slowly outside. And then I spend too much time on this damn computer and hate myself for that. It felt so good that day that Alan left for work and forgot to give me the key after a lunchtime walk. I laid outside for 5 hours, watching the sun shine through grass blades. You can see the little bugs crawling on the top side of the grass. Little spiders crawl between blades on invisible strings. The littlest puppy has curly hair in the middle of her tail and the shy one, the one I call dinky-doo, has a spotted nose. I'd rather notice those things than read that Israel has bombed Syria or the Republicans are up to some more crazy shit or why can't we all just get along. We can't get along because some people are crazy and I'm tired of crazy. America you make me want to be a saint. But how can I be a saint in a house with 10 dogs and two cats and not enough books, basically a kennel and a storage facility for extended family, in a country where I'd give anything to just have a normal conversation at the grocery store or be able to eavesdrop on candlelit restaurant conversations. Saints live in little darkened rooms with wooden crosses on the dripping walls. This is not how I pictured my La Neuville Sur Oudeuil doldrums....

My Sister the Single Parent ( but SO much more than that)

In honor of National Single Parent Day on March 21, I've decided to write up a short little post about the single parent closest to me, my younger sister. Things around the web have been a bit harsh in regards to single parents lately, with everything from a new report from policy research organization Third Way seemingly blaming single moms for the decrease in men's economic earnings to the usual senseless dribble from the Heritage Foundation ( which I'm not going to link to here. If you want to read it ,look it up, but in my opinion, the sooner they vanish away into oblivion, the better). Despite these stories, and the attendant stereotypes about single and young mothers  that often accompany them, the truth of the matter is never so black and white. What I want to talk about here is the fact that single parents ( not just mothers) have it HARD, much more so than partnered parents, and deserve some credit for both their struggles and their success. Case in point, my sister Lesa. In short, I think she's amazing. Although I won't get into why she was forced into the role of single parent here, suffice it to say that it was not a choice. Most single parents do not set out with the goal of being that way. They find themselves in tough situations and make what they see as being the best choice both for themselves and for their children. My sister had her oldest child while still in high school and her youngest shortly after graduating from college. Whats that you say, your sister graduated from college single and with children?  She didn't end up some ignorant, drug-addicted mooch like some people would have you think all single, young parents will?  No, she did not end up anywhere near that. And not only that. My sister has had to deal with the loss of "friends" after becoming pregnant so young, with the abuse and abandonment of partners, and with all the stress that normally comes along with parenting. This is some heavy stuff to talk about, much less have to live through. And here's the thing- She has done an amazing job, both on improving herself and on being one heck of a role model to her two young children. She was in the top 5 percent of her high school class and graduated college with a 3.9 GPA. Pretty awesome huh? Her children are not damaged, mentally or emotionally, and they do not live in poverty. They are some of the smartest, most creative, imaginative and loving children that I have ever met. True story: When they were visiting with me in Austin last year, we went out to grab a bite at Taco Cabana and Benjamin, then 6, goes up to a black lady at the coke machine, gives her a huge hug, and says I love you. Which cracked everyone around him up. And I mention her race because racism is still a VERY present force in the small town where the children are being raised. And I'm very proud of my sister for not passing such filthy ideas on to her children. Same for the religion aspect of small northeast Texas towns.  I'm not saying that life is all sunshine and roses for Lesa or her kids. Or that she never loses her temper or that the kids never get frustrated and act like....well like normal frustrated kids. What I am saying is that she is doing an awesome and commendable job being a single parent. That she daily considers the needs and wants of her children and seeks to meet all of them that she can, all on her own. And I know there are tons of other single parents out there that do the same thing. They do not deserve our doubt, our judgement, or our assumptions. They deserve a high five ( and some help, both on a personal and national scale). So here's your high five Lesa. Way to go :)

My Thesis Is Still Not Written....

So, for the sake of feeling like I've done something productive today, other than watch too many episodes of the French version of Real Housewives, here is the current outline for my thesis. I only have 6 pages and its due by mid-June and is supposed to be 60 pages by that point, so perhaps this will help me at least start writing at a more...rapid pace. For some reason, I'm having alot more trouble writing this time around than I did with my undergraduate thesis. I was thinking yesterday that perhaps  this is because I started with a single text analysis ( Patti Smith's "Because the Night") with the first one and with this one, I don't have any one single place that I'm starting at. So maybe that's what I'll do next, find either one Ginsberg interview or one Smith song/interview/performance and sort of start in the middle and see where things go. But for now, a more elaborate outline with some key words and such. If any fellow writers/academics want to give advice or set up an exchange schedule together, that might be nice. Oh and I guess the subject would help. Basically its about the moral and social vision put forth by the life and work of Patti Smith and Allen Ginsberg, particularly their embrace of dualism and often seemingly contradictory ideals.

Intro

Why I want to write this thesis, how I got to this point, my past research, why Smith and Ginsberg are important

Theoretical Lens

For this part I'm going to use my old favorite, Bakhtin ( Is there any possible thesis subject that Bakhtin can't be used for? If so, I haven't found it yet because I seriously used him in about 80 percent of my junior and senior papers). In particular, I'll be using his concepts of dialogism- the idea that something special happens when multiple voices have a dialogue with each other. I'll apply this to how Smith and Ginsberg borrow from multiple and often seemingly contradicting positions in formulating and expressing their views of morality and the good society. And just to make this part more awesome, apart from Bakhtin, I'm going to that "I contain multitudes" Whitman quote in the title somehow. Yep, Bakhtin, Whitman, Patti Smith and Allen Ginsberg. Pretty cool.

Contemporary Sources/ Other Lens of Analysis

This is where I'll bring in other research that I feel is valuable and/or is a lens through which to better understand what Smith and Ginsberg are up to. Its made up of three parts/authors.

      - Theodore Roszak's The Making of a Counterculture: The Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition . This text is particularly valuable for several reasons. First of all it was written in 1969, at the tail end of the counterculture movement and serves therefore as a time capsule of sorts. Secondly, it has an interesting chapter on Allen Ginsberg. Interesting because Roszak is quite fond of Ginsberg and his style and demeanor, but in an earlier chapter was very ( and I mean VERY) critical of the counterculture's use of psychedelic drugs. This seems like quite the contradiction to be being as Ginsberg has never been the least bit shy about advocating the use of such drugs. So I'll talk about that. And also about how Roszak sees in the counterculture an expression of joy, of openness, and a rejection of the ruling scientifically, technologically based society in favor of a more expressive, spiritual and creative sort of structure. The link between this source and the following one will be the idea of decency ( that expressed by the counterculture and how it might apply on a larger scale).

     - Avishai Margalit's The Decent Society is actually the text that I have read the least of ( but we'll fix that soon....) It was recommended to me by a former professor and friend who I greatly respect, so I know it will be useful, its just getting around to finishing it that's the problem right now. From what I currently understand, Margalit's idea of the good society is one that is centered around the concept that no member of that society should be humiliated, either on purpose or through humiliating laws. The absence of humiliation, rather than ideas of rights or justice or fairness, is how he measures a society's morality. I think this will be especially helpful in regards to Ginsberg and his embrace of non-confrontation in dealing with those who he disagrees with, as well as the issue of his homosexuality. In particular, I'm thinking of using this piece when I analyze his interview with John Lofton, which, believe me, is all sorts of crazy. If for some reason you don't believe me, take a look here . Actually, even if you do believe, just read it. It will make you all love Ginsberg even more than I'm sure you already do. What I'm struggling a bit with is how to relate Margalit's concept to Patti Smith. This source will be connected to the next one by the idea that our treatment of others in a large society is linked to our view of and expression of our personal self.


     - Curtis White's The Spirit of Disobedience: Resisting the Charms of Fake Politics, Mindless Consumption and the Culture of Total Work is one of my favorite books ( as is his other work, The Middle Mind). Few authors have as much....tenacity is a nice way to put it perhaps, as White does. He's not shy about naming his targets and firing away at them. What is both inspiring and frustrating however is how he never quite manages to offer a concrete solution to the problems that he names with contemporary society. This is where I think Ginsberg and Smith come in handy though, as they are living examples of what it might look like to live out the ideals that White writes about, namely the embrace of a spirituality that acknowledges the humanity inherent in us all, of a way of life that functions outside of the parasitic nature of capitalism and of a creativity that finds constant and ever-changing expression as just a fact of everyday life, not something that must exist outside of "work".  Also helpful is White's emphasis that, politically speaking, society must get out of the left/right dichotomy that it seems stuck in. Neither side is pure and spotless ( although, granted, he argues, forcefully and convincingly -although I needed little convincing, commie pinko that I am- that the modern Republican party is an atrocity in all sorts of nasty and damaging ways). Ginsberg has lent his support to a variety of political and social movements but its hard to say that he's a card-carrying member of any party (even leftist ones in actual practice as seen in his forced expulsion from Cuba and the Soviet Union in the late 1960s). Especially the two that dominate U.S. politics at this point and time. Smith too has campaigned in support of Ralph Nader but has, especially at the beginning of her career, strongly resisted being labelled or claimed by either political or social movements ( her....contentious views on feminism being a prime example).

Actual Examples in Smith and Ginsberg

And here is where I get even more stuck. This is the part where I want to identify specific values that I feel Smith and Ginsberg exemplify and find specific times/performances/works in which they've shown these values. I'd like to focus on four values: the freedom to exist/create, joy, the spiritual and the body, and gentleness/decency. I'm just not exactly sure what acts or poems or songs I want to use for each section or whether its best to discuss Ginsberg and then Smith or sort of mish-mash them together with my other sources or what.  Perhaps it might be best to try and find one example from each that covers multiple values? I'm sure I'll use the Lofton interview here, definitely for decency and maybe for more than that. But Smith is proving to be a hard dog to make hunt here. If all else fails, I can use "Because the Night" again, at least partially.

Link Between Smith and Beat Philosophy/ Values

From here I would like to talk about why Smith is seen as a descendent of the Beats. In particular, why does she identify with Beat figures like Ginsberg ( and Burroughs) instead of the hippie generation that came between her and the beats? I think its the sense of independence, of the personal and of freedom that is not limited by a "movement". My former colleague recommended what appears to be an excellent book to me, Simon Warner's Text and Drugs and Rock n Roll, which I'll be purchasing soon and think will really help out here. But I'm still a bit hesitant as to whether this section needs to go at the beginning or at the end as I've mapped it out here. 

Why It Matters Now

My favorite way to close is piece is by asking and attempting to answer Kerouac's " And what difference does it make?" I think Smith and Ginsberg's ideas matter very very much. Especially with the rightward push in the U.S. as well as the inability of the left to embrace any sort of spirituality and the general ability across the front to embrace a from of spirituality that is expansive and inclusive instead of non-existant, narrow-minded or exclusive. As regards the practices of the academy, I'm also an unabashed supporter of interdisciplinary studies ( Yay American Studies!) and of the need to talk about what we love, in Barthes words, without losing critical distance.

Whew, okay. Thats it for now. Let me know what you think! And excuse any typos please. :)

Me and Holden

Hi everyone- or really, just me right now. This is the first post of a new blog. Maybe just mine, maybe mine and my SO's, we'll see. I'm not exactly sure what I want to do with it. Its more an effort to catalogue and preserve my ideas and feelings more than it is an effort to do much else. My own little Holden Caulfield, " why can't life be like a museum" sort of thing. That was always my favorite part of the book. Maybe I can find the part online. And yes, here it is, or at least part of it :

"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole […]. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or that kid that was your partner in line last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way – I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it.- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Ch. 16

Its beautiful no? This desire to be able to change ourselves but to have everything around us stay exactly the same? To be able to go back to those places you loved as a child, grandparents houses, the first time you galloped on your pony on a dusky Texas evening, night coming in fast, the tall grass brushing your bare legs, summer camps, a favorite birthday, whatever your thing was as a kid ( mine was the grandparents), to relive some crazy summer, nights full of Kentucky Deluxe and Mountain Dew, to freeze the moment when a first love was just that, a new and exciting and unbroken thing, and leave it there, unchanging, to come back and visit whenever you wanted? Maybe its when your children were born or the first time a new niece or nephew smiled at you and you knew that things might still but rough,  but they were going to be okay and you would make it. Maybe its the first time you held the hand, in a dark backseat, a bit drunk perhaps,  rain sliding down the window, the lights of Austin (or any city really) warped on the falling drops, of the man that would open life up for you in a way that you had never felt or thought possible and that you'd eventually marry. The way he looked as he walked up the sidewalk at the airport nearly 24 hours after he left France on a months notice. Because thats the sort of crazy things he does and thats what makes- and will make- all the future moments with him worthwhile and wonderful. These are my moments that I would freeze in my own version of Caulfield's museum. I'm sure you'll hear more about them. But right now, I want to hear about your stories. Tell me, what beautiful moment do you wish you could have put away and kept safe and separate, to visit over and over again, whenever your heart wanted?