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I
love telephone poles all strung together and filing off into the distance,
and giant steel power-line towers standing like aliens in ochre fields. All the roads rushing, rushing, the burnt
fields, lakes, farm buildings, fabulous cities. I like to write in the car because the process is so like the
aciton -- a stream of images unravelling like a ribbon (like a film). I
have to show you the really handsome circa 1959 photos of him, so dashing
as he stood poised to be taken seriously as an author, at last, suit and
tie, hair slicked, beautiful innocent face.
The thing I value in his writing is that he could really SEE, even
in his later cloudy state, his condition and situation
(c.f. Big Sur, Vanity), retaining
w. a cinematic clarity the essence of each phase of his life, the places
and people and feelings. He
could see the reasons to strive, to try; yet also the reasons why none
of it matters, “...and anyway I wrote the book because we're
all gonna die...” The futility of achievement, the sad fact that no matter how
much one accomplishes, it's not going to save us. He had believed, early on, as we all did, that heroic deeds
and great words/thoughts COULD save us, and set us free. There he was, life in uproar, his brother,
father, best friend dead, loved ones distant, his dreams, even when fulfilled
not adding up to salvation. All
his youth gone, his youthful desires accomplished somewhat and welldone
too and yet, what of it? I
half-heartedly attempted a Carver article last year, just for myself,
and wrote all this stuff, but ultimately I realized that he meant so much
to me that it was beyond the logic of explanations, and exposition, it
was completely emotional, intuitive, non-conveyable.
So I put all those writings in a file and left them. I have tapes of him reading, which I really want you to hear... So now
we have the tapes of Jack's voice, available to any who might want them. I can give up my search for those beat-up
impossible-to-find-and-then-$150-when-you -do old Hannover and Verve releases.
His voice as familiar as my friend Thom's at this point, and that
means pretty close. I'm wondering, now: Who wants to listen? Are there still people willing to take
this stuff to heart? Poets? Idea-visionaries? People with backgrounds and hometowns
and new lives, mothers, fathers, lovers and their attendant sadnesses,
troubles, friends, broken-down old cars, riotous insane good times, the
love of maps, the Madonna hotel, full suitcases, Las Vegas, the big questions,
confusion, longing, desire, goofing, silliness, indulgence, despair, cinemas,
bedroom eyes, rowboats, bookstores? what
about the ‘jazz’ comparison? Somewhere
in the pages of Vanity of Dulouz we find our man Jack talking about the geneology of his surname,
Kerr stemming
from the Cornish Celtic word for ‘house’ , and Uack meaning ‘language of’.
Thus: In The House of Language. He had found for himself the most perfect
life-affirmation! Beyond
family beyond religion beyond the road:
the word and nickel notebooks full were what Jack believed in --
they constituted the true furnishings in his head-house. For better or worse he was damned to thought-dreams and the
written word as memory, the printed page as history. These
three records were all recorded in 1959, there were none before or later,
although Jack had long kept a tape recorder by his side, for to record
his drunken Sinatra imitaions, sure, but also because he recognized that
which he was about: language,
how it sounds, how it is spoken, how it rolls off the mind's tongue. The spontaneous head-spew which appears
before the mind can apply logic and reason. These pieces may be spontaneously writ and recited, but it's
obvious how much preparation has come first, how much attention to rhythm,
to punctuation, to tone.
I'm listening
to Mike Watt's new demo tape now, and his world is Econo, Flannel, Pedro,
and Righteous. Nick Cave's
world is full these days of bibles and preachers and emotional trials. He has adopted the imagery of rolling
trains, barnyards and swamps. Jack's
was redbrick, mad,
and gone,
all that road going, red wine and tea and pomes, Christianity and Bhuddism. Trying to make sense out of things which
one shouldn't neccessarily try to make sense out of, namely, well, everything.
How to understand our own lives in light of a wheatfield, the billion
stars at night, teevee shows, paintings, K-Marts, pop music, plutomium,
8-track tapes, a beautiful face looking straight into yrs, history, etc.
How to fit into it, see yrself on the end of it's line. Jack
was haunted by history, by events.
Why did things happen the way they did?
Have you ever asked yrself this?
How did I get HERE? How from football
star to notorious beatnik scribe, from pure 3 year old boy to whirlwinded
misunderstood famous 30 yr old King-of-the-Beats, and the blurr beyond.
Drunk. How are these dots connected? Jack wanted to know, to understand the
futility of banging his head against the world, trying to make sense of
his own life. So he spewed
forth, hoping that maybe the thoughts he assembled -- the specific memories
and created images which he chose to signify in his work -- would shed
some light on these questions. Leafing
through an old Evergreen Review, the second issue, the San Francisco issue,
I found Jack's 'Oct in the RR Earth'.
It's also the first track on his beautiful first record, one I've
heard many times and am quite familiar with.
It's a wonderful piece, on tape, but it's one of his stories which
has always remained somewhat impenetrable to me, in print -- these dense
wordimages [ “...how'd’ya
like’ta oolyakoo with me, mon?” ] not always adding up. Reading those opening paragraphs again,
which my ears have grown so familiar with, I realized that the words as
written move somehow too slowly, the images don't come across fast enough
to flash cinematic; but as Jack reads aloud it really rolls, the images
knocking rhythhmic tip,tup,bip,bop into one another, pushing the thing
forwards at a great clip. All
the word-pictures falling into place.
Listen to his voice: the sound of it as well as the meanings. His voice on these disks opens up the words, elucidate and
set the scene, the mindset, in which these thoughts roam. It's
only recently I'm struck by the terribly tacky lounge-piano accompaniment
which Steve Allen provides here, vamping on ‘What Kind of Fool Am
I’ and ‘Stormy Weather’.
Gheesh! (But it doesn't matter).
Jack, end of MacDougal Street Blues: “...I just wanna be sincere.” And that he is, I can feel it on this
one.
My
least favorite record in this collection, this one seems thrown-off, unfocused,
a bit off all around despite some nice passages. The booklet claims that Al Cohn and Zoot Simms didn't even
care afterwds to hear playback, but went for drinks, leaving Jack dismayed.
It sort of sounds like that.
There is less mood on this disk.
Too spontaneous (!). This is indulgent babbling, riffing with
no place to go, on the part of all the players. Too loose. Occasionally
a flash of Jack's vision, a phrase or sentance rises out of this murk.
This record makes little sense to me.
I can't really listen to this, esp. next to the other two. The Steve
Allen Show Bonus Cut: This
is what it's all about, an essential blast, encapsulated. (Seek this on video!)
"..All the stories I wrote were true, because I believed
in what I saw.”
Ginsbg's
quote: “Yet K's poetry rarely included in anthologies...” The sincere
confessional tone of his voice.
His improv much like SY's movements around designated signposts,
during the journey fr. pt. to pt., image to image. The stroyline (route) dictated by the immediate turns of the
mind. The Pull
My Daisy soundtrack
omission, only poss fault w. this collection. Milstein: The censorship issue surrounding the 1st
record, which still is haunting us today: “I am not accustomed to writing liner notes in defence
of pornography.” Will
the world never turn around?
I'm
hiding behind the screen, unwilling to look at this room. Unable to look at you and know how I feel.
The room is rushing up at me, thought-dreams flashing like strobes,
one after the next, no time to pull them up from the well.
I'm spinning words not deeds.
Blowing a hollow horn. Late
night now, I'm thinking of so many different things, the loft is quiet,
I'm flashing images as the house sleeps.
Jack is talking, there's no music on this one, just his voice. I'm not listening to the stories right
now, I know them by heart anyway (ev'n the never heard ones). His voice is the music now, I hear his
occasional punctuation -- “Neal”, “Third and Howard”
(S.F.),
“Colorahda”, “I love Allen Ginsberg, let that be recorded
in Heaven's unchangable heart” (and when did you love a friend enough to proclaim it unabashedly
to the world, without fear?), “Mardou” (how sad and carefully he tells of
his failed love), all the rolling and dripping language, comforting, familiar
as rain on a porch. It has
been pointed out how this last disc, unaccompanied, is startlingly the
most musical of all. After
the over-casual air of BLUES AND HAIKUS, this is a serious record: I can feel Jack alone in the studio, (“...and in the
BarOQUE periodoftheThreeStooges...”), telling it, and he's seen it clear. Impressions, stories, emotions, everything
that's important. We ride
along knowing we're somewhat tangential to his need to tell it. The Three Stooges as a twentieth century
metaphor, in seriousness, and throwing his best friend in their midst,
what could be more perfect? The Extra
Track: He gets on stage,
right?, and is to address this ridiculous topic:
“Is There A Beat Gen?” [a critics idea, natch], and
he stands up and says "The question is very silly because we should
be wondering tonight ‘Is There a World’...there really is
no world, you know, sometimes I'm
walking on the ground and I see right through the ground...there
is reallly no world...you'll find out..." Now he
says this with utmost seriousness, it's his premise, his belief, and it
seems to go right by everyone. It
doesn't even get an uneasy laugh.
But that's where he's coming from, but the audience is waiting
to be entertained with funny stories and drunken episodes.
Missing the point. THERE
IS NO WORLD, he says. There
Is No World. "And
here is a poem I wrote about Harpo Marx," he says, "Harpo! I'll always
love you!....” “This poem,” he says, “I dedicate to human
suffering and human salvation! You're
not listening!!”
Overall,
Rhino has done a great job. It
all sounds good, the booklet is one of the best of it's kind, with plenty
of reminiscinces from everyone you's expect, the photos are great, etc. The omission of the Pull My Daisy soundtrack
I still find completely inexcusable, but hey, I've got it on a cassette
somewhere...
tapes
of JC Holmes Acetates, any other recorded stuff [I
have stuff to trade, write c/o box 6179, Hoboken, NJ 07030] |