Ginsberg speaks July 10, 1985

  

I woke up angry, hung over, worried about my eyes.

I couldn’t read for a while, splotches of color danced on the page of my book, blotting out whole letters.

My shoulder still hurts as does my back and head.

I took my temperature, praying I had a fever. No go. I just don’t want to be here. Or even write these words. But I’m caught up in the rituals of my own life, demanding that I press on regardless of how I feel.

Last night, we went and saw Ginsberg at the college, a strange fellow, touring the country, making his political speeches.

A few years ago, his appearance here got canceled when William Paterson was still a teachers’ college and having a radical poet like him seemed inappropriate.

Things have changed. We have all sorts of right- and left-wing radicals coming on campus, Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Abbie Hoffman, and now Ginsberg.

Kissinger came last November. Haig in February. Abbie – who I knew from the lower east side before he went underground to escape a cocaine-dealing arrest – came before those.

Abbie’s reappearance drew a large crowd. Kissinger and Haig drew a lot of protests. Ginsberg’s drew a few loyal souls, and only two protestors, me and Michael – and we were largely ignored.

No stretch limo, not college president, no TV and news crews, no national attention.

The only reporters came from local newspapers, and we were the only underground press.

It was kind of sad, watching this old man take Ripmaster’s place in front of the class, going through his usual preaching diatribe that has become so worn out over time, having heard most of it before over the airways of WBAI, the poetry, the music, the protest against capitalism, racism and all the other isms he has historically been against.

Ginsberg was everywhere doing everything in the 1960s. He was with me at the Columbia University protest, the Chicago Democratic Convention Protest and various poetry events I attended later at the Great Falls in Paterson. He was in Europe for the radical spring uprising and made appearances at this event and that as if his whole life was one big publicity stunt. But his power and his prestige as part of the Beat Generation gave him street credibility as his words shocked a whole generation into rebelling against mainstream society.

The room drew an audience of hippie-lovers and wannabe Marxists, but also a few curious mainstream boys, jocks for the most part who came to giggle and eventually left early, leading Ginsberg to mock them as they went, drawing a laugh from the hip crowd who had come to get their radical merit badges, Ginsberg-imitators nodding their approval, not just as the insult, but at the propaganda spouted sometimes as poetry. Even Ripmaster smiled, having managed to bring one of the Gods of the previous sixties to campus, giving his own radical creditability of a boost, a ghost from the past who was ever present in our lives, influencing our generation as profoundly as the Beatles had.

It seemed hugely important to our radical professor that he bring in these legends before they vanished, preserving the essence of what once was and what might be again in the future – although with Reagan in the White House – not a near future.

Not all of those who came, however, were Ginsberg fans or jocks to be mocked, but legitimately concerned people at the erosion of morality Ginsberg testified to, such as the nun in the back of the room that glared at him through each of his racy poems, full of curses and cocks, much of which the well-aware Ginsberg seemed to aim in their direction, his eyes glinting with glee as he did.

Watching him, I was reminded of the old comics from the Vaudeville days who infrequently appear on late night TV, masters of their craft who continue their schtick with an unappreciated brilliance, lost in time as mainstream tastes moved on without them.

But here, Ginsberg gave us a real-life education on the 1960s, his hope for a better world part of his intention, while all the flaws of that failed movement the subtext, the mistaken arrogance of know-it-all self-righteousness that made his kind of insufferable and ultimately made their call for revolution unattainable.

It made me angry, a rage that remained even through my sleep and dreams, the arrogance of social justice that justified anything and everything, when little or none of it could be justified at all, and me knowing we would see it all again, the same delusion, the same pathetic self-centered social warriors rising up, the same pathetic misunderstanding of society or America or the life we all needed to live, and how much we all needed to strive to survive.

 

 1985 Menu


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