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.
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