{"id":212,"date":"2007-06-03T15:07:55","date_gmt":"2007-06-03T15:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=212"},"modified":"2020-05-07T13:34:22","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T17:34:22","slug":"writing-social-change-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2007\/06\/03\/writing-social-change-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"WRITING, SOCIAL CHANGE & REVOLUTION"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following essay appeared in a recent posting on John Sinclair’s always fascinating travelpod blog<\/a>. John has an accute instinct for ferreting out meaning and truth in a blighted world. I’m grateful for having learned many lessons from this revolutionary “on the road” scholar.<\/p>\n

Here is a manifesto for our times<\/em> — written by Ed Sanders<\/strong><\/a>, a great American writer, poet, musician, publisher, activist — and long-time supporter of the Detroit Artist Workshop. Another Ed Sander’s essay worth checking out is: “Investigative Poetry: The Content of History Will Be Poetry”<\/font><\/a> <\/strong>Sanders has long been a practioner of the narrative historical poem, a format he helped devolop for his epic nine volume America: a History in Verse.<\/em> This new essay reads as an extension of Investigative Poetry<\/em>, with practical advice and methods for creating, surviving and getting through it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Writing, Social Change & Revolution
\nA Talk with Poetry and Music
\nBy Edward Sanders<\/strong>
\nKeynote Address
\nNew York College English Association Spring Conference
\nSUNY New Paltz
\nApril 13, 2007<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m happy and honored to be here. What an exciting era! The very structure of the nation seems at risk, yet somehow we take resolve and rise up to protect the Bill of Rights, personal freedoms, and are more determined than ever to create a world without war.<\/p>\n

My subject is Writing, Social Change and Revolution, and if I say anything that seems outr\u00c3\u00a9 or what they call beyond the pale, I hope that you will receive it as coming from a long time activist who is determined not to allow a great nation to sail into a right wing quagmire. These war-mad, fear-drenched anguished times require all of us to stay alert, get into action, and put our shoulders to the wheel.<\/p>\n

I will try not only to be theoretical, but also very practical, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll bring some poetry and music to the presentation also.
\nOne of the main points of my beliefs comes from a quote from a poem by Allen Ginsberg written after his friend Jack Kerouac passed away in 1969:
\nWell, while I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m here I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll
\ndo the work\u00e2\u20ac\u201d
\nand what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the Work?
\nTo ease the pain of living
\nEverything else, drunken
\ndumbshow
\n(from \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Memory Gardens\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Oct. 22-29, 1969)<\/p>\n

One of the biggest problems in an era of senseless warfare, erosion of rights, global warming, lack of health care, polluted water, the mania of privatization, plus thousands, literally thousands of other pressing issues, is the lack of time. How can we, as activists, find the time to face the right wing onslaught that threatens the very core of a great nation?
\nHow can we carry on our regular work, in our homes, in our jobs, as scholars and teachers, keep up our friendships, while at the same time doing effective work to forge a new direction for America, and a new direction for Gaia, the small planet on a small arm of a small spiral galaxy upon when we briefly dwell?<\/p>\n

The Scholar-Activist <\/strong>
\nOne possible answer is to become what I would call the Scholar-Activist. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a concept that occurred to me while reading Matthew Arnold\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Scholar-Gypsy.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d A Scholar-Activist follows a pattern that is common to writers\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat is, spending weeks and weeks, or months and months, in front of a computer, typewriter or even yellow pads, writing and rewriting and editing, over and over and over, like a monk in a small stone cell, till a book is done, and the writer can emerge into the real world and face all its interactions.<\/p>\n

The Scholar-Activist has a similar life path of private research and public action. The point for the Scholar-Activist is always to be carefully studying the issues on which you are active. In a social cause, knowing the new facts early, and knowing all the facts is extremely useful in building up bonds of trust in the public arena. The Scholar-Activist is always creating alphabetical and chronological files, and memorizing details, in order to come up with programs and ideas for a Better World. The formula is know your stuff then strut your stuff.<\/p>\n

Finding time is always a problem. But it is totally and absolutely necessary for you to take the calm time to thoroughly study issues. Try to find an hour a day for the scholarly side of Scholar-Activism.
\nMulti-Decade Projects<\/strong><\/p>\n

And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a long lasting flow of time, this being a Scholar-Activist; for, just as a career in writing, art, music or teaching is, say, 60 years long, so too your life as an Scholar-Activists is a sixty year path. Also, keep neat and usable files, because the files and researches and studies you put together in one decade may be of use, even great use, thirty years later.
\nShaw and Time-Tithing <\/strong>
\nBeing alive today is like being a sunflower surrounded by a million suns, there are so many distractions! How do you keep from getting overwhelmed? Engulfed in the absolute sea of human warfare, injustice and misery? People sometimes comment on how tired anti-war or environmental activists appear, with their eyes ringed like bruised apples.<\/p>\n

One solution, in part, is the concept of time-tithing. To give regular amounts of time, time-tithing to social causes. A great example of this is found in the career of the playwright George Bernard Shaw, who lived from 1856 through most of 1950. Even though George Bernard Shaw was a world famous playwright and critic, he nevertheless regularly worked for the cause of Fabian socialism, setting aside time weekly, giving speeches for the cause, writing the text of pamphlets and newspapers, doing the down and dirty daily routines of spreading the word, however exalted his position as a playwright was.<\/p>\n

Time-tithing, part of the path to prevent becoming overwhelmed.
\nThe Saturation Job<\/strong><\/p>\n

My mentor, the poet Charles Olson, first showed me the important concept of the Saturation Job. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Best thing to do,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he wrote to the poet Edward Dorn, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is to dig one thing or place or man or woman until you yourself know more abt that than is possible to any other man. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter whether it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Barbed Wire or Pemmican or Paterson or Iowa. But exhaust it. Saturate it. Beat it. And then U KNOW everything else very fast: one saturation job (it might take 14 years). And you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in, forever.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d My own saturation job was the research and data system I put together during several years writing my book The Family, a history of the Charles Manson group.<\/p>\n

The enormous and extended research that one of you might do, for example, studying a creek or a wetlands you want to protect over the course of months or years, might be YOUR Saturation Job.<\/p>\n

Once you do your Saturation Job, then you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re prepared as you can be for the eery thrill of being an activist in the Bush era.<\/p>\n

One more word about research files: don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have it all on a computer; but put it into folders, alphabetical and chronological, because there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing quite like spiffling through actual files\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat tactile feeling\u00e2\u20ac\u201dto give you ideas for position papers, ideas for further research, thoughts for leaflets, stories, poems, ads on issues, and the like.<\/p>\n

Overcoming Despair, Defeat, Self-Doubt<\/strong>
\nIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important not to be down-toned all the time, important not to freeze-dry frown wrinkles and cracks of despair into your long-term face. You have to keeping smiling. Eat meals with your cohorts. Sing together. In my youth going on peace walks and civil rights marches, many people carried a guitar and we sang all the time. If our church was surrounded by the klan, we would softly sing together.<\/p>\n

So, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very very important to laugh into the smiling lips of defeat and doubt. There are always those in any cause who are horrified when you party or have a good time now and then. Many of them won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t change this attitude; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just part of the hefty mix of making a better world. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t forget to smile and party.
\nYou have to be Ready for Ridicule
\nIt pays to study the life of the great American Rachel Carson, who overcome great cascades of putdown and ridicule from the chemical polluters when Silent Spring <\/em>was published in 1962; or what happened to Daniel Ellsberg when he heroically released the Pentagon Papers in 1971; or what happened to Native Americans at Pine Ridge\u00e2\u20ac\u201dto understand how you have to be prepared for ridicule.
\nThe establishment loves to use ridicule and dismissiveness as a weapon.<\/p>\n


\nThe Mead Quote<\/strong>
\nSometimes a Scholar-Activist can feel SO ALONE, and feel as if no one is listening or paying attention. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a subtle phenomenon, however; the fact is that you may be having a greater impact than you can ever know. And sometimes it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not what you stop now, but what you prevent in the future. The huge Moratorium demonstrations in Washington in 1969 prevented Richard Nixon from expanding the war.
\nIn this regard people sometimes quote Margaret Mead: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/em><\/p>\n

Factionalism<\/strong>
\nThose on the center-left are sometimes accused of being riven with factional strife, with putting slight modulations of personal advance, or sectarian power, in front of the overall goal of promoting commonweal and the relief of suffering. Some people seem naturally inclined to create shit-lists, sometimes more lengthy than Nixon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s famous enemies list; and than tick off vast arrays of transgressions of colleagues in the campaign to prevent a WalMart or to protect an aquifer.
\nOthers seem excessively bitter, bitter beyond reason, even when, say, they have a safe gig at a college, and can spend their summers studying communal tendencies among skateboarders in Norway. However the merit, bitterness is a malady too often felt among writers and better worlders, especially given American history the last few years.<\/p>\n

Factions sometimes quarrel over ideological purity, and minute differences in outlook. A writer sometimes is caught inside a rather grim falafel of ideology, as I noted in my book, 1968, a History in Verse:
\nThere is never any answer
\nto the snarl
\n“You don’t care about
\nthe suffering of the people.
\nYou only care about pleasure.”
\nor the anger that crunches
\nthe dry twigs
\nleft and right
\nA writer is never right enough
\nfor the right
\nleft enough for the left
\npure enough for the pure
\nnor poor enough
\nfor the poor of heart.
\nA story comes is told now and then
\nhow once at Stanford in the ’60s
\na student heckled
\nthe socialist Irving Howe
\n(one of the founders of Dissent )
\nover his lack of commitment
\nto the rev
\nThat his fingers were sooty with Moloch’s boot polish
\nHowe glanced over at the youth and replied,
\n“You know what you’re going to be?
\nYou’re going to be a dentist.”<\/p>\n

The issue is not the Issue
\nIn Berkeley around the time that Governor Ronald Reagan ordered helicopters to spray pepper gas on protestors at People\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Park in Berkeley, there was a saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Issue is not the Issue.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The issue is not the issue.
\nWhich means that the real issue is the kind of fundamental change, consistent with our great Bill of Rights, that will banish poverty, provide us French-style national healthcare, and give all workers, of all pay levels, paid vacations of at least a month, and an old age where a person doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to sell their house, eat up all savings, and in effect become a pauper just for the honor of passing away.
\n
\nKeeping the Issues Alive<\/strong>
\nOne of our great tasks, of course, is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153keeping the issues alive.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d A writer can be very useful at keeping an issue alive, by thinking of fresh new written approaches, say, to focus on an injustice or something that needs to happen. One example is the many brilliant poets and writers who stood up and opposed slavery. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t easy to do. And a few decades of keeping the issues alive raises the risk of what they call burn-out.
\nThe Question of Burn-Out
\nIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important to refuse to be burnt-out; to take your files and researches forth, and take to the public with freshness and vigor. One way, in Latin, to say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Refuse to Be Burnt-Out,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is Noli in spiritu combueri which is the title of a poem of mine on the subject.
\nRefuse to Be Burnt\u00e2\u20ac\u201dOut
\nNoli in spiritu combueri
\nRefuse to be Burnt-Out
\nSome people slip
\non that ladder
\nhang by the rungs
\nfor twenty years<\/p>\n

Some people turn their backs
\non their Dreams
\nbecome a Tory
\nlike Robert Southey<\/p>\n

Refuse to be Burnt-out<\/p>\n

Some people fake a burn-out
\nrubbing themselves with charcoal
\nbitterly bickering bitter-shitters
\ncursing fate
\nwhen lunch is late
\nAnd the saddest are not the burn-outs
\nbut the burn-ups\u00e2\u20ac\u201d
\na stomach full of blood
\nan overburdened liver
\na street without names
\nand fifty years of pain and grief
\nfor those who loved them in the flames
\nNoli in spiritu combueri
\nRefuse to be burnt-out
\nWhat can we do
\nwith the world on fire
\nand the Bill of Rights
\ndipped in the mire
\nBe defiant
\nmove to the Left
\nwhile the right wing writhes
\nin its nightmare cleft
\nStay strong on your path
\nin spite of distraction
\nput bread and roses
\nin your every action
\nThe greatest thing to do
\nacross the left
\nis protect the ballot box
\nfrom right wing theft
\nThe answer is
\nnot to be laid back
\nnot to be cynical
\nnot to be hesitant
\nnot to be shy
\nnot to be uninformed
\nnot to be beaten down
\nnot to be isolated
\nnot to be frightened
\nnot to be threatened
\nnot to be coopted
\nnot to be lied to
\nNoli in spiritu combueri
\nRefuse to be burnt-out
\nRefuse to be burnt-out
\nRefuse to be burnt-out
\nThe Long Term View for Bread and Roses
\nThere was a famous strike in the cold January of 1912 at the American Woolen Company in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The company, with no warning or consultation, suddenly reduced the pay of all the employees, most of them women of a number of nationalities. The women went out on strike and soon other nearby plants joined in, so that soon 50,000 were on strike. Women of many countries joined one another across language and ethnic barriers. The Wobbly songwriter Joe Hill wrote his famous tune, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Rebel Girl,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d about a strike leader, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.
\nIn one of the demonstrations some women carried a famous banner \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We want bread and roses too.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Bread and Roses!\u00e2\u20ac\u201dit is a catch-phrase that has energized activists for almost a hundred years.
\nIt is a phrase that like a miracle sums up what we all want\u00e2\u20ac\u201da life where there is no poverty, no class divisions, everyone has a home, and there is also the Rosa Mundi, the rose of the world, that guarantees fun and leisure for all, and how about a 5 week paid vacation for every human?
\n This was the sort of thinking that animated the life of the brilliant French composer Erik Satie, who lived from 1866 till 1925.
\nWhen he was a young man, in the late 1900s, Satie moved to a suburb of Paris, where he joined what one biographer called a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153local Radical-Socialist Committee,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and wrote articles for a radical newspaper. In 1895, he wrote the 7-part Messe des Pauvres, or Mass for the Poor. During his youth he composed his famous Gnossiennes, exquisite solo piano compositions. My favorite Gnossienne is number 5, a truly beautiful piano piece, which will accompany the following poem, dedicated to all the articles for a better world this excellent composer wrote. I will play a tape of the Gnossienne while I read.
\nPoem to a Gnossienne of Erik Satie
\n(to be read while listening to Gnossienne #5)<\/p>\n

The issue of the rose
\nso vital to our youth
\nshall rise again
\nIt always has
\nit always
\nwill
\nAnd it’s
\nour dance of
\nour lives
\nto grow the rose<\/p>\n

It always was
\nIt always will<\/p>\n

Ink on paper told me that
\n& the rose agrees<\/p>\n

It always has
\nit always
\nwill
\nThere comes a time
\nwhen all the
\npetals have to fall
\n& yet there’s
\nsuch a place
\nwhere petals
\nnever fall
\nYou know, my Erik\u00e2\u20ac\u201d
\nthey’re the same same place!<\/p>\n

Everyone
\nhas a right
\nto food, a decent place to live, health
\n& fun, my Erik,
\nfun & fun & fun!
\nThe rose haunts
\nall of time
\nit always has
\nit always will
\nMeanwhile
\nall of us fade
\nto the same
\nsame
\nanarcho-determinist
\npost-marxist
\nplace of the sun
\nin our
\nfurry pajamas
\nAnd the rose haunts
\nall of time
\nit always has
\nit always will
\nRevolution and Violence<\/strong>
\nThe word Revolution is tossed around quite a bit. They talk about a revolution of this and a revolution of that. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s often a revolution in publishing. In music. In flower arranging.
\nBut, what about a revolution that guaranteed an equal share of the resources and largess of a civilization to everyone. That set up a national health care system like in many European countries.<\/p>\n

That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the kind of revolution that interested me and many of the companions of my youth. The generation of the Beats, the Flower Children, Psychedelia, Chicago, the Exorcism of the Pentagon, the great Moratoriums that caused Nixon to pull back from war expansion, and the great advances in music and recording, including the invention of the 8, then 16, then 24 track recording machine, and, of course, the invention of the wah wah pedal.<\/p>\n

When I travel to Europe, and do interviews, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sometimes called to task for American foreign policy and all the wars and violence our country conducts. I say that no country that invented the wah wah pedal and came up with the great song, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We Shall Overcome,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can be totally evil.<\/p>\n

As for Revolution, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s this: if you have enough multi-millions demanding near-term social change with insistence and mass resolve\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s called Revolution.<\/p>\n

And then there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the issue of violence. The question of violence sometimes arises, at least in discussions, in an era of gross injustice.
\nMy opinion is that violence is rarely required, if at all. However, what if a kind of surveillance-batty techno-fascism should arise in our great nation? What then? It depends on the degree. In any case, I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s useful for Scholar-Activists to contemplate how they could exist in a secret cell, if they had to, how they could communicate and not get intercepted, how they could spread around resources and money without detection in a time of rising oppression. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s useful to think along those lines.
\nBut, remember, they have the cluster bombs, they have the bomb-drones, they have the Delta Force and Special Operations. They have precision-guided bombs. They have crowd-control gases of a number of types, not just teargas and CS. They have enormous packages of violence-creating weapons of many kinds. And they have the precision.
\nSo, unearned suffering, the suffering of Selma, Birmingham, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy\u00e2\u20ac\u201dtaking risks, without violence, to change the world\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the path.<\/p>\n

The Question: Should We Risk Jail?
\nIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s difficult now, in these rat race time, to take time off to to jail. Who will mist the orchids? Who will walk the dog? Pay the phone bill? Everybody seems overworked, and it would be prohibitively expensive for most to spend time in jail. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the tragedies of the Rat Race.
\nI think that maybe we should start pooling money\u00e2\u20ac\u201dto set up funding sources, to pay for the expenses of those who commit civil disobedience, say the group that struggles against the re-named School of the Americas; or those who may get arrested regarding military recruitment in high schools or on campuses.
\nEspecially if our nation drifts more and more into what we might call the Dick Cheney shadows, where war is peace, and freedom is obedience, and public opinion be damned. Then we will likely have to help pay the jail and prison expenses of friends and loved ones.<\/p>\n

Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pray the drift toward an authoritarian surveillance state never goes that far.
\nNext, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll recite a poem which some of you may not totally agree with, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be happy to allow my recitation. And even though you may not agree with the message, I invite you to chant along on the repeating one-line chorus, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Send George Bush to Jail.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nThe Impeachment of George Bush\u00e2\u20ac\u201da World Wide Party
\nToday they impeached George Bush
\nand the world began to party
\nFlowers bloomed spontaneously
\nTrombones came out of attics by themselves
\nand began to play the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Celebration Waltz\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\n(all chant, with emphasis)
\nSend George Bush to jail!
\nOut in Des Moines the birds in the pet shops
\nsuddenly knew \u00e2\u20ac\u0153All you need is love\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nand every single puppy could hold a D minor yowl!
\nIn Italy they turned on all the ancient fountains
\nand the ghosts of Roman poets wrote encomia!
\nSend George Bush to jail!
\nThrough the Arc de Triomphe
\n400,000 lily-carrying children sang
\nthe two words of impeachment
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00c3\u2030galit\u00c3\u00a9….. Libert\u00c3\u00a9\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nIt was \u00e2\u20ac\u212245 all over again
\nSend George Bush to jail!
\nIn Bohemia the state glass works
\nproduced a million blue plates of Absolute Joy!
\nto be given out free to the tourists of Prague!
\n654,000 tapdancers were seen in Santiago
\nsurging past the house of Pablo Neruda
\nwhile the stolen books of \u00e2\u20ac\u212273 were repaired
\nSend George Bush to jail!
\nPetrarch and Laura appeared holding hands
\nand watching the boat races along the Arno
\nbeneath the bridge of sighs
\nOut of the mound of Troy
\ncame the mother of Patroclus
\nwith a basket of pomegranates
\nto heal the soul-wounds of Bush\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s many killings
\nSend George Bush to jail!
\nOn the cliffs of Leucadia
\nancient Sappho sang
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be freedom to live as we love now
\nthat he is gone\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nThe voice of Thomas Jefferson
\ncame across Virginia to ask that all citizens\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 debts
\nto banks be forgiven
\nSend George Bush to jail!
\nAnita Ekberg swam naked and alone in the Trevi Fountain
\nshe was so excited at George\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s barring
\nand Catullus wrote three poems at the marvel
\n500,000 legless humans from U.S. and Chinese land mines
\nclicked their crutches to the beat as
\nStevie Wonder\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Superstition\u00e2\u20ac\u009d played from giant helicopters
\nto lift the millions of unexploded land mines
\nout of the blood fields
\n& into U.N. casks
\nSend George Bush to jail!
\nPaul Bowles sent a waterpipe from Tangier
\nto Corso, Ginsberg and Orlovksy
\nin room 27 of the Beat Hotel on rue Git le Coeur
\nto celebrate the good news
\nCassandra stands on Pennsylvania Avenue
\nand weeps this time with surprise
\nbecause the world at last is listening to her words,
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Goodbye George, your house has fallen without ashes!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nParty yay! party say!
\nTime to dance all day!
\nand Send George Bush to jail!
\nDare to be Part of the History of Your Era
\nIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important, as a Scholar-Activist to dare to be a part of the history of your era. You might want to keep a chronology of your activities, even your letters to the editor, maybe a journal or diary specifically devoted to keeping track of your researches and activities. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important to be a part of your public generation.
\nKeeping a neat personal history of your involvement in causes will help to prevent alienation, and help to recall later the fun, the fury, the intensity of your lives on the front lines.<\/p>\n

Not to be Boxed into a Corner<\/strong>
\nIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also important that, no matter how controversial you find your stances, that you not allow yourself to feel cut off from the world, boxed into a corner, isolated, trapped in lonerhood, and feeling like a puppy in a shoe box on an alien porch.
\nI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to do a song now, dedicated to a great American poet, who, even though at times he was very very controversial, never allowed himself to be boxed into a corner.
\nHe always reached out to the world, and around the world, with his enormous skills as a poet, but also as a poet who performed at literally hundreds upon hundreds of benefits for a wide variety of causes. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m talking about my friend, the author of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Howl,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153America,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the great threnody for his mother, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Kaddish\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and many other beautiful poems.
\nHis name of course is Allen Ginsberg, the great Beat Era sage and bard who helped bring great social change to America. The freedom now enjoyed in the arts and on the screen and TV came about in good part from the demands for greater personal freedom from Allen Ginsberg and his generation.
\n It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem possible that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been gone for ten years, this April. Om.
\nFor Allen Ginsberg
\nHe was one of my heroes
\nWhere the river of freedom flows
\nand the blossom of peace grows
\nAllen Allen Allen has fallen
\nWhat a huge and giant brain!
\nwith its hundreds of Blake lines memorized
\n10,000 vowels of Yeats,
\na Catullus or two, 50 pages of Whitman
\nMilton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Lycidas,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d samples of
\nSapphic stanzas, vast memories
\nof his youth & family, gigabytes
\nupon infinitudinabytes of naked truth
\nabove the burning fields of the earth
\nAh Allen
\nyour skyrocket mind
\nup there w\/ Sappho & Keats
\nexploding
\nwith such a wide, wild corona
\nout o\u00e2\u20ac\u2122er our Little Part of the Milky Way
\nHe was one of my heroes
\nWhere the river of freedom flows
\nand the blossom of peace grows
\nAllen Allen Allen has fallen
\nWell, while I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m here I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll
\ndo the work\u00e2\u20ac\u201d
\nand what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the Work?
\nTo ease the pain of living.
\nEverything else, drunken
\ndumbshow
\n(from \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Memory Gardens\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Oct. 22-29, 1969)
\nHe was one of my heroes
\nWhere the river of freedom flows
\nand the blossom of peace grows
\nAllen Allen Allen has fallen
\nNo time to recycle
\nNo time to read the mail
\nNo time to look at the comet
\nNo time to go to the meeting
\nNo time for fabulous images
\nNo time to think
\nNo time to study Egyptian
\nNo time to listen to Berg
\nNo time to go to the rock shop
\nNo time to relive that moment
\nNo time to sort-out cosmology
\nNo time to buy a new oar
\nNo time to decipher the glyphs
\nNo time to sort the papers
\nNo time to measure the moonlight
\nNo time to grow the peppers
\nNo time to argue for freedom
\nNo time to dismantle the fear
\nNo time to savor the visions
\nNo time no time no time no time<\/p>\n

He was one of my heroes
\nWhere the river of freedom flows
\nand the blossom of peace grows
\nAllen Allen Allen has fallen
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201dWoodstock-Venice-Florence-Rome
\n1997-1998
\nThe Theory and Practice of Fun and Laughter
\nAs I noted earlier, we need to party and have fun, in spite of the war. Even if we were each equipped with 10,000 parallel lives and each parallel life went to meetings 15 hours a day, we could not call a halt to human suffering and transgression.
\nSo, in the midst of the struggle, we need to slow down, tend to our gardens, read through all the novels of Dickens we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve neglected, learn enough Russian to sight read Pasternak, etc.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve read that Laughter Therapy is very au courant. So, I will close this talk on Writing, Social Change and Revolution, with a musical setting of William Blake\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Laughing Song,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d from the Songs of Innocence.
\nYou are invited and encouraged to sing along on the choruses, which feature rambunctious laughter. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get the idea.
\nBefore we laugh together, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to thank Professor Thomas Olsen and Professor Renny Scott-Childress for inviting me, and also to thank the New York College English Association. I am very grateful.<\/p>\n

Now, for William Blake\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Laughing Song,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with a music track on a Yamaha QY100 sequencer.<\/p>\n

The Laughing Song
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201dWilliam Blake
\n When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,
\nAnd the dimpling stream runs laughing by;
\nWhen the air does laugh with our merry wit,
\nAnd the green hill laughs with the noise of it;
\nHa Ha Hee Ha Ha Hee
\nHa Ha Hee
\nWhen the meadows laugh with lively green,
\nAnd the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene;
\nWhen Mary and Susan and Emily
\nWith their sweet round mouths sing
\nHa Ha Hee
\nHa Ha Hee Ha Ha Hee
\nHa Ha Hee
\nWhen the painted birds laugh in the shade,
\nWhere our table with cherries and nuts is spread:
\nCome live, and be merry, and join with me,
\nTo sing the sweet chorus of
\nHa Ha Hee
\nHa Ha Hee Ha Ha Hee
\nHa Ha Hee
\nThank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following essay appeared in a recent posting on John Sinclair’s always fascinating travelpod blog. John has an accute instinct for ferreting out meaning and truth in a blighted world. I’m grateful for having learned many lessons from this revolutionary “on the road” scholar. Here is a manifesto for our times — written by Ed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,15,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-peace-gaia","category-poetry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}