K: Our generation is headed for disaster

This entry may or may not be a lengthy discourse on the subject of the title. Stay with me.

I had run the typically standard spectrum of performance anxiety by friday afternoon. Even though I had solidified my presentation's topic weeks earlier, I hadn't seriously thought about it until the night before when I jotted down a very brief sheet of bullet-point notes on what, exactly, I was going to say during my ten minutes in front of the class.

For Jody's "Arts for Journalists" class, the assignment was, in groups or as a solo, to discuss... something and its merits as an artform. Puzzled, I went back to the well, opting to turn a new audience onto something I had great success with years before*. After getting the OK from Jody that we are all adults and prepared to hear a little casual profanity, I told her the focus of my presentation was going to be Jack Kerouac and the Beat Poets.

*It hasn't even been THAT long; in truth, less than two years. Time flies.

I then proceeded to ignore any preparation for the presentation while I tended to more important matters; mostly crossword puzzles.

About 9:00 on thursday night, I began a refresher course in order to arm myself with enough knowledge to effectively communicate my point to the people. After the first week of presentations, I noticed a great deal of focus on powerpoint presentations, video clips, and other theatrics. I formulated a plan to make myself... unique. After all, it would be a grave disservice to the ideals of the beat writers about whom I was discoursing to make it a matter of rigid presentationality and power-pointitude.

So during the two hours between Sal's class and Jody's, the bulk of my presenation began to ferment within my mind as I recalled my long out-of-practice improv skills to take me between the already-outlined points. My stomach was a knotted clump, as it often was back in the day.

I arrived in class and sat anxiously through a number of presentations, some of which I gladly didn't follow immediately, including Dave's spirited acoustic performance of Woody Guthrie's "Deportee," as well as "Streets of Laredo" and a song he composed himself, all of which got a rousing applause (the last of which brought the house down completely.) Following that were presentations on noteworthy films, a particular band, and establishing characters through props and costumes. With three sheets of paper in hand, I went to the front of the room and plugged in my iPod. After a brief technical snafu, a very particular tune began to play over the speakers. Jazz music -- more precisely, because I don't own any actual jazz records, the soundtrack to Einstein's Dreams. I'm not sure if this is the actual series of events, or if I'm mixing things up, but essentially it happened like this;

I grabbed a dry-erase marker and scrawled all in capital letters on the whiteboard, and asked, "Can anyone give a definition for this word?" The word in question was "BEAT." After a brief hesitation, Leo chimed in from the back by saying, "Like, musically, being on the beat." "Right." I wasn't looking for any particular answer, I wanted to get the idea across that the word was a multi-faceted one, with many interpretations. Dave piped up next, with one of his usually lengthy tangents.

"Well they were a groups of writers, you know, beatniks, in the 1950's, who comprised a scene of new york poets and..." et cetera. Flatly, I told him, "Dave, do YOU want to be doing the presentation?" An awkward laugh was elicited from the class. I moved on. "Anything else?" Justin, also in the back, added, "Being defeated, like, beat down." "Yes!" I said enthusiastically. The point had been reached. The word meant all of those -- even Dave's unfortunate interjection. I noted that it could also mean up-beat and beatific. I neglected to mention the notion of "beating off" because, hey, not everyone loves masturbation jokes (or so I might've thought.)

"I don't really want this to be a presentation," I told them, either after the beat discussion of right before it. "More like a conversation... where I walk around the room and you all pretend to listen, and also I'm holding paper which I may or may not be reading off of." Only occasionally glancing at my notes (which were left purposefully vague,) I delivered the bulk of the presentation off the top of my head, which may have had the effect of making me seem like a rambling fool, but for the most part the audience seemed enrapt. I'll confess, though I was walking among them, behind my sunglasses (which I had worn for effect, even in the dimmed classroom,) I hardly noticed them. I went on to describe, briefly, the lives of Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs, the paradoxical notion of three men comprising a "generation," and how this compared with my weeks-earlier assertion that poetry was a "dead artform" (or, as I was humourously misquoted, "a dead earthworm,") by comparing previous and modern poetry to the works created by these particular people. I noted the "Howl" obscenity trial and the influence the group had on future artists like Dylan, the Beatles, the Clash, etc, etc. I read first from "Marriage" by Gregory Corso, which got a slight reaction, and then from my signature piice (in that I invoke it whenever humanly possible,) Kerouac's "Mexican Loneliness," a comparatively obscure piece that struck me like a lightning bolt when I first read it. I paced around the room, reading directly from the sheet for the most part, for while I had read it over quite a few times, it is a relatively involved piece, and difficult to commit to memory (especially in as short a time as I'd left myself.) I began to stumble over a few words but recouped right in front of what I consider the key phrase in the poem, the one that causes peoples' ears to perk up -- "...masturbators fuck pillows." I paused (inadvertantly, actually,) an a significant laugh was had. God. They were listening. I continued, and ended the poem virtually on that note.

It was long (I went through about 15 minutes of music during the course,) and it may have been rambling, but I felt good. Better, perhaps, than I had felt in months or years prior. I got the same rush I got when on the stage back in the day, and while I was never much of an actor, it was always a thrilling experience when you hooked an audience. My one regret, and it will huant me forever after, is not engaging in deeper discussion after the presentation, during the allotted question period. I was tired of talking, and I think people were tired of listening *(it was very nearly the end of class) but I really would have like to hear peoples' thoughts on the poems. I'll never get that, and it'll bother me probably forever. My other regret was that I had meant to include a projection of names for people to look up (I frequently invoked that phrase -- "you can look him up, I don't have enough time to go over him.") and since I didn't, people might not get the proper spelling of "Kerouac," "Ginsberg" or "Ferlinghetti."

Well, whatever. I think I did what I set out to do, which is stick out in peoples' minds. You can daydream through a powerpoint presentation, you can nod off during a cuecard reading. Even without the benefit of a computer, (which Jody had decreed to be closed,) it's not hard to drift off into one's own subconscious. But hopefully that's a little more difficult with the use of physical motion, casual language, and a few well-placed expletives.

So I don't know. It was a mess, but a memorable and enjoyable one, I hope.

My point, with this entry's title, is that while the members of the "beat generation" were essentially a branch of what is called by Tom Brokaw the "Greatest Generation," who by and large defined the world they defended in WWII, (or shaped it, as the beats did, with words and ideas,) my generation is quite frankly a mess. We get too much information too soon, to much responsibility, too little credit, too little discipline and have far too great a sense of entitlement. There would be something great about my generation if we didn't already think that -- so we're really just arrogant, spoiled into perfect little consumers by the corporations established by our fathers, the baby boomers. (I mean, not literally my father, but somebody's. Kershaw's, maybe.) We're a pretty good generation, and we're bursting with potential, but it looks to be dying on the vine. Time will tell if it was all for nothing. We're trying, but being thwarted by outside factors and our the limitations of our conditioning. We're going to save the world, or destroy it at last.

On that highly upbeat note, I'm gonna beat it.

It's saturday night, St. Patrick's day, and I'm sitting here. I prefer, however, not to think my life is lame. Just that I'm saving my coolness for someone special. Hope you're out there, hope your life is going well.

Keep on rockin'
-Oh That Scotto