There's no passion in our generation. We've accepted a life of passivity. Of 'credit cards and parents that love us'. There is no need to stress or to strain or to work hard. The ideal of the American Dream died long before Hunter Thompson went in search of it's end and now everyone just expects the dream to be handed to them in a highball glass, or in a Louis Vuitton bag or in an overly vocordered hit single. We haven't had to suffer for anything. We haven't had to fight for anything we thought was right or moral or inspirational. Our "culture" has become so patheticly cookie cutter and suburban white middle class that it is difficult if not impossible to have faith or hope for our artistic future, despite the reintroduction of the words to our vocabulary by the new president and messiah. I find myself in constant pursuit of the mania of the counterculture of the late sixties and seventies because people were so mad and as we all know, "the only people for me are the mad ones." Maybe I just need more ibogaine or psylicyben in my life because I'm mostly unimpressed with myself and my inability to access that elusive raciness, the mania, the madness.
Ward! Beaver! Dinner's ready. We're having roast beef.
We will miss you!
11 years ago
K.Tighe says: "I was thinking: the Beat experience was countercultural in the 50s when pop culture was notoriously plastic. In the 60s and 70s, when counterculture became a fad, that's when Kerouac starting eating and drinking himself to death and denying the meaning of his work.
ReplyDeleteAll this to say that maybe when culture is its most complacent that's when the mad are their most impressive. So...maybe now's the right time to go crazy."
I agree with her that it's time for a new cultural revolution and that was in a round about, and in my generally negative or pessimistic way of saying so. The counterculture of the fifties is what sparked the revolution, the Kerouac's and Ginsbergs of the Beat Generation but I was being heavily influenced by Hunter S. Thompson whilst writing the post, hence my specification of the sixties and seventies.
VIVA LA REVOLUCION!