Tag Archives: Allen Ginsberg

[July 6, 1969] Everybody's talking about Revolution, Evolution… (The Making of a Counter Culture by Theodore Roszak)

If the title for this article sounds familiar, it's because you've heard the (just released) single from John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "bed in".  The Beatle and his new bride are living examples of Counter Culture.  But just what is "Counter Culture"?  Theodore Roszak has thoughts…and Kris has thoughts on those thoughts!


By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society & Its Youthful Opposition by Theodore Roszak Hardback Cover

All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned…

The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx

Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'

The Times They Are A-Changin', Bob Dylan

A spectre is haunting the campuses of the West, the spectre of the counter culture. All the powers of the Technocrats have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre.

Wait, you may well ask, I thought this was a contemporary review, not a poor pastiche of a 120-year-old piece of political economy? However, this is the central speculation of Theodor Roszak in his latest book: that these are the core oppositional forces of our time.

But what is the Technocratic Society and what is the Counter Culture?

Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today

In the case of the former, Roszak sees Technocracy as the governing by experts from a certain class with the aim of a routinised control over human interaction. This can be observed in our democratic political system where the two main parties in most Western nations usually are not concerned with creating vastly different Utopian systems. More often, it is a competition of seeming the most competent to deliver state run social services, defence and economic growth. Even in the Soviet Union, there is not much talk these days of instituting a worldwide proletarian revolution, compared with speeches on improving the efficiency of grain harvests or increasing housing stocks.

Black and White photo of Robert McNamara behind a set of microphones and in front of a map of Vietnam
Robert McNamara, Technocrat Extraordinaire

The technocrats themselves are rarely the presidents or prime ministers; they are merely the salesmen. Roszak sees them as the upper-level bureaucrats or the studious quiet men of the cabinets. Robert McNamara is a prime example of this tendency, moving between running Ford Motor Company, the World Bank and the US Defence Department and applying the same philosophy, one he outlined in his recent book, The Essence of Security:

…the real threat to democracy comes, not from overmanagement, but from undermanagement. To undermanage reality is not to keep it free. It is simply to let some other than reason shape reality…Vital decision making, particularly in policy matters. This is partly, though not completely, what the top is for.

You may well ask, what is the problem with this? Well, Roszak outlines the tecnocratic viewpoint thusly:
1. All problems are purely technical in nature, and, therefore, if it is not technical, it cannot be a problem. Depression -> More Pills. Rioting in the cities -> More police.
2. Their end is always the right end and any friction against this is a lack of communication. This can be solved by the Marketplace of Ideas.
3. However, the only people who can truly understand these principles and implement them are this technocratic elite. And, it just so happens, that a good sign that you are one of those qualified to understand these issues is that you are already a part of the governmental or corporate structure.

Ad for Playboy with the tagline "Waht sort of man reads Playboy", with a photo showing a man on a boat reading Playboy whilst he is surrounded by women in bikinis
Want Sexual Promiscuity? Buy A Boat!

And he does not see New Authoritarianism as only occurring in government business but creeping into all aspects of life. Take the example of Playboy, which appears at first to be approving of sexual permissiveness; but, in reality, the articles and photos create an association between sex and wealth for men, whilst reducing women to men’s playthings: making half the population repress themselves whilst striving to reach these elite heights, whilst the other half become accepting of this attitude by the rich and powerful. This viewpoint can be seen again in the trial of Lady Chatterly’s Lover where the argument of the prosecution was:

Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?

In fact, Roszak goes further, to state there is a mystification that has happened in the technocracy. Where, in the best Orwellian manner, language is used to obfuscate reality. Where the bombing in Vietnam is referred to as an “escalation” or dictatorial communist regimes refer to themselves as “democratic republics”. If an individual challenges this, the technocrats will merely dismiss them as not understanding the complexity of the issue.

So, what is the solution for this? Well that comes in its opposition.

God is Alive, Magic is Afoot

Black and white photo of a protest to legalise marijuana, at the front is Allen Ginsberg holding a sign that says "Pot is a reality kick"
Allen Ginsberg protesting to legalise marijuana

Counter Culture appears to be derived from the term “contraculture”, defined by Yinger in 1960 as:

wherever the normative system of a group contains, as a primary element, a theme of conflict with the values of the total society, where personality variables are directly involved in the development and maintenance of the group's values, and wherever its norms can be understood only by reference to the relationships of the group to a surrounding dominant culture.

This, though, is almost a decade older and could be seen as merely a standard part of society, like the Bright Young People of the Jazz Age. And the young have usually been the radicals. For example, in 17th Century England, many of the radical protests were led by the London Apprentice Boys, the militant student movement of the day. So what is the difference between the rebellions of yesteryear and the counter culture of today?

The difference is two-fold. First off, the traditional left-right axis does not really create an opposition to technocracy but a support of it. The communist, the fascist and the liberal all accept the need for rational efficiency and control of life by an elite, whether that be the bureaucrat, the camp commandant or the head of a Fortune 500 company. So even the most aggressive of demagogues are no longer opposing the technocracy, merely wishing to be a part of it.

Painting: The Disquieting Duckling by Asger Jorn
Showing a pastoral watecolour which has, on top of the picture, been painted a giant duckling in children's style in a manner of rainbow colours
The Disquieting Duckling by Asger Jorn

Secondly, the theories behind the opposition are not predominantly coming down from the elite but up from artists. Early examples include Situationists like Asger Jorn or Beat Poets like Allen Ginsberg, who themselves draw more from the tradition of Blake and Children’s Art than Joyce and Van Gogh. See for example Ginsberg’s Howl:

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!

Black and White photo of a protest by Students For A Democratic Society, holding up signs saying:
"Refuse to pay taxes for Vietnam"
"Liberalism in the pursuit of fascism is no virtue"
"End Johnson's war on peasantry"
"LBJ, the lesser Evil?"
"End All Foreign Intervention in Vietnam"
"LBJ: The Myth of American Liberalism"
"Escalation Means Nuclear War"
Protest by Students For A Democratic Society

The reason, Roszak claims, this opposition is taking root within the youth movements is also a feature of the technocracy. As the bureaucracy of business has grown bigger and the need for rigid routine labour has diminished, intellectual thought is more valuable among workers. Therefore, experts like Dr. Spock have pushed parents away from regimented childcare towards exploration, and governments have moved children away from the factory floor to longer and longer periods of education. When this kind of student is suddenly ordered to cut his hair and put on a uniform to join the army or the corporation, he naturally rebels against it.

Whilst Roszak acknowledges there is no manifesto of the nebulous group but that what is required is:

…the subversion of the scientific world view, with its entrenched commitment to an egocentric and cerebral mode of consciousness. In its place, there must be a new culture in which the non-intellective capacities of the personalities – those capacities that take fire from visionary splendor and the experience of human communion – become the arbiters of the good, the true and the beautiful.

How will this be achieved? One area Roszack has little time for is the overuse of psychedelics. Whilst he acknowledges they may have use for skilled practitioners:

There is nothing whatever in common between a man of…experience and intellectual discipline sampling mescaline, and a fifteen-year-old tripper whiffing airplane glue.

In fact, he sees the current expansion of psychotropic drugs as having more in common with the technocracy, promising a quick granting of insight that is only superficial and built on a few getting rich whilst causing unhappiness to the many. No different to the barbiturates or alcoholic beverages marketed to the masses.

The actual means for this "subversion" to come about are nebulous. Rather, he sees that this will be developed over time through such concepts as the “Politics of No-Politics” and the de-centralised Utopian thought of Paul Goodman.

The Armies of the Night

Protestors putting flowers in the guns of military police
Protestors putting flowers in the guns of military police

Roszak goes through a number of different facets of the counter culture and their opposition to the technocratic rationality, from anti-schools to trying to levitate the Pentagon. I have to wonder sometimes if the free-wheeling rejection of rationality extends to his writing. I consider myself reasonably well-read and knowledgeable, but I found myself reaching for dictionaries and other reference material (or just plain scratching my head) trying to understand what he was talking about. He tends to work best in generalities, when he is (to steal a phrase for Kant) critiquing pure reason. When he goes into specifics, such as an entire chapter looking at how Marcuse and Brown attempt to reconcile Marx and Freud, Roszak moves away from insightful investigation to navel-gazing.

He spends some time comparing this movement to nascent Christianity and, by extension, suggesting how this movement over time could change the mode of Western thought. There is one problem I have with this, one he even acknowledges in passing: the fact that people enter and depart with ease and that there are a lot of tourists involved. This is not just the more egregious examples, like Burberry selling expensive imitations of Chinese Communist Army uniforms. Mick Jagger, an LSE drop-out with a public drug bust under his belt seems like the perfect candidate for the Counter Culture. But, whilst he may sing that “the time is right for violent revolution” or “my name is a number, a piece of plastic film”, the group is reportedly planning to tour the US with major venues and able to charge high ticket prices, and he seems just as at home among the accoutrements of wealth as any banker.

Overall, "The Making of a Counter Culture" is interesting as polemic and critique, for, as Roszak puts it:

What is of supreme importance is that each of us should become a person, a whole and integrated person in whom there is manifested a sense of human variety genuinely experienced, a sense of having come to terms with a reality that is awesomely vast.

But as prophecy? That is for the young to show us.

Four Stars






[August 28, 1967] NYC–the Days are Vacuum-Packed

[Please enjoy this next installment of the travels of the Journey's resident aesthete, Vicki Lucas. I can't think of a better way to tour our American land in 1967 than her articles…]


by Victoria Lucas

No Time!

I’m just starting to get used to the pace. New York is not San Francisco or Berkeley. I feel as if Alice’s rabbit is screaming “No time! No time.” We are on the go all the time, except for an hour or two hanging with friends.



Alice's rabbit

Like last weekend. It was too hot to stay in NYC, so we made our way to New Jersey, where our VW bus is garaged. We brought some things but had planned to do a little shopping on the way, partly because it would have been too much trouble to carry very much with us on public transportation. We can cook on our little camp stove, and we thought we would check out a couple places as we drove to Mel’s folks’s summer home in Maine, overnighting there before returning. It’s about a 6-hour drive from where our bus is parked.

We stopped briefly in New Hampshire. Wow! What we found there!


Shaker houses

Have you ever heard of the Shakers? A sort of cult of “Mother Ann,” a British woman who prophesied that her religious organization would die out, and it is clear that is happening. After nearly 200 years in the United States, and a peak of around 6,000 Shakers in 21 communities, the streets of these celibate communities are empty, and the few remaining members are sustaining themselves mainly by selling handmade furniture and some of their other first-ever products, such as seeds! I was fascinated to learn that their group was the first to package and sell seeds! They are also the authors of the Shaker spiritual “‘Tis the Gift to Be Simple,” appropriated in Aaron Copland’s “Simple Gifts,” and used in his “Appalachian Spring.” We stopped and toured one of the communities briefly, like a sort of living museum, finding out that they adopted orphans to carry on their traditions, but too many of these adopted sons and daughters decided not to stay.


A smoking mother-in-law

It was weird seeing Mel’s parents. I will never forget waking up the next morning in the sofabed on their lower level, noticing that Mel was up–and that his mother was sitting by herself on a hard armless chair, smoking and looking at me. All I could think of to say was, “Good morning.” (Does it have anything to do with the fact that I’m his 3rd wife? Or that I’m 19 years younger than he?)


Abbie Hoffman

Oh! I almost forgot to tell you. Among the meetings with places and dates emblazoned on mimeographed sheets handed out on the streets of the Lower East Side was one back in July during the Newark riots. We spent 2 days going to meetings to decide how to help the people trapped behind barricades without water and food. But the meetings were anarchic, and everyone had a different opinion and was willing to let the meetings drag on and on as no decisions were made. Finally, after enduring meetings starting Friday at 6 pm and continuing on Saturday, Abbie Hoffman stood up to his full height (quite intimidating, actually) and announced that he had a plan and he was going to carry it out and anyone who was willing to help was welcome. He was going to get a truck, stuff it with food and water and other necessities for those in need and drive it to Newark, going as far as he could into needy neighborhoods. He would only want a few people to distribute the goods, but he would need money. We gave him a few bucks and gratefully departed. Thank goodness someone is willing to step up! The two of us had had no idea how to help.


Aspen, no. 5+6

My man Mel works full time, and I am only part time at Phillis’s place but loving it! When she finally releases the new Aspen “magazine” (culture in a box in the form of a film on a reel and many other bits and pieces) issue (numbers 5 and 6 combined) it will be a square white box with only a little printing on it–in fact, just like the picture above. I had never worked for anyone before whose office was in her bedroom. It’s like this, as far as I can tell: Phyllis (Johnson Glick, but she seldom uses her married name) works as a journalist and editor for Nebraska State Journal, Women’s Wear Daily, Advertising Age, and American Home Magazine (and probably others), so when she is not working at a publisher's office, she works from home. So she gets up, makes her bed, and immediately starts using it as a desk as she finishes her coffee. She does have a little hard writing surface on a bedside table with a lamp, when she needs to write something. She calls me when she is going to work on her new creation, has set up her paper piles on the bed, and is nearly ready to start telling me what to do. I've never met her husband–he is probably gone long before I get there.

About the stapled, wholly paper "magazine" we are used to, Phyllis wrote this in 1966: "Last year, a group of us enjoying the sun, skiing and unique cultural climate of Aspen Colorado, asked ourselves, ‘Why?’" So she started creating something completely different, a magazine in a box with every piece (including ads) separate. Mostly I work the telephone or do the typing at a typing table with a (I think) dining-room chair–she dictates or tells me what needs to be said. If she has dictated it she signs it. There is a lot of telephoning and mailing to do to get the writers to write, the musicians to record, the recording studios to send recordings, and the film people to get their stuff to the copiers and then to us, etc. At the end of the day, Phyllis begins stacking the papers on her bed with sets perpendicular to one another, so she can tell where the different sets begin and should be in a different location in the morning. The stacks are put away off the bed. She tells me when she’s done, and I leave then. She pays me regularly (we both keep track), but I think that if I could afford it I would work for her for nothing–it's such fun to work for such an innovator!

John Cage

Since Mel is not particularly into music, I went by myself to a concert of John Cage’s music in a church. It was free. That is, it was free to me, because I stayed the whole 4 hours. The longer you stayed, you see, the less you paid. If you left immediately, it was pretty expensive. A few people did. There were a lot of silences.

Ed Sanders's Peace Eye Bookstore

And we went to the Peace Eye Bookstore on the lower East Side, Ed Sanders’s place. We met Sanders there but never saw anybody else famous whom we recognized, like Tuli Kupferberg or Peter Orlovsky. We did see an art piece from Allen Ginsberg: a large jar of cold cream, mostly empty. It swung in a small wooden frame from a rafter in the store, which was on the other side of Tompkins Square Park from our place on 3rd Street.

The Tompkins Square Park "Massacre"

We enjoyed the park and went there as often as we could manage. Once when we were passing through, we noticed a large number of hippies with their dogs and children sitting on grass labeled “Do not walk on the grass” (or thereabouts), and as we continued to walk we saw police engaging with some of the people on the grass. Whatever was happening appeared to be escalating. Voices were raised. We decided it would be a good time to go back to our apartment and have some dinner.

When we came back to the park, it was empty, there was debris where the hippies had been, and in a minute there was suddenly a young man handing out mimeographed news sheets, perhaps from the Peace Eye, which had a mimeograph. There had been a large number of arrests, and our presence was invited outside the police station at a given address. It was within walking distance, and we hied ourselves over there, joining a crowd from whom we heard the story: the police brought a van to the park and started arresting people and throwing them into the van. A pregnant woman protested and received the same treatment–everyone was afraid she might have miscarried. Some who didn’t cooperate received blows to the head and were bleeding. As part of the crowd we demanded the release of these peaceful people. We were there about an hour as it got darker and darker. Finally the battered and bloody “criminals” were released, and there was rejoicing. We went back home.

Simon and Garfunkel

As bad as NYC gets sometimes-–the trash, the crime (not hippie protest crime), the police, the subway, the homeless–-there are moments when I feel as if I’m in the right place. Like last evening when we had been visiting Central Park and were headed to our bus stop not far from the East River before going home. Someone had a radio on as the twilight descended. As we neared the 59th Street Bridge, guess what song was playing. Yes, it was. It was “The 59th Street Bridge Song.” And we were "kicking down the cobblestones.” And we were “feeling groovy.” Thank you, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel!






[June 16, 1965] The International Poetry Incarnation


by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Poetry has an unusual place within the science fiction and fantasy community. Many of the earliest and most influential works come from poetry, such as the Norse epics or Spenser’s Faerie Queen, continuing into the 19th century with pieces such as Rosetti’s Goblin Market and Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came by Robert Browning.

This has continued in the speculative magazines, with poems regularly featured in F&SF and Galaxy.

However, introduction of more experimental forms has come to be as important a dividing line as the "message" and "anti-message" divide we have seen debated for the last decade. Even more literary writers such as Brian Aldiss are not always in favour, describing William Burroughs as “piss” in a letter to Zenith.

For myself I love to see more experimental forms and beat poetry, the likes we have seen emerging in the post-war era, ever since I read Donald Allen’s anthology, The New American Poetry.

New American Poetry Collection
The New American Poetry Collection

So as such I was fascinated to see on BBC News that there would be a meeting of International Poets at the Royal Albert Hall.

Royal Albert Hall
The Venue For The Evening

Me and my wife applied and were pleased to receive tickets. It was a fascinating list of poets

Poster For the Incarnation
Poster For the Incarnation

With the performance starting at 6:30 I was able to meet my wife just outside our offices and grab an early bite to eat before taking the underground round to South Kensington (thankfully my offices only being a short hop away).

Heading into the Royal Albert Hall we found the place to be packed, causing me to momentarily worry we had turned up on the wrong day and Bob Dylan was playing here again. The Royal Albert Hall seats around five thousand people and to see this many interested in seeing Avant-Garde poetry was a shock and a delight.

On the way in people were handing out flowers and the whole thing was a curious atmosphere, with a stage covered in foliage and the clanking of bells. Almost funereal. There was also a lot of smoke about but I think the was more from the audience than an attempt to create a specific mood. (We were up in the gods ourselves so did not get as affected by this as much as those in the stalls much have done, which is a good thing given my wife suffers from asthma).

This evening is an experiment and we are finding out what happens when you put 5000 people in a hall with a few poets… – Alexander Trocchi

Bulletin
Pre-Event Bulletin

As it was a very long night I won’t take you through all the performances but will highlight some of the most memorable:

Laurence Ferlinghetti
Laurence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s To Fuck Is To Love Again was an excellent crowd pleaser. Making brilliant use of irony, metre and giving a rousing performance, he wove a journey about sexual repression and the pointlessness of division.

Harry Fainlight
Harry Fainlight

Harry Fainlight’s The Spider was frustratingly interrupted and he took it hard. However, the poem is a brilliant dark piece that he performed really well under the circumstances. It takes a dark journey into the mind of someone who believes themselves being transformed into a spider and how this compares to their own mental state. If it was published in Fantastic, I am sure fantasy fans would be devoting many letters pages debating its merits (whilst I would myself be giving it five stars).

Adrian Mitchell
Adrian Mitchell

Adrian Mitchell's poem To Whom it May Concern was a little more traditional than some of the others, having spent a long time on the British poetry scene and in anti-war causes, but probably my favourite of the evening (and many others given the level of applause he received). It is an angry piece against the war in Vietnam and contains amazing imagery:

I smell something burning, hope it's just my brains.
They're only dropping peppermints and daisy-chains

Ernst Jandl
Ernst Jandl

Ernst Jandl gave a fascinating performance that was mostly through sounds but was really meaningful nonetheless. This included one that was done entirely through sneezing! I had never heard sound poetry before but it is a really interesting and something I would like to see more of.

Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg was obviously the star attraction and gave a performance in his usual powerful style, sounding like he is forcing the words out in a flow of emotion. These included his epic The Change and a brand new one combining viscerally disturbing imagery, despair and current politics.

He also read New York Bird by Russian poet Andrei Vosnesensky. Apparently Russian authorities would not allow Vosenesky to perform his own poem, so Ginsberg performed it in his place.

Some of the performances were less memorable and there were also some highly expected performers, like Pablo Neruda, who did not end up performing.

There were some downsides to the event. The whole thing seemed very disorganised, with no official running order. Nor was it really all their best performances. I have heard records of some of those present that have been significantly better.

It was also disappointing how all of the performers were men. Why not invite some excellent contemporary women poets like Diane Di Prima or Denise Levertov?

Poets
Poets Gathered Together, All Men

What was most fascinating about the whole experience was seeing these poets live, and being with so many others people who were interested in this kind of art. Whilst we there we saw the event being filmed, so perhaps it will spread even further?

Either way it was an exciting performance to be at and shows a healthy future for experimental writing around the world. The event lasted more than four hours so we headed home for the weekend very tired but also elated at what we had seen.

Will the poems of this calibre and experimental nature be featured in the SF magazines? It's hard to say, but I surely won't find it aught amiss if they do!



[Don't miss the next episode of The Journey Show, featuring singer-songwriter Harry Seldon.  He'll be playing a mix of Dylan, Simon, and some unique original compositions!]