WHO WERE THE BEAT GENERATION?

This is a must-see docu on the Beat Generation, the precursor of the anti-war peace-and-love movement of the sixties.

Watch it.  

You'll see how the system commodified what it feared: the power of youth to change the world.

I learned that "Beatnik" was coined by the media; it had connotations of disparagement.

In Manila, the beatniks didn't exert any influence on Filipino culture, because deep, hard U.S. culture never reached us.  The civil rights movement, MLK, Malcolm X did not break through the mainstream media filters.  Elvis did.  The Beatles. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iwxf3Crrcw

             SO THE VIBE WENT FROM CAFE GATHERINGS

                    AND THE  GREENWICH VILLAGE SCENE                                

                              TO  THE  COMMODIFICATION

   

Not visible in screenshot is the first line:

I'M   BORED.

I   THINK   I'LL

           FACT:  The Beat Generation birthed the                                                Counterculture.

            Really interesting how central music (jazz and folk) was to the Beat Generation, just as it was to the hippie movement (rock), because the hippies were the children of the beat generation.  

       The BG was more intellectual, more about poetry and literature.  Though the 1960's youth rebellion (BG and the Counterculture) were both about: 

                      (1)  Rejection of materialism

                      (2)  Rejection of conformity

And the intellectual vein of the beat generation morphed into the anti-war movement that ended the Vietnam war.

The CIA had both movements in its crosshairs.  It had created LSD, MKUltra mind control, mass surveillance, rock bands who sprang out of nowhere (well, their parents were military) and curiously were never drafted (check out videos about the bands of Laurel Canyon).

The hippies were shooting ducks.  The Beat Generation relied on a few individuals and once they had succumbed to alcohol or suicide, that was that.

Paris 1968 turned into urban guerrillas, which the system was very good at liquidating as well.

In all the countries, esp. Latin America.  The jackals and military dictatorships took care of reformist political leaders.

It's really so interesting to look back on it all.  Distance gives clarity.  The net offers docus.

EMILY DICKINSON, MARY SHELLEY, ANNIE ERNAUX

Annie Ernaux

Emily Dickinson

Mary Shelley and her Creature

The world of writers.  I love to watch videos of writers talking about their creative worlds.

Also videos of academics who are experts in literature, such as one I just saw on Mary Shelley's classic, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus.

And I learned about Annie Ernaux, French writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 2022.  Fascinating woman.  

I also saw an interview with Nora Ephron, author of Heartburn and screenplays such as When Harry Met Sally.

GLAD I'M ME regardless -- RANT --

 

Just sent this e-mail to my beloved youngest brother.

Eighties Babe, eternally beautiful.

I'm recovering from flu.  Second week, but I'm just a human fire hydrant of mucous, it's cleaning out my system.

There's just the little detail of kerosene poisoning.

(Explained below... I use kerosene heaters and it's autumn - winter in Chile.)

I just saw a Renard video where a man who looks like a redneck is denouncing ICE for deporting a two-year-old.  Sounded like it was a forcible deportation.  Who would be in favor of that, it's inhumane, it's extreme cruelty.  And it's just one more.  We get this horrendous information nonstop 24/7.  No wonder so many people just don't want to hear, or know, like my d., everytime I've told her anything she says, "How do you know it's true?  What is your source?" And it just means, "I don't care where you heard it and what you heard. You're believing lies."

And she's got a point too. I could be deceived.  Though unlike the news from the redneck (and I'm sure what he says is probably happening), I'm sharing other info of a different sort: statistics on the abnormal rise in mortality rates, infertility, turbo cancer...  Even if I told her my trusted source, it means nothing to her who the source is, because she doesn't follow those channels, and she would not investigate either.  Because she doesn't believe anything other than what she believes.  She's leftwing and she doesn't pay heed to anything going on outside Chile.

It's a defense mechanism.

So much that is going on is too horrible to even think possible.  Most people don't have the stomach for it.  The Michael Douglas character:  "You can't handle the truth."

So it's like, just shut up, Liz.  Just don't talk about anything because nobody wants to know what worries you.  Nobody cares what you're appalled at/by.

And sure, I don't know/have anybody who has dropped dead, who's gotten turbo cancer.  My d. is having trouble conceiving, but even before the pandemic lots of women and men were already sterile.  I've only seen VIDEOS.  Why should I believe they are real?

Nobody else around me is concerned.  Yes, my fellow therapist J., but two years ago we had a falling out for a stupid reason and that friendship ended.

Despite our own differences, you are practically the only person I can talk to.  Who writes to me.

Ah, there's M. in Madrid, he's in an international volunteer group of doctors and lay people who are helping cancer victims willing to follow alternative protocols and they have been racking up rising numbers of recoveries.  But he just goes on periodic raves to me about that, it's his schtick.  I listen and applaud. In my case, though, I've known for decades that chemo and radio are scams.  But M. is not interested in anything else.  Sometimes I'll share a link with him but there's never any echo. I just sit in his bleachers.

They are doing something important:  not just denouncing,  doing something ---actually healing terminal cases.  Many of them are desperately poor in the Phil.

I've heard thousands of people on videos saying that their families don't talk to them, they've lost jobs, friends, etc. because they're conspiracy theorists.

I'm just the only person in Chile who is a c.t.   In the end, we all are screwed, no matter what we think or say. There is no relief, no solution in sight.  The world is fucked, and fucked it will stay, and we all share its fate.

That idea is abhorrent to me though.  So I just suck it up.

I stay in my corner and just play dead, play stupid, play happy. Whatever.  But I AM happy, I DO have my areas of happiness, thank God.  One is our friendship, our love.  Our echo.  My kids are another.  Most of all, THE CHALLENGE OF WRITING.  It gets me into a different head and heart space.  Yes, it's hard to drag myself into it.

Why?  Because peace and eternal time are rare in 3D if you are 71, live alone and electric heaters are too expensive. You have to use kerosene heaters.  (This is the teensy-weensy tip of my iceberg but you don't have to know the rest, nor do you wish to.  It's nothing, just the universal human condition on prison planet.)

3D rains down really stupid quandaries.  Like the old man in the gas station who filled my 2 jerrycans with kerosene, and didn't screw on the cap right on one of them.  It turned over while I was driving and spilled over everything in the trunk.  I've had to throw away two big sheets of plastic that have served me in different ways for about 20 years.  My car cover is also stained.  It's gonna rain hard again.  I've covered the car with it, inside-out, so the rain will at least wash that side.  And I've got to turn it right side out and cover the car again so the rain washes the other side too.  Inside the car, the fumes will remain for several months so I'll have to have it detailed.  Yep.  $$$$

And I have a bunch of plastic shopping bags that I must wash in the bathtub. All the time, my skin gets in touch with the traces of kerosene, absorbs them and my liver has to get rid of the solvent.

Enemas are in order.

One old doddering man in a gas station.  Still working.  And I didn't know better than to unscrew the cap and screw it back on properly.  Because I THOUGHT he fixed it.  But he didn't.  It still was screwed on crooked, but it didn't look crooked.

I had the flu, forced myself to go buy kerosene because those heaters don't fire themselves.  

3D is full of illusions.  Your senses give you wrong information all the time.  Worse when you are sick.

Well hon, just gotta get through this crap, right?

xoxoxox

(Sorry to ruin your day, but be glad you're NOT ME.)

Love You.

Liz

P.S. The nutty part is, I'm glad I'm me.