The Existential Linux Poetry Jazz Cafe

[Mel Thompson]

Somehow Linux, the existence of it, the quest of it, the massive and nearly impossible thing it is set up to do, it's very Existential, and plus it feels like something that fits in a cafe where jazz and beat poetry are also going on.

[franklee]

Kant and Schopenhauer would be happy although they predate Jazz.

[fingal]

I think you're right, but then I like counter cultures, jazz and Beat poetry. I think I was born 20 years too late!

[Mel Thompson]

Yeah, I feel that way too. I feel it would have been better to be born about ten years earlier and really live through the height of beat poetry, jazz and the whole free-love era. Or, it would be better to have been born ten years later than I was so I could feel little attachment to that era I "almost was" a part of, and therefore more easily get on with the future. I'm just old enough to not quite identify with the future, but just young enough to have not quite had a really rockin' past in the very vortex of the coolness. I was born in 1959, but I wish I'd been born in 1949, because, right at 1967 I would have been eighteen. But alas, in '67 I was only eight, and therefore missed the great wave. In some way I worry Linux and Mac are the only futuristic thing about me. God knows I don't like where pop music and hip hop clothing are headed.

[fingal]

But alas, in '67 I was only eight, and therefore missed the great wave.

I was just 3, but my Dad's next door neighbour wrote the Beatles biog. That's the only bit of coolness my family was connected to (true story).

You might enjoy watching this short film on Google. 'Pull my Daisy' was a satirical (?) comedy featuring some of the best known Beat poets of those times... Well, the late 50s anyway. I can't find a version without subtitles though.

[questio verum]

You might enjoy watching this short film on Google.

Now that's a unique little celluloid moment. Ginsberg seems so, well... unassuming here. While I never was a big fan of beat poetry, I did like some of the literature that was inspired by it, as well as literature which was indirectly influenced by it.

Surrealists like William S. Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut, and Arthur Miller, along with predecessors like Aldous Huxley and Franz Kafka have spurred me on when I would otherwise have given up on reading.

To appreciate what these guys were doing, you need to consider the repressive times they lived in. Ginsberg's 'The Howl', along with the book that inspired this deliciously absurd moment were both the object of obcenity trials. Today they're scarcely given a second thought.

qv

[fingal]

Now that's a unique little celluloid moment.

It certainly is, and I only found out about the film recently. It might look a bit crazy, but it was carefully scripted, and filmed in a professional studio. I like the feeling of 'looking in' on another era which I'm curious about.

Interesting point about the repressive times they lived in. It would account for the sense of rebellion in the film, but in the end it's playful and entertaining.