The Moment of Revolution

There seems to be a Taoist strain in the literary traditions that I have felt a fellowship with as if I were continuing the progress that biology would not allow. Hell, the connection with me is so intense that I've even imagined conversations with this brethren, a result of isolation no doubt--crazy. I say there is a Taoist relation because I look underneath ruins, into old ravaged western mines, to find this outlaw tradition in writing. For many reasons I find this literature that after every two decades is burned by their creators in bonfire barrels, of course I am pointing to Tzara, but it to me is the most free and uninhibited of all literary or artistic traditions and an healthy alternative to the dead alcoholic descendants of Chaucer. It is in their courageous exuberant sense of freedom that the avant-garde moves towards reinvention and in some cases brings into consciousness for modern readers the spiritual path that has always been the umbilical cord of the poet.

There is a need that exists within poetry as well as poets to exceed custom mediocre canned perceptions. Therefore a poetical precondition presents itself and finds a origin in a fundamental human desire to transcend the 'known' and explore the wilderness territory of that which is equally feared and dreamed of. Bukowski had a poem called 'I was born to hustle rosebuds down the avenues of the dead'�, and as poetical this is, it contains a particular truth of the artistic function. The artists, after all, are not a statesmens or laborers, but while they with all the armaments of imagination forges beauty out of nothingness travels in a land of harsh utility alien to what seems to them a an utterly absurd manifestation.
It is among this alternative commentary that I came across the tradition of spontaneous writing, with its roots in James Joyce, but truly forwarded by Jack Kerouac. The reasoning for adopting spontaneity was more because my method is such an act of fury created when I am writing and like that school I have a firm belief in pure unadulterated emotion as the supreme form for all expression. There is a catalogue of artists as well with such a lust for life that fills their canvases and pages with the razor tipped arrows of human essence. It is the mad ones, as Kerouac said ' . . . the only ones for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, the ones who . . . burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'� Out of this motley crew outfit that I have drawn a sense of a tradition out of, a difficult project to find a tradition out of nonconformist bums who wish to tear the cacophonic walls of literary conventions down to a the edges of the bowery pier.

It is not just a medium strictly of words that attract me, but a whole consortium of mediums that draw me into there center. The power of music, for instance, to have the ability to encapsulate setting, place, environment, individual background of the subject among other elements all working to continue an emancipated narrative of the soul. Folks who wage war on the human proclivity for bull shit and get down, finally, to something that is equally human as it is substantive. What binds all of these disparate traditions is a basic attitude and heart that is between the lines, notes, and brush strokes that hit certain sensitive individuals at chosen moments as an ultimate harmony of life.

This tradition of mine that befriended me when there were only strangers, has it as any other tradition been another form of conformity and limitation of the past? This good possibility is actually been an element within the tradition warned of any faith in any father. After all it is the individuals life and no one else's. This being so, what is held in that life is all that is required for individual visionary ticks and momentum to speak the same yet original song that gives that the narrative a revolution.

So why should I listen to any tradition? What is necessary is the radical independence to be rid of the past, to dissolve golden idols, and to get hip with what the progress of the individual unconditionally is. That is, to find a degree of happiness and contentment in self and world usually in the form of compassion. The level of individual compassion has always been the barometer of world progress, because in the arena of society or government there are amoral structures, i.e. they are composed of both immoral and moral individuals. So, why be so enchanted with other voices beyond the communication of individual vision when the real responsibility to self and society is to develop compassionately. When one deeply and unquestionably understands this then one can still chum around with past sages, but the majority of energy is for the magical journey to inner peace. Afterwards, all of the foolish worship of the past ends because it is the here and now where life exists and if that becomes an evaluating standard, compassionate selfhood, the oppression of old ideologies ceases to possess any formative meaning.

Many people will agree with my philosophy, but they just can't get around certain things such as: status, envy, greed, pride and all the other baggage that we as a civilization have been insanely clinging to for reasons that continue to baffle.

I am not going to pass individual responsibility off onto civilization, but it is civilization where these socialized behaviors are taught, conditioned, and reinforced. People say 'Well, that's all good, but I have to eat'� or 'Your just going to let them get away with that.'� In my observation while religion or shall I say human institutionalized religion teaches or rather preaches these ideals it fails to truly remain true to them because of issues of power and wealth. When it comes down to it the world frowns upon compassion, calls it weakness and not strength. There have been those who's self expression became their compassion such as Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Theresa, but invariably the world turns on their unorthodox philosophy of compassion with the punishment of death. How many out of a slim list have been murdered as a result of their harmless compassionate ethics? How much misery does this earth have to endure before a new thought, an unheard of thought will be seen as a agreeable alternative. When will the value of competition be seen as the anti social force that it is?

Compassion is not favorable to 90 percent of the world because the results of such a direction aren't as glittery, they don't provide with portentous selfish benefits. I think that largest boulder for one to turn over is the boulder of self, mine included, but when it is realized that there are no 'me's'� or 'not me's'�, that the observer is the observed, how meaningless the efforts of a flawed social system become. So, as said and with what you can gather from my words, is not the most revolutionary event, socially and individually, to evaluate the stuff of our lives in terms of their compassionate content and not who they know or how their bank account is shaped, would that not be an entire revolution from what was previously thought to be reality and thus a total revision of history.
So let me take stock in this little trip in words we've taken. To begin I find a anti literary establishment as a reasonable direction in literature and I progress to include the entire establishment of western civilization as a flawed and destructive system. What do you or myself do or, more aptly, take action for a better world. The world has proven itself to be desireless of peaceful change. The manner in which I change or the world changes is always on an individual level. Is not one pure drop of water in a polluted pond a polluted pond less polluted. Society is not my responsibility, but how I relate to it is and in this exists my effectiveness for change.
In my present conditions I still am young and quibble about things that in the next second become meaningless. It is more my willingness and open eyes to another alternative way of approaching my existence on a war torn earth that is what I call that many times implemented word, hope. It is a hope within my self where I begin to believe in not only my own possibilities for compassion, but those around me. The world possesses far more beauty in it when it still has the potential in its inhabitance to create peace. When I see this potential in the lives that surround me it becomes a joy to exist and it is then that I truly become social all the rest is a manifestation of fear. I do not believe that perfection is a logical aim for any creature on earth, but perhaps acquiring some gracefulness isn't such an unachievable end.

Michael Guichard here and signing off.

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