On Kerouac

Little ditty ‘bout Jack and Dean ..

Over the course of a continuing lifetime I have taken many trips, across nations and continents, to the tops of mountains and through vast lowland swamps, traversing oceans and deserts, down back alleys of sprawling cities at night and gravel strewn country lanes into cloistered villages far removed from the hustle and bustle of the frantic and of course, with the initial guidance of teachers and shamans, into the deepest recesses of my own mind. Carlos Castaneda, Voltaire, the Odyssey and the Iliad, Johnny Quest, Sinbad and Dorothy have all been inspirational, but never have I sat more frequently with groups of friends around the world discussing the ramifications of a classic novel of adventure and discovery than that of ‘On The Road’ by the famous beat-generation writer Jack Kerouac.

The anticipation of the journey is often more exciting than the arrival. I have always felt most free and cognisant of spirit when ‘on the road’. Many of us are simply born with that desire to keep moving and exploring the world and our selves as active participants within it. As I wrote in a poem, with an obvious aside reference to Kerouac, ‘.. the memory of forgotten promises reminding me of Dharma bums and hobo days, it’s always easier for the one who goes than for the one who stays ..’

When Jack Kerouac published ‘On The Road’ it was said he began the “greening of America”. That is, he pulled the world that had been existing in black and white, a model of society defined and accepted by the majority, with its shades of grey disguising intention in a cinematic fusion of outward perception into an era where colour and the revelation of awareness of self could blossom into a new age of freedom and introspective purpose focused on locating the 'I'.

It was the first time ideas of self and collective consciousness of identity outside restrictive group norms had come into being on such a scale. Post World War Two America was searching and questioning and Jack opened the doors to perception through reinventing the classic quest story for the modern middle classes.

Unlike so many tales of adventure, the archetypal hunt for fortune or glory with good and evil outlined in caricature, the characters in Kerouac’s story in a morally vague period of liminal transition, are on an expedition to find themselves; not something without but something within. In this vision of America, as it existed then, there is greater wonder in learning who one is and in rejecting a past that has for all intents decayed along with the anachronistic opinions of ‘anyone over thirty’. The world, post war, has changed, and the old paradigm no longer addresses the concerns of contemporary youth.

Kerouac attempts to redefine culture beyond the familiar frontiers of geographic territory whilst utilising the physical trip across that seemingly endless country as a setting, for California now marks the edge of the map, toward a search for the meaning of personal existence in this new and complex age of information and its constantly shifting transient society of individuals. Our protagonist, a veiled Kerouac himself, voyages through time and space meeting others who reveal the secrets of life through their own narratives of the journey to realisation; a new consciousness for a new age.

During the account of this rambling and often hectic jaunt back and forth across America Kerouac introduces various characters, each struggling to reconcile their here and now with a troubled past that no longer holds a truth for the future. For those who have read ‘On The Road’ it becomes obvious that the most poignant and lasting of these often-tragic figures is his frequent companion, the ‘crazy’ Dean Moriarty.

Alas, poor Dean Moriarty. To be thought insane or sane would in and of itself as definition deny the revelation of the character who stood outside convention – for only through the yes of the non-insane is the determination of the state of mind by which we measure such things. Is insanity an arbitrary notion? I think not.

Schizophrenia is one of the culturally manifest mental illnesses that have been shown to have universally applicable criteria (manifests itself culturally but with recurring features cutting across lines of acceptable social interaction and recognised norms of believability), and Dean doesn’t exhibit those distinguishing attributes. Yes, that dividing line may be tenuous at times and run down the centre of the road as a median we hesitate to cross yet edge along running our wheels close to the fringe of the acceptable, however what separates those who would veer to the other side from those who resist the urge is the measure of sanity.

The line is a gauge of the fragmented self and as broken hearts and minds in a disjointed world we vacillate through the gaps as the need to conform presses against the desire to follow instinct.

Dean represents both the past and the inner child. At the end of the book he stands amongst his associates, bandaged thumb protruding as a mark of ugly challenge – the iconic symbol of the perpetual hitchhiker, in blatant refusal to grow up when Sal and his friends are ‘settling down’ and coming together as suburban couples with the ordinary dreams of jobs and homes. With his dirty t-shirt and cackling laughter he is an unsightly reminder of the pain and suffering each has endured ‘on the road’ to coming of age in the new world.

As friends and compatriats they have travelled this highway of grief and are ready to accept the conformity each successive generation has faced, while Dean has yet to leave the anguish behind and see the future as one of adult requirements to reshape society in an original vision of hopefulness. Much to their discomfort, Dean is still trapped in that boxcar of the dark chilly night bouncing through the endless prairie of that old and depressive dustbowl heartland.

The suggestion of distance as miles travelled and space as the distance between places are themselves fluid concepts and subject to interpretation, or with the intention of being more accurate here, distance becomes time. The Lakota Sioux, for example, measure distance as the time it takes to travel from one place to another, that is, one does not say ‘my house is 5 miles away’ but rather ‘my house is an hour from here’. However, we also perceive distance as the space between events in our lives (we’ve come a long way since then .. etc) and measure that by what we have learned or how we have grown from each experience, or perhaps even how we have become ‘distant’ from ourselves and others as we lived in a remembered past.

This harks back (so to speak) to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland adventure, in that the protagonist finally returns to the upper world of manners and accountability after her hallucinatory experience filled with a new awareness of self, ready to meet those who dispute her progress in becoming a woman of her age (and/or time).

She recognises the need for change and lets go of childish desires while holding fast to imagination as a source of inspiration to her self, the creative play in her mind suggesting it is possible to have ‘sane’ thoughts beyond the norm and yet integrate them into personality that is still within the realm of acceptability – as “all the best people do”.

Dean, however, is not the fresh idea of change and integrated composite self, but rather the moribund form of the lost innocence of youth. Sal is touched, yes, by the sentiment of Dean’s entrance, but he is also saddened by the inability of Dean to reinvent the adventure – the quest must continually evolve, or that which we seek is no longer meaningful. By trying to stay the same, in continuing to live as he always had, Dean had lost the plot; for him the story was at an end.

Change is an essential aspect of the journey and Dean did not change with time, he didn’t grow and learn. This is Dean’s insanity, the inability to amalgamate his past with his present, his repetition without restructuring.

Constantly reliving his disappointments he was swallowed by the misery of his childhood and was forever sentenced to repeating the failures of his past. We observe in Dean the inability to grapple squarely with responsibility and mature resolution of parental flaws, and he remains the burden of truth and the image of regret for those who cannot move forward to realisation of the unified self.

The road beckons for all of us, for the road is itself a metaphor for life, with the point on the horizon where we finally arrive being that state of becoming a complex yet complete person for whom the adventure continues but the quest is variable.

Many times I have, along with friends, followed the whim of adventure; rolling along highways and back roads, discovering truths of existence and filling our heads with multicoloured dreams. I have journeyed near and far and I continue the quest today – still seeking resolution of freedom and independence with the security and comfort of knowledge of self.

However, I no longer seek me, as I am quite aware of who I am, rather I seek others – those like minded individuals who share the road as fellow travellers in life, and the exploration of space itself – the places I encounter as landmarks on the way. For where will our thoughts take us if not towards a union of spirit, the spirit of discovery – of the past and the future?

The present is a fleeting moment of existence, whereas who we have been and who we are becoming are the sincerest revelations of self. I find myself reflected in the eyes of others, on the road that forever winds and twists through the experiences of a spirited life into the heart of a new day.

I look within my own mind as the thoughts of those who have gone before are reconfigured to define my age and time for an empathetic world yet to be, and I know this path is for me the best of all possible roads.

*     *     *

A New Beginning

"Begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end: then stop"

from Alice in Wonderland ~ Lewis Carroll

December has arrived, and the sun is shining through scattered clouds across the Southern skies as I pull on my travelling boots once again and head across the cornfields and pine forests toward the rugged coast of the Western frontier. I love the wild open plains that stretch as far as the eye can see and the wide endless sky above the rolling hills of farmland and pasture. From the Aegean to the Pacific, from Istanbul to San Francisco I have travelled across nearly every type of terrain and seen many fabulous wonders, both natural and built, and love the vibrancy of life I have encountered - partaking in my fair share of the luxuries this world has on offer. Yet, I am concerned for the prospects of the next generation in the face of a steady decline of places and spaces untouched by the ravages of over-development.

Don't Fear The Reaper

The moon had risen late and still hung in the heavens as a beacon to the followers of the stars when the orange sun sprayed its first rays of shimmering light over the surface of the gulf waters with such immediate blinding intensity that even the early birds gathering their morning beetles and pulling worms from damp crevices beneath the soil swooped for shelter amongst the shade of tall pines and luxuriant banana trees.

I was taking a vigorous walk along the sandy beach and felt only the faintest breeze of crisp morning air coming in from the calm waters off the far edge of the peninsula to remind me it was autumn in these northern latitudes.

Beneath my feet dew had settled on the thorny plants that spring from the earth during the late season nights, and I crunched my way down the path to the rocky outcropping at the end of the strand.

Jack Kerouac coined the phrase ‘rainy night in Georgia’ in his book 'The Dharma Bums', and from the couple of years I lived in Georgia and South Carolina, on the Atlantic coastal island of Hilton Head and the city of Savannah, I know well the tremendous storms that winter brings. I experienced these same deluges on the island of Mallorca – and had been told to expect them through the winter in Turkey. However, I haven’t seen rain for a long time, though a few threatening clouds have passed over coming inland from the wide blue water that reaches a thousand miles out to meet the ocean currents.

I sat watching the sunrise across the deep water beyond the harbour where the shrimp boats and trawlers moored, their nets pulled high and fluttering silently in the sea breeze like the wings of butterflies trapped in gigantic spider webs.

I cast my mind out across the sea and thought of distant windswept lands where once I had struggled through snowfalls and sleet to rush from here to there in anticipation of this escapade we call living.

I recalled the line from John Lennon’s ‘Beautiful Boy’, a song I would sing nightly to my infant son Gabriel before he slept, “life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”  I felt sadness for lost time, I felt weariness with the constant expectations of something more, I felt joy in my current circumstances and calm in recognition of that inner contentment. I watched the sun lift into the cool blue sky, and with peace in my heart and a smile on my lips strolled back along the dunes to breakfast on fresh fruit and honey.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving in America. A time when families gather to share the bounty of another year in the pursuit of happiness, and praise the health of those who live in the knowledge of the freedom to seek their destiny among like-minded individuals. With a strong will and the promise of a full belly at the end of the day, people can achieve anything.

Whenever I consider the holiday event of Thanksgiving I recall the joke my friend Tina, a full-blood Sioux Indian from South Dakota, would never fail to tell me whenever we would meet. “The anthropologist came to the reservation and asked the people, ‘we call this land America, what did you call it?’ 
‘Ours’ they replied.”

Autumn is a season of reminders, as we tuck into the harvest feast laid out on the table as the survivors’ reward from a benevolent earth, we huddle against the tide the transformation of age sweeps upon us. However, we all remain aware that continual change is the only stable force surrounding us, and embrace the progress of life in sure and certain hope of the betterment of living through striving to achieve the dreams we hold true.

I love to travel, discovering new spaces to tread and revisiting old places where once I trod with eagerness for the future. I’m always looking forward – I can’t imagine a life in one location, land or town forever, the very thought sends shivers of panic down my spine.

 I am a wandering spirit in this world, and I gladly accept that status, and feel a mild passing pity for those who call only one place home – though every person makes their decision and I respect the difficulty each has faced to be where they feel they belong.

However my heart is free, my mind is ever seeking challenge and my soul craves something more than a paved street and a mortared box to live in. There is so much to learn, and the world is vast with so much culture to explore; we are blessed with little time to waste trudging along the same grey road everyday.

I especially enjoy meeting people and making friends everywhere I go. I like knowing that my network of fellows in life are scattered as seeds in fertile ground each growing the fruit of experience according to their taste and kind. A few days ago I saw people bent over high stalks in the fields picking ripe cotton, knowing it would eventually be woven into fabric.

Earlier, I spoke with a couple of fishermen as they laid out their night’s catch for trade along the harbour. I ambled through the market selecting a few choice items for my Thanksgiving meal, and of course made acquaintance with Charlie, a friend’s beautiful cat, and only one of the local predators.

Lacking perfect sight, but with a peculiar acuity for darting flight when locating prey, the bats that flurry around the veranda at night are uniquely skilled in catching the moths that hover near lamps.

Dragonflies skim the surface of the pond in an autumn mating dance while grasshoppers nibble leaves from vines growing along the fence irregularly separating field from road.

 

Occasionally a praying mantis can be seen awaiting a morsel to feed upon as brightly coloured butterflies tremble, seductively alighting on the extravagantly clothed flowers, while honeybees work through the dense vegetation, finding the sweetest nectar for the queen secreted in her hive.

Insects are generally not a particular problem for me, and are more interesting than annoying. Several people have complained to me of unseasonably irritating mosquito bites, they don’t seem to bother me. I put this down to a particularly awful episode when, as a child in America, I was swarmed upon by so many of the nasty little bloodsuckers that I was left feverish for days – I don’t think I’ve been bitten since and feel I have immunity now, like some fragrant chemical warning to the blighters that tells them: stay away!

It seems local entertainment isn’t restricted to the banjo, whistle and guitar, as I had to send Buddy away with a morsel of meat a few nights ago after his howling rendition of an old classic. This furry little fella takes great pride in his fame and quite frankly, I’m not sure how deserved his reputation is.

Finally, I meandered once more out to the promontory; the harvest sun was setting across the still waters that reach out across the southern sky to form the endless line of the horizon. I sat on a rock near the edge of the field and pondered the mysteries of life – knowing that all secrets are only knowledge yet to be revealed. I looked up and awaited the first glimmer of a star amongst the uncountable constellations as a compass needle pointing me toward the next destination on my route, knowing there was another place I had to return to soon ..

 

I wondered what I would see on the road, who I would meet, whether old friends or new, love or heartache. I anticipated simply another episode in the story of life unfolding as a flower opens its petals to catch a glimpse of the sun, and I smiled within at the magic of every moment of being.

*     *     *

Novembaura

I have a good reason to discuss a change in the season .. an autumn amble in the country, along the beach, in the forest, through the heart of the affair ..

Over the past months I have really learned to appreciate photographs revealing the soothing consolation of nature in all her glory .. but, most particularly I've revelled in simply walking through the beauty of life’s marvellous creation admiring stunning views and thoughtfully considering the variety of organisms that often we take for granted

In the Scheme of Things ..

With the Bayram festival approaching and the summer sun still warming the earth, I couldn’t resist one more visit to this most ostentatious city of spires, a fabulously inspiring metropolis of imperial dreams; and it was only a magic carpet ride away.

Just a short, pleasant journey through gently rolling countryside and a quick trip through underground tubes landed me wide-eyed in child-like anticipation at the axis point of history, the juxtaposition of continents and cultures.

Capital of Controversy 2010

I had been promising myself a visit to Istanbul’s Museum of Modern Art during the city’s tenure as European Capital of Culture for 2010, and I arrived with my heart in my hands at the epicentre of three empires.

Lap of the Gods ..

I’ve been stunned into submission of the senses by so many of the magnificent and imposing structures in this beautiful and vast landscape of wonder, and still I’m continually surprised at the wealth of history to be uncovered in this ancient land. With every sunrise that colours the world my eyes are opened once again to the tremendous possibilities in living and the hopes that drive us onward. I regularly discover stunning vistas and majestic buildings; new and exciting places to see and significant extraordinary sights to visit just up ahead and around the bend of this endless path I tread.

Within the Sands of Time

Time is pouring through the hourglass of our lives and every grain of sand that trickles past the narrow space of the here and now is a moment slipping away that will either contain a treasured memory or simply be lost in the shifting passage of current movements as a missed opportunity ..

Eye on the Future ..

What do you feel
When you let go of the wheel,
Can you take a leap of faith,
Will you face the change of pace?

There are worlds out there
Beyond compare ..
Going on a journey
Somewhere far out East ..
We'll find the time to show you
Wonders never cease ..

- Morcheeba -

The weeks are beginning to roll by and become as one long moonlit dream .. I am starting to develop a rhythm and pattern to my days that works with the lifestyle of the brilliant heat of midday sunshine and the cool sea breeze of the evenings ..

This is the House

“There is no real and no imaginary except at a certain distance. What happens when this distance, even the one separating the real from the imaginary, begins to disappear and to be absorbed by the model alone?” Jean Baudrillard

“When two people see the same thing at the same time, that is real.” John Lennon

“Time can pull us together or time can push us apart – distance is the space between.” .. me.!



The Cruiser artists are a busy bunch ..and the past month has been no exception .. the Memory + Migration exhibition opened at Deda in Derby in January and runs through March 28th .. meanwhile “I can see your house from here” was a happening at the Old Knows Studios in Nottingham ..


Simon has been engaged in calculating a new theory of time travel – and this is a terrific example of his blueprints ..








Yelena had her first performance / Lecture at the RCA .. yet still had time to conceive and paint these wonderfully imaginative pastiche pastels on perspex blocks entitled ‘ninja mickey mouse’ ..






John sent his pre-packaged ‘art in a bag’ from America’s East Coast ..


Chris Lewis-Jones performed his live painting ‘never mind the pollox’ at the Sycamore Centre on 13th February .. in Chris’ words it was: “an only slightly ironic time based exploration of expressionism, the physicality of mark making and the visual language of Abstract Expressionism in general and Jackson Pollock in particular to the accompaniment of Be Bop.” However, for “I can see your house from here.” Chris examined our relationship to appearance and how we perceive ourselves – how do we define the physicality of personal space?











Saira seems to be everywhere at the moment .. the Horizontal group exhibition opened at Wadham College in Oxford .. and she produced these stunning ‘alien figure’ drawings and a fine example of encapsulated artefacts ..











I performed
a spoken word piece
called ‘Hame’ ..

a rumbling bus ride through some of the rougher parts of a post-industrial Northern town into the darker recesses of long buried memories .. a Scotland of the past – and not so far from home .. as the conductress said, “I can see your house from here.”


* * *

What's Up & Coming: 2010

With 'Up & Coming' soon arriving in Nottingham, I thought I would post this little video of one of my works on display at Novas Scarman's Contemporary Urban Centre in Liverpool .. the exhibition was the masterwork of Sheffield graduate curator David Thomas Crawley, and coincided with the European Capital of Culture celebrations for 2008 ..



It was a hectic time, with the open studios at Banks' Mills and a hot and sweaty poetry night at Big Blue in Derby, the John Lennon Drawing, Gustav Klimt paintings at the Tate in Liverpool, the preview evening of the Vickers' Art Award (the missed kiss haha .. Oi! where's my invite?), the emergence of Subism and No Parking as underground collectives created a buzz .. oh, and it was about that time I started this Blog ..

But while all that is in the past the future looks bright .. with Deda and Quad offering opportunities for local artists to show their work and the addition of Cruiser and Horizontal and many other small groups challenging the idea of traditional artist outlets and opening up new venues - working within and without the established art sector, and forums such as the Visual Arts Network establishing viable links with community and civic organisations, this region's independent artist associations look set to break down the barriers between the private and public to develop into a truly national hub for arts development .. and I'm certainly pleased to be part of what's happening ..