by Tully Thibeau

Being the voice of my generation would be pretty cool, I always thought, until last night, that is, as I watched some seemingly well-intentioned film documentary of the life and time of Mr. Jack Kerouac upon his production of the piece he entitled Big Sur. Jesus, man, for me it turned becoming the voice of a generation into a total bummer, like fame for the famous could be nothing other than a crushing avalanche sent down unto those who have sinned and the only thing that might keep them alive was the life-saving pockets of oxygen to be discovered amid what I infer to be liberal quantities of money under which they lie buried.

Fuck me.

I’m not certain what royalties of something like On The Road collects for its author, but, hey, before his ascendance, Kurosawa wrote screenplays during the dead of night lying in bed drinking beer (I have read), and, as he approached his zenith, he turned to whiskey, but suffocation didn’t set in until his work was defunct and cash remained readily available. So, what is it that’s separating the wheat from the chaff, as it were, in matters such as these, I presently ask. Buddhism versus Catholicism?

Shit.

Too simple. Must it have been circumstances of World War Two? That the defeat suffered by the Empire of Japan sustained the creative genius of the likes of a Kurosawa while the victory won by the United States, which fostered the burgeoning creative genius of the likes of a Kerouac, inured in that ilk such an overwhelming disposition of well-being that any form of obstacle, apparent and real, became unremittingly insurmountable?

Plainly, it has a geopolitical basis in reality, but does it also have the evaluation measure, the necessary and sufficient analytical grain for distinguishing the indolent luster of alcohol from the womblike darkness of the ensuing project?

Questions!

And no answers, mind you. I don’t fancy myself chronicling the Beat Generation or the Japanese Cinema here. I’m simply requesting the aid of you, the reader, in deciphering a most exquisite bamboozle, some luscious failure to grasp, to experience a pulsation that, if one speaks as the voice of a generation, folks’s gonna wanna put they ears raht up agin it.  Just ask that bald-headed crazy bastard Kurtz; he won’t give you any answers either, will he?

No. But enough Polack jokes.

You, the reader, and I have been summoned together on these kinds of matters before, in Ketchum Idaho and Woody Creek Colorado, the drug of choice and the final ticket to ride. The voices of the generations shall have their say, and we feel only their vibrations, like a babe in utero witnessing the natural and gentle rhythm of our own mother’s speech.

At least that’s what it used to mean to me. But not any more; that whole freak out was about championship effort, for sure, yet disillusionment was inevitable, and there’s only so many times you can pick up the pieces. Just ask that bald-headed crazy bastard Humpty Dumpty.

Taking charge of the words is a monumental task, I think we can all admit that, but you, the reader, are the obelisk on which they are carved, a time and place here on earth, when once there was poetry. Alas.

Mournful, indeed. Akin to the sound of a song on a motel-room radio in Wheeling West Virginia, expressing a heartfelt ache to return to the homeland south of Mason-Dixon. I think we’ve all felt that way once in our lives, and if you’re like me, the writer, all you can really do is hope that maybe the voice of your generation won’t crack under the landslide.