A New Movement

I’m ready for something new. I don’t mean that I’m looking for a new personal area of interest (although this is never a bad thing), or that I’m making some vague political statement about the Bush administration (although it’s pretty clear he’s all washed up)--I’m talking about art in its most general and sprawling definition. It seems to me that no matter how hard we try, we can’t seem to get rid of the sixties—with all its washed out, shallow metaphors and drug-induced attempts at enlightenment. The “drifter” was a cool guy to be in the fifties; Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, these were guys worth having a conversation with--carving their stream-of-consciousness, counter-culture, live for the moment, leave your possessions, life is jazz mentality into the minds of the upcoming children of peace and love. But that’s where it should have stopped and been turned into something concrete. The Beatniks had something to say. They were the closest thing that this country has ever had to a mainstream intellectual/ artistic movement, where writers and poets and bright minds were taken seriously enough to be celebrities in the American mainstream. They lived their words: train-hopping, ground camping, money scrounging their way to the next town, looking desperately for some depth and meaning to set them free from the mundane, suburbanite bullshit that was eroding the minds of everyone around them. These were great men. They had courage to be something different and to say, “I’m intelligent, self-sufficient, and more alive than you are. I have no money, I have no home, and I am still an American, and what’s more, I have influence. I don’t need corporate sponsorship, I don’t need government protection--I don’t need anything but my pen. I live by my words and I’m willing to die by them." Each was a soldier in his own rite.

Then came the hippies. The hippies said, “That’s all fine and well, but we’re not so interested in the whole discipline thing." So, the Beatnik’s intellectual counter-culture turned into a thing of the heart. Hippies were, by and large, good-intentioned, big-hearted, talent-less vagabonds who turned, “scrounging for money to find Truth and create something lasting” into “scrounging for money to get to the next music festival and buy more acid." The musicians had some talent, but not a lot of discipline. The movement lost steam because it became more about having fun than about finding meaning. It stopped asking the big questions and started giving the easy answers—-simple answers, like love each other and make peace, not war, answers that were broad and spiritual and, ultimately, as we've seen, easier to say and sing about than to actually live out in reality. The now moody, reality-blurred movement dissipated into an age of bad music, confusion, and brainless disco dancing with only the Grateful Dead to keep the hippy dream alive. The Beatniks surely would have been disappointed to see that the hippies let drugs and sex and spinning around until they saw God come between them and their movement.

This is not to say that some good and lasting things didn’t come out of the sixties: Civil Rights, Feminism, conscientious objection to violence, these ideas were specific and useful towards a greater good. They were tangible ideas that Americans could understand and buy into. Many other worthwhile ideas were swept away with the Bohemian Mafia, content with cultureless dissent and structure-less, tacky, anything-goes art and music. In its place came the eighties' synthesized music with nothing to say and even harder drugs to do. With the voice of the intellectuals all but absent—-only Kurt Vonnegut to cynically mock the ridiculousness of the Regan years—-the voice of the Beatniks cowered even further from the mainstream into an elitist group sitting in campus coffee shops scratching their chins. The mainstream voice still trying to speak out for Truth and real Freedom (when it comes to big decisions), became angry in the nineties with grunge music (a fair attempt, but still ultimately undisciplined and lacking motivation), and has now turned to cynicism and sarcasm among anyone still tuning out and clinging to reality in a culture of people looking for anything that will catapult them into stardom: a gimmick, an image, a façade that will entertain the American people like dangling car keys in front of a newborn child. Today's "artists" have nothing to say, it's all about them. If an artist can stick to a inner voice and express something meaningful and people buy into it enough to make this artist wealthy--fine. But today's artists simply cater to what the people want and it has turned all of our fine arts into watered-down, mono-cultured, commercial bullshit. Every book on the bestseller list is the same book, every song on the radio is the same song, every voice in America is the same voice, and it's saying, "I care more about money than saying what I really think about life."

So, I’m ready for something new. I’m ready for this country to get fed up with the bullshit and start enduring some boring mindfulness for the sake of something beautiful and lasting, something with depth and meaning, something that might possibly echo the sentiment of the Beatniks who were willing to sleep in a barn rather than compromise with a culture that spends their time talking about what color couch will match their curtains. Anytime you’re ready artists and musicians. Anytime you’re ready intellectuals. Anytime you’re ready American mainstream—-to calm down and do something that involves talent and thought, something creative that is about enriching your culture and not about making you rich-—I’m ready to see it.