Written (maybe March 2021?) in reply to an association/community of creatives riffing off the Jack Kerouac writing for Japhy Ryder (*cough* modeled after Gary Snyder) about a rucksack revolution.
My feeling is the beat generation, the lost generation, romantics, punks/hippies/pranksters and/or whatever movement you want to namecheck are labels of convenience (we love to categorize) and – importantly – don’t live fossilized in amber.
Ergo: people who are creating today *honestly and authentically* are part of a continuous strand which occasionally picks up names along the way.
daveo
We are a *new* movement whether it has an “name” or not. If you are writing, sharing, wondering, wandering, rambling, sharing, filling notebooks with joy & impunity, endless letters to lovers you’ll never meet & living full on, going going going.
We are who we are, regardless of generation and accidental timings of birth or state of the world, we take in all that came before us and (perhaps) we spark what will come after us. We are the rucksack revolution who found a place to sit calmly, share widely, create honestly, give openly, inspire gently and carry-on intrepidly through it all.
Indeed for decades when I would ramble on about these literary heroes, most people would stare blankly, even lots of Deadheads didn’t trace the lineage but now, what was once “counter culture” has bubbled up into consensus reality so often.
We are the ambassadors and the diplomats but also the practitioners … and we have mighty tools available to us! So many writers were never “known“ because a suit in a New York City office didn’t *take a chance* on them (their efforts sequestered in shoeboxes in attics and lost to unknowing grandchildren or recycle bins) but now all of us can publish everything / all the time / everywhere and (importantly) cultivate a community like one does with a garden.
Now I’m so pleased and proud to help amplify these classic & contemporary stories in Japan through exhibits and examples, plus – again importantly – inspiring other people to create their stories and sprinkle them out to the universe in whatever form they choose.
Fck Stats, Make Art.
Right here / it’s all about the cycles: they showed us the way, keep your notebooks handy & pencil sharpened, remember to share, remember to seek, & remember to go go go.
“I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of ’em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures …”
Jack Kerouac *fictional quoting* Japhy Ryder in Dharma Bums