The irony of backalley blogging on the FP has already been noted. As has this:
Sometimes while prowling back alleys you find things that don’t bear the light of day, brass ritual cymbal turns out to be a trashcan cover, exotic seafood dinner is really rotten fish guts.
Yet perhaps there’s some truth to these lies.
Here in NYC the sun has gone down. That’s the time to prowl.
With no apparent purpose, I will say that from an artistic view I’ve been frustrated by folks characterizing the far left as a given known group. Ever since I started hearing the stories of the hippies from the 60s and their adventures, I don’t see how they are ever truly portrayed in our political discourse and yet I would maintain they are the true left who inherited the real mantle from the same folks who worked for social justice in the 30s and 40s, those who came from Eastern Europe for good or ill who had a real revolutionary vision of equality and human rights which was passed through the wild American filter culminating in a generation of visionaries who to this day have not received their true (and well deserved) portrait in our album of history. I’ve also, in recent years, come to both meet and read about some of the fierce young people who have that same spirit but in a far more difficult environment, they hop trains and live on the street and protest from sheer howling passion, and these kids have not had their portrait included either. Anyway, just had to get that off my chest.
Here’s a prose piece I dreamt up tonight.
Trickle of Consciousness Beat and rhythm under my feet even as big powers clash and make energetic noises, even as fires burn and the air turns dark or mountaintops are sundered by the insanity of insane commerce, even as thundering bombs fall from robotic dystopian jets, the rhythm in my quotidian abode is that of winter of naked branches and long nights, the beat the same in all the universe, the beat of existence that although adorned by endless permutations and glamours of human expression, the beat remains the same as it endlessly inspires and accommodates adornment, be it saintly or demonic.by Nightprowlkitty
No escape from the rhythm, infinite sacrament to angels and devils as they yinyang gleefully before our bewildered eyes, and the movement to the rhythm, rhythm to the beat not making big drama fuss just always there, always ours, no cost or fee no membership application strings contracts treaties oaths promises and no escape if it’s always ours.
Here’s something classy.
(Video courtesy of YouTuber theslumsofsoftfocus)
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(courtesy YouTuber twobarbreak)
that never get their due.
One thing I think most of them have in common is that they don’t feel the need for the credit, as long as the things they work on progress. Thats a warm reward.
have one thing in common, maybe. 🙂 they have aged. pictures of youth and then pictures of age; the same people, the same faces, just older, with more wrinkles, determination in the eyes, even after failure, and failure, and more failure. maybe that is the portrait. perserverance.
Though they look like they`re not ours,
These hidden humans are often flowers.
They live in places we call mean,
They live in places we call unclean.
Often meant to be unseen,
Their hidden lives,
We`ve yet to glean.
All they do isn`t for naught’
And like all people,
when dead they rot.
They are no different from you or me,
They only ask,
To live & be.
reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav.
as I just got back from a dark time walk in the city even though it’s only five thirty it’s dark now. Walking in the city reveals it’s tawdry glamour. NY is a night city, even the filthy snow looks good after sunset. Pretty nifty prose poem so much rhythm, your background of lyric writing serves you well. Inspiring.
The revisionists who want to minimize the hippies overlook the historical background. They isolate the social/political movements out of context and time. Much like art and music each wave is standing on the shoulders of giants who went before. Were did the beatniks stop and the hippies begin? Where did the Oakies of the depression era stop and the dispossessed homeless of now begin. Then you had the ‘no future’ of the punks, another counter.
I think the hippies scared the bejesus out of the mainstream as they were tribal, and not a small number to be relegated as a footnote. They were a mix of all the strains with shades of the east and truly countered the culture of American entrenched status quo and propriety. They reeked havoc.
As a geezer I look at the urban young and my heart sings. Even the poseurs seem to be reinventing the various manifestations of the left that has gone before. They can all rummage though the trash cans of history and culture via the information age and open doors to philosophies and expressions that are just the next. They are a force to be reckoned with. I hope will not be co-opted with visions of neocons and dying with a lot of toys.