Dylan is about the Individual against the whole
creation
Beethoven is about one man's fist in the lightning clouds
The Pope is about
abortion &
the spirits of the dead...
Television is about people sitting in their living room looking at their things
America is about being a big Country full of
Cowboys Indians Jews Negroes &
Americans
Orientals Chicanos Factories skyscrapers Niagara Falls Steel Mills radios homeless Conservatives, don't forget
Russia is about
Czars Stalin Poetry Secret Police Communism barefoot in the snow
But that's not really
Russia it's a
concept
A concept is about how to look at the
earth from the
moon without ever getting there. The moon is about
love &
Werewolves, also
Poe
Poe is about looking at the
moon from the
sun
or else the
graveyard
Everything is about something if you're a thin
movie producer chain-smoking muggles
The world is about
overpopulation,
Imperial invasions,
Biocide Genocide,
Fratricidal Wars,
Starvation,
Holocaust,
mass injury & murder,
high technology
Super science,
atom Nuclear Neutron Hydrogen detritus,
Radiation Compassion Buddha,
Alchemy
Communication is about monopoly telivision radio movie newspaper spin on Earth, i.e. planetary censorship.
Universe is about Universe.
Allen Ginsberg is about confused mind writing down
newspaper headlines from
Mars--
The audience is about
salvation, the listeners are about
sex, Spiritual
gymnastics,
nostalgia for the
Steam Engine & Pony
Express
Hitler Stalin Roosevelt &
Churchill are about
arithmetic &
Quadrilateral equations, above all
chemistry physics &
chaos theory--
Who cares what it's all about?
I do!
Edgar Allen Poe cares!
Shelly cares!
Beethoven &
Dylan care.
Do you care? What are you about
or are you
a human being with 10 fingers and two eyes?
--Allen Ginsberg
October 21, 1996
"The New Yorker", "election" double issue