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the
current
Monday
Report
below!
This week's report by King Wenclas:
"WHAT HAPPENED
INSIDE MILLER THEATER!"
Part Two of King's Howl Protest Account!
(Click here for Protest photos, press & participant reports).
(Click here to read Part One of this report).
The New York City sky had darkened. Jelly Boy inside the hall
must've talked his way into keeping his seat. I couldn't adequately
explain to the others what'd happened in there, other than that we'd
made our point, I think. All else was the confusion I'd brought into
this-- the pleading Lopate had put into his letter (the part he'd
skipped when reading it to the audience) that we not get too carried
away; EXPECTING that we'd be inside. Our reputation has always
been greater than the reality. But where was that fearless sideshow
clown I'd left within?
I saw him coming out during intermission shortly thereafter,
accompanied by two attractive women. It took me a minute to
recognize the women as Margo Jefferson and Ann Douglas. They
escorted me back into the hall. "We'll get you in," Margo said to me.
"That's kind of a hostile crowd," I noted.
"Oh, you can handle yourself," she said.
Once inside at my seat, I found myself bombarded with questions and
statements from the audience: "You don't know us. You don't know
anything about us." But I knew them too well-- had been struggling
to find a place or not find a place in their world my entire life.
Intermission had ended and Jason Shinder stood at the microphone as
if he'd never left it. There was one more scene to be played. The
clown stood on the steps to the stage. Much alarm! Everyone, myself
included, wondered why he was there. The clown was on stage,
standing next to Shinder at the podium, engaging him in conversation.
The two men of same height studied each other eye to eye. A
transcendent moment really-- the confrontation between Insider and
Outsider; villain and hero; prince finding pauper in his looking glass;
slick bureaucrat facing street poet clown. Two sides of literature's
coin. Which was the genuine article?
Were the two men so different? Smiling Eric asked glaring Jason to
help him with a trick which would make the clown go away. Shinder
declined. Eric did the trick anyway-- snapping a mousetrap on his
own tongue-- to surprising applause. The poet next to him struggled
to overcome his scrupulous control, but couldn't-- the literary
establishment unwilling to give up the microphone.
"The rules!" I prodded from my seat, encouraging him to give over
his control. Around me the place was in an uproar, an uproar which
hadn't stopped, at least had been in my head for much of this hectic
day.
"I didn't pay fifteen dollars to listen to you!" a man shouted at me
from above.
I thought, THAT bozo will have to pay more than fifteen dollars to
see us. The show was over. I rose from my seat and stepped up the
aisle to see if the character in the stands would have anything else to
say. Two ULAers who'd followed me in during the break rose also. I
accompanied them from the arena, pausing to argue with members of
the audience the entire way. The amazing street performer Eric
Broomfield-- "Jelly Boy the Clown"-- brought up the rear behind me.
This is my version of events; only that. The people who were on
stage can give their own perspective if they wish. Will they? No
chance of that! To speak of it would be to knock down the barrier
which exists between themselves and groups like the ULA; the same
barrier which surrounded the stage-- the wall which stands between
them and the rest of society.
Established literature is a hardened darkened unmoving fortress
which would've frightened the young Allen Ginsberg of 1955. There's
no room for dissent in it-- only unthinking conformity. Legions of too
many trained conformists march in straight lines into the heart of the
fortress at the top of which sit the high priests of sinecure and status,
who might symbolically be represented by six chairs. Is it any wonder
the product of this System expresses safe artistic stylistic well-
ordered conformity, and little else? There are no "Howls" from the
System; no rages, rants, or surprises; no cries of pain and outrage--
only deadening sameness.
New Howls are being shouted by zeensters and street poets; those
who'll not conform; who have no status as the Beats had no status,
and therefore nothing to lose.
April 17th the Underground Literary Alliance made history by
invading the fortress, introducing life and energy, showing how
exciting the _expression of literature can be. In the long annals of
literature there was never an encounter like this one-- forgotten
writers being heard. For one moment, the bridging of a gulf. Whether
or not our movement is acknowledged isn't our problem-- we'll
continue our rebellion, will create on the sidewalk, the stage and the
page while writers of the past continue their predictable lines in
predictable outlets in predictable ways.
Keep up your walls, maintain your bastions, defend your fortresses,
literary Overdogs, while the world beneath you teems with howls of
poetry and madness and life.Circulate your pronouncements from on
high! They'll be issued to the public in approved venues like the New
York Times.
Click here for more info on the ULA's Columbia Howl Protest.
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King Wenclas is the ULA's publicity director.
Check out his lit-blog, Attacking the Demi-Puppets!
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