WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.459 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are doing 00:00:02.459 --> 00:00:05.080 something a little different. Usually when we 00:00:05.080 --> 00:00:09.179 look at history, we pick an event, a war, a movement, 00:00:09.400 --> 00:00:13.160 a scandal. A big, broad topic. Exactly. But today 00:00:13.160 --> 00:00:16.140 we're focusing on a person. And not just any 00:00:16.140 --> 00:00:18.219 person. We're looking at a man who you could 00:00:18.219 --> 00:00:22.160 argue acts as the connective tissue for the entire 00:00:22.160 --> 00:00:24.660 American counterculture of the 20th century. 00:00:24.859 --> 00:00:27.339 It is a massive claim, but I think the sources 00:00:27.339 --> 00:00:29.620 back it up completely. I mean, if you really 00:00:29.620 --> 00:00:31.640 look at the literary and cultural timeline of 00:00:31.640 --> 00:00:36.340 America from say 1945 all the way to 1997, there 00:00:36.340 --> 00:00:39.899 is one figure who is just. He's present at almost 00:00:39.899 --> 00:00:42.359 every single major cultural inflection point. 00:00:42.420 --> 00:00:44.259 We are talking about Allen Ginsberg. And I think 00:00:44.259 --> 00:00:45.979 for a lot of people, the name Allen Ginsberg 00:00:45.979 --> 00:00:49.380 conjures up a very specific, almost a cartoonish 00:00:49.380 --> 00:00:51.219 image. Oh, absolutely. You know, the bald head 00:00:51.219 --> 00:00:53.520 with the ring of hair, the big bushy beard, the 00:00:53.520 --> 00:00:55.560 thick glasses. Maybe he's playing a harmonium 00:00:55.560 --> 00:00:58.200 and chanting OM in a park somewhere while people 00:00:58.200 --> 00:01:01.100 in tie -dye dance around him. Exactly. The hippie 00:01:01.100 --> 00:01:02.939 poet caricature. Yeah. And look, don't get me 00:01:02.939 --> 00:01:05.079 wrong. He was that. That part is true. He leaned 00:01:05.079 --> 00:01:08.120 into it. He absolutely leaned into it. But that 00:01:08.120 --> 00:01:10.359 is just the surface layer. If you stop there, 00:01:10.480 --> 00:01:13.349 you miss the actual engine of the man. Because 00:01:13.349 --> 00:01:16.590 this is the guy who bridged the gap between the 00:01:16.590 --> 00:01:20.890 intellectual literary beats of the 1950s, you 00:01:20.890 --> 00:01:23.269 know, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and 00:01:23.269 --> 00:01:26.629 the full -blown hippie explosion of the 1960s. 00:01:26.650 --> 00:01:28.469 But then, and this is the part that gets me, 00:01:28.549 --> 00:01:30.689 he didn't stop there. He kept going right into 00:01:30.689 --> 00:01:33.269 the punk era of the 70s and 80s. That's the part 00:01:33.269 --> 00:01:34.750 that blows my mind. He was hanging out with The 00:01:34.750 --> 00:01:36.670 Clash. He was on stage with The Clash. He's on 00:01:36.670 --> 00:01:39.469 one of their records. So our mission today... 00:01:39.629 --> 00:01:42.590 Looking at this stack of biographies and letters 00:01:42.590 --> 00:01:46.450 and even FBI files is to move past that caricature. 00:01:46.549 --> 00:01:49.969 We want to explore the complex, often contradictory 00:01:49.969 --> 00:01:53.390 figure who fought for free speech, who explored 00:01:53.390 --> 00:01:55.909 Eastern spirituality way before it was cool. 00:01:55.989 --> 00:01:58.150 Before the Beatles went to India. Way before. 00:01:58.269 --> 00:02:01.370 He investigated the CIA and he wrote arguably 00:02:01.370 --> 00:02:03.569 the most influential American poem of the century, 00:02:03.750 --> 00:02:05.680 Howl. And we are going to get into the messy 00:02:05.680 --> 00:02:08.840 stuff, too. The madness, the drugs, the controversies. 00:02:08.840 --> 00:02:10.500 Because, I mean, you can't really understand 00:02:10.500 --> 00:02:12.460 the art without understanding the trauma that 00:02:12.460 --> 00:02:14.860 fueled it. You really can't. They're completely 00:02:14.860 --> 00:02:17.159 intertwined. So let's unpack this. Where does 00:02:17.159 --> 00:02:20.840 the story of Allen Ginsberg actually begin? Well, 00:02:20.879 --> 00:02:22.560 to understand the man, you have to understand 00:02:22.560 --> 00:02:24.340 the child. And to understand the child, you have 00:02:24.340 --> 00:02:27.259 to go to New Jersey in the 1920s and 30s. Ginsburg 00:02:27.259 --> 00:02:29.759 was born in 1926, grew up in Newark and later 00:02:29.759 --> 00:02:33.020 Patterson. And, you know, on the surface, it 00:02:33.020 --> 00:02:35.379 looked like a pretty standard Jewish -American 00:02:35.379 --> 00:02:37.780 upbringing for the time. But the household dynamic 00:02:37.780 --> 00:02:41.520 was, well, anything but standard. It was a house 00:02:41.520 --> 00:02:44.699 divided. It's actually a perfect study. In contrast, 00:02:44.960 --> 00:02:47.379 on one side, you have his father, Louis Ginsburg. 00:02:47.580 --> 00:02:49.919 Right. And Louis was a schoolteacher. He was 00:02:49.919 --> 00:02:52.120 a responsible citizen. He paid his taxes. He 00:02:52.120 --> 00:02:54.360 was a pillar of the community. And he was also 00:02:54.360 --> 00:02:57.340 a published poet, but of a very, very specific 00:02:57.340 --> 00:03:00.020 kind. The sources describe him as a traditionalist. 00:03:00.479 --> 00:03:03.099 Which feels like an understatement. A huge understatement. 00:03:03.159 --> 00:03:05.680 Louis wrote in strict rhyme and meter, you know, 00:03:05.699 --> 00:03:08.780 ABAB rhyme schemes. He loved the classics, Longfellow, 00:03:08.840 --> 00:03:12.060 Emily Dickinson. He was what Allen later affectionately 00:03:12.060 --> 00:03:14.199 called an old -fashioned delicatessen philosopher. 00:03:14.680 --> 00:03:18.120 I love that phrase. It's perfect, isn't it? It 00:03:18.120 --> 00:03:20.900 just captures this idea of a man who believed 00:03:20.900 --> 00:03:23.710 in order. He believed that poetry should be polite. 00:03:23.810 --> 00:03:26.009 It should be structured. And above all, it should 00:03:26.009 --> 00:03:28.150 be understandable. It shouldn't be confusing 00:03:28.150 --> 00:03:31.389 or offensive. So you have this pillar of stability 00:03:31.389 --> 00:03:33.870 and tradition on one side of the house and then 00:03:33.870 --> 00:03:36.969 on the other side. You have Naomi, Alan's mother. 00:03:37.150 --> 00:03:40.050 And Naomi Ginsburg is, without a doubt, the single 00:03:40.050 --> 00:03:44.389 most important and most powerful figure in Alan's 00:03:44.389 --> 00:03:46.990 life. A force of nature, it sounds like. Absolutely. 00:03:47.110 --> 00:03:49.520 She was a Russian immigrant. a fervent Marxist, 00:03:49.520 --> 00:03:51.439 and a card -carrying member of the Communist 00:03:51.439 --> 00:03:54.360 Party during a time when that was a very radical 00:03:54.360 --> 00:03:56.360 thing to be. So she's already politically on 00:03:56.360 --> 00:03:58.340 the fringes. Oh, yeah. Radical doesn't even begin 00:03:58.340 --> 00:04:01.379 to cover it. But alongside her politics, she 00:04:01.379 --> 00:04:03.719 suffered from severe debilitating mental illness. 00:04:04.500 --> 00:04:07.500 The diagnoses in the sources vary a bit, but 00:04:07.500 --> 00:04:10.280 it aligns pretty clearly with paranoid schizophrenia. 00:04:10.780 --> 00:04:12.599 And we're not talking about just, you know, mom 00:04:12.599 --> 00:04:15.099 is eccentric or has some quirks. This was dangerous, 00:04:15.159 --> 00:04:17.889 terrifying stuff. It was a nightmare for a child 00:04:17.889 --> 00:04:21.470 to witness. Her delusions were incredibly vivid 00:04:21.470 --> 00:04:24.110 and all -consuming. She believed that the President 00:04:24.110 --> 00:04:26.129 of the United States, that Franklin Roosevelt, 00:04:26.389 --> 00:04:29.129 had personally implanted listening devices in 00:04:29.129 --> 00:04:31.889 their home in Patterson to spy on her communist 00:04:31.889 --> 00:04:34.410 meetings. Wow. She thought her mother -in -law, 00:04:34.449 --> 00:04:37.089 Louise's mother, was constantly plotting to kill 00:04:37.089 --> 00:04:40.009 her. She would see conspiracies everywhere. Wires 00:04:40.009 --> 00:04:43.480 in the walls, poison in the food. There's a detail 00:04:43.480 --> 00:04:45.319 in one of the biographies that really stuck with 00:04:45.319 --> 00:04:48.060 me about her bedtime stories. You know, most 00:04:48.060 --> 00:04:50.639 kids get Cinderella or Goldilocks. Not Alan. 00:04:50.800 --> 00:04:54.120 Alan got Marxist parables. Naomi would tell him 00:04:54.120 --> 00:04:56.600 these stories about the good king. But in her 00:04:56.600 --> 00:04:58.399 version, the good king would ride out from his 00:04:58.399 --> 00:05:00.680 castle and he would see the suffering workers, 00:05:00.920 --> 00:05:03.660 the sick peasants, and he would use his power 00:05:03.660 --> 00:05:06.800 to heal them. It was this strange, intense mix 00:05:06.800 --> 00:05:10.680 of political ideology and maternal care all wrapped 00:05:10.680 --> 00:05:12.889 up in a fairy tale. So she's teaching him her 00:05:12.889 --> 00:05:15.009 politics from the very beginning. Absolutely. 00:05:15.149 --> 00:05:18.009 But her illness meant she was also deeply, deeply 00:05:18.009 --> 00:05:20.050 paranoid about the outside world. Which would 00:05:20.050 --> 00:05:23.009 naturally lead her to draw Alan very close. Incredibly 00:05:23.009 --> 00:05:25.550 close. She didn't trust anyone else. She called 00:05:25.550 --> 00:05:28.370 Alan her little pet. It created this intense, 00:05:28.509 --> 00:05:31.269 almost suffocating bond between them. He wasn't 00:05:31.269 --> 00:05:34.009 just her friend. He became her caretaker, her 00:05:34.009 --> 00:05:37.410 confidant, her... her anchor to reality as flimsy 00:05:37.410 --> 00:05:39.990 as it was. And he saw things no child should 00:05:39.990 --> 00:05:42.730 ever have to see. He witnessed her suicide attempts. 00:05:43.329 --> 00:05:45.750 The sources are pretty explicit about her slitting 00:05:45.750 --> 00:05:48.610 her wrists. He saw her in states of complete 00:05:48.610 --> 00:05:51.189 undress, screaming in paranoia at phantoms in 00:05:51.189 --> 00:05:54.129 the room. And he was the one, often, who had 00:05:54.129 --> 00:05:56.970 to accompany her on the bus to the mental institution, 00:05:57.370 --> 00:06:01.649 Greystone Park. That image is just, it's haunting. 00:06:01.730 --> 00:06:03.709 A young boy taking his mother to the asylum. 00:06:03.810 --> 00:06:06.420 It is. And that trauma right there is the fuel. 00:06:06.500 --> 00:06:08.699 If you look at his major works, Howl, and especially 00:06:08.699 --> 00:06:11.399 his other epic poem, Kaddish, they are directly 00:06:11.399 --> 00:06:13.079 metabolized from this experience. He's taking 00:06:13.079 --> 00:06:16.160 this raw, terrifying private pain and turning 00:06:16.160 --> 00:06:17.959 it into public art. And you can see why he couldn't 00:06:17.959 --> 00:06:19.980 follow in his father's footsteps, poetically. 00:06:20.079 --> 00:06:22.399 How could he? Yeah. He didn't hide from the madness. 00:06:22.459 --> 00:06:24.779 He didn't try to bury it like his father might 00:06:24.779 --> 00:06:27.379 have wanted to. He realized early on that the 00:06:27.379 --> 00:06:30.579 polite, rhyming, orderly world of his father 00:06:31.360 --> 00:06:34.120 couldn't possibly explain the chaotic, terrifying, 00:06:34.540 --> 00:06:36.920 unpredictable world of his mother. So he needed 00:06:36.920 --> 00:06:40.120 a new language? Exactly. He needed a language 00:06:40.120 --> 00:06:42.300 that was big enough and strong enough and maybe 00:06:42.300 --> 00:06:45.040 crazy enough to hold all that madness. So let's 00:06:45.040 --> 00:06:47.620 move forward a bit. He survives this childhood 00:06:47.620 --> 00:06:50.480 somehow. He's obviously a very smart kid. He 00:06:50.480 --> 00:06:52.259 graduates high school and he heads to Columbia 00:06:52.259 --> 00:06:55.139 University. And this feels like the moment the 00:06:55.139 --> 00:06:57.850 movie really starts. This is the crucible. This 00:06:57.850 --> 00:06:59.629 is where all the elements come together. He enters 00:06:59.629 --> 00:07:02.449 Colombia in the mid 1940s. And interestingly 00:07:02.449 --> 00:07:05.629 enough, his initial plan was to study law. He 00:07:05.629 --> 00:07:08.529 wanted to be a lawyer. That is just it's hilarious 00:07:08.529 --> 00:07:10.930 considering how much time he spent fighting the 00:07:10.930 --> 00:07:13.410 law later in his life. It is. But it came from 00:07:13.410 --> 00:07:15.329 a very sincere place. He wanted to be a labor 00:07:15.329 --> 00:07:17.589 lawyer. He wanted to defend the working class, 00:07:17.769 --> 00:07:19.829 you know, help the little guy. He was trying 00:07:19.829 --> 00:07:22.970 to honor his mother's Marxist ideals in a practical 00:07:22.970 --> 00:07:25.449 American way. But that plan gets derailed pretty 00:07:25.449 --> 00:07:29.430 quickly. Very quickly, it gets derailed the moment 00:07:29.430 --> 00:07:31.550 he meets the people who will completely change 00:07:31.550 --> 00:07:34.670 his life and, by extension, American literature. 00:07:34.870 --> 00:07:37.550 The heavy hitters, the core of the beat generation. 00:07:37.610 --> 00:07:40.829 The whole crew. Lucien Carr, who is this sort 00:07:40.829 --> 00:07:45.269 of charismatic, rebellious, Rimbaud -esque figure. 00:07:45.670 --> 00:07:48.529 William S. Burroughs, the older, mysterious, 00:07:48.829 --> 00:07:51.589 sardonic heir to a fortune. And, of course, the 00:07:51.589 --> 00:07:54.209 golden boy, the football star. Jack Kerouac. 00:07:54.370 --> 00:07:56.430 It's just wild to think of them just hanging 00:07:56.430 --> 00:07:58.850 out in dorm rooms at Columbia, smoking cigarettes 00:07:58.850 --> 00:08:01.670 and planning a literary revolution. Kerouac had 00:08:01.670 --> 00:08:03.670 a nickname for Ginsburg, right? I did. He called 00:08:03.670 --> 00:08:06.709 him Carlo Marx. Oh, Marx. Perfect. It was partly 00:08:06.709 --> 00:08:08.910 a reference to his Jewish background and his 00:08:08.910 --> 00:08:11.069 mother's communism, but it was also because Ginsburg 00:08:11.069 --> 00:08:13.069 was the intellectual of the group. He was the 00:08:13.069 --> 00:08:15.649 one with the big philosophical ideas. So what 00:08:15.649 --> 00:08:17.250 were they bonding over? What was the mission? 00:08:17.589 --> 00:08:19.930 They bonded over a shared sense of rejection. 00:08:20.430 --> 00:08:21.810 You have to remember the context of the time. 00:08:21.889 --> 00:08:24.389 This is post -World War II America. The McCarthy 00:08:24.389 --> 00:08:26.769 era is just starting to ramp up. The culture 00:08:26.769 --> 00:08:29.310 is obsessed with conformity. The man in the gray 00:08:29.310 --> 00:08:32.490 flannel suit. Exactly. The message to young men 00:08:32.490 --> 00:08:35.649 was crystal clear. Get a degree, get a corporate 00:08:35.649 --> 00:08:38.070 job, buy a house in the suburbs with a white 00:08:38.070 --> 00:08:40.710 picket fence, keep your mouth shut, and be normal. 00:08:40.870 --> 00:08:44.169 And this group, they were not... interested in 00:08:44.169 --> 00:08:46.190 normal. Not at all. They wanted what they called 00:08:46.190 --> 00:08:48.289 a new vision. That's the actual phrase they used. 00:08:48.370 --> 00:08:52.070 They were rejecting the polite academic poetry 00:08:52.070 --> 00:08:54.330 that was popular at the time, which was very 00:08:54.330 --> 00:08:57.250 dry, very T .S. Eliot influenced. They wanted 00:08:57.250 --> 00:09:00.649 something raw. They're reading Yeats. Rimbaud, 00:09:00.929 --> 00:09:04.049 the French symbolists. They wanted art that bled. 00:09:04.169 --> 00:09:06.649 But it wasn't just an intellectual exercise for 00:09:06.649 --> 00:09:09.149 them. They were living it. They were living chaotically. 00:09:09.269 --> 00:09:11.429 And Ginsburg actually got into some serious trouble 00:09:11.429 --> 00:09:13.250 at Columbia, didn't he? He was suspended and 00:09:13.250 --> 00:09:15.789 then prosecuted. And the story behind it is just, 00:09:15.850 --> 00:09:18.629 it's absurd. It's like a bad crime novel that 00:09:18.629 --> 00:09:20.590 they would have loved. What happened? Ginsburg 00:09:20.590 --> 00:09:23.029 was letting an acquaintance, a guy from the sort 00:09:23.029 --> 00:09:25.009 of Times Square underworld they were all fascinated 00:09:25.009 --> 00:09:27.730 with, store some goods in his dorm room. Goods. 00:09:27.809 --> 00:09:31.179 I like the euphemism. Right. Stolen goods. The 00:09:31.179 --> 00:09:33.840 acquaintance was a thief. So when the campus 00:09:33.840 --> 00:09:35.820 authorities eventually raided the room and found 00:09:35.820 --> 00:09:38.639 all this stolen property, Ginsburg was on the 00:09:38.639 --> 00:09:41.159 hook. He was facing serious criminal prosecution. 00:09:41.460 --> 00:09:43.919 He was probably going to go to jail. So what 00:09:43.919 --> 00:09:47.480 does he do? He's trapped. He plays the card he 00:09:47.480 --> 00:09:50.549 has been holding his whole life. Yeah. He pleads 00:09:50.549 --> 00:09:53.350 insanity. He used the madness as a strategy. 00:09:53.690 --> 00:09:56.649 It was a brilliant, desperate move. He and his 00:09:56.649 --> 00:09:58.629 professors basically convinced the authorities 00:09:58.629 --> 00:10:00.970 that he wasn't a criminal mastermind. He was 00:10:00.970 --> 00:10:04.169 just this mentally unwell, confused kid who fell 00:10:04.169 --> 00:10:07.149 in with the wrong crowd. And because of his family 00:10:07.149 --> 00:10:09.610 history with Naomi, it was a totally plausible 00:10:09.610 --> 00:10:12.129 defense. So instead of prison. Instead of prison, 00:10:12.289 --> 00:10:14.950 he spent several months in the Columbia Presbyterian 00:10:14.950 --> 00:10:17.210 Psychiatric Institute. Which ironically brings 00:10:17.210 --> 00:10:18.830 him right back into the world of his mother. 00:10:19.340 --> 00:10:21.899 The world of institutions. It does. And it's 00:10:21.899 --> 00:10:23.820 absolutely pivotal because it's in that institution 00:10:23.820 --> 00:10:26.419 that he meets a man named Carl Solomon. Carl. 00:10:26.600 --> 00:10:29.399 The one and only. And if you have ever read Howl, 00:10:29.399 --> 00:10:31.919 you know that name. The entire third section 00:10:31.919 --> 00:10:34.679 of the poem is a chant. I'm with you in Rockland, 00:10:34.759 --> 00:10:37.279 which was the asylum Solomon was later transferred 00:10:37.279 --> 00:10:40.460 to. For Ginsberg, Carl Solomon became the ultimate 00:10:40.460 --> 00:10:43.580 symbol of the brilliant, sensitive genius crushed 00:10:43.580 --> 00:10:46.370 by the machinery of society. So he comes out 00:10:46.370 --> 00:10:48.289 of the institution. He's back in New York. He's 00:10:48.289 --> 00:10:51.529 been through the ringer. And then in 1948, something 00:10:51.529 --> 00:10:54.250 happens that changes the entire trajectory of 00:10:54.250 --> 00:10:57.450 his life forever. He stops being just a rebellious 00:10:57.450 --> 00:11:01.440 student and becomes, well. Something of a mystic. 00:11:01.500 --> 00:11:03.799 The Blake vision. This is the moment. This is 00:11:03.799 --> 00:11:06.700 his origin story as a prophet. Ginsburg is living 00:11:06.700 --> 00:11:09.759 in an apartment in East Harlem. He's alone. He's 00:11:09.759 --> 00:11:11.639 feeling alienated, probably a bit depressed. 00:11:12.100 --> 00:11:14.360 And the sources are very, very specific about 00:11:14.360 --> 00:11:15.919 what he was doing at the time. We should probably 00:11:15.919 --> 00:11:18.299 just say it. We should. He was pleasuring himself. 00:11:18.460 --> 00:11:20.340 Right. He was masturbating while reading the 00:11:20.340 --> 00:11:22.899 poetry of William Blake. Specifically, the songs 00:11:22.899 --> 00:11:24.860 of innocence and of experience. He was looking 00:11:24.860 --> 00:11:28.399 at the poems, ah, Sunflower and the Sick Rose. 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:31.480 It's a very Ginsburg combination, isn't it? The 00:11:31.480 --> 00:11:33.659 profane and the sacred just smashed together. 00:11:33.860 --> 00:11:35.799 That's his whole ethos in a nutshell. And in 00:11:35.799 --> 00:11:38.299 that state of, you know, physical release and 00:11:38.299 --> 00:11:41.340 intense intellectual focus, he experiences a 00:11:41.340 --> 00:11:45.039 profound auditory hallucination. He hears a voice, 00:11:45.200 --> 00:11:49.320 a deep, ancient, gravelly voice reciting the 00:11:49.320 --> 00:11:51.580 poems aloud to him. Did he think it was God? 00:11:51.899 --> 00:11:54.019 He thought it was the voice of God or maybe the 00:11:54.019 --> 00:11:56.320 voice of Blake himself reaching across the centuries 00:11:56.320 --> 00:11:58.889 from the grave. But it wasn't just the voice. 00:11:58.990 --> 00:12:00.970 He looked out his apartment window at the fire 00:12:00.970 --> 00:12:03.450 escape. And he had this sudden, overwhelming 00:12:03.450 --> 00:12:07.049 visual realization. He saw the fire escape. He 00:12:07.049 --> 00:12:09.330 saw the sky above it. And he understood in a 00:12:09.330 --> 00:12:11.549 flash that the fire escape was made by human 00:12:11.549 --> 00:12:14.129 hands, but the sky was self -created. It was 00:12:14.129 --> 00:12:16.929 a manifestation of cosmic intelligence. That 00:12:16.929 --> 00:12:18.870 sounds like a simple observation, but for him 00:12:18.870 --> 00:12:20.669 it was everything. It was the interconnectedness 00:12:20.669 --> 00:12:23.070 of the universe. That was his phrase. He felt 00:12:23.070 --> 00:12:25.129 he was seeing the face of God in the architecture 00:12:25.129 --> 00:12:27.539 of the city. He realized that everything was 00:12:27.539 --> 00:12:30.299 holy. The sky, the fire escape, his own body, 00:12:30.440 --> 00:12:32.799 the book in his hands, it all clicked. Now the 00:12:32.799 --> 00:12:35.379 obvious question, given Ginsburg's later reputation, 00:12:35.759 --> 00:12:38.600 was he high when this happened? That is the absolute 00:12:38.600 --> 00:12:41.820 key point. He insisted for the rest of his life 00:12:41.820 --> 00:12:45.340 that he was not. He was stone cold sober. But, 00:12:45.340 --> 00:12:48.299 and this is a huge but. He spent the next huge 00:12:48.299 --> 00:12:51.279 chunk of his life trying to get back to that 00:12:51.279 --> 00:12:55.220 feeling using drugs. He used LSD, peyote, marijuana, 00:12:55.679 --> 00:12:57.940 ayahuasca, you name it. He was always trying 00:12:57.940 --> 00:13:00.480 to recreate or trigger that cosmic consciousness 00:13:00.480 --> 00:13:03.919 again. But the original vision, that was completely 00:13:03.919 --> 00:13:06.019 natural. So he has the trauma from his mother, 00:13:06.100 --> 00:13:07.759 he has the intellectual training from Colombia, 00:13:07.919 --> 00:13:10.259 and now he has the spiritual mandate. He feels 00:13:10.259 --> 00:13:12.320 like he's a prophet with a message. And prophets 00:13:12.320 --> 00:13:14.600 need a wilderness to go to, or in his case, a 00:13:14.600 --> 00:13:17.269 new city. So he goes west. To San Francisco. 00:13:17.330 --> 00:13:20.129 And this is the early 1950s, the San Francisco 00:13:20.129 --> 00:13:22.049 Renaissance. This is where the beat generation 00:13:22.049 --> 00:13:24.669 really stops being a private club and goes public. 00:13:24.870 --> 00:13:26.549 He arrives in San Francisco and, believe it or 00:13:26.549 --> 00:13:28.710 not, gets a steady 9 -to -5 job. He works in 00:13:28.710 --> 00:13:31.049 market research. I cannot picture Allen Ginsberg 00:13:31.049 --> 00:13:33.730 in an office, in a suit, analyzing why people 00:13:33.730 --> 00:13:36.129 buy a certain brand of toothpaste. He was apparently 00:13:36.129 --> 00:13:38.610 quite good at it. He had a knack for understanding 00:13:38.610 --> 00:13:41.389 how people thought and what motivated them. But 00:13:41.389 --> 00:13:44.529 that was just the day job. By night, he is writing 00:13:44.529 --> 00:13:48.529 furiously. He meets Peter Orlovsky in 1954, who 00:13:48.529 --> 00:13:51.250 becomes his lifelong partner, and he starts to 00:13:51.250 --> 00:13:54.250 organize the local poetry scene, which was vibrant 00:13:54.250 --> 00:13:57.110 but kind of fragmented. Which leads to the legendary 00:13:57.110 --> 00:13:59.009 night, the one that gets written about in all 00:13:59.009 --> 00:14:03.230 books, October 7, 1955, the sixth gallery reading. 00:14:03.490 --> 00:14:05.429 If you could build a time machine and go back 00:14:05.429 --> 00:14:07.830 to one single literary event in American history, 00:14:07.990 --> 00:14:10.549 this is the one you choose. The Sixth Gallery 00:14:10.549 --> 00:14:13.649 was basically a converted auto repair shop. It 00:14:13.649 --> 00:14:16.690 wasn't some fancy auditorium. Ginsburg organized 00:14:16.690 --> 00:14:18.690 a reading with a bunch of his new poet friends, 00:14:18.909 --> 00:14:21.830 Gary Snyder, Philip Whelan, Michael McClure. 00:14:21.870 --> 00:14:23.970 And Kerouac was there, too. Kerouac was there, 00:14:24.029 --> 00:14:25.789 but he wasn't on the bill to read. He was the 00:14:25.789 --> 00:14:28.340 hype man. The master of ceremonies. The sources 00:14:28.340 --> 00:14:30.200 have this great image of him going around with 00:14:30.200 --> 00:14:32.480 a hat, collecting spare change from the audience 00:14:32.480 --> 00:14:35.220 to buy these big gallon jugs of cheap red wine. 00:14:35.360 --> 00:14:38.139 So the atmosphere is loose. Very loose. The room 00:14:38.139 --> 00:14:41.279 is packed. It's smoky. Everyone is getting drunk 00:14:41.279 --> 00:14:43.840 on this cheap wine and just buzzing with anticipation 00:14:43.840 --> 00:14:46.500 for something new. And then Ginsburg steps up 00:14:46.500 --> 00:14:48.399 to the makeshift stage. He steps up. He's nervous 00:14:48.399 --> 00:14:50.899 at first. Then he takes a few big gulps of wine. 00:14:51.000 --> 00:14:54.399 He's drunk. He's passionate. And he just unleashes. 00:14:55.000 --> 00:14:58.139 How? I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed 00:14:58.139 --> 00:15:01.019 by madness, starving, hysterical, naked. Just 00:15:01.019 --> 00:15:04.100 hearing that line. It's an assault. It's aggressive. 00:15:04.259 --> 00:15:07.440 It's breathless. This is not the polite, metered 00:15:07.440 --> 00:15:10.379 poetry of his father. Kerouac described him reading 00:15:10.379 --> 00:15:12.539 with his arms outstretched, swaying, almost screaming 00:15:12.539 --> 00:15:15.620 the lines. It was a rhythmic, physical, incantatory 00:15:15.620 --> 00:15:18.029 performance. It was like a sermon. Let's break 00:15:18.029 --> 00:15:20.309 down how for a second, because it's not just 00:15:20.309 --> 00:15:22.049 a chaotic rant, which is how some people see 00:15:22.049 --> 00:15:23.850 it. It has a very clear structure and it has 00:15:23.850 --> 00:15:26.629 a villain. It does. It absolutely does. The poem 00:15:26.629 --> 00:15:29.269 is divided into three main parts. The first part 00:15:29.269 --> 00:15:33.110 is this long Whitman -esque catalog of the best 00:15:33.110 --> 00:15:35.669 minds, his friends, the junkies, the travelers, 00:15:35.809 --> 00:15:38.289 the artists, the outcasts, and all the ways that 00:15:38.289 --> 00:15:40.110 society has destroyed them. And then you get 00:15:40.110 --> 00:15:43.509 to part two. And part two introduces the monster 00:15:43.509 --> 00:15:46.169 responsible for all that destruction. Moloch. 00:15:46.210 --> 00:15:48.309 Moloch. Where does that name come from? In the 00:15:48.309 --> 00:15:51.070 Bible, in the Old Testament, Moloch is an ancient 00:15:51.070 --> 00:15:53.190 Canaanite god that was associated with child 00:15:53.190 --> 00:15:55.809 sacrifice. People would literally burn their 00:15:55.809 --> 00:15:58.809 children as offerings to appease this god. But 00:15:58.809 --> 00:16:01.970 in Howell, Moloch isn't some ancient stone statue. 00:16:02.490 --> 00:16:05.549 Moloch is modern American society. Moloch whose 00:16:05.549 --> 00:16:08.950 mind is pure machinery. Moloch whose blood is 00:16:08.950 --> 00:16:11.250 running money. Moloch whose fingers are ten armies. 00:16:11.470 --> 00:16:14.899 Yes. Moloch is capitalism. Moloch is the military 00:16:14.899 --> 00:16:17.919 industrial complex. Moloch is the crushing pressure 00:16:17.919 --> 00:16:20.960 to conform, to be a cog in the machine. It's 00:16:20.960 --> 00:16:23.879 the soulless robotic force that eats individuality 00:16:23.879 --> 00:16:25.860 for breakfast. And there's a great backstory 00:16:25.860 --> 00:16:28.179 in the sources on where she got the actual visual 00:16:28.179 --> 00:16:30.279 for Moloch. It wasn't just an abstract idea. 00:16:30.860 --> 00:16:33.659 No, it came from a vision. He was in San Francisco, 00:16:33.759 --> 00:16:35.840 high on peyote this time, and he was looking 00:16:35.840 --> 00:16:38.100 at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, a big, imposing 00:16:38.100 --> 00:16:40.340 building. And under the influence of the drug, 00:16:40.480 --> 00:16:42.360 he saw the facade of the building transform. 00:16:42.679 --> 00:16:45.299 He saw the windows turn into the empty eyes of 00:16:45.299 --> 00:16:47.740 a skull. He saw the whole building as a giant, 00:16:47.779 --> 00:16:51.220 devouring monster eating the city. That hallucination 00:16:51.220 --> 00:16:53.889 became the face of Moloch. It's incredible how 00:16:53.889 --> 00:16:56.970 he takes these deeply personal, often drug -induced 00:16:56.970 --> 00:17:00.250 visions and turns them into these powerful metaphors 00:17:00.250 --> 00:17:02.370 for social commentary. That's his genius. But 00:17:02.370 --> 00:17:05.289 the authorities in 1956 did not see social commentary. 00:17:05.569 --> 00:17:08.009 They saw filth. They saw obscenity, plain and 00:17:08.009 --> 00:17:10.549 simple. The poem was published as a book by City 00:17:10.549 --> 00:17:12.950 Lights Books, which was run by the poet Lawrence 00:17:12.950 --> 00:17:15.509 Ferlinghetti. The police seized the books. They 00:17:15.509 --> 00:17:17.390 arrested Ferlinghetti and the bookstore clerk. 00:17:17.490 --> 00:17:20.309 They charged the book with being obscene, specifically 00:17:20.309 --> 00:17:22.250 because of the graphic depictions of sexuality. 00:17:22.670 --> 00:17:24.289 We have to remember the context. This is the 00:17:24.289 --> 00:17:28.210 mid -1950s. Exactly. Sodomy laws are in full 00:17:28.210 --> 00:17:31.369 effect in every state. Being gay is not just 00:17:31.369 --> 00:17:34.380 frowned upon. It's effectively illegal. It's 00:17:34.380 --> 00:17:37.240 classified as a mental illness. And here is Allen 00:17:37.240 --> 00:17:39.759 Ginsberg writing these incredibly explicit lines 00:17:39.759 --> 00:17:42.559 about cocksuckers and men getting fucked in the 00:17:42.559 --> 00:17:44.400 ass by saintly motorcyclists and celebrating 00:17:44.400 --> 00:17:46.920 it. He wasn't using euphemisms. He was shouting 00:17:46.920 --> 00:17:49.299 it from the rooftops. The trial must have been 00:17:49.299 --> 00:17:51.660 an absolute circus. It was a pivotal moment for 00:17:51.660 --> 00:17:54.519 the First Amendment in America. And the judge 00:17:54.519 --> 00:17:57.619 presiding over the case was a man named Clayton 00:17:57.619 --> 00:18:00.890 W. Horn. And get this. He was a Sunday school 00:18:00.890 --> 00:18:03.710 teacher. Oh, no. Right. Everyone in the literary 00:18:03.710 --> 00:18:06.250 world assumed he would look at this filth and 00:18:06.250 --> 00:18:08.710 throw the book at them. Literally. They thought 00:18:08.710 --> 00:18:10.329 City Lights was going to be shut down. But he 00:18:10.329 --> 00:18:13.369 didn't do that. He did the opposite. He actually 00:18:13.369 --> 00:18:15.880 listened. He listened to the literary experts 00:18:15.880 --> 00:18:19.039 and critics who came to testify that the poem 00:18:19.039 --> 00:18:22.140 had artistic merit, that it was a serious work 00:18:22.140 --> 00:18:24.839 of literature, not just pornography. And he delivered 00:18:24.839 --> 00:18:27.579 this landmark ruling that is still the gold standard 00:18:27.579 --> 00:18:30.660 for obscenity cases today. He ruled that if a 00:18:30.660 --> 00:18:32.740 work has even the slightest redeeming social 00:18:32.740 --> 00:18:36.200 importance, it cannot be legally considered obscene. 00:18:36.240 --> 00:18:38.319 I have the quote from the judge here. He said. 00:18:38.730 --> 00:18:40.849 Would there be any freedom of press or speech 00:18:40.849 --> 00:18:44.230 if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid, innocuous 00:18:44.230 --> 00:18:46.690 euphemisms? I mean, what a line. It was a complete 00:18:46.690 --> 00:18:48.849 and sort of slam dunk for free speech. And the 00:18:48.849 --> 00:18:50.609 great irony, of course, is that the trial made 00:18:50.609 --> 00:18:53.309 Ginsberg an international celebrity. Before the 00:18:53.309 --> 00:18:55.569 trial, he was a locally known San Francisco poet. 00:18:56.130 --> 00:18:57.930 After the trial, he was on the front page of 00:18:57.930 --> 00:19:00.309 newspapers. The government's attempt to censor 00:19:00.309 --> 00:19:02.839 him backfired spectacularly. So now he's famous. 00:19:02.880 --> 00:19:05.200 He's the king of the beats. But Ginsberg has 00:19:05.200 --> 00:19:07.259 this deep -seated restlessness. He doesn't just 00:19:07.259 --> 00:19:09.380 stay in San Francisco and enjoy the film. He 00:19:09.380 --> 00:19:11.900 goes to Paris. He lives in the famous Beat Hotel 00:19:11.900 --> 00:19:15.480 with Burroughs and Gregory Corso. But then the 00:19:15.480 --> 00:19:18.859 real spiritual shift happens in the early 1960s. 00:19:18.880 --> 00:19:21.480 He goes to India. This is the next major chapter. 00:19:21.700 --> 00:19:24.099 This is where we see the transition from the 00:19:24.099 --> 00:19:28.460 angry young poet screaming about Moloch to the 00:19:28.460 --> 00:19:31.829 spiritual guru who starts chanting Aum. What 00:19:31.829 --> 00:19:34.049 drove him to India? Was he just tired of the 00:19:34.049 --> 00:19:36.690 West? It was a kind of desperation in a way. 00:19:37.170 --> 00:19:39.849 He was famous, but he was deeply unhappy. He 00:19:39.849 --> 00:19:41.890 was still chasing that Blake vision. He felt 00:19:41.890 --> 00:19:44.490 spiritually hollow. He felt like the anger of 00:19:44.490 --> 00:19:47.390 Howell had sort of burned him out. So he and 00:19:47.390 --> 00:19:49.490 Peter Orlovsky decided to travel to India in 00:19:49.490 --> 00:19:52.309 1962, and they ended up staying for nearly two 00:19:52.309 --> 00:19:54.210 years. And they weren't doing the luxury tourist 00:19:54.210 --> 00:19:57.009 thing, staying in nice hotels? Not at all. They 00:19:57.009 --> 00:19:59.380 were living on pennies a day. They stayed in 00:19:59.380 --> 00:20:02.779 the slums of Calcutta and Varanasi. They spent 00:20:02.779 --> 00:20:04.660 most of their time at the burning ghats on the 00:20:04.660 --> 00:20:07.940 Ganges, just watching bodies being cremated day 00:20:07.940 --> 00:20:10.920 in and day out, contemplating mortality. They 00:20:10.920 --> 00:20:13.440 hung out with the sadhus, the wandering holy 00:20:13.440 --> 00:20:16.180 men who covered themselves in ash and renounced 00:20:16.180 --> 00:20:18.859 the material world. Ginsburg was looking for 00:20:18.859 --> 00:20:21.269 a teacher. He was looking for a method. And this 00:20:21.269 --> 00:20:23.289 is where he really connects deeply with Buddhism 00:20:23.289 --> 00:20:26.109 and Hinduism. He had been interested in it since 00:20:26.109 --> 00:20:28.769 the 50s. Kerouac was a huge influence there with 00:20:28.769 --> 00:20:31.670 his book, The Dharma Bums. But in India, Ginsburg 00:20:31.670 --> 00:20:33.730 didn't just read about it. He practiced it. He 00:20:33.730 --> 00:20:36.069 learned meditation. He learned to chant mantras. 00:20:36.069 --> 00:20:39.059 He bought a harmonium that... boxy accordion 00:20:39.059 --> 00:20:40.900 -like instrument you always see him with in pictures 00:20:40.900 --> 00:20:42.839 from that era. What did the chanting actually 00:20:42.839 --> 00:20:44.720 do for him? Was it just a performance, a new 00:20:44.720 --> 00:20:46.839 kind of poetry? No, for him it was physiological. 00:20:47.180 --> 00:20:49.480 It was a technology. He realized that the long, 00:20:49.480 --> 00:20:52.240 sustained breath required for chanting literally 00:20:52.240 --> 00:20:54.859 calmed his nervous system. It stabilized his 00:20:54.859 --> 00:20:58.299 mind. It was a way, he said, to get high without 00:20:58.299 --> 00:21:00.279 having to rely on drugs, which were becoming 00:21:00.279 --> 00:21:02.319 unpredictable for him. And when he came back 00:21:02.319 --> 00:21:05.259 to America in the mid -60s, he brought that practice 00:21:05.259 --> 00:21:07.869 with him. He became the hippie bridge. This is 00:21:07.869 --> 00:21:11.089 a crucial role he played. In the mid -60s, you 00:21:11.089 --> 00:21:13.369 have the explosion of the hippie counterculture. 00:21:13.490 --> 00:21:15.470 You have all these kids dropping out, taking 00:21:15.470 --> 00:21:18.009 acid, looking for spiritual meaning, but without 00:21:18.009 --> 00:21:21.029 any roadmap. Ginsberg looked at them and saw 00:21:21.029 --> 00:21:24.029 they were brilliant, but also unstable. And he 00:21:24.029 --> 00:21:27.019 thought, I can help them. I can give them a tool. 00:21:27.180 --> 00:21:29.599 I can give them a practice. So he starts chanting 00:21:29.599 --> 00:21:32.359 everywhere. Everywhere. He becomes the single 00:21:32.359 --> 00:21:34.279 biggest promoter of the Hare Krishna movement 00:21:34.279 --> 00:21:36.900 in the West. He befriended Swami Prabhupada, 00:21:37.039 --> 00:21:39.299 the founder of the Hare Krishnas in New York's 00:21:39.299 --> 00:21:41.720 Lower East Side. He used his fame to help them 00:21:41.720 --> 00:21:44.400 get a temple, to get a record deal. He made them 00:21:44.400 --> 00:21:46.180 legitimate in the eyes of the counterculture. 00:21:46.559 --> 00:21:48.720 There's the famous story of the mantra rock dance 00:21:48.720 --> 00:21:52.880 in 1967. Oh, the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. 00:21:52.980 --> 00:21:55.579 A legendary lineup. You have the Grateful Dead. 00:21:55.720 --> 00:21:57.779 You have Yanis Joplin with Big Brother and the 00:21:57.779 --> 00:22:00.839 Holding Company. You have Moby Grape. And then 00:22:00.839 --> 00:22:02.579 right in the middle of this psychedelic rock 00:22:02.579 --> 00:22:05.319 show, you have Allen Ginsberg and the Hare Krishnas 00:22:05.319 --> 00:22:08.720 in their robes leading thousands of hippies in 00:22:08.720 --> 00:22:11.799 chanting Hare Krishna. It's an incredible image. 00:22:12.039 --> 00:22:14.490 He made it cool. to be spiritual in that way. 00:22:14.569 --> 00:22:17.789 He validated Eastern religion for a whole generation 00:22:17.789 --> 00:22:20.069 of rock and roll kids who would have never picked 00:22:20.069 --> 00:22:22.210 up a Bhagavad Gita otherwise. But he didn't just 00:22:22.210 --> 00:22:24.410 stay in the ashram. He took that spirituality 00:22:24.410 --> 00:22:27.789 and he weaponized it politically. Weaponized 00:22:27.789 --> 00:22:29.549 is an interesting word, but I think it's accurate. 00:22:29.710 --> 00:22:32.069 He used chanting as a form of nonviolent protest. 00:22:32.720 --> 00:22:35.539 As a political tool. The 1968 Democratic National 00:22:35.539 --> 00:22:38.839 Convention in Chicago. Chicago, 1968. The whole 00:22:38.839 --> 00:22:41.440 world is watching. You have the Vietnam War protests 00:22:41.440 --> 00:22:43.960 raging. The police are rioting. They're beating 00:22:43.960 --> 00:22:46.559 protesters in the streets with billy clubs. There's 00:22:46.559 --> 00:22:49.579 tear gas everywhere. It is a war zone. And what 00:22:49.579 --> 00:22:51.380 does Allen Ginsberg do? He doesn't throw rocks 00:22:51.380 --> 00:22:53.630 back at the cops. He walks right into the middle 00:22:53.630 --> 00:22:56.069 of Lincoln Park, sits down on the grass, pulls 00:22:56.069 --> 00:22:57.829 out his harmonium, and just starts chanting, 00:22:57.970 --> 00:23:01.269 Oom, for hours. What did he think that was going 00:23:01.269 --> 00:23:03.250 to accomplish? Did he think it would stop the 00:23:03.250 --> 00:23:05.990 tear gas? He believed in the physics of sound. 00:23:06.529 --> 00:23:09.789 He genuinely believed that if he could create 00:23:09.789 --> 00:23:13.210 a steady, peaceful vibration, the sound of OM, 00:23:13.390 --> 00:23:15.630 it would literally lower the temperature of the 00:23:15.630 --> 00:23:17.690 violence. It would give the panicked protesters 00:23:17.690 --> 00:23:19.670 a center of gravity so they wouldn't freak out 00:23:19.670 --> 00:23:21.930 and get violent themselves. It was an act of 00:23:21.930 --> 00:23:24.329 sonic peacemaking. It's such a unique approach 00:23:24.329 --> 00:23:27.269 to activism, not fighting fire with fire, but 00:23:27.269 --> 00:23:30.369 fighting fire with breath. But don't let the 00:23:30.369 --> 00:23:33.269 gentle chanting fruit you. When it came to hard 00:23:33.269 --> 00:23:36.109 -nosed politics, Ginsburg was sharp as a tack. 00:23:36.250 --> 00:23:38.369 He was an investigator. And this brings us to 00:23:38.369 --> 00:23:41.500 his obsession with the CIA. This is one of my 00:23:41.500 --> 00:23:43.819 favorite parts of the whole Ginsburg saga, because 00:23:43.819 --> 00:23:45.660 it shows how he was so often ahead of the curve. 00:23:45.920 --> 00:23:48.400 In the 1970s, he became completely convinced 00:23:48.400 --> 00:23:50.880 that the CIA was deeply involved in heroin trafficking 00:23:50.880 --> 00:23:53.299 in the Golden Triangle. That's Southeast Asia, 00:23:53.460 --> 00:23:57.109 Laos, Burma, Thailand. Which at the time must 00:23:57.109 --> 00:23:59.369 have sounded like a completely bonkers conspiracy 00:23:59.369 --> 00:24:02.450 theory. It sounds totally nuts. The government 00:24:02.450 --> 00:24:05.190 is secretly selling drugs to fund its secret 00:24:05.190 --> 00:24:07.809 wars. Yeah. People just dismissed him. They said, 00:24:07.829 --> 00:24:09.849 oh, that's just Alan. You know, he's high. He's 00:24:09.849 --> 00:24:13.430 paranoid. But Ginsburg did the homework. He spent 00:24:13.430 --> 00:24:16.009 10 years collecting newspaper clippings. He talked 00:24:16.009 --> 00:24:18.930 to sources. He compiled this massive file. He 00:24:18.930 --> 00:24:21.789 claimed the CIA was using the drug trade to pay 00:24:21.789 --> 00:24:24.640 its proxy armies in Laos and Vietnam. He even 00:24:24.640 --> 00:24:26.779 confronted the head of the CIA about it. Yes. 00:24:27.039 --> 00:24:30.119 This is amazing. He met Richard Helms, the former 00:24:30.119 --> 00:24:33.240 CIA director, at some public event. And Ginsburg, 00:24:33.460 --> 00:24:35.299 being Ginsburg, just walked right up to him and 00:24:35.299 --> 00:24:37.539 confronted him. He bet him $10 that he was right 00:24:37.539 --> 00:24:39.880 about the heroin trafficking. Helms, of course, 00:24:39.920 --> 00:24:41.859 denied it and called him ridiculous. But Ginsburg 00:24:41.859 --> 00:24:46.180 was right. He was 100 % right. In 1972, a historian 00:24:46.180 --> 00:24:49.339 named Alfred McCoy published a massive, meticulously 00:24:49.339 --> 00:24:52.059 researched book called The Politics of Heroin 00:24:52.059 --> 00:24:54.319 in Southeast Asia. And it laid out all the proof. 00:24:54.519 --> 00:24:57.220 The CIA was absolutely complicit. And the New 00:24:57.220 --> 00:24:59.079 York Times actually had to apologize to him. 00:24:59.200 --> 00:25:01.920 The editor at the time, C .L. Sulzberger, wrote 00:25:01.920 --> 00:25:04.359 Ginsburg a personal note that essentially said, 00:25:04.460 --> 00:25:07.220 you were right and we were wrong to dismiss you 00:25:07.220 --> 00:25:10.559 as a crank. It was total vindication for him. 00:25:10.740 --> 00:25:12.950 So he's fighting the American government. But 00:25:12.950 --> 00:25:15.410 he wasn't exactly a darling of the authoritarian 00:25:15.410 --> 00:25:18.210 leftists either. This is what makes him so interesting 00:25:18.210 --> 00:25:21.390 and so hard to pin down politically. He wasn't 00:25:21.390 --> 00:25:24.069 a partisan hack. He was an equal opportunity 00:25:24.069 --> 00:25:27.630 agitator. He was a socialist, yes. But he had 00:25:27.630 --> 00:25:30.710 zero patience for authoritarianism, even if it 00:25:30.710 --> 00:25:33.470 came from his own side. The Cuba story is a classic 00:25:33.470 --> 00:25:36.609 example of this. In 1965, he gets invited to 00:25:36.609 --> 00:25:39.710 Havana to be a judge for a literary prize. He's 00:25:39.710 --> 00:25:41.410 excited to see the great Cuban revolution up 00:25:41.410 --> 00:25:43.920 close. But he gets there, and he immediately 00:25:43.920 --> 00:25:46.380 sees that Fidel Castro's regime is persecuting 00:25:46.380 --> 00:25:49.000 gay people, sending them to labor camps. And 00:25:49.000 --> 00:25:51.039 Ginsburg just cannot keep his mouth shut. What 00:25:51.039 --> 00:25:53.420 did he do? He started publicly protesting the 00:25:53.420 --> 00:25:55.440 treatment of homosexuals. He complained about 00:25:55.440 --> 00:25:57.660 the lack of marijuana. And according to some 00:25:57.660 --> 00:26:00.160 reports, he allegedly called Che Guevara cute 00:26:00.160 --> 00:26:03.059 and said he wanted to sleep with him. I can't 00:26:03.059 --> 00:26:04.619 imagine the Cuban authorities appreciated that 00:26:04.619 --> 00:26:07.500 very much. They did not. A few days later, they 00:26:07.500 --> 00:26:09.660 knocked on his hotel room door, told him he was 00:26:09.660 --> 00:26:12.710 a bad influence, and deported him. They put him 00:26:12.710 --> 00:26:14.430 on the next plane out, which happened to be going 00:26:14.430 --> 00:26:17.809 to Prague, Czechoslovakia. So out of the revolutionary 00:26:17.809 --> 00:26:20.289 frying pan and into the Soviet fire? Exactly. 00:26:20.630 --> 00:26:23.529 He lands in Prague, which is under a very repressive 00:26:23.529 --> 00:26:26.069 Soviet control. And the students there, who are 00:26:26.069 --> 00:26:29.250 living under this gray, conformist regime, they 00:26:29.250 --> 00:26:31.769 see Ginsburg as this icon of freedom. They embrace 00:26:31.769 --> 00:26:34.549 him. At their annual Mahalis festival, they elect 00:26:34.549 --> 00:26:37.670 him the King of May. It's this huge, joyous, 00:26:37.670 --> 00:26:39.690 spontaneous celebration of freedom and poetry. 00:26:40.190 --> 00:26:41.950 And you can be sure the secret police are watching 00:26:41.950 --> 00:26:44.809 all of this. There's ATB. They are tracking his 00:26:44.809 --> 00:26:47.009 every move. They raid his apartment. They steal 00:26:47.009 --> 00:26:49.289 his personal journals. They read them and declare 00:26:49.289 --> 00:26:52.150 them lewd and degenerate. And within a week of 00:26:52.150 --> 00:26:54.170 being crowned King of May, he is expelled from 00:26:54.170 --> 00:26:56.630 Czechoslovakia, too. So he was too gay for the 00:26:56.630 --> 00:26:58.809 communists and too communist for the Americans? 00:26:59.049 --> 00:27:00.789 He was a man without a country, in a way. He 00:27:00.789 --> 00:27:03.009 lived in his own sovereign state of radical openness. 00:27:03.579 --> 00:27:06.500 And speaking of that radical openness, we have 00:27:06.500 --> 00:27:09.119 to address the most controversial and for many 00:27:09.119 --> 00:27:11.619 people, the most disturbing aspect of his life. 00:27:11.839 --> 00:27:14.339 We can't do a deep dive and just skip the things 00:27:14.339 --> 00:27:16.400 that make people profoundly uncomfortable. No, 00:27:16.440 --> 00:27:18.559 you can't. And you're referring to his involvement 00:27:18.559 --> 00:27:21.759 with NMBL. Yes. The North American Man Boy Love 00:27:21.759 --> 00:27:24.099 Association. The sources are very clear on this. 00:27:24.240 --> 00:27:27.079 Allen Ginsberg was a member. He was. And this 00:27:27.079 --> 00:27:29.579 is where we have to be very precise about just 00:27:29.579 --> 00:27:32.059 reporting the facts from the sources. Ginsberg 00:27:32.059 --> 00:27:34.430 joined the group. And he publicly defended it. 00:27:34.509 --> 00:27:37.369 How on earth did he justify that? What was his 00:27:37.369 --> 00:27:40.450 rationale? He framed it primarily as a free speech 00:27:40.450 --> 00:27:44.130 issue and as an issue of non -judgment. He viewed 00:27:44.130 --> 00:27:46.049 it as just another frontier of sexual liberation. 00:27:46.670 --> 00:27:48.869 He is on the record as saying, this is a direct 00:27:48.869 --> 00:27:51.130 quote from him, I'm a member of NBLA because 00:27:51.130 --> 00:27:53.829 I love boys too, everybody does, who has a little 00:27:53.829 --> 00:27:56.910 humanity. That statement. It's incredibly disturbing 00:27:56.910 --> 00:27:59.049 to hear today. It is. It's shocking. And it wasn't 00:27:59.049 --> 00:28:01.309 just a passive membership for him. He wrote poems 00:28:01.309 --> 00:28:03.670 about it. He called them pederast rhapsodies, 00:28:03.750 --> 00:28:05.809 where he graphically described his attractions 00:28:05.809 --> 00:28:09.200 and fantasies. And this put him at war with other 00:28:09.200 --> 00:28:11.079 parts of the counterculture that had once been 00:28:11.079 --> 00:28:14.000 his allies, specifically the feminist movement. 00:28:14.240 --> 00:28:17.220 Yes. The radical feminist Andrea Dworkin in particular 00:28:17.220 --> 00:28:20.799 went after him hard. She argued that this wasn't 00:28:20.799 --> 00:28:23.619 about liberation or free speech. She saw it as 00:28:23.619 --> 00:28:26.220 predatory and abusive. She accused Ginsburg of 00:28:26.220 --> 00:28:29.099 using his intellectual status and his fame to 00:28:29.099 --> 00:28:31.880 justify the abuse of children. And what was Ginsburg's 00:28:31.880 --> 00:28:34.420 response to that? He didn't back down an inch. 00:28:34.920 --> 00:28:38.039 he accused workin of projecting her own trauma 00:28:38.039 --> 00:28:41.039 onto him he refused to feel shame about any of 00:28:41.039 --> 00:28:44.539 his desires it was a massive ugly and very public 00:28:44.539 --> 00:28:47.079 conflict But it's important to include this because 00:28:47.079 --> 00:28:49.839 it shows the absolute extreme edge of his philosophy. 00:28:50.099 --> 00:28:53.480 He believed in candor at all costs. He believed 00:28:53.480 --> 00:28:55.720 in revealing every single thought, no matter 00:28:55.720 --> 00:28:58.079 how caboo or repulsive it was, to the rest of 00:28:58.079 --> 00:29:00.599 society. He didn't want to hide any part of himself. 00:29:00.880 --> 00:29:02.759 Nothing. He wanted the world to see the madness 00:29:02.759 --> 00:29:04.660 and the darkness right alongside the spiritual 00:29:04.660 --> 00:29:06.980 light. It was all part of the same human package 00:29:06.980 --> 00:29:09.480 for him. Let's pivot back to his poetry for a 00:29:09.480 --> 00:29:11.240 minute, because while he's causing all these 00:29:11.240 --> 00:29:14.019 international incidents and controversies, he 00:29:14.019 --> 00:29:17.619 is also constantly refining his craft. He had 00:29:17.619 --> 00:29:20.299 some really specific techniques he used. He was 00:29:20.299 --> 00:29:22.339 a serious technician. He wasn't just splattering 00:29:22.339 --> 00:29:24.380 feelings on a page. He talked a lot about the 00:29:24.380 --> 00:29:26.940 eyeball kick. The eyeball kick. Explain that. 00:29:27.099 --> 00:29:29.440 He got this idea from looking at the paintings 00:29:29.440 --> 00:29:31.880 of the post -impressionist artist Paul Cezanne. 00:29:32.389 --> 00:29:35.089 He noticed that Cezanne would put two contracting 00:29:35.089 --> 00:29:38.009 patches of color right next to each other on 00:29:38.009 --> 00:29:40.769 the canvas, like a bright red right next to a 00:29:40.769 --> 00:29:43.410 bright green. And when your eye hits that border 00:29:43.410 --> 00:29:46.930 between the two colors, it sort of spasms, it 00:29:46.930 --> 00:29:49.130 vibrates, it creates a little jolt in your perception. 00:29:49.410 --> 00:29:51.619 And he wanted to do that with words. Exactly. 00:29:51.700 --> 00:29:54.339 He wanted to jam two completely opposite images 00:29:54.339 --> 00:29:56.799 or ideas together in a single phrase to make 00:29:56.799 --> 00:29:59.400 the reader's mind jump. The most famous example, 00:29:59.420 --> 00:30:02.079 of course, is the phrase hydrogen jukebox from 00:30:02.079 --> 00:30:04.680 Howl. Hydrogen and jukebox, two words that have 00:30:04.680 --> 00:30:07.390 no business being together. None at all. Hydrogen 00:30:07.390 --> 00:30:09.910 brings up the H -bomb, science destruction, Cold 00:30:09.910 --> 00:30:13.009 War terror. Jukebox brings up teenagers' diners, 00:30:13.029 --> 00:30:15.769 rock and roll, fun, pop culture. You smash them 00:30:15.769 --> 00:30:18.490 together, hydrogen jukebox, and you create a 00:30:18.490 --> 00:30:21.109 brand new third image in the reader's mind that 00:30:21.109 --> 00:30:23.930 is both terrifying and electric. That jolt, that's 00:30:23.930 --> 00:30:26.329 the kick. And he also believed in what he called 00:30:26.329 --> 00:30:29.470 spontaneous prose. First thought, best thought. 00:30:29.769 --> 00:30:31.910 This was originally a Kerouac idea, but Ginsberg 00:30:31.910 --> 00:30:35.029 adopted it and made it his own. The idea is that 00:30:35.029 --> 00:30:38.549 the mind is inherently holy. So if a thought 00:30:38.549 --> 00:30:40.390 or an image comes into your head as you're writing, 00:30:40.490 --> 00:30:42.990 it's true and pure. If you stop to edit it or 00:30:42.990 --> 00:30:44.970 censor it, you are lying. You're getting in the 00:30:44.970 --> 00:30:47.150 way of the divine flow. But did he actually practice 00:30:47.150 --> 00:30:49.329 that? Did he never revise his poems? The truth 00:30:49.329 --> 00:30:51.750 is he did revise his poems. The manuscripts for 00:30:51.750 --> 00:30:54.549 Howell show a lot of revision. But the goal, 00:30:54.650 --> 00:30:56.910 the aesthetic he was aiming for, was to capture 00:30:56.910 --> 00:30:59.710 the raw, unfiltered flow of consciousness. We 00:30:59.710 --> 00:31:01.690 talked a lot about Howell, but many literary 00:31:01.690 --> 00:31:03.849 critics actually say his greatest single work 00:31:03.849 --> 00:31:06.430 is Kaddish. I would agree with that. I think 00:31:06.430 --> 00:31:08.849 Kaddish is his masterpiece. And it brings us 00:31:08.849 --> 00:31:10.569 full circle right back to the beginning of our 00:31:10.569 --> 00:31:13.269 story. Back to his mother, Naomi. Naomi died 00:31:13.269 --> 00:31:16.109 in 1956 while she was still institutionalized. 00:31:16.230 --> 00:31:18.109 She died in the mental hospital. And because 00:31:18.109 --> 00:31:20.609 of the circumstances, there was no minion. the 00:31:20.609 --> 00:31:23.470 required quorum of 10 Jewish men, to say the 00:31:23.470 --> 00:31:25.210 traditional Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, 00:31:25.369 --> 00:31:28.390 at her funeral. Ginsburg was devastated by that 00:31:28.390 --> 00:31:30.910 failure. He was. He carried that guilt with him. 00:31:30.950 --> 00:31:33.549 He felt he had failed her in her death as he 00:31:33.549 --> 00:31:35.529 had so often failed to save her in her life. 00:31:36.170 --> 00:31:39.589 So a few years later, he wrote his own Kaddish. 00:31:39.930 --> 00:31:42.630 And it is a long, brutal, absolutely heartbreaking 00:31:42.630 --> 00:31:45.730 poem. It is essentially a biography of her madness. 00:31:45.970 --> 00:31:47.910 He doesn't sugarcoat any of it. Not at all. It 00:31:47.910 --> 00:31:50.509 is unflinching. He describes the scars on her 00:31:50.509 --> 00:31:53.170 belly from the lobotomy. He describes her vomit. 00:31:53.329 --> 00:31:56.369 He describes her paranoia. He describes her nudity. 00:31:56.430 --> 00:31:58.509 It is incredibly raw and graphic. But through 00:31:58.509 --> 00:32:01.289 all that grotesquery, there's this immense, overwhelming 00:32:01.289 --> 00:32:03.730 love. He's trying to give her back her dignity 00:32:03.730 --> 00:32:06.450 by bearing witness to her suffering in a way 00:32:06.450 --> 00:32:08.900 no one else would. There is a specific detail 00:32:08.900 --> 00:32:11.359 in the poem, a letter she wrote to him from the 00:32:11.359 --> 00:32:13.920 hospital. This is the emotional core of the entire 00:32:13.920 --> 00:32:17.720 poem. Two days before she died, in a rare moment 00:32:17.720 --> 00:32:19.660 of lucidity, she wrote him a letter from the 00:32:19.660 --> 00:32:22.299 hospital. It said, The key is in the window. 00:32:22.480 --> 00:32:25.019 The key is in the sunlight in the window. I have 00:32:25.019 --> 00:32:27.539 the key. Get married, Alan. Don't take drugs. 00:32:27.839 --> 00:32:30.599 The key is in the sunlight. That image, the key 00:32:30.599 --> 00:32:33.200 in the sunlight, haunts the poem. It represents 00:32:33.200 --> 00:32:35.539 this fleeting moment of peace and clarity she 00:32:35.539 --> 00:32:37.660 was always looking for, but could never quite 00:32:37.660 --> 00:32:40.640 grasp because of her illness. And in a way, you 00:32:40.640 --> 00:32:42.759 could say Ginsburg spent his whole life looking 00:32:42.759 --> 00:32:45.279 for that key, too. As we move into the later 00:32:45.279 --> 00:32:49.059 years of his life, the 70s, 80s, 90s, Ginsburg 00:32:49.059 --> 00:32:52.319 achieves this really weird status. He becomes 00:32:52.319 --> 00:32:55.299 the grandfather of the counterculture. He refused 00:32:55.299 --> 00:32:58.099 to become irrelevant. A lot of the 60s icons 00:32:58.099 --> 00:33:00.720 either burned out, faded away, or became these 00:33:00.720 --> 00:33:03.640 sad self -parodies. Ginsberg just kept adapting. 00:33:03.980 --> 00:33:06.279 When punk rock happened in the late 70s, he didn't 00:33:06.279 --> 00:33:07.759 look at it and say, oh, that's just noise. It's 00:33:07.759 --> 00:33:09.960 not like the 60s. He said, this is the energy. 00:33:10.079 --> 00:33:12.259 This is the new beat. He hung out with The Clash. 00:33:12.359 --> 00:33:14.240 He collaborated with them. He's on the track 00:33:14.240 --> 00:33:17.539 Ghetto Defendant on their classic album Combat 00:33:17.539 --> 00:33:19.839 Rock. You can hear him in the background reciting 00:33:19.839 --> 00:33:23.299 his poetry. He toured with Bob Dylan on the legendary 00:33:23.299 --> 00:33:26.390 Rolling Thunder review. He recorded a track with 00:33:26.390 --> 00:33:29.569 Paul McCartney. He just stayed curious. That 00:33:29.569 --> 00:33:32.230 is the defining trait of his later years. He 00:33:32.230 --> 00:33:34.670 never stopped being curious. He was always looking 00:33:34.670 --> 00:33:37.670 for the next new vision. He was teaching at Brooklyn 00:33:37.670 --> 00:33:39.509 College. He became a distinguished professor, 00:33:39.769 --> 00:33:41.990 but he was still showing up at punk rock clubs 00:33:41.990 --> 00:33:44.430 in the East Village. But eventually the body 00:33:44.430 --> 00:33:48.049 fails. In 1997, he gets the diagnosis. Liver 00:33:48.049 --> 00:33:52.079 cancer. It was terminal. And the doctors believed 00:33:52.079 --> 00:33:54.799 it was a complication from hepatitis C, which 00:33:54.799 --> 00:33:56.720 he had likely contracted decades and decades 00:33:56.720 --> 00:33:59.039 earlier. It was on the drug use. Possibly from 00:33:59.039 --> 00:34:00.859 a dirty needle during his heroin experimentation 00:34:00.859 --> 00:34:04.440 phase in the 40s or 50s, or maybe from unsterilized 00:34:04.440 --> 00:34:06.240 medical equipment somewhere along his travels 00:34:06.240 --> 00:34:09.000 in the 60s. It's impossible to know for sure. 00:34:09.500 --> 00:34:12.280 But the result was the same. The doctors gave 00:34:12.280 --> 00:34:14.719 him a few months to live. And the way he handled 00:34:14.719 --> 00:34:18.059 his own death, it feels like his final performance 00:34:18.059 --> 00:34:21.440 piece, his final poem. It was. It was a masterclass 00:34:21.440 --> 00:34:24.380 in his own philosophy. He didn't withdraw. He 00:34:24.380 --> 00:34:26.059 didn't go to a private hospital room and hide 00:34:26.059 --> 00:34:28.619 from the world. He went home to his loft in the 00:34:28.619 --> 00:34:31.619 East Village. And he got on the phone. The goodbye 00:34:31.619 --> 00:34:34.460 calls. He went through his address book, and 00:34:34.460 --> 00:34:36.739 he called everyone. He called his old lovers, 00:34:36.860 --> 00:34:38.639 his fellow poets, his students, his friends, 00:34:38.739 --> 00:34:41.940 his enemies. He called them to say, I'm dying, 00:34:41.980 --> 00:34:43.980 and I love you, and goodbye. Can you imagine 00:34:43.980 --> 00:34:45.800 picking up the phone and hearing that? Allen 00:34:45.800 --> 00:34:48.460 Ginsberg on the other end. The sources say the 00:34:48.460 --> 00:34:50.960 calls were this incredible mix of sorrow and 00:34:50.960 --> 00:34:54.460 joy. He was crying. They were crying. But he 00:34:54.460 --> 00:34:56.400 was also laughing and telling stories. He was 00:34:56.400 --> 00:34:59.000 wrapping up the show. He was practicing the non 00:34:59.000 --> 00:35:01.000 -attachment to life that he'd learned from his 00:35:01.000 --> 00:35:03.300 Buddhist teachers. And he kept writing. Until 00:35:03.300 --> 00:35:06.539 the very end. His last poem, which was titled 00:35:06.539 --> 00:35:09.400 Things I'll Not Do, Nostalgias, was written just 00:35:09.400 --> 00:35:13.389 days before he died in April of 1997. It's just 00:35:13.389 --> 00:35:15.349 a simple list of all the places he won't get 00:35:15.349 --> 00:35:18.289 to visit now, the books he won't read, the lovers 00:35:18.289 --> 00:35:21.769 he won't meet. It's this beautiful, sad, accepting 00:35:21.769 --> 00:35:24.690 farewell to the physical world. And then he was 00:35:24.690 --> 00:35:27.190 gone. But the ripple effect, you could argue, 00:35:27.289 --> 00:35:30.349 is still moving. So let's try to synthesize all 00:35:30.349 --> 00:35:33.070 this. We've covered a lot of ground here. The 00:35:33.070 --> 00:35:35.429 boy from Patterson, New Jersey, the Mad Mother, 00:35:35.670 --> 00:35:38.369 the Columbia Rebellion, the vision of William 00:35:38.369 --> 00:35:41.539 Blake. the obscenity trial, the chanting, the 00:35:41.539 --> 00:35:44.599 protests, the controversies. When you look at 00:35:44.599 --> 00:35:47.679 the whole arc, what is the key takeaway? What's 00:35:47.679 --> 00:35:49.840 the thing that holds it all together? I think 00:35:49.840 --> 00:35:51.619 the key to understanding Allen Ginsberg is that 00:35:51.619 --> 00:35:54.239 he treated his entire life as a laboratory experiment. 00:35:54.920 --> 00:35:57.139 And the subject of that experiment was radical 00:35:57.139 --> 00:35:59.440 openness. What do you mean by that exactly? I 00:35:59.440 --> 00:36:01.579 mean, he decided early on, probably because of 00:36:01.579 --> 00:36:03.659 the secrets and shame surrounding his mother's 00:36:03.659 --> 00:36:06.519 illness, that secrets are poison, that shame 00:36:06.519 --> 00:36:09.469 is the enemy of the soul. So he lived his life 00:36:09.469 --> 00:36:12.429 as a completely open book. He hid nothing. He 00:36:12.429 --> 00:36:14.530 didn't hide his homosexuality when it was illegal 00:36:14.530 --> 00:36:17.409 and dangerous to be openly gay. He didn't hide 00:36:17.409 --> 00:36:19.690 his drug use when it was taboo. He didn't hide 00:36:19.690 --> 00:36:21.630 his mental health struggles. He didn't hide his 00:36:21.630 --> 00:36:23.909 most controversial and too many repulsive desires. 00:36:24.389 --> 00:36:26.389 It's the complete opposite of how most of us 00:36:26.389 --> 00:36:29.590 live, especially now. We curate everything. We 00:36:29.590 --> 00:36:32.369 have our Instagram face, our LinkedIn face. We 00:36:32.369 --> 00:36:35.070 hide all the messy parts. Ginsburg put the messy 00:36:35.070 --> 00:36:37.849 parts on the front page. He made it his life's 00:36:37.849 --> 00:36:40.449 work. He forced America to look at the things 00:36:40.449 --> 00:36:43.170 it wanted to ignore. He forced us to look at 00:36:43.170 --> 00:36:47.030 the madness and ask if maybe, just maybe, the 00:36:47.030 --> 00:36:49.289 so -called mad ones were the only ones telling 00:36:49.289 --> 00:36:51.409 the truth. It brings me right back to that line 00:36:51.409 --> 00:36:54.010 from his mother Naomi's final letter. The key 00:36:54.010 --> 00:36:56.670 is in the sunlight at the window. Ginsburg spent 00:36:56.670 --> 00:36:59.250 70 years trying to find that key through poetry, 00:36:59.530 --> 00:37:01.909 through sex, through drugs, through chanting, 00:37:02.130 --> 00:37:04.250 through political protest. And maybe he found 00:37:04.250 --> 00:37:07.099 it. Or maybe he realized that the search itself, 00:37:07.340 --> 00:37:09.380 the act of looking, the act of living openly 00:37:09.380 --> 00:37:12.320 and honestly without shame, was the key all along. 00:37:12.539 --> 00:37:14.360 So here's a final question for you listening 00:37:14.360 --> 00:37:17.340 right now. In our age of hidden selves and carefully 00:37:17.340 --> 00:37:20.380 crafted online personas, could any of us survive 00:37:20.380 --> 00:37:22.860 the kind of radical openness that Alan Gessberg 00:37:22.860 --> 00:37:25.380 practiced? Or was that so -called madness the 00:37:25.380 --> 00:37:27.539 only thing that actually kept him sane in a crazy 00:37:27.539 --> 00:37:30.329 world? It's a question worth meditating on. That 00:37:30.329 --> 00:37:32.989 is it for this deep dive on Allen Ginsberg. Thanks 00:37:32.989 --> 00:37:34.769 for listening, and we'll see you next time.