Calling The Toads
Part I: The Antinomian Fire This Time

by Ron Whitehead

A threshold was crossed with the passing of Allen Ginsberg. He had become he is (as millions round the world celebrated his passing) a symbolic figure representing personal freedoms which today are under attack by new age cult fascist Cromwellian Roundhead Puritan Christian Coalition religion government led by Rush Limbo Newt Gingrich Pat Buchanan Jesse Helms Jerry Falwell Pat Robertson Ralph Reed and others much as personal freedoms were under attack in the 50s by Joseph McCarthy Richard Nixon J. Edgar Hoover and others in that decade when The Beat Generation achieved notoriety through the publication of such acclaimed (and censored) works as HOWL (1956) by Allen Ginsberg, ON THE ROAD (1957) by Jack Kerouac, A CONEY ISLAND OF THE MIND (1958) by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and NAKED LUNCH (1959) by William S. Burroughs. The difference is that, with advancements in technology, governments, militaries, and corporations now pose an ever greater threat to personal (and, by extension, community) freedoms.

Today "Specialization" is sold on every corner, fed in every home, brainwashed in to every student, every young person. We are told that the only way to succeed, here at the beginning of the 21st Century, is to put all our time, energy, learning and focus into one area, one field, one specialty (math, science, computer technology, business). If we don't we will fail. We are subtly and forcefully, implicitly and explicitly, encouraged to deny the rest of who we are, our total self, selves, our holistic being. The postmodern brave new world seems to reside inside the computer via The Web with only faint peripheral recognition of the person, the individual (and by extension the real global community), the real human being operating the machine. The idea of and belief in specialization as the only path, only possibility, has sped up the fragmentation, the alienation which began to grow rapidly within the individual, radically reshaping culture, a century ago with the birth of those Machiavellian revolutions in technology, industry, and war. And with the growing fracturing fragmentation and alienation comes the path - anger, fear, anxiety, angst, ennui, nihilism, depression, despair - that, for the person of action, leads to suicide. Unless, through our paradoxical leap of creative faith we engage ourselves in the belief, which can become a life mission, that regardless of the consequences, we can, through our engagement, our actions, our loving life work, make the world a better, safer, friendlier place in which to live. Sound naive? What does this have to do with Allen Ginsberg? With Voices Without Restraint? With The Beat Generation? With the so-called and sadly mislabeled Generation X? With The Youth of Today? What place does the Antinomian Voice The Voice of Dissent (in legal terminology an antinomy signifies a contradiction which, for example, in Walt Whitman's historical moment was the condition of slavery in a supposedly free society), the Voice of The Poet, The Voice of The Beat Generation, Allen Ginsberg's Voice, The Voice that (descending/ascending from William Blake, Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, Henry Miller, & ohters to Allen Ginsberg), though trembling, speaks out against The Powers That BE, what place does this Outsider Voice have in the real violent world in which we are immersed? Are we too desensitized to the violence, to the fact that in the past Century alone we murdered over 160 million people in one war after another, to even think it worthwhile to consider the possibility of a less violent world? Are we too small, too insignificant to make any kind of difference? The power-mongers have control. What difference can one measly little individual like you or me possibly make, possibly matter?

Today the X and microserf generations are swollen with thousands of young people yearning to express the creative energies buried yet burning like brushfires in their hearts, the smoke seeping from every pore of their beings. They ache to change to heal the world. Is it still possible? Is it too late? Is there anyone (a group?) left to show the way? To set an example? To be a guide? A mentor? James Joyce, King of Modernism, said the idea of the hero was nothing but a damn lie that the primary motivating forces are passion and compassion. As late as 1984 people were laughing at George Orwell. Today, as we finally move into an Orwellian culture of simulation life on the screen landscape, can we remember passion and compassion or has the postmodern ironic satiric deathinlife game laugh killed both sperm and egg? Is there anywhere worth going from here? Is it any wonder that today's youth have adopted Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Herbert Huncke, Gregory Corso, Neal Cassady, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, David Amram, Amiri Baraka, Robert Creeley, Diane di Prima, Bob Dylan, Hunter S. Thompson, Ed Sanders, Anne Waldman, and all other Beat Generation and related poets, writers, artists, musicians as their inspirational, life-affirming ancestors? These are the people who have stood and still stand up against unreasoning power/right/might, looked that power in the eyes and said NO I don't agree with you and this is why. And they have spoken these words, not for money or for fame, but out of life's deepest convictions, out of the belief that we, each one of us - no matter our skin color our economic status our political religious sexual preferences - all of us have the right to live to dream as we choose rather than as some supposed higher moral authority prescribes for us.

Allen Ginsberg and The Beats, who in the next decade will come to be recognized as the most important group of writers and poets in the history of America, have given birth to new generations to new energies which are awakening to the realization that the creative imagination provides salvation from suicide, from death in life, by revealing that there are alternative paths to follow in this world that lead away from the mundane, the superficial into the inspired brilliant fire called life.

Allen Ginsberg and I didn't always get along. In June '95 at New York University's Jack Kerouac Symposium the Anti-Beats demonstrated outside the Loeb Student Center and at the Town Hall readinig which featured Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, David Amram, Anne Waldman, Lee Ranaldo, and a host of others. The Anti-Beats held banners which read "Rollo Whitehead is the Quintessential Beat" as they marched and chanted "We Want Rollo" and "Rollo Whitehead Save Us From Sellouts." They declaimed disdaining Allen Ginsberg for selling his letters, and numerous other items he'd collected over decades, to Stanford University for over one million dollars and for appearing in GAP commercials and for earning six figures for his Collected Poems. They claimed that Ginsberg had Sold Out his bohemian anti-establishment peers betraying values he'd preached since his youth. The Press was having a field day.

I walked into Ginsberg's apartment and was given icy stares by Allen, Bob Rosenthal, Peter Hale, Bill Morgan, and Gordon Ball (his General, Lieutenant, Bibliographer, and Editor) all of whom had always been friendly and helpful. "What?" I asked. "What did I do now?" "Are you the one leading this Anti-Beat campaign?" they queried back. "Hell No!" and it took me an hour to get to the bottom of the story and convince them I had nothing to do with it which, although I knew many of the Anti-Beats from readings events and publications and had heard a few of them explain the derivation of Rollo Whitehead as Quintessential Beat, I really wasn't involved in their movement. Plus Allen, as an advisor to the global literary renaissance and to me, praised my INSOMNIACATHON successes but gave me hell about my financial losses from a 48-hour non-stop music and poetry INSOMNIACATHON which NYU asked me to produce to kickoff their 50-year celebration of The Beat Generation in May of '94. He told me more than once "don't bite off more than you can chew" which believe me I've done more than once in attempts to achieve illumination plus hoping to uplift and inspire others yes well hell yes I've traveled Interstate Excess till the wheels fell off and burned (more than once!!!) and well I laughed and I cried when Allen Ginsberg said "you don't want to give poetry a bad name" and I stared back at him in disbelief instantaneously recalling that half of the people I'd ever talked with when Ginsberg's name was mentioned muttered under their breath loathsome vile hatefilled words and the other half sang songs of praise lavishing adoration on this angelheaded rulebreaking boundaryshattering hipster and so what pardoxical advice was this that Allen Ginsberg was giving me?

Allen Ginsberg was a human being more human than most. He said "there's not enough candor not enough honesty in the world, be candid." He was honest about himself about his own life to the point of making some people sick to death of hearing bout the personal details. Many more were offended by his graphic homoerotic love poems. In fact his reading of "Sphincter," which was the first poem he read after intermission at the University of Louisville reading (over 1,500 attended. largest ever poetry audience in Kentucky history) I produced, was the beginning of attacks on me by U of L administration attacks which accelerated after the Amiri Baraka reading attacks which didn't end until Lawrence Ferlinghetti convinced me to divorce myself from university and go independent and out of which was born the global literary renaissance. But just as I saw the fear Allen Ginsberg instilled in some I saw liberation in the eyes of others. The fact that this singular lone singing voiced poet had the audacity to stand up in front of God, America, and the President of the University of Louisville and be completely honest be forceful passionate and gentle compassionate without hurting anyone stunned excited set free hundreds thousands in Louisville in America around the world inspiring them to come out of whatever closet they were hiding in and be themselves yet while being themselves always remembering the Beat willingness to believe to believe in life even if that belief couldn't be expressed in conventional terms in a status quo lifestyle and to always remember that Beatitude and Beatific are as much a part of being Beat as anything is.

What did I learn from what do I remember from Allen Ginsberg? What gifts did he share with me? That he loved Bob Dylan but would never be able to consummate that dream cause Dylan is heterosexual. He said Dylan will be remembered longer than the Beats because Dylan is poet bard singing brother of Homer who digs deeper into heart via music. I remember arriving New York City East Village with my family after sunrise allnight drive from Kentucky waiting in van outside his apartment being awakened by street gangs in turfwar standoff with clubs knives guns police arrive twenty minutes after gangs split but police not there for gangs they arrive to escort homeless man from school found sleeping under bleachers in gymnasium. I remember Diane di Prima showing up on street in front of Allen's apartment another visit same time family and I arrived she come to visit for several days. I remember having to front Gregory Corso $100 I didn't really have, Allen's apartment, street methadone so we could travel on to Lowell Massachusetts to read at Kerouac Festival & what Corso spent the $100 on. Allen introduced me to Corso and Herbert Huncke and William S. Burroughs and John Wieners and Robert Creeley and Yevgeny Yevteshenko and Anne Waldman and Ed Sanders and many others and I remember photos of Whitman on kitchen and bedroom walls and Ginsberg getting sick while my daughter Rani and I helped him get what he needed to feel better and I remember meditating at Kerouac's grave after breaking up a fight in a bar between Corso and a stranger and I remember readings and visits in Louisville and Lowell and New York City and Washington D.C. and I remember phone calls and letters and being honored to publish his work and I remember his cathartic candorfilled healing poetry and I honor Allen Ginsberg his life his work and I cherish most of all his giving and I accept it into myself and I intentionally choose to make it one of my ideals one of my spiritual values. to give.

Copyright (c) 2008 Ron Whitehead

from Ron's new THE WANDERER book