Radical marketing thought #1 (btw, I am exploring bleeding edge of my own ideas out loud):
Write as deeply, fish as far down as you want, satisfy yourself first, then reader cannot fail to receive telepathic shock and meaning-excitement by same laws operating in his own human mind....
You can substitute 'writing' and 'reader' and substitute with the core of your passion, your art, your business. Hmmm, "Essentials of Spontaneous Marketing"?
"Marketing is an art form of its own. We don't believe there are any secrets. There's no '101 Secrets to Marketing'. It's integral to who you are." - Marco Zecchin, Marketing4Artists.net
At the end of day we're not marketing because that's what they'll put on our tombstone: "RIP. She was such a genius...marketer."
Somehow it's missing je ne sais quoi.
"Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? - every, every minute?" asks Emily, who's now a ghost, in the classic play Our Town.
Godlike stage manager: "No."
A long pause follows. Then:
"The saints and the poets, maybe - they do some."
Can marketing be its own art form? Poetry? Realize life? Maybe. Maybe if it taps into and captures something BIGGER, vital, primal even.
Pretty cool (I'm doing research on the history of salons, artists' colonies and specifically the 1906 SF earthquake and Beat movement for my thesis of an "accelerated Salon effect" re: social media)...
AND I find out Allen Ginsberg penned the first draft of Howl one week after committing to his art and "arranging his own lay-off" at his cushy market research firm.
What's the big deal - a poet writes a poem?
Ginsberg didn't pen a poem, he encapsulated and gave voice to a cultural, creative movement & energy that was already bubbling in salons and bookstores and Chinese noodle shops and in himself. And it took off in an wildly spontaneous contagious manner because it was already there and percolating.
"One can reasonably say that it was not until the fifties, when the Beat poets began their howling, down at the City Lights bookshop and in the bars and cafes of North Beach, and when Bohemianism and the beatnik style of life came welling up from nowhere , that creative regeneration began in the city in earnest once again. The damage that was done to the intellectual and artistic spirit of the city by the events of 1906 [earthquake] took much longer to heal than did the physical damage. The buildings eventually came back, but not the soul entire, not for a very long while." - Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906, by Simon Winchester
The Beat movement did not come from 'nowhere' and the Six Gallery reading of Ginsberg's Howl was local turning point that echoed and rippled far and wide. Below are mere snippets from the superb (must-read-illuminating-thought-shattering) "How Beat Happened" article by Steve Silberman (whom studied with Allen Ginsberg himself).
When Ginsberg stepped up to the podium, he had only lived in San Francisco a short while, but the cultural pot had been simmering a long time before he brought it to a Beat boil. The Bay Area in the late '40s and early '50s was a nexus of collaborative innovation, inquiry, and radical experiment in many arts, and "Howl" wouldn't have been "Howl" without Ginsberg's immersion in the local scene during the year preceding the poem's composition.
San Francisco was the perfect stage on which the Beats could happen...
Ginsberg knew he was at a crossroads in his art between apprenticeship to academic models of literature, and breaking through to a personal voice which could sing of experience beyond the bounds of what was permissible -- by '50s academic standards -- to speak of in poetry. "To break with that pattern entirely," he wrote, "Must find energy & image & act on it."
Planning to enroll in graduate school at U.C. Berkeley, Ginsberg moved to North Beach, taking a room at the $6-a-week Hotel Marconi on Broadway where Al Sublette -- a friend of Kerouac's -- lived.
The most lively literary salon in the Bay Area in those days was a circle that met on Friday nights in poet Kenneth Rexroth's apartment over Jack's Record Cellar, at Page and Divisadero. Rexroth grew up in Chicago, where he owned a tearoom called the Green Mask, featuring jazz and poetry, with a whorehouse on the floor above...
...a list of slogans that Ginsberg kept over his desk:
Blow as deep as you want -- write as deeply, fish as far down as you want, satisfy yourself first, then reader cannot fail to receive telepathic shock and meaning-excitement by same laws operating in his own human mind.... Nothing is muddy that runs in time and to laws of time -- Shakespearean stress of dramatic need to speak now in own unalterable way or forever hold tongue -- no revisions ... write outwards swimming in sea of language to peripheral release and exhaustion ... tap from yourself the song of yourself, blow! -- now! -- your way is your only way....
Ginsberg explained that the author of these "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose" was a friend: Jack Kerouac...
[But Ginsberg felt depressed so...] Ginsberg consulted a psychiatrist at Langley-Porter to ask him if he should be trying to be heterosexual. In Ginsberg's telling of the tale, the psychiatrist asked Ginsberg what he really wanted to do. "I really would just love to get an apartment, stop working and live with Peter and write poems," was Ginsberg's reply.
"So why don't you do that?" asked the doctor.
"What happens if I get old or something?"
"You're a nice person. There's always people who will like you."
Ginsberg felt he had received a blessing. He arranged his own layoff at the market-research firm where he had been working by replacing himself with a computer, ensuring himself unemployment benefits for six months. He bought an armful of Bach records with the first check. Orlovsky and Ginsberg moved into an apartment at 1010 Montgomery Street which allowed them separate rooms, and Ginsberg wrote a poem telling of his happiness to Kerouac: "I'm happy, Kerouac, your madman Allen's/ finally made it: discovered a new young cat,/ and my imagination of an eternal boy/ walks on the streets of San Francisco,/ handsome, and meets me in cafeterias/ and loves me...."
One afternoon in late July of 1955, Ginsberg wrote a line in his journal, "I saw the best mind angel-headed hipster damned," thinking of his friend Carl Solomon, who had survived a gauntlet of insulin shock treatments at the New York Psychiatric Institute. A week or so later, Ginsberg sat down in his apartment to jam at his typewriter.
I sat idly at my desk by the first floor window facing Montgomery Street's slope to gay Broadway -- only a few blocks from City Lights literary paperback bookshop. I had a secondhand typewriter, some cheap scratch paper. I began typing, not with the idea of writing a formal poem, but stating my imaginative sympathies, whatever they were worth. As my loves were impractical and my thoughts relatively unworldly, I had nothing to gain, only the pleasure of enjoying on paper those sympathies most intimate to myself and most awkward in the great world of family, formal education, business and current literature.
Ginsberg expanded on the line from his journal, changing it to a second draft of the best-known line in 20th Century poetry: "I saw the best minds of my generation/ generation destroyed by madness/ starving mystical naked." Ginsberg continued for seven single-spaced pages. The lines were short, [William Carlos] Williams-like, but the phrases already soared like the Charlie Parker riffs the poet had in mind as he typed. "I knew Kerouac would hear the sound," said Ginsberg later.
At first, Ginsberg thought that "Howl" was too personal for publication, but he did begin revising it almost immediately, combining the short lines into expansive out- breaths, and dropping out more diffuse language ("who stumbled by billboards with 6 cents and broken glasses and a bloody nose and stomach full of guilt metaphysics and metaphysical lightning blasting through the icy skull")...
Whatever sea-changes in global culture were precipitated by the events at the Six Gallery could never have been foreseen by the poets sharing steaming platters of chow fun at Sam Woh's.
p.s. Interesting tidbit, you may or may not know that women and gays - often relegated to the history book backwaters - were vital catalysts (instigators, hosts and hostesses) of salons ever since the Middle Ages. "Salon life was thus a vital aspect of cultural creation, and salon women played a major role in shaping and molding the ideas of their time because of the power they had in their salons.
In the past, conversation was one of the main elements of a successful salon. Formal presentations alternated with intense and passionate exchanges of ideas." - West Coast (Los Angeles) Women's Salon
p.p.s. I've been meeting in one-to-one salons with friends of late and have noticed how they spur us individually to stay true to the muse + results in new collaborative ventures. I'm forming a bit larger, but still small, intimate online salon (plus separate Bay Area face-to-face salon). More soon or email crossroadsdispatches -at- gmail =dot= com.
photos Ginsberg actually wearing clothing and the aftermath of 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Update Friend emails: "By the way, this is barely about marketing and more about the soul." Hallelujah! YES! But it I start with a blasphemous marketing remark. Marketing is supposed to be about satisfying our customer. So my premise isn't intended in a narcissitic way, but by satisfying yourself first deep deep within the soul - I'm guessing if it enthalls you, then you're not alone. Of course, this post ends up going way beyond marketing to staying true to your muse and morphs to movements.
Oh yeah, movements are how markets move. Think Apple.
Tish Gier added: "This is, in a sense, what is being done with blogs. I have always looked at my blog as my own little barroom, but both are, in their own ways, salons, and I kind of run them as such."
Yep. I like thinking of blogs as place. Blogs accelerate the salon effect. (My Syndicate slides are first time I broach the topic publicly: Download .pdf.)
And Tom Foremski (of SiliconValleyWatcher) notes the parallels between Beat generation writing and blogging. (Sound familiar? "Critics of the Beat have often disparaged the self-absorbed, narcissitic content of their writing.”)
I think the social salon aspect of Beat poets also parallels blogging and social media. And I think Beat generation paved the way for the counter-cultural personal computer revolution too...which paved the way for today's indie sharing spirit too.
And more in the comments sparked by David Seah's great Q that I am still mulling on what conditions do salons arise?
That's really interesting, regarding salons and their role in feeding our muses. About a year ago I started a group that I'm realizing just might be a salon. It started as a group of "new media practioners", and I structured the call to action as distinctly NOT being a business networking group. What happened was that the group quickly evolved into something much more than just another tech group; we all would come away from it being inspired in ways we hadn't considered. I attribute the modicum of success we've had to the face-to-face aspect, low threshold of participation, and the sense that there is a host that helps move things along.
I'm also wondering what conditions give rise to salons, and if they're out there but just invisible. I started my group because I suddenly realized that I wanted to see actual people, not just IM them, and had the vague notion that energy would be generated. Was there something similar happening in the beginning of the salon era?
Posted by: Dave | Mar 19, 2006 at 08:47 PM
I think you give a good description of a salon yourself.
There has been salons going for a long long time so no "era" per se - Wikipedia does a good job of it but stops a bit early in the history. Drawing rooms and welcoming guests and going to parties was part of society life pre-phone, pre-Net.
Your question is a great one as to the conditions that give rise to salons. I'll dig into that more, but often it just says stuff like "Rexroth established the Friday salon"...but never WHY. Of course some of the best stuff we do we have no idea WHY at the time than other because it feels right and it is experimental.
Read Chapter 37 in Po Bronson's "What Should I Do With My Life". He talks about why he started the Writers Grotto which is probably why anyone starts a salon (they probably 'emerge' more than they're created). Similar vien, here he answers question why he went to writing school after being a bonds salesman:
"Julie asked me, "Can writing schools really teach you to write?" I never thought that was the litmus test. Writing school helped me by surrounding me with people who aspired to the same ideals I did... The hardest thing was not learning to write; the hardest thing was to never give up."
When you're swimming upstream against the world, it really helps to be surrounded by those doing similiarly idiotic things ;-) but it's not group therapy (http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/03/web_20_is_like_.html) but more like mutual inspiration, feeding your soul so you can engage in the world refreshed.
In past, I think many salons flourished because women that didn't feel they could participate publicly as an artist, philosopher, politician for themselves could influence, support and shape the men in the limelight. It was acceptable to be a witty conversationalist in their own sala. Plus the hostesses tended to be connectors (in Tipping Point terminology) that brought together diverse people. People in polite society didn't mingle outside their own network...until salon hosts brought them together.
"Marmontel's remark about Julie de Lespinasse suggest the secret of the salon in French culture:
'The circle was formed of persons who were not bound together. She had taken them here and there in society, but so well assorted were they that once there they fell into harmony like the strings of an instrument touched by an able hand.'"- Wikipedia
Bingo.
When I was in Santa Fe & Taos last year I noticed how important certain folks were to establishing an arts community there that is still vibrant today. One is Mabel Dodge Luhan, a wealthy arts patroness. Before moving to Taos, she lived in NYC. "Her [NYC] salon became a mecca, a catalyst for some of the most interesting thinking by people who were trying to reshape society aesthetically, politically, or socially."
Posted by: Evelyn Rodriguez | Mar 20, 2006 at 03:19 PM
Evelyn, I love it that you've been making the same connections to the Beat writiers that I have noticed and have written about:
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2006/02/the_new_and_old.php
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Foremski/?p=42
And yes, I have been trying to get salons organised but this business crowd in Silicon valley is early to bed and early to rise and they lack any energy for anything else--I'm fed up with trying to stimulate their imagination. Let's just get one going together :-)
Posted by: Tom Foremski | Mar 21, 2006 at 02:28 PM
Thanks Tom. And thanks for the first link to your post, which I missed. People, no problem. Just need a place as mine isn't a suitable sala.
Dug up more on the rise of salons here. This site's motto: “To converse is human… to salon is divine.” from http://www.dailywriting.net/SalonBackground.htm
I'm sure it goes back even further than ancient Greece too: "Sappho led one salon, in which she instructed women in "the arts," such as chanting or singing in the choruses for the marriage ceremony. The women of the salon have been called poetic disciples, friends, and students of a sort of finishing school; Sappho has even been called the president of the world's first women's club, a kind of sacred sorority." - http://www.trivia-library.com/b/was-ancient-greek-poet-sappho-gay.htm
Posted by: Evelyn Rodriguez | Mar 21, 2006 at 05:08 PM
The Beats most definitley paved the way for the counter-culture computing revolution--most of us who've done counter-culture kinds of stuff owe *something* somewhere to the Beats. (but I tend to not want to give too much props to the Beats, as there was an anti-women element to Beat culture that was also part of the legacy of the Punks, direct heirs to the Beats...but I digress)
Here's a link to an NPR story on salons that mentions the origin of salons in the Greeks, and what is going on now (some of it in the Bay Area, some in Seattle.)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1138003
However, there does have to be the right crowd for salons to work. For awhile, a group of friends out here had a salon going. Sadly, after everyone either had babies or moved, the salon dissipated (kind of like Tom's early-to-bed, early-to-risers never getting started.)
hmmm....perhaps that's part of why salons that consist of gay men and bon vivant women last longer and have more of an impact...
the one important thing that is missing from the blog-as-salon ideal is that, most of the time, there is no face to face time. Still, the variety of people that can be part of a blog conversation is fascinating.
Posted by: Tish Grier | Mar 22, 2006 at 02:20 PM
Evelyn, this Friday is the anniversary of "Howl" I'm heading over to the Beat museum in North beach for a recreation of that event, maybe you can join us?
3). RE-CREATION of the 6 POETS AT THE 6 GALLERY
This will be our last event in March and it may well prove to be our most successful undertaking yet! The local poets and writers of North Beach have gathered together to celebrate a milestone in the history of the Beats. We'll be re-creating that famous night from October, 1955. Join us as we re-create the spirit of that magical evening that set the entire Beat Generation in motion! "Charming Event".
Kenneth Rexroth --------------- Jim Brightwolf
Philip Lamantia --------------- Jessica Loos
Allen Ginsberg ---------------- Neeli Cherkovski
Michael McClure --------------- Catz Forsman
Gary Snyder ------------------- Michael DePaul
Philip Whelan ------------------ Jerry Ferraz
Lawrence Ferlinghetti ------------ Peter Sherbourne
Peter Orlovsky ----------------- Brewster Gray
Jack Kerouac ------------------- Hans Rivers
Neal Cassady ------------------- John Allen Cassady
Conceived and Organized by George Davis & Jerrry Cimino
Click here for our schedule of events.
http://www.thebeatmuseum.org/schedule2.htm
Posted by: Tom Foremski | Mar 22, 2006 at 10:45 PM
Coming late to the conversation, I read the post and comments with interest. But doesn’t the fact that anyone can come late to a blog thread suggest a critical difference between blogging communities and salons? If we looked for applicable models, wouldn’t it seem that salons are structured like collective conversations around presence(s)? The most important presences are those of the speakers to each other and of the world they share – even when that world is in the process of being reinterpreted or transformed. We may want to come late to Rexroth’s salon, but we can’t. We can read about it, of course, but because we can’t be present, our relationship to the salon is literary, not personal (in the way that is only possible when we share a world in common with a group of others).
Following this same line of thought, wouldn’t blogging communities, for all their feel of presence, be structured like writing itself around a potential absence(s) --- specifically the (potential) absence of the writer and reader to each other? Because readers and writers must remain potentially absent to each other in order for writing to be writing (philosophers like Derrida have made this point, and so have phenomenologists like Poulet), we have to (co)construct whatever world we are to hold in common. Without that world-in-common, we can’t understand each other. (And isn’t marketing “about” finding or constructing a world that we hold in common? When successful, isn’t marketing a form of writing that mimics the presences, the intimacies, of conversation?)
The history of the Beats, at least as I read it, moves between these two ways of organizing experience and communication – the mode of presence and the mode of absence. In your description of how “Howl” was written, for example, isn’t Ginsberg (in part) evoking the presence of the absent Kerouac as the ideal person to hear his voice as he describes what he sees in the new world he discovers they hold in common? It’s as if Ginsberg is at the perfect Salon, holding the perfect conversation about the world these fellow-travelers all share (but which hasn’t yet been described or understood – which is in the process of being discovered and shaped).
After this absent presence was coded into “Howl” it then served as a touchstone for multiple Salons negotiating real presences of writers, hipsters, beats, hangers-on, musicians, artists, deviants, drop outs, and the like.
Kerouac himself alternated wildly between presence and absence – setting out on adventures of speed and vision, all night bouts of drinking, talking, loving, beholding, and then retreating to write – usually in solitude. At the heart of writing, as he details in Desolation Angels, Some of the Dharma, and many other places, Kerouac found the VOID – the Buddhist-inflected idea that emptiness lies at the core of both our suffering and our ability to transform (and redeem) ourselves and our worlds. His spontaneous prose method begins with this insight that no form can be permanent when emptiness drives it from within, forever pushing it to the brink of transformation into the NEXT THING.
As Kerouac knew (and Ginsberg learned), none of this is new. Tolstoy, whom Kerouac read closely, considered the question of how historical movements happen. He came to the then surprising conclusion that the so-called great individuals who serve as agents of change are symptoms, not causes. Tolstoy wrote: “There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, which is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his elemental hive life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him” (War and Peace, Bk. 9, ch. 1). I wonder if it would be worthwhile to think of salons as a kind of hive life that strives for the freedom of individual life (if, in no other way, by working out a language or style in which to address the strange new forces that constantly push and reshape us).
Posted by: Chris | Jan 20, 2008 at 10:26 AM