Dancin’ Beats

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww! ~ Jack Kerouac

Again my recent reading has been centered on my exploration of the Beat Generation: you know, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, et. al. I’ve just completed re-reading Kerouac’s On the Road for the fourth (or is it the fifth?) time. But this post isn’t about the cool words of the Beats. It’s about the music of the Beats.

I’ve long been aware of the prose, poetry, and music of the Beats. One way or another, it was all blues and jazz:

Once there was Louis Armstrong blowing his beautiful top in the muds of New Orleans; before him the mad musicians who had paraded on official days and broke up their Sousa marches into ragtime. Then there was swing, and Roy Eldridge, vigorous and virile, blasting the horn for everything it had in waves of power and logic and subtlety — leaning into it with glittering eyes and a lovely smile and sending it out broadcast to rock the jazz world. ~ Jack Kerouac

A Zen History of Jazz ~ Shorty Petterstein

And then there is the dancing—a kind of dancing we seldom see these days. The kind that my mother and father danced. I understand that my dad was a great dancer; not only on the dance floor, but also on roller skates. This kind of dancing:

In can’t conceive of doing that kind of dancing on roller skates.