Pretty powerful talk

« IN FALL 1950 when I was so much on weed, three bombs a day, thinking about unhappiness all the time I one night really carefully and high listened to George Handy’s The Blues (Vicki had his picture up on wall with mine and Charlie Parker’s, the mind, the hand, and me the heart she said) but to really drift and I found it a big mocking sound and specifically the joy of bop in the middle with Herby Steward is rejected for this modern or rather sadomasochistic modernity, on I I was able to see that Handy was sacrificing joy which naturally existed in his heart for the glooms and despairs and great disappointed deaths, the deadly loss of ego, the last acknowledgment of self – the music seemed to say “There are still a few things that you can cling to and this I supposed you should be soothed about – ha ha – but you won’t even get that – though there’s joy in our souls (bop interlude) we are nothing but shits and we’ll all die and eat shit in graves and are dying now.” Pretty powerful talk! »

Kerouac, Jack. Visions of Cody. 1960. Penguin Books. p. 25