As previously mentioned, yesterday I was in San Francisco and stopped by City Lights Bookstore, where apparently various members of the Beat Generation used to meet.
Today I've been thinking: all those cool artist gangs had a special hangout. The Beats had City Lights, the Inklings had The Eagle and Child, the Romantics had Villa Diodati.
We (and by we, I mean you and me) are a cool artist gang, and therefore should have a cool artist hangout. How else are we supposed to come up with the artistic ideas that will define our generation?
I'm open to suggestions.
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i thought it was called, "yvette's apartment"??
ReplyDeleteI would say a coffee shop but that's too "typical" now, your unique thoughts can't grow in that kind of environment...i have no suggestions for you - at the moment.
ReplyDeleteooooo, we must find one! you're so right. i vote for a quiet little pub somewhere. i'm willing to search for one every weekend with you if we have to! : )
ReplyDeleteuh. i echo yvette's comment. booyah.
ReplyDeleteOf course, you neglect to recognize the sheer community that is to only be found in tired instant messages sent back and forth to each other at three in the morning (or sometimes in the afternoon, but still tired none the less). It is a place that cannot be created in a pub over drinks, or a dark corner of an intimate bookstore. It is where one idea bleeds into the next and you read it later and aren't quite sure if you were saying the same thing or coming up with the same plot but, for some reason, it did work at the time and your mind weaves it together and thus it creates- this all because a few words have caught your eye and pulled at something. Concrete words on the screen, but abstract thoughts and vague imaginings. And there is no wondering ponderously, "Wait, what was it that was said? I knew it was great..." because it is there to be read again. The internet, by itself, displays the sheer terror and delight to be found in the danger of putting words down in any way where they can be read by and perhaps kept by another. And it is this place and community that has no exclusion. It does not say, "Your sister is 5 hours by flight if you are lucky - and three hours by time and you cannot call her because it is there there even though you know she is an insomniac and likely awake." It is not dictated by the time a place closes - e-mail does not rely on postage or become drowned in busy schedules. It is a place where you can ask one question and find the answer to it the next, and the whole world becomes open as authors of generations are available at simply a few keywords. So I challenge that the internet is now the 'hangout' of great minds. Minds no longer constrained to one town or dependent of the great felicity of meeting the right person or group of people. There are no inklings of this generation perhaps, but there are people scrambling around a computer to find out a hint to next books or to read the works of those who they would have never met otherwise. We aren't a generation of cozy nooks an quiet conversation or debate anymore. Cellphones and laptops rule this out. As a historian, this is a bit sad, but it is as sad to me to see the starbucks on the paved road in front of the castle of Edinburgh. History put so abruptly to the present reality and a stinging reminder of what we have lost. But we are not a generation where women regularly die in childbirth either. We are a generation where a sister can leave a far too rambling post on her sister's blog at two in the morning when future generations would be lucky to have a letter every two months, if a sister was particularly thoughtful. It puts things in a bit of a jarring perspective.
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