Players & Participants
There are Players and there are Participants.
Participants are legion. What they participate in is the Look Alike Contest. Wanna-be Bukowskis and Millers, a handful of James Deans.
There are two categories of Players, and they both probe the Big Silence. Miller and Bukowski fall into one category, Bob Kaufman and Gregory Corso into the other. They both see the Big Silence, but the Millers and Bukowskis loop in and out of it, sensing that if they went in too deep and stayed too long, they’d never get out again.
Corso and Kaufman, on the other hand, plunge in all the way and never look back. They wind up scarred and bludgeoned and frightening to look at. They die poor and obscure and get nailed to the cross as misfits by the legions of Participants.
Both Player approaches are valid, it’s the seeing that counts. But if the Big Silence is ever to be cracked wide open into a primal scream, it will be the Kaufmans and Corsos who do it. This probably will never happen.
If you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, put on your white sequined jump suit, slick your hair back like Elvis, and belt out your best version of Heartbreak Hotel.
