Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village. downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking, talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues shout blind on the phonograph
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the loss and memory of a loved one amidst the vibrancy of life.
In this poignant reflection by Allen Ginsberg, the speaker contemplates the absence of a significant person in his life, contrasting their memory with the lively backdrop of Greenwich Village. The imagery of a sunny winter day and the act of listening to music underscores the beauty of life, even in the face of loss, suggesting that love and memory endure even when the person is no longer present.
In practice
During a memorial service, this quote could be used to evoke the memories of the deceased.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.
Marijuana is a useful catalyst for specific optical and aural aesthetic perceptions. I apprehended the structure of certain pieces of jazz and classical music in a new manner under the influence of marijuana, and these apprehensions have remained valid in years of normal consciousness.
Many seek and never see, anyone can tell them why. O they weep and O they cry and never take until they try unless they try it in their sleep and never some until they die. I ask many, they ask me. This is a great mystery.
What if someone gave a war and Nobody came?
Fortunately art is a community effort - a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh.
Sometime Iβll lay down my wrath, As I lay my body down Between the ache of breath and breath, Golden slumber in the bone.
He will kill mice and he will be kind to babies...but when the moon gets up and the night comes, he is the Cat that Walks by Himself.
To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten.
These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.
Fear the sins that you commit in secret, because the Witness of those sins is the Judge Himself!
We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.
If the words 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.