Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

As a kid in Orange county California
Anaheim to be exact, five miles from Disneyland
I grew up around strange characters, Mickey Mouse
Goofy, Donald Duck, Tinker Bell, to name a few
at the age of twelve I decided I was a beatnik
I had a pair of bongos I got in Tijuana
I got a push button switchblade too
but I was not a little ruffian, I liked to dress
as a bum, or hobo, on Halloween, I identified with the bum
I'm not sure why, it was those ragged characters
that intrigued me for some reason, maybe it was the season
of the witch, because I was always attracted to the little
witch girls, but I had to be the mysterious bum, the tramp
the untidy one, I guess that one morphed into the beatnik
I think I dressed as a beatnik the last time I went trick or treating
I also think that I identified with Halloween more then any other
holiday, I liked Christmas because I got out of school for two weeks
but the dark night with the full moon hanging up there, the bats
the black cats with luminous saucer shaped eyes, arching their backs
and the space people, the shitty costumes they sold at the store
I once dressed up as Bugs Bunny in a prefab costume
and it did not feel right to me, even though Bugs was cool
I always saw myself at the back of the Halloween parade
following along, like some gypsy on the edge of it all
not really in the parade of silly people, but just at the end
a gypsy a beatnik a bum a ragged one on the trail of little witch girls

I can relate and I think many artists are born outsiders....and i have always loved the song Season of the Witch, one of the first I learned to play on guitar....especially like Terry Reid's version....and Bugs was cool....one of the first cartoon characters to don lipstick and dress like a female, among other things...ha....but I dig that place you came from...identifying with the rough side of life, the side that wasn't neatly prepackaged....I always ran in the other direction...still do....too late for us to change now....and why would we want to ?

Not sure what you are saying, I do not equate a "rough side of life" with its opposite.In other words, it was always rough, so there is nothing to say that is not rough is the sense that I would compare cool to hip to being aware of what is really going on.If you get my drift, so to speak.I'm not looking for the opposite of rough, nor am I looking to emphasize a roughness, as it were.I used the word ruffian, to indicate, that even though I was raised in relative safe conditions, and so I was not raised so as to become the kind of person that would carry a switchblade, or make a zip gun, i did know about it.As far as to my leanings in so far as to what I think about in regards to poetic endeavor, I have indicated that when I started out to make myself into a poet, it was not as a simple pass time, it became a way of life for me, a calling, a pursuit, a will to poetry, in so far as people think they know what the pursuit of happiness is, but when we look at the human condition, especially in this day and age, one would have to believe that only money can give you that.A beatnik is just like any other costume in society, until you look under the costume.So beatniks were cool because some TV character took on that persona.Well how did that happen? When I was a kid, I watched war movies, and I wanted to be like John Wayne, but that was a passing phase.I was a little rebel at six, so I quickly passed through the John Wayne phase, and soon I became dimly aware
that resonated with the more complex characters, I like the sound of jazz early on. I liked science fiction, I loved the Ernie Kovacs show because it was so unusual, I was drawn to the unusual. Did I completely eradicate the John Wayne character out of my psyche? Well, by the time I was a teenager, I knew that I would not allow myself to be drafted.