Believe, Believe / America

            Reading the poem “Believe, Believe” by Bob Kaufman (1925-1986) I couldn’t help but wonder if the beat poet had been at the same venue where in the past decade I discovered the healing powers of jazz music. Jazz can keep your mind from overthinking with its spontaneity! Kaufman had been called the quintessential jazz poet, and it is likely that during his lifetime he attended many jazz clubs, including the Village Vanguard.

            A friend of mine used to be a manager at the Village Vanguard, and I used to get in for free on certain days, only having to pay for drinks. What I learned over port wine and dim lights is that jazz and its technique of improvising fresh and unexpected arrangements on known musical pieces lets the mind relax and wonder, without worries. It’s not so easy to explain, but the second stanza in Kaufman’s poem just nails it!

            “Believe in the swinging sounds of jazz,

            Tearing the night into intricate shreds,

            Putting it back together again,

            In cool logical patterns,

            Not in the sick controllers,

            Who created only the Bomb.”

            Sounds of jazz at the Vanguard certainly cleared up my thoughts each time I went. The spontaneity of music allowed my thoughts to be spontaneous also, and helped me see some things in a different light: what seemed bad looked not so bad, and what seemed good just mixed in with the bad into a kind of balance.

            Many of Kaufman’s poems were performed orally without being written down or published.  “Believe, Believe” is listen as published posthumously in a 1996 compilation “Cranial Guitar,” but according to some themes it seems logical to think the poem was written sometime during the Cold War.  By “sick controllers” Kaufman means a certain elite of individuals who can manage public opinion and what people believe – such practice usually leads to one-sided thinking, like good is only good, and bad is only bad, without a possible middle. Kaufman was reactionary to American politics: he took a vow of silence after JFK’s assassination, and ended it 10 years later after the end of the Vietnam War.

            Reading the poem “America” written in 1956 by Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) I couldn’t help but wonder if Kaufman and Ginsberg were on the same page about the Cold War, with the latter just being more direct.

            “I can’t stand my own mind.

            America when will we end the human war?

            Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.

            I don’t feel good don’t bother me.

            I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.”

            Ginsberg stating that he “won’t write” the poem is almost like a reference to Kaufman’s vow of silence, and both are reactionary to very same The Bomb. But Ginsberg has not gone to a Jazz club to calm his mind yet, he seems to have been studying history and literature.

            “America why are your libraries full of tears?

            America when will you send your eggs to India?”

            What Ginsberg probably means by sending “eggs to India” is bringing ideology of democracy to India.  At the time the poem was written, India had only recently become independent from the British Rule, having left the Dominion of the Crown in 1950.

           

            What could possibly have been stopping Ginsberg from escaping his anxieties at a jazz club was the Lavender Scare, a Cold War product of McCarthyism. Ginsberg was openly gay, and the Lavender Scare was homophobic propaganda accusing gay and lesbian identified individuals of being most likely to be recruited to spy for the Communists. This idea was supported on the basis that gays and lesbians could be easily blackmailed with the threat of being outted, since at the time homosexuality was still listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.