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As it
is, the idea of Jack Kerouac—the lifestyle, the spirit,
the je ne sais pas—will probably live longer than
the real Kerouac ever did. Arguably one of the most sacred
authors of multiple testaments in the hipster canon, Kerouac's
Mexico City Blues is in itself a testament to his effortless
cool and eternal exploration of enlightenment. The 242 choruses
that comprise the epic poem are meant to be strung together
like paper lanterns in a sticky New Orleans jazz bar, running
on an improvised and spastic beat. In a small introduction,
Kerouac writes, "I want to be considered a jazz poet blowing
a long blues in an afternoon jam session on Sunday."
Kerouac,
intrigued by the close relationship between the free-form
style of jazz music and poetry, typically displayed his unique
style of spontaneous prose in novels like The Subterraneans,
Visions of Cody, and On the Road. Kerouac's
efforts here mark a turning point—when he stops writing
about jazz music (On the Road and The Subterraneans
both reference Beat icon and legendary jazz musician Charlie
Parker) and instead applies his matchless way with words to
become music. As exemplified in the "59th Chorus,"
Kerouac bemoans life as a junky with hard breaks mid-sentence,
no specific rhyme or meter, and one line working in tandem
with the one before it, constantly ebbing and flowing:
Then
I always manage to get
my weekly check on Monday,
Pay my rent, get my laundry
out, always have enough
Junk to last a coupla days
Have
to buy a couple needles
tomorrow, feels like
Shovin a nail in me
Just like shovin a nail in me
Goddamn - (Cough) -
While
Ginsberg's "Howl" became the preeminent epic, Mexico City
Blues is largely forgotten and typically not aligned with
works of similar genre. In effect, the tool Kerouac uses to
allow his poetry a freer and less constrained verse is the
very tool that distracts the mainstream public. While readers
might appreciate his ability to contort, create, and arrange
words, it is hard to imagine many people relating to Kerouac's
typical stanzas of drug use, errant travel, and casual sex.
In Mexico City however, Kerouac delves into not only
Buddhism, government debt, family, and places traveled, but
also more widespread questions about himself and what it means
to exist. He references Mexico, India, and small towns across
the US, and struggles at length to express his slow evolution
from Catholicism to a more enlightened Buddhism. In his "18th
Chorus," he embraces Buddhism and belies his previous Catholic
belief system, ending with the image of "bloody sawdust"—often
inferred to be a shorn crucifix.
The
bottom of the repository
human mind
The
Kingdom of the Mind,
The Kingdom has come.
It's
the only thing you got free,
the Mind.
And later,
in the same chorus:
I've
had all I can Eat
Revisiting Russet towns
Of long ago
On carpets of bloody sawdust
The deeper
into Mexico City Blues Kerouac writes, the deeper his
insights become and the more seemingly profound his trek to
enlightenment becomes. In "Chorus 111" he writes, "I even
dropped my conception/ of highest old wisdom / And turned
to the world, / a Buddha inside, / And said nothing. / and
I had no idea / what I was thinking about / and abided in
blank ecstasy."
In the
end, Mexico City Blues is not a collection for everyone.
Though deeply layered and insightful, the poem essentially
caters only to Kerouac and his personal enlightenment mission.
The stiff interruptions in lines, intermittent rhyme scheme
and brief one-page professions are easily stumbled upon but
inherently calming to discover evolving page by page. Kerouac
wanted to be considered a jazz poet, and though his subjects
can be found at opposite ends of typical jazz themes, the
style is the same. In a poem not included in this collection
of choruses, Kerouac compares Charlie Parker to the "image
of the Buddha" who "burst his lungs to reach the speed / of
what the speedsters wanted / And what they wanted / Was his
eternal Slowdown." This is not unlike Kerouac himself, who
slowed down to finish Mexico City Blues the same year.
(August,
2007)
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