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Jack Kerouac’s 30 Keys to Life & Writing.

via on Sep 6, 2012 | 4 comments

{Tess Adamski’s Jack Kerouac tattoo by Thor at Yonge Street Tattoos.}

“Someday I’ll find the right words and they’ll be simple.” ~ Jack Kerouac 

It is said that troubled, genius, raw and lonely Jack Kerouac came up with this list of Beliefs & Techniques for Modern Prose in Allen Gingsberg‘s hotel room, a year before Ginsberg’s iconic poem Howl came to life. Ginsberg openly admitted Kerouac’s influence in his work.

Since writing is not about writing but about life, this goes out to anything that moves—fingers or heart—it all pumps blood.

 

Original version: 

  1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy

  2. Submissive to everything, open, listening

  3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house

  4. Be in love with yr life

  5. Something that you feel will find its own form

  6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind

  7. Blow as deep as you want to blow

  8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind

  9. The unspeakable visions of the individual

  10. No time for poetry but exactly what is

  11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest

  12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you

  13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition

  14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time

  15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog

  16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye

  17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself

  18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea

  19. Accept loss forever

  20. Believe in the holy contour of life

  21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind

  22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better

  23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning

  24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge

  25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it

  26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form

  27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness

  28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better

  29. You’re a Genius all the time

  30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

He forgot to add #31: 

 

“Anyway, I wrote the book because we’re all gonna’ die.”

 

 

And if, by any chance, you’re a romantic, spiritual being having some sort of a human experience (and a lover of old letters), breathe this in…

Jack to his wife Edie, in 1957:  

“I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. 

 

It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don’t worry. It’s all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside.

 

We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever.

 

Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all.

 

It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect.

 

We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing.

 

It’s a dream already ended. There’s nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. 

 

I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away?

 

Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born.”

{Selected Letters 1957-1969} ~ Jack Kerouac, The Portable Jack Kerouac

 *****

PS. “Put down the pen someone else gave you. No one ever drafted a life worth living on borrowed ink.” ~ Jack Kerouac

 

More writing mojo:

11 Tips & Tricks for Troubled Writers

 

 

{Join the Creative Rebellion.}

 

Andrea Balt
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Andrea Balt

Co-creator of Rebelle Society. Unfinished book with a love for greens, bikes and poetry. Holds a BA in Mass Communication, an MFA in Creative Writing & is an AADP certified Wellness Alchemist. Raised by wolves & adopted by people. Not trying to make art but to be art. In addition to Rebelle Society, she spills her tea over at Rebelle Époque & she is currently undergoing 365 days of Creative Rehab. Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest & Tumblr.
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