This Note is Not Legal Tender

I don’t drive, so when it gets to that point in the night where it’s unbearable to stay awake, I often find myself in situations where I’m begging my friends or girlfriend to drive me home. Of course, with those people, it’s hardly begging.

We live in a Weird Time. It brings back memories of Black weekdays, dirty thirties and Boo Radley leaving treasure in an oak tree. I like to think I’m conscious of things like our seemingly swan song singing economy and the overwhelmingly schizophrenic gas prices that roll and reek vengeful havoc on our culture’s (or at least some of its representatives’) ignorant greed. Still, when we’re in a group setting, and one of us suddenly becomes aware of their heavy eyelids, I am more often than not offered a ride home on general principle that I would otherwise have to walk.

In these situations, I am prone to being the only passenger to accompany the driver; at least sometimes I am the last to be dropped off. At that hour of the night, which is usually absurdly late and not night at all, conversation comes slowly to me. And since even at suitable hours I find that I write better words than I can sometimes articulate through speech – I actually come complete with a list of conversation starters that I will fall back on if the occasion necessitates such contrived attempts at communication.

Lately, I’ve been resorting to a question I’ve had about counterfeit money. I do not know as much as I wish I did about legal matters. I am also double-majoring in English and Philosophy, so naturally, the Meaning and Truth of words and how far they can be stretched is of great importance to my curiosity. Recently I’ve been asking my drivers and sometimes even fellow passengers what “counterfeit” means to them. Is it having it (knowingly?)? using it (knowingly?)? making it? all of the above? I received responses that perpetuated opinions in favour of all the options listed, but the “knowingly” element made its first appearance on my ride home last night.

As I mentioned before, we live in Weird Times. In this fertile and vulnerable New Year, 2009, history seems to be repeating itself as history is wont to do, and our economy is in a state of Recession. Well, Weird Times call for Weird Answers. I like to think I’ve learned from the best. My personal library consists of enough Beat writers and artists to blow up a bank. That claim might seem strange, but it will become less obscure as I go on.

Between the end of the Great Depression and the 50s, there wasn’t much room for fun. With World War II in full heat for the first half of the forties, soldiers were recruited in large quantities, diminishing the definition of entertainment for stay-at-homers to satisfying vicarious interest. Even after the official end of WWII on September 2, 1945, culture was licking its wounds in America: the focus shifted to repopulation and family unification. When the fifties started, Conservative philosophy dominated how people lived their lives, and if you were an individual that wasn’t baby booming and pursuing nuclear family life or the great American Dream, you had nothing but your job and your possessions, and you weren’t looked on kindly.

Then came the Beat Generation.

The Beat Generation consisted of a collection of authors that can be looked at as a response to the Great Depression and its results. “Beats” or “Beatniks” were essentially those that rejected the dominant American values, seeking liberation for the very soul that was being oppressed. Eastern spirituality, drug use, and sexual exploration were prominent focuses. Jack Kerouac packed up and traveled across America, traveling which consisted of hitchhiking and finding beauty on the road and in the jazz clubs and company it brought him to. This resulted in the 1957 publication of On the Road. William S. Burroughs embraced drugs like marijuana, a German opioid called Eukodol, morphine, and especially, heroin, all of which he wrote about in his seminal work, Naked Lunch. In an effort of spiritual independence, in 1955 Allen Ginsberg took advice from his therapist and quit his job, becoming a full-time poet. He then wrote Howl, a collection of his then-recent works. He was able to do this with the time he had off and the stress that was lifted when he quit his job.

The things you own end up owning you, but you are the only owner of your experiences. An important element of Kerouac’s travels and the junky lifestyle that Burroughs passed was a rejection of material possessions. It’s hard to travel with a lot of stuff – especially when on foot, and drugs cost money – something a lot of heavy users (Burroughs was one) often have to obtain by letting things go. There’s something to be said here, since both were able to make books of substantial integrity out of the experiences in which they took part.

Burroughs’ Naked Lunch and Ginsberg’s Howl each faced obscenity charges thanks to the conservative values being enforced at the time, but ultimately, they were lifted for the social importance that each work brought to its culture. If Burroughs and Ginsberg proved anything more than Jack Kerouac with these triumphs it was that it is okay to be obscene.

This is where my counterfeiting question comes in. But I’ll reintroduce it in a new way: if counterfeiting is illegal, would it be illegal for art’s sake? Even if it is, and the Recession becomes the New Depression, I wouldn’t mind doing some of my own for the purpose of making a 150x70m collage of colourful Canadian capital that spells out in big blocky capitals,

THIS NOTE IS NOT LEGAL TENDER.

It might be rejected as counterfeit and obscene, but I think it would serve a greater purpose than imposing a widespread conservative repulse in a time of economic strife. It would deliver an important message to the Canadian people: in this time of capitalist propaganda and rickety job stability, you still have your souls. Make art, and live life. Enjoy freedom from and reject the noose of material thingamajigs. This is the new Pop Art. It’s not Pop Art at all. It’s something from nothing. It’s Beatific. It’s obscene. It’s Soul Art.

Dig?



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