howl@america 

emptypanopticon.org is currently collecting - for the purpose of posting & sharing here - audio & video recordings - done by any of us, especially you - of readings & performances of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl.”

why howl & Web 2.0?

On December 13, 2006, You were named Time’s Person of the Year. Why? Well, from 1.1.2006 to 12.13.2006, You were, according to the magazine, “seizing the reins of the global media,” “founding and framing the new digital democracy,” and “working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game.” Congrats, You. You’ve earned it.

But You forgot something. & so did I. Sometime in the autumn of 2006, while You & I were busy democratizing the media, Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” and a handful of “other poems” celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their publication.

What You’ve done with Web 2.0 - all these blogs & YouTubes & podcasts :: all these remarkable & artful & strange power plays on the stifled unSoul of the media-that-was - is not unrelated to Ginsberg’s 50+1 year old poem. Consider the way that Bill Morgan, a biographer of Ginsberg & The Beats, and Nancy J. Peters, publisher of City Lights Books, celebrated the the anniversary of the poem: the two edited Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression. Yes, 50 years ago, U.S. Customs seized copies of Howl and Other Poems. (For more on the legal life of “Howl,” visit City Light Books’ “A History of Howl.”)

Charges of obscenity would not stick to the printed & bound version of the poem. But the voice of the poem - that is, readings & performances of it - are, when broadcast over the radio, (ambiguously) regulated by the F.C.C. As Bill Morgan notes in the concluding chapter of Howl on Trial, “When Ginsberg died in 1997, … there was no clear decision about whether ‘Howl’ could be read on the air or not. […] And so it goes, ten years later, the question of ‘Howl’s’ alleged ‘indecency’ is still unresolved.”

And this is where I think that You might be useful. You & Your Web 2.0 soul can find, record & share the (ambiguously) regulated voice of “Howl.” I imagine that You might take the words of this poem - in its entirety or otherwise - & speak & record them at a reading, a protest, or, in the spirit of YouTube, at some peculiar, spontaneous, or awkward moment … or, even, when You’re in Your room alone with a webcam or mic feeling like You want to make a little Web 2.0 contact :: feeling like You want to howl@america.

I imagine a (minor & informal) online community of people interested in bringing some of Ginsberg’s words & a whole lot of his spirit into their day-to-day. To that end, I hope to accumulate, & then make available for download, Your audio & video recordings of “Howl.”

So, if you have something to share or want a little more information, contact: terrorthroughthewall@emptypanopticon.org