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GENERATING_BEAT

On the generation of Beat...


   The quaint Damon Runyan New York
   of boozey gamblers starts getting
   into some heavier drugs (maybe
   an interest in opiates is spread
   by wounded ex-GIs at the close of
   WWII: "Sister Morphine");

   What honor there is
   among the thieves gets
   increasingly strained;

   The Broadway scene starts to
   develop a nastier edge...

   Kerouac and Holmes pick up on
   an adjective from this
   underground: "beat".

       They put their
       own spin on it.



 Maybe this is typical:
                                      GENESIS_OF_THE_CYBER-PUNKS
 The behavioral change
 happens first.

 Someone notices, dimly, that
 things are a little different,
 and invents an adjective years
 later.

 Then the existence of the
 new terminology changes
 people's perception, and
 creates further behavioral
 changes.



     It's now very common for people
     to try to manufacture a term, to            NEWFOLKS
     put over a new scene change.

        This rarely works, if ever:
        the new terminology has such
        a reek of inauthenticity
        about it that even if it
        does catch on, the usage
        seems very half-hearted, and
        it soon fades.

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