Weary of Time

Last Sunday the Renoir Cinema had a screening of “Ah! Sunflower” a 1967 documentary on Allen Ginsberg in London originally shot for WDR Television in Germany (now available on DVD from The Picture Press). The screening was introduced and later discussed by the novelist psychogeographer Iain Sinclair who had participated in the films production. The programme also included some short films, loosely gathered under the sobriquet “Beat London”.

In the introduction Sinclair read from Kodak Mantra Diaries, an account of the period which formed his first prose work (recently republished by Beat Scene magazine). Forty years old, some of Ginsberg’s words at the conference The Dialectics of Liberation sliced through the intervening period. Prescience or a further record of how long we have had knowledge and not action?

We can leave the planet
We can destroy the planet
We’ve never had history with those possibilities
We’ve had little wars in Asia
Or wars between America & Europe
But we never had a whole planet that could blow itself up
Or could destroy itself WITHOUT even blowing itself up
By destroying its forests
& changing its weather
& making carbon dioxide all over
Raising the temperature of the earth
Melting the polar ice cap
Causing a flood again