Howl - by Allen Ginsberg

The first poem I was introduced to by Allen Ginsberg was America. Whilst listening to the poet re-sight his emotions via youtube, I remember feeling as though I was sitting in a jazz bar in downtown Brooklyn nursing a brandy during my final hours of a weekend bender wondering where it all gone wrong. With Howl I did the same, I punched in the details, rolled a cigarette and kicked back to the voice of the counterculture generation; only this time I become Hunter S Thompson, gliding through the desert via Route 66 higher than virgin’s christening. This was Howl, to some effect, and ultimately America, the swinging hipsters of the 50’s were on the way out to make room for sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Society was ready to trade communist values for freedom, liberated by narcotics and trippy visions of ‘farrrr out maaaan’, young bohemians had the money and lacked the fear of travel to move against the ‘system’ challenging sexuality and religion along the way. Counterculture played a major role in our journey to modernity, as I have always proclaimed, architecture is not about buildings, it’s people, society and economics that shape our built environment and how we perceive it. The slight madness of this movement broke barriers and trends of thought that has allowed us to move forward to essentially where we are today, diversity, freedom of speech, right to vote, religious acceptance ect ect… Although it would be fair to say the 60’s, albeit care free and liberating, was destructive. Such is Faustism, you have to destroy in order to create.