« Please Support AB 655! | Main | Tyler's Primazons »
February 25, 2005
A Great Ending with J.G. Ballard and friends
Thursday was somewhat unextraordinary for the most part. Like Spalding Gray wrote of in Swimming to Cambodia, I search for the perfect moment(s); The one(s) that make(s) it All worthwhile... worth waking up to take on another 24/7. As of 6 p.m. yesterday evening, it still hadn't revealed itself, so a few of us made the journey to San Francisco in search of some inspiration.
We entered Ferlinghetti's City Lights bookstore just after 7 and headed up to the poetry room where V. Vale and J.G. Ballard enthusiasts were hanging out reading their favorite quotes from RESEARCH's latest publication J.G. Ballard Quotes. When we first arrived we could only get about halfway up the stairs and stood listening to the various voices coming down to us over a small P.A. from the room just several feet away. I remember staring at the walls while listening and finding a photo of a youthful Lawrence Ferlinghetti leaning against a sign that read, "I Am The Door" (1965).
People would slowly tire and trickle out of the room allowing us to enter and attach the voices to the readers' faces. Besides Vale, several notables were there including R.U. Sirius and Mark Pauline (full list here). While the quotes were great to listen to, some quite profound, it was something that V. said that stayed with me... He shared that he had always thought that if you were to create a J.G. Ballard fan club it would bring together the most extraordinary group of people. And as I looked around this small booklined room I had to agree, we were all there searching for something greater than ourselves.
"I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen." ~ J.G. Ballard
Posted by Brian at February 25, 2005 10:40 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.villagesavant.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/173