I just came across a collection of wonderful photographs of New York City's Lower East Side in the late '70s and early '80s by Michael Sean Edwards. The photos are vivid and gritty, both in subject matter and the look of the film.

Really wonderful stuff. Believe it or not, looking at these photos makes me wish I had been old enough to experience this New York. I'll admit I'm romanticizing it quite a bit but there's no denying the artistic and cultural energy of the time. Gone.

Richard Metzger at Dangerous Minds chimes in with some commentary on a few of the photos. Definitely worth the quick read.

Check out the whole NYC 1978-1985 set and all of Edwards' work. Lots of great stuff to look at.

Blah Blog Blah has a post up about Allen Ginsberg's old apartment in New York City. The photos in the post aren't much to look at but the words that accompany them are those of a former neighbor and intimate observer.

We didn't bother with each other much, but he'd take photos of my shirtless carpenter boyfriend when he'd use the fire escape for an impromptu workshop. You never knew who'd be gathered around his kitchen table: a PBS film crew, a minion of men with black garb and payis chanting Sabbath prayers, etc.

Get a little more about Ginsberg's old homes here and here.

Blah Blog Blah's post got me to thinking about the recent exhibition at the National Gallery of Art featuring Ginsberg's photographs from the Beat era.

Ginsberg's photographs are far more than historical documents. The same qualities that governed his poetry -- intense observation of the world, deep appreciation for the beauty of the vernacular, and faith in intuitive expression -- also permeate his photographs. Drawing on the most common form of photography, the snapshot, he created spontaneous, uninhibited pictures of ordinary events to celebrate and preserve what he called "the sacredness of the moment."

I love the captions that Ginsberg added to the photographs.

Myself seen by William Burroughs, Kodak Retina new-bought 2'd hand from Bowery hock-shop, our apartment roof Lower East Side between Avenues B & C, Tompkins Park trees under new antennae.

Hey Jack Kerouac...

Jack Kerouac wandering along East 7th Street after visiting Burroughs at our pad, passing statue of Congressman Samuel "Sunset" Cox, "The Letter-Carrier's Friend" in Tompkins Square toward corner of Avenue A, Lower East Side; he's making a Dostoyevsky mad-face or Russian basso be-bop Om, first walking around the neighborhood, then involved with The Subterraneans, pencils & notebook in wool shirt-pockets, Fall 1953, Manhattan.

This one ties in just right with the old apartment story.

I sat for decades at morning breakfast tea looking out my kitchen window, one day recognized my own world the familiar background, a giant wet brick-walled undersea Atlantis garden, waving ailanthus ("stinkweed") "Trees of Heaven," with chimney pots along Avenue A topped by Stuyvesant Town apartments' upper floors two blocks distant on 14th Street, I focus'd on the raindrops along the clothesline. "Things are symbols of themselves," said Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. New York City August 18, 1984

My mind is wild with the thoughts of the energy that filled the room while Ginsberg had his morning tea. Or even the energy the view from his apartment gave back.

One of the reasons I love to travel is to immerse myself in the culture of the place I'm visiting. I rent an apartment, take public transportation whenever possible, and do as the locals do. It makes for a much more enlightening and worldly experience.

The problem with that is that I end up falling in love with the places I visit. Always.

With Madrid it was love at first sight and very passionate.

Atlanta is a lover I can always turn to for a quick romp, animated conversation, and sparks of creativity.

New York City is my great love. The one I'll always remember that sets the bar for all those that come after.

Currently I'm falling in love with Mexico City. It's like that lover that you're not sure of at first, but you get to know them really quickly and find yourself wanting to be with them all the time.

I always tend to see the good in the places I fall in love with. Yeah, each place has their faults and dark corners, just like we all do. Keeping it ideal, while a bit of an illusion at times, is a great way to remember these lovers in their best moments. I'll take that parting memory every time.

I've been thinking a lot about Steve Earle lately.

He's been one of my favorite musicians from the get go. Actually got to meet him a couple of times back when I worked at WNCW. He was always a real nice guy.

Anyway, Steve has been part of the Nashville music scene since 1975. He was 19 when he first got there and it took about eleven years for him to break through with Guitar Town in 1986. It's a fun record that kicks off with the following words:

Hey pretty baby are you ready for me
It's your good rockin' daddy down from Tennessee

Check it out.

Fast forward 21 years. A lot can happen to a good rockin' Nashville guy in that time: wives, kids, drugs, politics, more wives, jail time.

The upshot is that throughout all the drama Steve has made the most honest and well-received music of his career. Classics, I'd say: Copperhead Road, El Corazón, I Feel Alright, Train A Comin', and Jerusalem -- just to name a few.

Then in 2007 Steve made a record called Washington Street Serenade. Having lived in New York City with his seventh wife, singer Allison Moorer, for a couple of years had an intense effect on him.

The first song on the record, "Tennessee Blues," begins as such:

Sunset in my mirror, pedal on the floor
Bound for New York City and I won’t be back no more
Won’t be back no more, boys, won’t see me around
Goodbye guitar town

And then the kicker:

Fare thee well I’m bound to roam
This ain’t never been my home

Have a listen.

This ain't never been my home. Wow, man. Strong words.

I gotta say that I know how the guys feels. Life can change you profoundly. It can make a man whose life and music were synonymous with Nashville kiss the town goodbye and realize that it had never really been the place for him.

Sometimes you figure that out quickly, other times you go to hell and back several times before you do. But when you do figure it out and you take action you end up happier than you've ever been. Steve is living proof.

Goodbye guitar town, indeed.

Patti Smith, from the book Just Kids, after having visited the Museum of Art in Philadelphia for the first time at the age of 12:

I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not.

Just Kids is the story of Patti Smith, one of the greatest performers in music, and Robert Mapplethorpe, one of the most significant and controversial photographers of our time.

This book, however, chronicles their lives before the fame and recognition. Patti and Robert are two fledgling kids living in New York City and full of a longing to live a creative life full of unconditional love and support.

   I was particularly moved by the drawing he had done on Memorial Day. I had never seen anything like it. What also struck me was the date: Joan of Arc's feast day. The same day I had promised to make something of myself before her statue.
   I told him this, and he responded that the drawing was symbolic of his own commitment to art, made on the same day. He gave it to me with out hesitation and I understood in this small space of time we had mutually surrended our loneliness and replaced it with trust.

Miguel Piñero was a Puerto Rican poet, playwright, actor, ex-con, ex-addict, and co-founder of the Nuyorican poetry movement.

Piñero's most well-known poem -- A Lower East Side Poem -- is an elegy to the gritty and depraved Lower East Side of Manhattan in the '70s and '80s. The first stanza:

Just once before I die
I want to climb up on a tenement sky
to dream my lungs out till I cry
then scatter my ashes thru
the Lower East Side.

And the last stanza:

I don't wanna be buried in Puerto Rico
I don't wanna rest in long island cemetery
I wanna be near the stabbing shooting
gambling fighting & unnatural dying & new birth crying
so please when I die
don't take me far away
keep me near by
take my ashes and scatter them thru out
the Lower East Side.

That's just what his friend and fellow Nuyorican poetry movement co-founder Miguel Albarín did when Piñero died in 1988. Here is the story of that procession.

Another of Piñero's great poems is Seekin' The Cause.

he never gave his love to children
he never gave his heart to old people
& never did he ever give his soul to his people
he never gave his soul to his people
because he was busy seekin' a cause
busy
busy perfectin' his voice to harmonize the national anthem with spiro t agnew
busy perfectin' his jive talk so that his flunkiness wouldn't show
busy perfectin' his viva-la-policia speech
downtown, uptown, midtown, crosstown
his body was found all over town
seekin' a cause
seekin' the cause

Check out Piñero himself reading part of Seekin' The Cause in this video.

It's pretty powerful stuff.