Sunday, June 29, 2014

The Church of God's Original Beatnik Apostle



The Beatnick Gospel by E W King.  
King certainly is setting himself apart as the most unique COG leader ever!




E W King and Donald Smack's  Beatnik Kick

6 comments:

Byker Bob said...

The beatniks, while they introduced some cool slang, had a really lame scene going on. Poetry? Acoustic music? Coffee? Gimme a break! I mean I liked Maynard and all, but the anti-Viet Nam hippies gave us much better, kick-ass music, although I couldn't relate to their rampant anti-Americanism. The hippies' slang was even better, as was their back to the earth mentality and spirit of communal living. Beatniks = embryonic. Hippies = more thoroughly developed.

Any "downer" counterculture fits well with Armstrongism, though, even though the ministers who don't understand will condemn it. I am surprised that there isn't a huge Goth movement amongst the ACOG teenagers. Some of them right now are probably idolizing the new Goth version of Chloe O'Brien on the latest 24 series!

BB

old EXPCG hag said...

Just put on a beatnik hat and you become a beatnik

...so that's his secret hehehe!

Unknown said...

Karaoke night COG!

James said...

Wasn't Eric part of the The Partridge Family?
http://tinyurl.com/nb487aj

Anonymous said...

What happened to Eric's blue striped prayer shawl? He needs to work that into his music act together with a genuine yarmulke topped with a propeller...

If Dave Pack can be a 21st Century Apostle, then I guess Eric can be a 21st Century Beatnik. What's next, a Disco Revivalist ACOG? Get out your bell bottoms and platform shoes.

Ronco

Anonymous said...

E.W. King fancies himself as the "true" version of whatever flight of fancy he happens to be on at the moment. However, all he is, is a dilettante. Now he suddenly fancies himself a "modern beatnick" (his term, not mine.)

However, the word "beatnik" does not signify the true spirit of the "beat" movement, as attested in this quote by Alan Ginsberg from the Wikipedia "Beatnik" entry:

"The word 'beatnik' was coined by Herb Caen in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 2, 1958. Caen coined the term by adding the Russian suffix -nik after Sputnik I to the Beat Generation. Caen's column with the word came six months after the launch of Sputnik. Objecting to the term, Allen Ginsberg wrote to the New York Times to deplore 'the foul word beatnik,' commenting, 'If beatniks and not illuminated Beat poets overrun this country, they will have been created not by Kerouac but by industries of mass communication which continue to brainwash man.'"

So, if E.W. King wanted to maintain any fidelity to the actual beat movement, he would shun the word "beatnik," as merely a media-driven counterfeit of the beat movement created by commercial interests to sell mass-produced goods to then-emerging segments of the market who were eager to conform to an edgy and "non-conformist" stereotype.

The actual word "beat" as attested by Kerouac and Gisberg is a shortened form of "beatific" or "beatitiude," referring to a spiritually enlightened vision of what could be if everyone rose above the consensus engendered by the media shepherds, and the insanity of the nuclear age that consensus had brought upon all our heads. To be "beat" was to be sane in an insane world.

However, E.W. King is too shallow and flighty to understand any of this. He's merely an overgrown child (with an ego to match) who seeks to play different dress-up games every week, and "beatnik" is merely the costume du jour.

Adam Curtis' incredibly well researched four-part BBC documentary, Century of the Self documents how Sigumnd Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays took his uncle's ideas and used them to do the very thing the beat generation objected to. He was the wizard who showed industry how to brainwash the masses, and it was he who the beat generation were rebelling against, though they did not know it with that level of specificity at the time.

You can watch it on Vimeo:
The Century Of Self: Happiness Machines (Episode1)
The Century Of Self: Engineering Of Consent (Episode2)
The Century Of Self: There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads (Episode 3)
The Century Of Self: Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering (Episode 4)