THE

WAS THE BEAT MOVEMENT

HOW IT ALL BEGAN...

BEAT ORIGINS

• Originates from free flowing literature
• "Bring poetry to the streets"
• Free thinking poets and authors
• Innovation of new styles and ideas
• Portray human nature explicitly

WHAT WAS IS ALL ABOUT

• Innovation
• Inspiration
• Experimentation

Rejection of social and cultural norms
Development in new styles and looks
Recreational usage of drugs
Interest in alternative sexualities
Rejection of materialism

BEATNIKS

WHO WERE THEY?

• Followers of the beat movement
• Artists, poets, musicians, writers
• Lived nonconformist lives
• Sought a "Higher Consciousness"
• Experimented with drugs and zen buddhism

Beatnik Lifestyle

Free flowing, structureless
Opposed the cultural norm
Avoided telivision
Opposed working
Dressed independently

-lights out-
fall, hands a-clasped, into instantaneous
ecstasy like a shot of heroin or morphine,
the gland inside of my brain discharging
the good glad fluid (Holy Fluid) as
i hap-down and hold all my body parts
down to a deadstop trance-Healing
all my sicknesses-erasing all-not
even the shred of a 'I-hope-you' or a
Loony Balloon left in it, but the mind…

...blank, serene, thoughtless. When a thought comes a-springing from afar with its held-
forth figure of image, you spoof it out,
you spuff it off, you fake it, and
it fades, and thought never comes-and
with joy you realize for the first time
'thinking's just like not thinking-So I don't have to think anymore'
- Jack Kerouac

THE HIPPIE MOVEMENT

• Evolved from the beat movement
• "Hip" -Came from Hipster, used to destibe beatniks
• African American jive for "Fashionable, trendy"
• Sexual liberation
• Drug usage: Cannabis, LSD, Shrooms