"I want to change the world and writing is one of the best ways to do that."

Michael Sharp: The Fabric of Consciousness

Michael Sharp is a poet, author, mystic, and sociologist. He has penned close to a dozen books and numerous resources (including a watershed tarot deck) all of which are designed to support and facilitate both personal and planetary awakening and empowerment. His insight provides a clear path leading from the Romantics of the 19th century to the Beats, and then from the Beats to rock & roll.

Having attended a reading from Ginsberg, Burroughs and Corso in the 80s, Sharp draws a parallel between these so-called readings and rock shows, hinting at the exhilaration of a performance few can claim to have witnessed. Trained as a Romanticist and in the literature and ideas of the Nineteenth Century, Michael Sharp’s expertise also encompasses poetry and Victorian literature. Sharp talks about the Howl, Gregory Corso, William S. Burroughs, and Beat poetry.

Interview by Michael Limnios

Mr. Sharp when was your first desire to become involved in the Beat literary & what does the Beats mean to you?
It is interesting to me how you are characterizing my poetry. Honestly I never had any formal desire to write Beat poetry. In fact, I wasn’t even that familiar with Beat poetry when I started. I guess you could say that I just sat down to write and the Beat came naturally out.

What do you think is the main characteristic of you personality that made you a writer and poet?
That’s easy. I want to change the world and writing is one of the best ways to do that.

From whom have you have learned the most secrets about the Beats?
Writing a beat poem is easy, especially nowadays with all the online technology that allows you to search out new words (I’m thinking online thesaurus here). Start it out, snap your fingers to the emergent rhythm, and when you get stuck, look at a good thesaurus. What’s harder is connecting to the source of the beat, to the message you want to convey, and that’s your soul or “higher self” or, as I like to call it, The Fabric of Consciousness. Getting to that source can be a challenge because of so much crap that has been slopped over it since birth. Honesty, in this regard, I had to find my own way.

Any of Beat poems or novels has any real personal feelings for you & what are some of your favorite?
I like Allen Ginsberg, but I don’t have any particular favorites. I wasn’t a very literary person growing up. I read books but they were mostly science fiction and fantasy. I’m not that familiar with poems. In fact, before I started to write, in fact the day I sat down and wrote The Song of Creation, I could count on the fingers of one hand the poems I had read. It all comes from lifetimes past.

What is the “feel” you miss most nowadays from the Beat “family”?
Emotional honesty. They had a critical sensibility about things and weren’t afraid to peak beneath the hollow veneer and represent and express what they saw, even if that meant expressing anger, rage, and irreverent vulgarity. People nowadays are very afraid to even whisper the truth, much less express it with emotional honestly. We’re not born that way. We’re born in the beat of the moment, wanting to cry, laugh, and howl when we are hurt. But that’s slowly beaten out of us as we are smushed up and forced into the peg hole of modern society. I don’t see a lot of that honest expression these days. In fact, in a lot of ways I think people are even worse off these days. The mainstream media if far more powerful than it ever was, and any angst and suffering that might motivate people to action is subverted by Prozac and Fat Food Hamburgers and Soda. We’re a nation of addicts now, substituting commercialism, carbohydrates, and Cymbalta for the burning drive to manifest and express.

Why did you think that Beat writers, continued to generate such a devoted following?
Because they are authentic. They represent authentic expressions of inner truths. We all yearn for that authenticity, especially now when corporate controlled expression has pretty much come to dominate so many artists. I mean, how the hell can a lyric like “I wearing all my favorite brands, brands, brands” (Taio Cruz, Dynamite) be considered worthy of anything other than a trash pile. People know there’s more to life than that kind of creepy materialism and they look for it and find it in where they can, which in this case is the old poetry of the Beatnicks.

What mistakes of the Beat generation would you want to correct?
I don’t know if they made any mistakes. They were struggling against a monster much bigger then themselves and they did a great job expressing the horror of the repressive abuse. It would be nice if they offered a clearer way out, an alternative, even a solution, but what could they do at the time? With typewriters and hot lead in the press there’s only so much you can say in a lifetime. Those limitations don’t exist anymore so now the potential is bigger. But did they make a mistake by not realizing that potential? No because it wasn’t possible without some additional technological invention. It is also important to consider that the struggle we wage is an incremental one. I hate the phrase “we stand on the soldiers of giants” because its such a dis-empowering phrase (who is to say we aren’t all giants, after all), but there is some element of truth. What’s possible now becomes possible only because of the work and effort of those who came before. A lot of the revolutionary sentiment that Ginsberg and others sparked may have been erased in the post-sixties lock down, but the contribution never really goes away. It is always easy to tune in and pick up where they left off. Had they not done what they did you couldn’t do that. Although having said that if your goal is to transform The System, then its best you fit in, look like you belong, and find success within the parameters of The System. If you don’t do that then it becomes very easy for “priests of the mainstream” to dismiss you. A little finger waging, a little ridicule, and you’re reduced to a bongo drumming, drivel drooping, man in a black suit. You can’t give them the ammunition to do that. If you do, you’ve lost the battle. And I guess that is a mistake.

What “BEAT MOTTO” does you like most?
I like Howl. Of course that’s the one everybody knows but that’s for a good reason. I spend a lot of time writing bout the nature of The System, and the profoundly negative impact it has on us, but Allen captured the repressive, oppressive, stultifying nature of it with such skill and grace that it would be hard to top.

Which historical personalities would you like to meet?
The character that really pops to mind here is Hitler. I’d really like to meet Hitler, or Mussolini, or Stalin, or Reagan, and ask, “What the fuck were you thinking man.”

How you would spend a day with Gregory Corso?
Sitting outside with my wife and kids, watching them play, answering their questions, and talking about God, consciousness, and The System.

What would you say to Allen Ginsberg?
Thanks.

What would you like to ask Burroughs?
I’m always interested in the experiences of childhood that led to the dysfunction, toxicity, and addiction of adulthood. I’d want to know what caused him such pain that he had to descend into heroin-haze to deal with it.

The Lightning Path of Michael Sharp