I Pour Sunshine on Your Rainbow

Classes were cancelled one day this week as a result of a student strike to protest the extortionate fees charged and cuts being made to the University. Students blockaded entrances to the campus from 4am and stalls and information points were set up at the base. The day of the protest was cloud wracked and raining and although the strike went ahead, numbers seemed thin on the ground. Whilst i support the cause i felt it would be hypocritical of me to join the protest as i don't actually pay fees to the UC institution. I went to observe and concluded there was a lot of skepticism regarding the effectiveness of the protest. Is cutting classes and stopping education for a day really the best way to fight for the cause of being able to afford to be educated? At the same time, i was impressed by the motivation of the students. People held workshops and made art and played music - i would be surprised if we managed to pull off an entire campus shut down back in London.


We celebrated a birthday at the very end of the beach, with a bonfire on top of a large rock. The tide surrounded us so that it felt like we were floating in the ocean, stranded together, the world reduced to this. The moon bled white- electric lace onto the waves as they rolled before our eyes; the world is an oyster and deep in the middle lies the moon, that elusive pearl. We sink into the soft warm oyster flesh as the light from the fire melts the leather on our shoes and we hold each other close to keep out the cold and we sing. Lost souls caught together, falling through this time and place. Things will never be the same, we will never have this moment again. We are all painfully aware of this naked transience and the fleeting nature of the dance that we choose to lead which serves only to make us value each and every day. A warm mug of golden-love-liquid, sherbert moon beams on your tongue.

Music and life lurks everywhere. We steal bunches of fresh flowers from the stage and run off into the night a the thorns draw blood from our thumbs, daisies in our hair. Memories ingrained in our skin, inky spots of delicious moments.

 I feel that Subrosa open mic nights deserve a mention. Subrosa is  'a non-profit, donation-funded space in downtown Santa Cruz for art and radical projects run by a collective of volunteers from the local anarchist community'. Each Thursday people hunch upon a clutter of mismatched metal chairs in front of a book shelf and almost everyone performs. The homeless, homeowners, singers, talkers, dancers, musicians; bodily fluids were famously featured last week and culminated in a jar being peed in and drank onstage. This week was not a disappointment. People play guitar and sing, they tell stories, One man opened our chakras, one beatboxed, another simply talked about his life. My favourite was a woman in a padded jacket who emerged from the darkness asking for musical accompaniment. She was tiny and wizened like a shrill little bird, with a very sweet and girlish voice. She told us "I am Kate Jagger, and i'm going to dance for you like Mick Jagger!" Various people around the room began to play instruments and she danced. No definitive genre of dance; she simply moved with the music, closing her eyes and throwing her hands in the air. She spoke as she danced, telling wild and wicked tales as she prays for our souls. "I f***** Bin Laden!" she cries, moving faster, more intensely. "I was with Vladimir Putin in the eighties!" "I can feel them!" she says. "Hare Krishna! Paul McCartney! George Harrison! I am friends with Yoko Ono, i feel John in the room! Can you feel him, can you?" She is a brilliant soul, sparkling, glowing, moving, fifty years old at least. She flashes her rear end at the delighted crowd before quickly struggling back into her coat and vanishing into the night telling us "they f**** you up in prison, give you drugs. Lucy in the sky with diamonds!" I watch her melt into the shadows, she looks like any other person toughened from a life on the streets. She is so full.


Next we have a well-known local with a dog who reads his poetry from a battered notebook pulled from his back pocket. He is softly spoken and stumbles over the words - "I was drunk when i wrote this so i can't read it all, i'm sorry." His words speak of his life, sitting on the sidewalk with the moon, can in hand. His sentences are beautiful, they are pulsing and real, a particular phrase that stays with me is "i pour sunshine on your rainbow...". Here lie the true poets and the artists, in the place where they belong, tight- roping recklessly across the liminals and margins of life.
I had a lecture yesterday morning on Kerouac's 'On the Road', given by Rob Wilson who is the epitome of San Francisco culture, practically a Beat himself. The word 'beat' derives from 'defeated' or 'broken down' which that particular generation certainly were, but Kerouac emphasised the 'beatific' nature of the term, which relates to direct knowledge of God enjoyed by the blessed in heaven - a sort of striving towards a higher state, a revelation of spirituality which Kerouac found through jazz.
Sitting in Subrosa watching these people with the beautiful bruises of LIVING flowering across their bodies, violets, indigoes, grey like the clouds on a rain-trodden day i couldn't help but feel that THESE were the best minds of my own generation, literally starving, hysterical and naked but pure genius all the time.