If Jack Kerouac had been born in 1982 instead of 1922, he’d probably be blogging away like a
madman in some obscure corner of the Web. Or thrashing out power chords in a garage. Or doing
guerrilla street art with spray paint and found objects.

Indianapolis artist/poet/publisher John Clark believes the freewheeling creative process was a
hallmark of the Beat Generation, which Kerouac captured in 1957’s “On the Road,” based on his
cross-country travels with Neal Cassady. The Beats were rebels who took a look at the
straight-laced ’50s and felt compelled to defy convention.

Clark, the man behind pLopLop, an occasional self-published literary magazine, or zine, pointed
out that it took Kerouac six years to get “On the Road” published. And he never felt comfortable
with the celebrity it brought him — much preferring the type of anonymity millions of
do-it-yourself artists happily toil away in today.

“Kerouac was writing when no one wanted to publish him. Then when (”On the Road") came out, he
already had 10 books in the bag," said Clark, 47. “He did it just for the love of it. It’s like
indie rockers and bloggers, people who are writing because they love to write, and are not so
concerned about being read or published in a conventional way.”

The influence of the Beats is hard to measure but is easily glimpsed in the writing, music and
other art that sprang up after them in the 1960s, and beyond. Some of their heirs are obvious —
the drug-addled first-person “gonzo journalism” of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las
Vegas” was a natural progression of Kerouac’s own (often pharmaceutically assisted) adventures.

Other art that was inspired by the Beats is not so apparent. But observers say it can be seen in
the guitar freakouts of the ’60s, the found art movement, even modern rap recordings.

“Things were pretty straight in the ’50s, and this came along and blew everything open,” said Jim
Canary, the head of conservation at Indiana University’s Lilly Library, who’s responsible for
preserving the original 120-foot scroll on which Kerouac wrote “On the Road” over three weeks in
1951.

“After that, you’ve got (Allen) Ginsberg and (Bob) Dylan and then you’ve got the (Rolling)
Stones — all of that starting to happen once that crack developed. It just started becoming a
massive flood of people doing their own creative things.”

Kerouac wrote on long sheets of tracing paper because he, like the rest of the Beats, prized
spontaneity.

“He loved jazz, and that’s sort of like going off on a riff and continuing. He typed 100 words a
minute. He wanted to be able to flow with his thoughts, what he called spontaneous prose. If he
had to stop and take a sheet out of the typewriter, he’d be interrupting that flow constantly. He
wanted to just let the words fly off his fingertips and lay themselves down like asphalt,” Canary
said.

Other Beat figures employed this spontaneous sensibility in different ways. William S. Burroughs
was known for using the cut-up method for his book “Naked Lunch,” literally slicing up his text
and rearranging it. Jazz musicians valued improvisational melodies, which helped usher in the era
of extended rock ‘n’ roll guitar soloists like Jimi Hendrix and blues artists like B.B. King.

Clark says he uses spontaneity in his paintings and drawings.

“I call it bypassing the intellect. Because your mind is saying, ‘What, are you crazy? You can’t
put something down on this blank piece of paper!’ If you listen to that, you’ll never get
anywhere. But if you just start something and see what happens — so you’re both participant and
spectator. You’re waiting to see what happens.”

Like a musician, though, one has to build up “chops” before the words or music or art will come,
Clark said. “You can’t just pick up a pen and do great automatic writing. You have to read a lot
and write a lot.”

That sentiment is backed up by David Amram, a composer and jazz musician who was part of the
Beats’ inner circle. When “On the Road” was published, Amram was playing French horn in a
symphony while performing with jazz greats Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and working on
classical compositions.

“Spontaneity and formality we always felt were linked,” Amram said, adding that it was a topic
Kerouac and the other Beats “talked about incessantly.”

Amram points to an occasion when he was painstakingly copying musical scores. Kerouac joined him
and talked through the night. He was recounting a visit with French soldiers he made with
Burroughs, and how the spirit of camaraderie is a human trait that extends beyond national
borders.

“I looked over and the sun was up ….. I said, ‘Wow, Jack, if only I had a tape recorder that
could be transcribed. That could be a whole book.’ And he said, ’That’s what I try to do in my
writing, to make my reader feel that I’m talking to them. And I can never quite get it.’.”

Many people, of course, would disagree with Kerouac’s bleak self-assessment. Amram said that
Hunter S. Thompson, whom they both knew, spoke glowingly of Kerouac’s writing. “And Kurt Vonnegut
told me what he loved about Jack’s writing was he stayed true to his own vision in seemingly
disparate works. It was like one gigantic never-ending book.”

Amram said for a while in the late 1950s, he and Kerouac worked on improvisational combinations
of music and poetry made up on the spot. This formed the cradle of what we now know as spoken
word and slam poetry. Amram described it, somewhat dismissively, as something they fooled around
with for a few months and then dropped out of boredom.

To them, it was a natural outgrowth of the jazz tradition of scatting, but substituting real
words for nonsensical ones. In this, one can glimpse the roots of modern rap and hip-hop music,
with their focus on rhyme and cadence.

Amram, who still maintains a busy performance schedule, said in recent years he has been asked to
freestyle with hip-hop groups like the Flobots. “They said, ’You’re the best 77-year-old rapper
we’ve ever met!’.”

The Beats’ experimentation with drugs and alternative lifestyles — poet Ginsberg was among the
first major American figures to be openly and unapologetically gay — eased the way for
counterculture movements of the 1960s and beyond. Disaffection and alienation became a shared
experience, even something to be celebrated.

“They set a trend that we follow today. It’s as if the mainstream skewed off in their direction
instead of it being a dead end. The abnormal becomes the normal,” said Martin Krause, curator of
prints, drawings and photographs at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

In a sense, the Beats were a very personal association of friends that morphed into a movement.
John Gosney, a lecturer who teaches a class on the Beats at IUPUI, says they were more
politically apathetic than their cultural descendants.

“Unlike the ‘60s and hippies that followed, they weren’t, I think, trying to be an instrument of
radical change. I’m not sure they really cared if everyone else followed them,” Gosney said.

Gosney thinks the Beats were heavily influenced by the threat of nuclear weapons, which led to
their desire to live in the moment. “If we could literally die any minute with the flash of light
and the mushroom cloud, we need to make the most out of every second.”

Numerous modern artists have talked about the influence of Kerouac and the Beats on what they do,
from actor Johnny Depp to Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard. Colts owner Jim Irsay, who
bought the Kerouac scroll in 2001, says he discovered the Beats through his love of musicians
like John Lennon.

“When you’re growing up in the early 1970s, there were certain staples that were out there. You
start tracing people back, like when you become a big Bob Dylan fan or Tom Waits fan, you start
hearing those guys talk about who influenced them, and then you go back to that person, whether
it’s Kerouac or Woody Guthrie,” Irsay said.

“You get that trail that goes backwards.”

##On the Road Again with Jack Kerouac and Robert Frank

When: Thursday through Sept. 21.

Location: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 4000 Michigan Road.

Tickets: Free.

Info: (317) 920-2659, or visit www.imamuseum.org