Beat Soundtrack #30: Mimi German

Oregon Beat Laureate's musical menu

Mimi German is an American poet and musician who resides in the Steens Mountain wilderness of Oregon. She is also that state’s first Beat Laureate and the author of Beneath the Gravel Weight of Stars, Where Grasses Bend and her upcoming poetry collaboration Flowers of the Litter, followed by War Poems.

She says: ‘I grew up playing music. At a few points in my life, I had bands that I'd put together. Miriams Well was my band in the mid-2000s. We toured a lot and I eventually really got tired of the whole thing.’

German adds: ‘What I prefer now is working with a trumpet player who accompanies me at readings, although we've only done a few together. I like to perform on the street with street noise being part of the art.’ She also ‘listens to the songs of coyote coming down from the hills.’

‘I do feel the music in Diane di Prima's poetry. Like Life Chant, for instance. In this poem, the “may it continue” works for me as does the drone in Indian music by the tanpura. I latch on to this drone and hear the music she creates with her words.’

Rock and the Beat Generation caught up with her as the New Year began…

What attracted you to the Beats? When did you first encounter them?

I first learned about the Beats when I was 15, in high school in Philadelphia. My introduction was Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. It was a swift introduction to a love affair with the lifestyle, the characters, and the people and poets of the generation. There was a flow to the writing, especially in On the Road, a musicality that magnetized me to it.

It was a rhythm not dissimilar to how I felt when I had read Zora Neal Hurston’s book Their Eyes Were Watching God. The language in both books, Kerouac’s and Hurston’s, was real, so true to life, with the sounds of language exploding in Kerouac’s case, hitting me with the speed of life.

As a young person, I was a drifter, a wanderer, a child of muses. My sister Julie played an important role for me by way of bringing to life’s doorstep, the tools I’d need to blossom into my own existence. She introduced me to the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia through their Europe ‘72 album. Garcia and the personalities of the Dead became the soundtrack to my life.

I had already known about Neal Cassady through the Dead and as I came to understand who the real characters were in On the Road, I felt as if I were diving deeper not only into the lives of the Beats, but deeper into my own life, as a lover of poetry, lover of the road, drawn to the touring Dead, exploring my sexuality, and paving my own path.

My sister also turned me on to Vonnegut in high school. I loved his books. I was already a peacenik by then. At 15, I went to my first anti-nuke rally in DC and heard Dr. Helen Caldicott who, many decades later, would become a very dear friend. I wanted to be as passionate a person for the cause of peace as Helen was. Peace and anti-nukes were where my head was at. I found in the Beats, an attitude and penchant for love, for peace, for truth, for grabbing life and running wild with it, and I could relate to all of that.

I began smoking dope early around age 12, before I was turned on to Kerouac, and by age 15, had begun tripping heavily on LSD. I mean, a lot of LSD. Soon after, I got hooked on pharmaceutical speed, became the dealer, and tripped, sped, and read my way through high school on the words of Jack, some of Ginsberg’s poetry, Castenada’s books, and Zen philosophy via Zen in the Art of Archery to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

My friend Josh and I started a poetry magazine in school as well, allowing all submissions to be published. Who were we to edit someone’s thoughts?! I’m laughing at the sojourn of it all. It was a wild time. I’d heard about Burroughs and tried to get into his work, but I really didn’t like his voice. I couldn’t relate. I dug who he was and the stories about him, but not his work.

I was reading Ntzoke Shange and Ferlinghetti at the same time. Ferlinghetti was the kind of agitator I liked a lot. I liked agitators. I had already become one, unknowingly, really. The role and personality of the agitator is what I would eventually become known for in Portland, OR reflected by, for the most part but not solely, my advocacy for the rights unhoused people. My poetry became the torch I’d eventually carry to use as a weapon of truth in my testimonies over many years at Portland City Council sessions directed at the mayor and his cronies.

Do you have a favourite text, novel or poetry?

I think one of my very favorite books is On the Road but probably equal to my love of The Dharma Bums. My sister, who is a bit older than me, went to college for a while at Barnard. I’d visit her while I was still in high school, taking the train from Philly to NYC, then the subway uptown to the 116^th/Columbia University stop. I was very comfortable being on my own.

At night, during those visits, I’d walk to the edges of Harlem following the sounds of jazz music from behind the closed doors of dimly lit bars. I’d go in, underage at the time, sit at a table, get a glass of wine or shots of bourbon, smoke my cigarettes, listen and watch these glorious musicians spin tales into the night from their saxophones, upright basses and the soft swish of brushes on the drums. If I was lucky, there’d be a trumpet player.

I loved those nights. I’d sit for hours, alone, but very much not alone, writing some really shitty poetry into a book at those unnamed clubs. In the mornings, I’d walk down from Barnard to the Chock Full O Nuts early, have a few cups, and then rummage through the thrift stores waiting for night to come again so that I’d get to hear this music that for me, was Beat, had the Beat, was freewheeling Jack, Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never ever land. This was home for my spirit.

Favorite poetry? Well, there are too many to count as favorites, but I can say that my first real turn on to poetry was the work of Whitman when I was in first grade around 1968. We had to copy our favorite poems on to our writing papers attached to colored paper. It was a writing and reading exercise. Mrs. Seltzer, my teacher, gave us books of poetry in large print, made for little kids.

There were poems from Frost, Dickinson, and Whitman. Not sure who else might have been in the mix, but I was sold on this form of writing right then and there. I loved the flow of the line, the metaphor, without knowing what metaphor was, the mystical way they used language to describe things, and Whitman was my favorite. As much as Burroughs’ masculinity turned me off, Whitman’s soft tones warmed me.  For me, Whitman was the first Beat.

There were other books and writers who moved me even at a young age. Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, which I read in third or fourth grade, made me dream of living in the wilderness. Randomly scrolling through my memory, other favorites were Chekhov plays, Eugene O’Neil plays, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, books by Zora Neal Hurston, the many journeys through Casteneda’s books. Diane di Prima’s Revolutionary Letters is also a favorite.

What is the relationship between the Beat writers and music? How do you think that literary scene and musical sound connect(ed)?

As a blues/rock musician in previous chapters of my life, I honestly think that jazz and blues created the Beat writer with its rhythmic lines and blue notes, its runs, like Jack’s sentences; it’s repetition on a groove, like the repetition we see in Jack’s poetry and so many of the other Beat poets and contemporary Beat poets like Karlos the Unhappy in the UK, like George Wallace in NYC, like Dane Ince in San Fran. The lush run on the scales of music, the call of notes of time, of all things ever lived.

And it electrified and turned on the spirit or the soul, creating and bringing forth into the becoming, into the present, into the now, the Beat writer. The music and the line became the ecosphere, the music and the poet, the natural state or, maybe, the equilibrium between the two. But the nature of both in one, from one, into the One.

As a poet and musician have you been shaped or influenced by Beat experiences?

Absolutely. In even earlier chapters of musical life, I had an experience that set the tone for me. It was NYC. At the Bitter End. After sound checking, the sound guy asked if he could join me on the stage with his trumpet, you know, to just play with me on my guitar and I’d sing. He used a mute on his trumpet. That was about 1989 or so. Just the two of us playing music on the same stage that Dylan had graced with his presence and too many others to mention.

The sound of the trumpet and my groove was something I’d want later in my life when I returned to poetry. Now, when I do readings in person, I have a trumpet player with me. We groove off each other during the reading. It’s very jazz…loose. I prefer performing the readings in the streets. Hearing the noise and grind of buses, cars, horns, laughter, drunks. It’s not a put-on. It’s real. It’s life. It’s all pretty Beat.

In my last band, I’d always go off riffing at some point. Improving and emoting the feelings I had or wanted to grow in that room, like vines of emotion creating a oneness between audience and the band and me. Janis Joplin’s freedom to express herself moved me since I was probably a toddler. By the time I was five, I was holding a hairbrush as a mic and singing along with her on the AM radio. I do remember when she died. I read the headlines in the paper.

Her music, her death, affected me in ways I wouldn’t realize until I was a teenager. We don’t include her in the Beat genre. Why the hell not? Who was more Beat than Janis? Can you imagine Janis and Jack together? I can. He'd have been mighty humbled in her presence, I think. Ah, and this works its way into the next question.

Which musical artists from whichever era appear to make links to the Beat Generation – and how?

So, yeah. Janis, for sure. She was the blues. She was jazz. She was free. Well, at least when she was singing, right?

The Dead have so many integral ties to the Beats. I mean, Neal Cassady drove the Bus! The masterful poetry of Robert Hunter was Beat. And his lyrics were the backbone to Jerry’s music. They, too, became one. Unifying lyric with music allowing it to roll, roll, roll…

I wish that I had been friends with Patti Smith. It’s funny to say that because you can’t just wish for shit like that. But I admire her poetry, her poetic stance, her music, her performance, her strength and courage so much. I guess I wish we had known each other to see what we could have done together, musically. The same for Laurie Anderson. Another genius. I am no less mind-blown today when listening to her or watching her performances, than I was in the very early 80s or late 70s. Both women, genius. I can’t say for certain that Beat influenced Anderson, but I’d be surprised if it hadn’t.

I think there is Beat to the punk music movement as well. I’m not sure Punk could have emerged without the foundations Beat laid out. Beat is bones. The bones of Beat. Boning Beat. Beat da Beat. Beaty Beaty Beat Beat Beat.

Who are your own favourite singers, musicians and bands? Do they represent Beat ideas or attitudes in their lives and art?

I don’t have a lot of favorite anythings…but there was no one better than Janis. k.d. lang blew my mind in many ways. Absolutely some of the best pipes ever. And fun! Joan Baez and Pete Seeger were an important part of my upbringing and spirit. Dylan is my all-time favorite songwriter/poet. Bands? Well, I’m a Deadhead through and through. Jerry and the band were magical. But Jerry alone was, well, he was The Way.

John Lennon was a loose guru of mine. His assassination destroyed whatever was left of my thinking that humans could be collectively good. George Harrison, too. But not as much as Lennon. But I do feel that All Things Must Pass is one of the best albums ever created and produced.

During college, I had a bit of an affair with opium. During that time I really dug Keith Jarrett’s Koln Concert which I played over and over again as well as Joni Mitchell’s Miles of Aisles and Hejira mixed with Ravi Shankar sitar music. I think that all these singers and writers, performers and bands do have representation of the Beats in their work.

Musically, it all stems from jazz and blues, I think. Although I do believe the sitar informed the vibe necessary for the creation of jazz, like a seed creating life! The statements, the play, the energy unfolding, the examination of life in the songs, lyrics, music, especially Dylan’s, are Beat Beat Beat. And their lives? Their lives were…on the road.

See also: ‘The scores are in: Every “Beat Soundtrack” so far’, January 30th, 2024