Commentary: Cosmic Electronic Love Talk

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night" ----Allen Ginsberg

Legend has it that when Allen Ginsberg first went tripping he had a vision that he was the Messiah. The 1960's was a dangerous time to take LSD, not because of impurity or the risk of overdose, but because there was so much fear and confusion in the world and any acid-taking beat poet would necessarily be responsible for solving it.

Ginsberg was undeterred. His hallucination had the answer. He would install a permanent phone line directly connecting Nikita Khrushchev, John F. Kennedy and Norman Mailer, forcing them together to resolve the problems of the Cold War and nuclear proliferation that threatened to destroy the world. The name of that line: Cosmic Electronic Love Talk.

With that story began our trip to New York City. We didn't know we were looking for it, but somewhere in the middle of the second bottle of wine drunk in the back of a half-empty Greenwich Village café caught on a precipice between Friday and Saturday, we found perspective. We found the mainline of Cosmic Electronic Love Talk.

It wasn't much to look at on the outside, the café, just a few rusted tables and chairs beneath a poorly lit sign barely distinguishable from the rest of the block; a decaying façade which had long ago succumbed to the homogenizing powers of urban attrition.

Ah, but two steps in was a different story. Baroque revival couches and chairs orbited 50s diner tables as the few remaining patrons spun the wine in their glasses and scraped sugary residue from their dessert plates. All around dead eyes stared fondly out from prints of classical portraits hung from their faux-gilt frames to a myriad of animal skin wallpapers haphazardly mixed and strewn across the walls.

Here was the heaven of culture; the place where the old and beautiful ascended at its death, intermingled with fallen compatriots, and was reborn anew in perpetuity. The Clash blared out from a shoddy sound system in a corner by the bar; a simple irony for proof that this maelstrom of style and design was not a competition, but a harmony of disparate entities finding solace together between chords from Joe Strummer's guitar.

And there we were in the middle of it; overloaded in our rapture while our virgin senses scrambled to sop up the missing details as a crust of bread pursues those last elusive drops of soup. We spoke in a rambling cacophony of bold and joking philosophy, reasoning out our problems with the kind of joyous imprecision that comes from having everything to say and only one voice from which to speak. Our conversation was rooted in a desire to explain, to revel in the turns of phrase and twists of fate that happened across our wine-heavy breath. Nothing was resolved, but everything felt right. We leaned our weary heads against the wall and diffused into the atmosphere.

And then there was reality. Durham, North Carolina, Sunday evening. Ever-burning lights pointed out the Duke chapel in the nightscape. Our eyes snapped into focus in the gloom of Crowell Quad as we stumbled out of the Blue Zone. Standing there, encircled by the neo-gothic spires, we paused.

There stood the quads, much as they had for nearly 80 years; a vast network of intricately connected and mechanically organized houses and classrooms praying before a brilliantly lit stone edifice. The crests and gargoyles carved into the rock stood as self-conscious idiosyncrasies in what was otherwise a testament to unity. And it was beautiful, and strikingly so. Beautiful much as a Faberge egg might be; presenting an ornately regal and powerful exterior masking a hollow and brittle frame.

One week removed it becomes apparent. Everything at Duke is arrayed as if a point on a line, spelled out in the geometry of our campus which dictates organizational principles of order, of simplicity. Everything is connected by straight shots and narrow paths with obvious beginnings and definite ends. Such is the promise of the chapel lights as they boast our perfection, our clarity, through the night.

Alas, but two steps in is a different story. Behind the Duke Stone, underneath the elaborate carvings, steel stair rails lead to old bricks haunting the hallways. Through the barren wooden doors, the bleak white walls of dorm rooms, decorated systematically with posters and wall-hangings purchased wholesale, stand as a mocking monument to artwork and creativity whose voice was silenced by the demand for direction.

And directions are easy to find at Duke. We worker bees hum around campus constantly on our paths; frantically pursuing predestined directives on target towards the rest of our lives, with no need experience seriously those around us. We yell at each other, and loudly, but in different languages and always with the smug satisfaction we get from knowing that our path is unchallenged and our opinions unchangeable. We don't speak, except in interviews.

In the bottom of a bottle of whiskey, we wonder. Was it a mirage, that café in the Village? Is this really life, running along in straight lines, with nary a second or inclination to acknowledge our companions? If so, then pass us the acid, Allen. Take us back to that place where life becomes a spin-glass portrayal of itself, where time stops and wine flows and we have time to take our world in, swirl it on our tongues and give back a dialogue worthy of Cosmic Electronic Love Talk.

Andrew Waugh is a Trinity junior. His column appears every other Tuesday.