- Playing
- Finding My Kerouac: On the Road at Mid-Life
- From
- David Berner
Finding My Kerouac: On the Road at Mid-Life chronicles the travels of two men, but capture the longing of so many others. Jack Kerouac's On the Road was, and still is, an inspiration for so many young people who are trying to discover who they are and what they want from life. But why should the novel only make a connection with the young? In the mid-life years, isn't it true, that we all struggle with our own destinies, mortality, and the substance in our lives? Don't we all ask ourselves, as we did when we were young - what is it all about? Why are we here? Certainly we did, and we do it again, with more urgency, at mid-life. On the Road fuels the fires of a long unanswered question: What do we want out of life? And at mid-life, that question may be even more poignant. Re-reading the novel, along with its direct non-fiction connections to Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation, has become a catalyst for rediscovery at a time in life when meaning is most essential. Kerouac's character Sal Paradise says in the novel, "The road is life." In that short sentence there is so much meaning. On the road, you can find your life, your center, your authentic self. You can redefine your desires, reconnect with your dreams, sort out your sorrows, and come to the realization that life is a road; a winding one with many mileposts but few street signs, and a journey in the true sense of the word. Taking a road trip, has always been an affirmation of freedom and possibility. This road trip is exactly that, at a time in one's life when we long to find excitement, new challenges, new roads. (Note: All the audio, including narration, was done "on the road". There was no studio recording for this piece)
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Piece Description
Finding My Kerouac: On the Road at Mid-Life chronicles the travels of two men, but capture the longing of so many others. Jack Kerouac's On the Road was, and still is, an inspiration for so many young people who are trying to discover who they are and what they want from life. But why should the novel only make a connection with the young? In the mid-life years, isn't it true, that we all struggle with our own destinies, mortality, and the substance in our lives? Don't we all ask ourselves, as we did when we were young - what is it all about? Why are we here? Certainly we did, and we do it again, with more urgency, at mid-life. On the Road fuels the fires of a long unanswered question: What do we want out of life? And at mid-life, that question may be even more poignant. Re-reading the novel, along with its direct non-fiction connections to Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation, has become a catalyst for rediscovery at a time in life when meaning is most essential. Kerouac's character Sal Paradise says in the novel, "The road is life." In that short sentence there is so much meaning. On the road, you can find your life, your center, your authentic self. You can redefine your desires, reconnect with your dreams, sort out your sorrows, and come to the realization that life is a road; a winding one with many mileposts but few street signs, and a journey in the true sense of the word. Taking a road trip, has always been an affirmation of freedom and possibility. This road trip is exactly that, at a time in one's life when we long to find excitement, new challenges, new roads. (Note: All the audio, including narration, was done "on the road". There was no studio recording for this piece)
Timing and Cues
Finding My Kerouac is :57:00 in total, but it has been produced in two parts for breaks in format.
Part 1 :27:38 (real run time) Cue: "..got to bed." (music fade)
Part 2 :29:22 (real run time) Cue: "...a little bit better" (music ends)
Musical Works
| Title | Artist | Album | Label | Year | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Souls Communicate | Somebody's Closet | Independent | 00:00 | ||
| Picture of You | Slim | Shortwave Syndicate | 00:00 | ||
| Fences | Mark Jungers and the Whistling Mules | unknown | 00:00 | ||
| The View from Here | Casey Abrams | Wampus Multimedia | 00:00 | ||
| Round One | Evan Tate | unknown | 00:00 | ||
| I Wanna Go Home | Samantha Murphy | Indie | 00:00 | ||
| Gothic Prelude | Kathy Reynolds | unknown | 00:00 | ||
| Takin' Me Home | Heather Sullivan | RoCo Records | 00:00 | ||
| Had the Blues So Bad | Jacques Grant and Rewired | unkown | 00:00 | ||
| Spherical | Evan Tate | unknown | 00:00 | ||
| Leap of Faith | budz | unkown | 00:00 | ||
| Ambulance Ride for the Soon to be Departed | Devin Anderson | unknown | 00:00 |
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David Swatling
Posted on July 12, 2007 at 02:15 AM | Permalink
Review of Finding My Kerouac: On the Road at Mid-Life
Serious road trips are very personal journeys across landscapes of geography and psyche - mundane and mystical. This piece captures these aspects and more as two men approaching 50 (age, not speed limit) retrace route of Kerouac's iconic 50 year old novel.
On one hand, I felt I was on the road with them. But sometimes I felt, "You had to be there." Unavoidable, if you think about it. And not a bad thing. Those moments often allow your mind to wander to your own memories (...at age 40, cross-country with my parents in RV... watching display of Northern Lights with Dad...)
The music is evocative, conversation episodic, narration introspective (when not complaining about gas prices.) A particularly memorable sequence driving through salt flats of Utah. And the not unexpected realization of how much unlike Kerouac they/we are today.
Great summer listening or for actual Sept anniversary of "On the Road." But like the book, there's a timelessness to this trip, too.