it's not really a generation at all.

jk: it's not really a generation at all.
mw: it's a type of person?
jk: yeah. it starts with rock 'n' roll teenagers and runs up to sixty-year-old junkies, old characters in the street... it really began in 1910.
mw: well, what links the junkie and the eleven-year-old and jack kerouac? what is it to be Beat?
jk: well, it's a hipness. it's twentieth-century hipness.
mw: hip to what?
jk: to life.
mw: what kind of life are they hip to?
jk: ...to religoon.
mw: what kind of religion?
jk: oh, it's weird. visions. visions of God.
mw: you mean Beat people are mystics?
jk: yeah. it's a revival prophesied by Spengler. he said that in the late moments of Western civilization there would be a great revival of religion mysticism. it's happening.
mw: what sort of mysticism is it? what do Beat mystics believe?
jk: oh, they believe in love. they love children... and, i don't know, it's so strange to talk about all this... they love children, they love women, they love animals, they love everything.
mw: they love everything? then why is there so much violence? why do they drive, drive, drive? why do they go, go, go? why the rush?
jk: oh, that's just lyricism. wild motorcycle rides under the moonlight... a lyrical thing. it's not so unusual.
mw: why is jazz so important to this new mystique?
jk: that's the music of Beat Generation.
mw: what's mystical about it?
jk: jazz is very complicated. it's just as complicated as Bach. the chords, the structures, the harmony, and everything. and then it has a tremendous beat. you know, tremendous drummers. they can drive it. it has just a tremendous drive. it can drive you right out of yourself.
mw: how about dope?
jk: same thing. you can escape. you can have visions with dope.
mw: have you ever taken dope yourself?
jk: sure. a lot. but i have never got in the habit because i'm allergic to it.
mw: have you had visions with it?
jk: i'll say.
mw: do you remember any clearly?
jk: i fainted. i passed out, fell flat on my back in grass. during that time, i saw Paradise. i saw- well, i wasn't there any more. there was only one thing... there was a great golden light, and i wasn't there... but it was like, i suppose, God... but it was blissful, because i didn't have to worry about being myself any more. that was all over with.
mw: sounds like a self-destructive way to seek God.
jk: oh, it was tremendous. i woke up sick about the fact that i had to come back to myself, to the flesh of life...
mw: you mean that the Beat people want to lose themselves?
jk: yeah. you know, Jesus said to see the Kingdom of Heaven you must lose yourself... something like that.
mw: then the Beat Generation loves death?
jk: yeah. they're not afraid of death.
mw: aren't you afraid?
jk: naw... what i believe is that nothing is happening.
mw: what do you mean?
jk: well, you're not sitting here. that's what you think. actually, we are great empty space. i could walk right through you... you know what i mean, we're made out of atoms, electrons. we're actually empty. we're an empty vision... in one mind.
mw: in what mind- the mind of God?
jk: that's the name we give it. we can give it any name. we can call it tangerine... god... tangerine... but i do know we are empty phantoms, sitting here thinking we are human beings and worrying about civilization. we're just empty phantoms. and yet all is well.
mw: all is well?
jk: yeah. we're all in Heaven, now, really.
mw: you don't sound happy.
jk: oh, i'm tremendously sad. i'm in great despair.
mw: why?
jk: it's a great heavy burden to be alive. a heavy burden, a great big heavy burden. i wish i were safe in Heaven, dead.
mw: but you are in Heaven, Jack. you just said we all were.
jk: yeah. if i only knew it. if i could only hold on to what i know.

[jack kerouac interviewed by mike wallace, printed in the new york post january 21, 1958]