Finding Ginsberg

After yesterday’s thoughts on Ginsberg’s poem, “My Sad Self,” I went to the Top of the Rock today in order to find Ginsberg. The part of “My Sad Self” that evades me is the sadness. I understand it technically; I understand how, technically, a person can be sad when thinking on the past and the disappearance of that past. I don’t understand how this poem is sad; profound yes, profound to the point that—if read well—can move me to tears, but sad, I don’t experience that.

I have a better appreciation for the line, “Confused by the spectacle around me,” as I too, felt a bit confused after returning to street level from so high up. But the main feeling I felt on the top of that building today was awe. I was excited to spot what I thought was Hunter College, an old haunt of mine. I felt a sense of newness, seeing so many of my places from a different point of view

It’s incredible how—upon returning to street-level—the plate-glass windows, with their merchandise behind them, seem so insufficient after looking at such a wonderful view.

Ginsberg says, “I take the elevator and go/ down, pondering,” I found that it wasn’t possible to ponder in that elevator, with its clear ceiling, special lighting and strange sounds. It was a Disneyfication experience. I was happy to see so many tourists up there, but disappointed not to see more New Yorkers. What kind of city would this be, if more of its citizens ventured to points of pontification? I think this sentiment was shared by Ginsberg too. He expresses a sense of disconnection from the people around him:

“and walk on the pavements staring into all man’s
plateglass, faces,
questioning after who loves,”

The faces, like the plate-glass windows, are things merely, and they are things that can be stared into; not real, not responsive. This correlates with the traffic that he hears behind him while lost in his thoughts. These sounds of cars with people in them, these people going places, flat, plate-glassed, one-dimensional people, are ornaments to the city-scape; it is as if they are pieces, in a child’s model of the city set, faceless people to scatter about, occasional car-horns to add a sense of realism.

Maybe the sadness could be in a re-consideration of the sense of awe, from “awe” to “awh” as in “awh darnit.” The view itself (from the top of the RCA building) could be a symbol for memory; a symbol that Ginsberg uses to show the ineffectiveness, or the incompleteness of memory.