The Wild: from Thoreau to Punk

In a 1972 essay titled “In Wildness is Thoreau,” delivered at an annual literary conference, scholar Lewis Leary opines to have “us think briefly about the Thoreau who was a wild man, who let his hair grow long, … who dressed as he wished, and did exactly as he wished.” That wild spirit of resolute and uncompromising individuality is foundational to both Thoreau's thinking and the philosophy and motivation for punk rock and punk culture. 

Musician and rock journalist John Robb describes punk rock and punk philosophy as “the wild spirit, that outsider cry.” A key component for understanding that spirit is to separate it from the term "wilderness," which people often mistakenly believe Thoreau was referencing. It wasn't the wilderness, which is outside of us; it was the wild, which is within.

In the critical analysis America’s Bachelor Uncle: Thoreau and the American Polity, scholar Bob Pepperman Taylor asserts “... the heart of Thoreau’s revolt was his continual assertion that the only true America is that country where you are able to pursue life without encumbrance” (3) And “Thoreau exhibits a young person’s rebelliousness,” an insight with which Emerson would wholeheartedly agree. And similarly, nowhere and at no time is rebellion more about a youth than it is in punk rock culture. For Thoreau was attacking the complacency of the emerging American middle class, just as second wave punk Bands Bad Religion and Black Flag did in the 1980s Reagan America.

Albert Camus famously asserted "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." And like Thoreau in his experiment living in society but simultaneously outside of it, Dicki Hebdige said of punk in his book on subcultures, “No subculture has sought with more grim determination than the punks to detach itself from the taken-for-granted landscape of normalized forms …”

Jack Kerouac's Birthday

I came to Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation via Jim Morrison of the Doors.

It was during my middle school years that The Doors Greatest Hits was released, and I picked up the book No One Here Gets Out Alive, Danny Sugarman's rich biography of the Lizard King. That book became my reading list source, as the story of Jim's youth recounted his reading of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and other philosophers, as well as a vast list of other books. One passage in particular I can still recall mentioned how young Jim closed the book that had a profound impact on him, the story of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarity.

I'd never heard of the book or its author Jack Kerouac, and I knew nothing of the Beat Generation. But I knew that if that book was a life changing experience for Jim Morrison, I was going to read it, too. Honestly, I'm not sure I really understood what I was reading after buy the classic paperback copy at Barnes & Noble, but I knew it was unlike anything I'd ever read, and I would be intrigued for many years to come by the works and life of Jack Kerouac.

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…”

   

Thoreau, Punk, & Music as Culture

The merging of a musical style and a philosophical movement is not unprecedented, and the connection between the concepts is actually a fairly obvious and significant part of cultural scholarship. In the book Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock-n-Roll, esteemed writer, critic, and music historian Greil Marcus explores American culture through its music, a distinction which is integral to understanding the uniquely American voice and the genre of music that grew from that foundation. In explaining his goal of writing the book, Marcus notes, “It is an attempt to broaden the context in which the music is heard; to deal with rock-n-roll not as youth culture or counterculture but simply as American culture.” 

The symmetry between those ideas and cultural markers is integral to understanding the connection between an early nineteenth century philosopher and a late twentieth century music scene. Art is never created in a vacuum, and few critics or scholars would deny that environmental factors play a role in the development of music, paintings, books, and other cultural artifacts. Art is of the zeitgeist, and in this case, as Kevin Dunn asserts in the book Global Punk: Resistance & Rebellion in Everyday Life, “Punk sprang from a … social context [of] … alienation from social, economic, and political forces around them.” 

Clearly, similarities in both social influences and artistic reaction can be seen in the writings of Henry David Thoreau and the songs, styles, and scenes of punk.

The Philosophy of Thoreauvian Punk

While the life of Henry David Thoreau is extensively documented with generally broad agreement of his identity and legacy, the task of narrowing down a commonly accepted definition of punk is far more complicated. Punk by its very nature is resistant to codification, and because so much of punk history is scene and time specific, it can be difficult to agree on common elements. It is seemingly more difficultu to imagine and articulate a unifying "philosophy of punk."

Of course, that does not mean there has not been an extensive amount of research and writing that attempts to clarify and articulate the punk ethos. In fact, punk is one of the most well-researched and written about subcultures in American history. Almost from its earliest incarnations, writers and critics documented the scenes with commentary that went far beyond reviews of bands, songs, and shows. Thus, it’s not surprising that when Greg Graffin sat down to articulate a common vision and set of beliefs, punk would be discussed as not simply a musical style but “a way of seeing and experiencing the world.” 

Two noteworthy studies of punk which share Graffin’s view of punk as more than just a style of music are Craig O’Hara’s The Philosophy of Punk: More Than Noise!! initially published in 1999 at roughly the same time as Graffin’s manifesto, and the academic collaboration Screaming for Change: Articulating a Unifying Philosophy of Punk by Lars Kristiansen et al, published ten years later. Whatever the origin of punk, and the claims and theories are vast, the music scene and the movement that followed are a significant merging of numerous factors which all played a role in creating something unique, impactful, timely, and ultimately timeless. 

Putting punk then in a historical context is generally “launched down one of three distinctly separate trajectories: 1. Punk is a subculture; 2. Punk is a musical genre; 3. Punk is an authentic cultural expression.” These three angles are all significant components of punk, and establishing a connection back one hundred and thirty years requires synthesis of all. Though deceptively simple and obvious on the surface or to the uninitiated, punk has a long story to tell, one whose roots trace back to the fringe of Concord, Massachusetts in the early 1800s.

Patti Smith: Transcendentalist Punk

Patti Smith is a transitional moment and figure in the development of punk, and a closer look at her career reveals her as also a manifestation of the Thoreauvian influence on the punk genre and movement. As a multifaceted artist, Patti Smith, like Thoreau before her, is appreciated by multiple communities, making her a perfect synthesis of transcendentalism and punk. 

Music scholar/writer Simon Warner describes her as “a woman who carries Beat credentials,” and Smith has been connected to a wide swath of musicians ranging from Bob Dylan to Iggy Pop. Her style, presence, and status in the punk community from its very beginning in the Bowery on Manhattan's Lower East Side also serve as a testament to the idea that punk does not simply refer to the stripped down, amped up musical style associated with the Ramones, Sex Pistols, and the entire hardcore scene. 

Called the punk rock poet laureate and even the Godmother of Punk, Smith is an arguably atypical punk in terms of her music, and she has been known to say she never considered herself punk at all. Simply by nature of proximity to the music scene that emerged in the Lower East Side around CBGBs, she became associated with punk. Performing at the same time and in the same place as bands like the Ramones and Television, the punk label was inevitably applied, and Smith was certainly part of the community of bands and artists supporting each other. But more importantly, Smith’s presence and association simply broadened the definition of punk, assuring it was more about originality and authenticity than it was about speed and volume. 

Truly, one of the earliest and most significant qualities of punk emerged from the one sacrosanct rule for performing at CBGBs – no covers. The only requirement owner Hilly Krystal had in the early days was that bands play their own music. Just like Thoreau, they heard a call to march to their own drum beat, and that spirit of originality has been the punk rock ethos, and that ethos is Thoreauvian Punk. As far as originals go, Patti Smith is in rarified air, and her place in the punk ecosystem is a testament to the idea that punk rock is more about intent than a specific chord progression, drum beat, or sound.

Beat Punks -- the Beats are the Bridge

The transcendental tone of the Beat Generation represents a lineage backward and forward in the American arts, and the influence of the Beats is vast. In fact, the connections and shared influences between the Beats and rock music represents a pivotal time in American cultural history with the merging of genres, and Simon Warner’s work Text, Drugs, & Rock-n-Roll suggests the Beat Generation could be the bridge between the philosophical movement of transcendentalism and Thoreau in the early nineteenth century and the emergence of punk in the late twentieth.

The Beat Generation is another movement and sub-culture that has been researched and written about extensively, and in some ways its connections to the hippies and classic rock music of the 1960s would seem to defy a connection to punk. It’s well acknowledged and documented that the early punk musicians were quite literally reacting against what they believed had become a stale and unoriginal music industry that was more interested in status and money than in music. However, the Beats' connection to Thoreau and transcendentalism as well as their relationship with and influence on the rock music scene cannot be denied. With that in mind, the connection of the Beats as a transition for Thoreauvian ideas to work their way into contemporary music and, yes, later the punk music scene, is worthy of investigation and discussion. 

The Beats were most definitely a counterculture movement, perhaps one of the firsts to significantly impact a broader American history and definitely music culture. Warner does not miss the connection, and he explores the Beat influence on punk rock and punk culture in numerous ways. An important contribution is the discussion of Beat writer William S. Burroughs who was referenced as the Godfather of Punk before the term was later applied to Iggy Pop. Early punk musicians such as Patti Smith and Richard Hell certainly exhibit and acknowledge a connection to the Beats and to Burroughs. Of course, Allen Ginsberg is a more prominent connection to the punks, actually appearing on stage with Joe Strummer and The Clash in 1981. Ginsberg would later connect with bands such as Sonic Youth, and countless punk and post-punk or punk-adjacent musicians have mentioned an appreciation for Kerouac’s On The Road. 

Allen Ginsburg’s Howl is an iconic piece of American art that could be considered a perfect example of transcendental punk. The very title of Jonah Raskin’s book American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ and the Making of the Beat Generation sounds like a punk story. And descriptions of that first reading by Ginsberg at Six Gallery in San Francisco in the fall of 1955 portray the emotionally charged and almost cathartic moment in the same way many people would describe a punk show. Considering the later emergence of the punk poet Patti Smith, and the post-punk careers of the Dead Kennedys Jello Biafra and Black Flag’s Henry Rollins on the spoken word circuit, the connection between transcendentalism, the Beats, and punk is almost poetic. 

Finally, the connection between the Beats and punk is a topic which has been explored before, notably by classic rock biographer Victor Bockris in his work Beat Punks: New York’s Underground Culture from the Beat Generation to the Punk Explosion. Through extensive interviews with artists such as William Burroughs and Patti Smith, Bockris draws a clear connection in how the punks drew from and were inspired by the Beats at the same time the Beats were drawn to the punk phenomenon. With a clear connection to transcendentalism in the Beat Generation literature, it’s clear that Thoreau can be seen as a godfather to both movements. Thoreau’s connection to and influence on the Beats is fairly well acknowledged, but the relationship with punk remains to be adequately researched.

Thoreau's Civil Disobedience & Punk

Clearly, an anti-establishment and authority-defiant approach is fundamental to both Thoreau and the punk aesthetic, and it is perhaps the most obvious connection between the two. In a scholarly book length follow up to his punk manifesto, Greg Graffin expanded on the punk ideal with Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God. In that work, Graffin explains punk’s challenge to the tyranny of institutional authority warning that “If people unquestionably give in to the massive force exercised by the oppressive institution that is the government, they will enable the people in power.” This criticism clearly mirrors Thoreau’s assertion in Resistance to Civil Government about the relatively few bending the government to their will with the Mexican War. 

Prior to Graffin’s book Anarchy Evolution, Bad Religion’s song You are the Government had decreed “when people bend, the moral fabric dies,” and that concern is the essence of Thoreau’s abolitionist stance and the development of his most significant and enduring political work in the art of “Civil Disobedience.” Thoreau’s original thinking on government and the integrity of the individual who dissents began as his counterargument to William Paly’s “Duty of Submission to Civil Government” from The Principals of Moral and Political Philosophy. While scholars and historians widely acknowledge the lineage of Thoreau’s ideas running through the anti-colonialist revolution led by Mohandas Gandhi and the American civil rights protests led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the defiant beliefs can easily extend through the 1970s and 80s with the rise of punk. 

Granted, no one is aligning the historical struggles for abolition, independence, and civil rights with the kids raging in mosh pits during the early 80s. That doesn’t, however, discount the connection of the punk ethos linking back to the ideas of Thoreau. For, when Graffin “warns against blindly accepting the government directives and blindly conforming to their ideals,” he is clearly channeling the transcendentalist concepts of self-reliance and civil disobedience. Graffin, Bad Religion, and the punks of the Lower East Side would certainly “accept the motto that government is best that governs least” and might even agree that “when men are prepared for it, that is the type of government they shall have.”

Thoreau, Punk, & the Uncompromising Spirit

If there is one significant quality that is synonymous with both Thoreau and punk, it is an uncompromising sensibility. From an early age, Thoreau did not capitulate, did not give in, did not compromise when it came to values and beliefs. Such a firm conviction is what inspired him to quit his first teaching job rather than give in to the expectation, even the requirement, that he implement corporal punishment. He would not hit his students, and so he quit. The same can be for one of his most well-known revolutionary acts – the refusal to pay his taxes in protest of the Mexican-American War and to subsequently go to jail rather than capitulate, rather than compromise. 

Interestingly, just like Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols, Johnny Ramone, and pretty much the entire hardcore punk scene, Thoreau was often described as “prickly” and grumpy and not particularly concerned with making others happy. In The Adventures of Henry David Thoreau: a Young Man’s Unlikely Path to Walden Pond, Michael Sims writes how Thoreau “never strove to be popular and seemed not only resigned to not fitting in, but to sometimes revel in it.” For example, in some ways he was even dressing punk in the 1830s – while black was the standard dress for church, Thoreau might show up wearing green. He wore what he wanted, ate what he wanted, did what he wanted, and lived how he wanted, and he did so at a time and in a place that was much more reserved and homogeneous than the society where punk arose a century and a half later. 

So much of contemporary society, especially in terms of music and popular culture has always been about giving in, softening or amplifying an original vision in submission to a more popular and broader one. In fact, the record industry and consumer have so strictly demanded compromise, from song length to haircuts on the album cover, that such rules are a primary reason punk remained outside of the mainstream. For, truly, to become part of the mainstream there has to be compromise. If an uncompromising sense is paramount to punk, then the founder of Civil Disobedience must be the most punk of all. An uncompromising spirit is a key to punk, as it is a key to Thoreau.

The Politics of Thoreauvian Punk

Thoreau’s innovations in American political thought, specifically in an uncompromising sense of justice and a refusal to capitulate to what is easy or popular, is also the essence of punk rock, which is associated with challenging institutional authority on everything from musical forms to clothing styles to language. Just as Black Flag’s Henry Rollins and Bad Religion’s Greg Graffin led the charge for many second wave punk bands calling out the bankrupt '80s economic positions of the Reagan Revolution, Henry David Thoreau rejected and refused to support the foreign policy disasters of President Polk, and he openly challenged any passive acceptance of the institution of slavery, especially in his native Massachusetts following the capture and re-enslavement of Anthony Burns, per passage of the Fugitive Slave Act. Thoreau's passionate defense of abolitionist Captain John Brown is one of his most aggressive and overtly political stances, indicating a support for civil disobedience by violent means if necessary. Thoreau’s support for Brown in opposition to Brown’s conviction and execution was resolute and unwavering. 

In taking the very public stands he did, Henry David Thoreau was a true American original, as significant as any of the Founding Fathers for his innovative and influential political and philosophical ideas. While not overly famous in his lifetime, Thoreau has only grown in fame over the past one hundred and fifty years. In his eulogy Emerson noted, “no truer American existed than Thoreau.” Thoreau's connection to contemporary society specifically in punk culture is related to the passion and determination with which both operate. Henry Rollins has said he believes punk is where you have “young people in vitality,” and nothing could be a more apt description of Thoreau. Pushing back against authority and the established norms of the time was a key motivator in the life of Henry Thoreau, and it is a guiding principle of punk. When Thoreau walked into the woods to build his cabin and see if he could “live deliberately” it was an absolute expression of what is now known as Punk.

Walden Pond Punk

Henry David Thoreau has played many roles as an American writer and philosopher – environmentalist, abolitionist, progressive, libertarian, and punk rock poet. While the punk label is less well known, if acknowledged at all, it’s every bit as valid and worthy of discussion. The punk of Thoreau, the transcendental punk whose lineage runs throughout American history, is not the stereotyped punk of spiked hair, tattered clothes, anarchy symbols splayed across leather jackets, mosh pits, slam dancing, and loud, fast, riveting guitar rock. It’s the punk of individual liberty, authenticity in the sense of self, and the rejection of conformity amidst a mindless society.

This small paragraph is the beginning of a piece I published several years ago with Pop Matters. It's really the beginning of the idea that I have now decided might be a longer project, a book even. Read the rest of the piece here:

Henry Thoreau as Performance Art

 Far from being a hermit and a recluse in the woods, Henry Thoreau actually lived a very public life, and he was every bit a citizen of his Concord community. As I've noted before, if Thoreau truly hated people and wanted to go off and live in the woods somewhere secluded, he easily could have and would have. Instead, as Laura Dassow Wells notes in her esteemed biography, "... the circumstances meant it [his journey] would be performed on a very public stage. His two years living at Walden Pond became and remain an iconic work of performance art."

Thoreau's experiment at the pond was meant to be seen and talked about, for he intended to be "a rooster crowing to bring in the dawn." He had a strong message to deliver to his neighbors, whom he feared lived "lives of quiet desperation," and he wanted to be asked about his work, his thoughts, his realizations, and his insights. The economic argument in which he grounds - and introduces - his performance was enthusiastic social commentary, calling out and even mocking the drab, dour existence of the Puritans as well as the work-driven existence promoted by Adam Smith.

Because the market economy and the rise of consumer culture treated people inhumanely as simple cogs in a machine, and because writers like Smith promoted well-being and self-worth solely through material wealth and the exchange of labor for money, Thoreau saw people diminished to an inauthentic human experience. He sought to explore and model a life lived for experience and knowledge. And, in many ways, the philosopher in him took the action of living his performance as a test of whether man could live as he believed.

Wild & Free

Here's the final Thoreau mixed media piece I recently put together last weekend. This uses a shadow print of Felix Edouard Vallotton’s portrait over selections from Thoreau essays “Walking” and “Civil Disobedience.” While Thoreau is obviously known first and foremost for Walden, and as a nature writer, he was also an ardent advocate for individual liberty. Civil Disobedience is perhaps his second best known piece, while "Walking" is known mostly to Thoreau scholars and fans for its discussion on his "case for the Wild."