Hi Raymi,

This is the Daniel who asked you about your camera. It is arriving today, by the way. I am really excited about it.

The reason I’m writing to you is because I just read the Kerouac article that ended up in LAist. I wanted to say that I had a startlingly similar experience with Kerouac, and I had never heard of anyone having a similar encounter.

Your “in” with Kerouac was the fact of being a relative; my “in” was the fact that he and I share a birthday. That’s right–March 12, 1922 / March 12, 1987 (that’s me).

I read On the Road when I was fifteen, basically gobbling it all up during one of the few summers at home when I actually went to the beach. I had sunburns I could associate with the reading of that book.

Anyway, it ate my mind. I was at the age when–and it took me a while to acknowledge that this is not a unique phenomenon–I really badly needed to be someone and being myself wasn’t good enough. So I became Jack Kerouac. Unlike you, I did in fact “argue with a beret on my head over Burroughs and all that shit.” The scary thing is that so many people bought it. I spent almost two years that way, spouting faux-poetical manufactured phrases at every turn etc., until a girl I didn’t deserve to be with smacked me out of it.

Most of all, I want to commend you for being able to pick up on the Kerouac stylistic experiment without sacrificing any of your personal integrity. I’m surprised that I didn’t pick up on the similarities between what you and he worked on. I should also say that it actually took me a while to figure out what you were doing with your blog. After I started exploring the blogosphere a bit, I realized that your blog wasn’t just another instance of a particular type; no–in fact, everyone else was imitating you.

So, enough of the ass-kissing. Keep on doing what you’re doing, because you do it well.

Cheers,
Daniel