“Tell your friends everything. Give away your secrets.
Be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.”
~Allen Ginsberg
Image taken before a Halloween Party in the middle of the 1980s. Her costume, Helen as her mother.
Helen Jewel roving reporter for Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine.
“Him all wait for, him all yield up to, his word is decisive and final, him they accept, in him lave, in him perceive themselves as amid light, Him they immerse, and he immerses them.
Beautiful women, the haughtiest nations, laws, the landscape, people, animals, the profound earth and its attributes and unquiet ocean, (so tell I my morning’s romanza.) All enjoyments and properties and money, and whatever money will buy, the best farms, others toiling, and planting and he unavoidably reaps, the noblest and costliest cities, others grading and building, and he domiciles there…”
~ Song of the Answerer by Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass
Helen was our roving reporter for Flipside Fanzine. She has an amazing character that challenges me to this day! She grew up in Fullerton California and later ended up living in Whittier. She came from the kind of family that sat around the dinner table and talked. Her mother and father expected the children to give a speech about their day. Helen’s father might ask her sternly,
“What did you learn today?”
The words of Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac inspired her life as a teenager. Helen was a few years older than the average punk during the 1980s punk scene. When she asked us to include this interview with Allen Ginsberg, we teased her. It is a good thing she persisted. Helen weaved together important elements in her short interview with Allen Ginsberg with what was happening at that time in punk rock history. It is an excellent read.
One can study the history and literary accomplishments of Whitman, Ginsberg, and Kerouac but it is the link, the alignment, the spiritual rebellious thread that pulls me always!
Thank you Helen!!
“Punk shows suffering, so it acknowledges the real”
Flipside Fanzine 36 Allen Ginsberg
“A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
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