1994, University of Connecticut

By Scot Nolan

Here’s something a lot of people don’t know about me: I have terrible hearing. Not in the traditional hearing loss kind of way – that would be too easy.

I was the subject of a study at the University of Connecticut, and learned there that I lack the ability to differentiate between different voices.

Know how hard it is to hear what someone is saying to you at a noisy party or in a bar? It’s like that for me, if I’m in the car, and my wife is talking to me while a DJ on the radio yammers away. Even in that situation, separating the qualities of the DJ’s voice from the voice of the woman I love requires a significant amount of focus on my part.

Sucks, eh? If you’re wondering how I found that out about myself, or how I became the subject of that study at UConn, this is the story.

It was the early summer in the mid-1990s. Everyone was still listening to grunge music, which has just past its peak, and it was not so hot out yet that you couldn’t wear jeans.

I had just come back home from my summer job as a catalog operator and finished dinner when the phone rang. It was my friend Allie, asking me to come along with her and our friend, Ickabod, to UConn that evening, where beat legend Allen Ginsberg was doing a free poetry reading.

Of course, I’d heard of Allen Ginsberg, famed member of the Beat Generation and writer of Howl, but somehow, “poetry reading” wasn’t getting me fired up.

“Is this a formal thing?” I was quite comfortable in my grunge-appropriate ripped jeans and bootleg U2 T-shirt. After assuring me that the poetry reading would be “informal” and “totally not stuffy,” I agreed to go. And really, how could I not? He’s no Richard Dawson, but Allen Ginsberg is unquestionably a cultural icon.

And off we went.

The poetry reading was absolutely nothing like I expected it to be. The event was held in a classroom (not an auditorium), with the audience seated or grabbing floor around all four walls. And Ginsberg was lively and funny. Really damn funny. One poem in particular, Hum Bom!, had us all laughing until our cheeks hurt.

After the reading, we all lined up outside another classroom for book signings. Allie and Ick were absolutely giddy, about to have their well-worn copies of Howl autographed by one of their personal heroes. Me? I didn’t have anything at all until we bumped into a teacher from our old high school, who asked us to have his book signed for him.

It took us at least 45 minutes to reach the doorway. Allie and Ick were beside themselves with nerves. Who could blame them - this was their personal hero! “Not a problem,” I told them. “Let me show you how it’s done.”

In the room, Allen Ginsberg sat behind a long table. Behind him were about a half dozen other people - including UConn professor and author of The Portable Beat Reader, Ann Charters - engaged in a couple different conversations.

Fearless, I marched up to Allen Ginsberg, opened the cover of the teacher’s book, handed it over and said, “Hi. Could you please sign that ‘To John’?”

To which Allen Ginsberg, obviously noticing my bootleg U2 T-shirt, said, “U2?”

But I didn’t hear “U2?” With the different conversations in the room, I thought he said, “To who?”

“Sorry: ‘To John.’”

Ginsberg gave a little head shake. “U2?”

Poor old guy, I thought. He’s done so many drugs, and he’s so old, he can’t hear. “No, ‘To John.” I enunciate.

“No. U2.”

“To John.”

Ginsberg is pointing now. “U2!”

“To John!”

That got me an elbow to the ribs from Allie. “Your T-shirt,” she gritted out the side of her mouth.

“Oh!” I cried, holding out my T-shirt and pointing to the torso-size logo. “You mean the band U2!” The look on Allen Ginsberg’s face was priceless – I’d pay real money to find out what he was thinking at that moment.

“Yes, the band,” Allen Ginsberg said wearily. “You a big fan?”

“Yeah! I caught their Zoo TV show twice,” I said, because I had.

“I was in Germany a little while ago, recording with U2,” Allen Ginsberg told me. “I read poems, and they played music behind it.”

“Aw, that sounds really cool.”

“Yeah, it was. Are you familiar with Gurbble-Flabble?”

Except Allen Ginsberg didn’t say “Gurbble-Flabble.” To this day, I have no clue of what he said.

If I had been on the ball, I would have bluffed and said, “Yes.” But clearly, I was not on the ball.

“No … Can’t say that I am.”

“Really? He just read it an hour ago,” Ann Charters chimed in, and not without a bit of bite. It was at this point that I realized that I’d drawn the attention of everyone else in the room … and I was holding up the line … and already had my book signed … and Allen Ginsberg had already signed Allie’s and Ick’s books without so much as a word to them.

I mumbled something and made a quick exit.

He never did sign that book “To John.”

Scot Nolan is an interactive-television writer who resides in central New York with his wife and two daughters.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Monday, August 27th, 2007 | Email This Post

This entry was posted on Monday, August 27th, 2007 at 12:01 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.