Go Forth!
Here at The ##, we’ve decided to hire a new writer to blog completely unironically (via fighting meta-enabling). He’s innocent and unironic.
Hey guys! Simon here again, thought I’d share with you these Levi’s commercials I saw the other day. I think there are two of them.
This first one here is actually the voice of Walt Whitman reading his own poem, “America”:
“America”
By Walt Whitman
Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.
And here’s “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” (read above by an actor)
1
COME, my tan-faced children, Follow well in order, get your weapons ready; Have you your pistols? have you your sharp edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers!
2
For we cannot tarry here, We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, 5 We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!
3
O you youths, western youths, So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, Plain I see you, western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O pioneers!
The guys over at Slate have analyzed the shots pretty darn well. The neon “America” sign half-submerged, the beach bonfire! unbelievable! It gives me that warm feeling inside. GO FORTH! It all reminds me of the hope I have in our generation. Running around, in search of the Neal Casadys and W. Burroughses of the 1950s or the 2050s… jeans and white undershirts —— girls and fireworks and trains and cigarettes and hip to time, man, I’m hip to TIME! I read poetry and so what I might be rich motherfucker but I wear the same jeans as you. The same jeans as you! and we ride in pick-up trucks down dusty roads and pull from cheap vodka by a different name here but it’s the same as long as you’re in AMERICA! GO FORTH! CALL ME DARLING AGAIN DARLING!
