the origins of Mad Girl

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...

Every superhero has an origin story and mine begins with Jack Kerouac. This quote (from On The Road) has always struck a cord with me. When I first read OTR as a teenager I yearned to be part of the mad ones. I wanted to live a life on the outskirts of society, full of adventure and booze. I wanted to hop a train out West and shack up in San Francisco with gay poets. Well, this never played out, but I did spend most of my high school an college career pining over hipster poet boys.

However, I did continue to study the Beat generation in college. I took this class on youth culture of the 1950's and for one of our projects my friend and I wrote this screenplay intertwined with selections of our poetry. I really wish I still had a copy of it. We decided to name it Mad Girl's Manifesto. I guess that idea has always stuck with me and eventually lead me to this blog. So there you have it...the Mad Girl origin story.