Monday’s Muse: Carolyn Cassidy

“Dear Carolyn,

Wouldn’t it be wonderful for Neal, Allen, Bill, me and you to all be together talking at night; Bill and me with our wine, Allen with his upheld index finger, Neal with his oolong, and you with your pizza pies… and wine. 

You are a golden angel and I will always love you, as I have and will. 

Jack”

———-

“As far as I’m concerned, the Beat Generation was something made up by the media and Allen Ginsberg…” 

Carolyn Cassidy. Painter, bread winner, mother, muse and long-time lover of fourteen years to the enigmatic Neal Cassidy, of whom she describes as “the archetype of the American Man.”.

Also a writer herself, Carolyn was closely associated with the boys of the Beat Generation through her marriage to Neal and her friendships with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac – in Kerouac’s novel On the Road Carolyn’s character is named “Camille”.  She was considered the backbone in the boy’s lives, a sanctuary for them to return to when their antics got too much. Carolyn, a creative in her own right, also worked in theatre, costume design, make-up artistry, wrote for the local newspaper, and was a founding member of the Academy of Parapsychology and Medicine during the ’70s.

I love her for her no-funny-business attitude, her strength, and her words.