Tyler Watson on Lenny Bruce

Lenny Bruce was big on free speech. He spent a majority of his comic career assessing and deconstructing the stigmas of choice verbiages or sayings in America. "To come" is one of his more famous, partly because he was taken to court for the following performance. This particular performance was accompanied by Lenny banging on a drum and cymbal intermittently which practically equates to the stereotype of beatniks banging on the bongos along with their poetry. This performance reads as a poem, but it is really Lenny approaching the "obscenity" of the verb "to come" and it's sexual connotation. He was arrested for obscenity in 1961 for this performance and for using the word "cocksucker" on stage. He was attempting to strip the word of its dirtiness and reveal how common and base it was. The jury acquitted him of these charges, but this was just the beginning of many more arrests for obscenity, and he had cops sitting in on almost every one of his shows after this incident waiting to arrest him at the drop of a hat. His attempts to have the audience and listeners confront the stigmas of the day, and his subsequent run-ins with the law because of it made the clubs treat him like a leper, and Lenny eventually died at the age of 41, due to "acute morphine poisoning caused by an accidental overdose."(Collins, Ronald; Skover, David (2002). The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall and Rise of an American Icon.) A police officer at the scene of his death was supposedly quoted as saying, "There is nothing sadder than an aging hipster".

To is a Preposition, Come is a Verb

To is a preposition.
To is a preposition.
Come is a verb.
To is a preposition.
Come is a verb.
To is a preposition.
Come is a verb, the verb intransitive.
To come.
To come.
I've heard these two words my whole adult life, and as a kid when I thought I was sleeping.
To come.
To come.
It's been like a big drum solo.
Did you come?
Did you come?
Good.
Did you come good?
Did you come good?
Did you come good?
Did you come good?
Did you come good?
Did you come good?
Did you come good?
I come better with you, sweetheart, than with anybody in the whole goddamn world.
I really came so good and I came so good 'cause I love you.
I really came so good.
I come better with you, sweetheart, than anyone in the whole world.
I really came so good.
So good.
But don't come in me.
Don’t come in me.
Don’t come in me
Don't come in me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me.
Don’t come in me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me.
Don't come in me.
Don't come…. in me…in me in me.
Don’t come in me, in me….in me.
I can't come.
'Cause you don't love me--that's why you can't come.
I can't come.
I love you, I just can't come; that's my hang-up.
I can't come when I'm loaded, all right?
'Cause you don't love me.
Just what the hell is the matter with you-what has that got to do with loving? I just can't come that's all.
Now if anyone is this room or the world finds those two words decadent, obscene, immoral, amoral, asexual-- the words "to come" really make you feel uncomfortable--if you think I'm rank for saying it to you, you the beholder think it's rank for listening to it, you probably can't come. And then you're of no use, because that's the purpose of life, to re-create it.

That was the full transcript of the original performance, and here is a short video of him doing part of it many years later when he looks more like an aging hipster. This is after many years of legal hardships, when Lenny was drowning himself in studying the legalities of free speech, after his performances became less about comedy and more about his obsession with his court transcripts and the ways the court twisted his words. Just as Ginsberg was attempting to deconstruct modern America, and the way we look at it on a larger social aspect, Lenny was doing the micro change of language itself.