Revisiting Bukowski (again).

Several years ago I wrote a post reviewing a documentary called Born Into This, which portrayed the life and times of Charles Bukowski. It was a movie that stuck with me, as I have a lot of interest in the author's work. I've said it before, but it bears repeating- Bukowski inspired me to try writing. He also made me appreciate poetry for the first time in my life. When I first got turned on to his books, I devoured any of his titles that I could find. And it was difficult to find them. There was something about the early '90s that made his words live especially vividly. Perhaps it was the growing rejection of the materialistic 80's. There was so much fakery and emptiness in that decade that made any form of authenticity seem fresh.

It takes a special form of genius to make an existence of degradation sparkle. Many of us in the "X-Generation" were taken with the seedy undercurrents of the street that Bukowski represented. In retrospect I feel that I received a precious gift by having come of age during the popular resurgence of "Hank Chinaski". I was able to enter almost complete dissolution without sacrificing the social ties that such a lifestyle usually precludes. It is true that I engaged in it all in a self-conscious way. I managed to avoid the kind of mistakes that allow no full recovery. Unlike many of the people I knew during that time, I emerged relatively unscathed. Yet I realize that "fate's caprice" had much to do with it. I can't accept all of the credit.

Last night I watched Born Into This once again. I've been showing selections from my DVD collection at a local bar every Sunday night. I was pleased to get the chance to share the story of a Twentieth Century icon with anyone who wanted to see it. Oddly, a couple of the folks who watched it with me are still unfamiliar with Bukowski's work. This fact seems a bit surreal to me given the role the great scribe has played in my life. How is it possible that I have old friends who I haven't shared this work with? These are people who are firmly placed in my demographic. How have they not found Bukowski on their own? I know we are in the midst of an illiterate era, but it seems odd that such an accessible writer would be ignored.

It could be that Charles Bukowski is becoming increasingly irrelevant with time, but I suspect that this is only a passing phase from which society will eventually awake. The hardscrabble times in front of us could spark the rediscovery of his genius. He knew the most visceral and simplest of pleasures. He celebrated them above all else. He was constantly on the lookout for phonies and poseurs. He could sniff them out as soon as they approached him, and he wasn't too shy to let them know their true quality. I could only hope to emulate his example. Certainly I would employ a greater degree of diplomacy. After all, I never took the kind of beatings that he did growing up. But I took my share of blows from the bitches of "fate".

I'm sure that Charles Bukowski would be turned off by some of the artifice I employ. He was, after all, an iconoclast. He seemed to have an unwavering conviction that he was right, and most others were wrong. I'm much more of a relativist than he was. My rejection of metaphor is not complete like his was. And in some strange way, I feel that Bukowski was a bit of a romantic at heart. He held tightly to his ideals, and was often uncompromising in a way that I can scarcely imagine being. Yet he could turn a phrase unlike anyone I have ever read. He could cut to the marrow of a special kind of squalid existence, and make even the idea of loneliness a bit appealing. In that respect he was a magician.

Throwin' Down the Gauntlet...

"Regular readers" of this blog (and you surely have no real understanding of just how ludicrous a term that is) are probably sick and tired of my travel anecdotes. But it's only when I get back into town that I realize just how slow-paced life in the 'Burgh can be. Sure I get out regularly... but it's usually to meet up with friends and rehash our two or three staple conversations. So sometimes it does get a bit difficult to figure out what is worth sharing.

Anyway now that the disclaimer is out of the way, I'll relate just one more story from the road. On my last night in Chicago, my friend L. took me out to his favorite local dive- "The Long Room". Suffice it to say that this bar lives up to its name. It is dark (but clean) and has an extraordinarily long bar traversing its depth. The beer selection is fancy, and the prices are reasonable for the big city. This is the spot wherein L. meets up with his people and feels most comfortable slamming back a few Jameson's. So perhaps it shouldn't have been a surprise when the topic of writing came up.

It started with a tremendously goofy interchange whereby we began to evaluate the quality of various rock group names. He's been listening to a band named the "Kings of Leon", and I remarked that I found this to be an incredibly bad choice, apart from the music itself. It's the kind of moniker that keeps me from ever giving the actual songs a chance. We started to exchange famous and infamous existing band-names, and offering our opinion on whether or not they were any good. I'll spare you the quotidian details of that segment of our conversation. As one might expect, our talk soon transitioned into a contest to come up with the best fictional band name.

I led off with my longstanding favorite- "The Yeti Family". Soon I ran through a list of others with various degress of sincerity, including "The Slipped Discs", "Labial Intentions", and "The Delectable Mountains". I almost spit up my beer with the suggestion of "Shaved Pussy". (You'll have to forgive me, for this is the type of stuff that two male buddies who aren't that into sports end up talking about when slugging alcohol.) This went on for awhile, until L. suddenly got quiet and then threw down the gauntlet. It turns out that he has been going through a resurgence of interest in singer-songwriting. But unlike many musicians, he's intrigued by the idea of adapting other people's word to music. He knows that I enjoy writing, so he told me to come up with a poem/song right there on the spot.

Now by this time I had already had several beers, so the pressure was on. I tried to beg off by saying that I had neither paper nor writing implement. In a matter of about two minutes, these tools materialized in front of me on the bartop. L. wasn't accepting any excuses. I don't even think he would have continued talking to me if I refused the task. So I sat staring down at the blank surface of the back of a register receipt, and tried to muster some words. Eventually L. had a touch of mercy, and provided a writing prompt- I was to riff on the topic of the competing gender strategies of dealing with life's more difficult moments. This was a reverberation of a conversation we had with one of his friends the previous night. After a bit of contemplation I hunkered down to the task, and in a matter of about ten minutes I had what could possibly pass for a poem/song.

Although I initially fought against the idea of such improvisational free-verse writing, I ultimately enjoyed it. Unfortunately I can't share the results here because I left L. with the only copy to see what he could come up with. Perhaps L. will send me a copy of those lyrics if he reads this post. But my point in recounting this incident is my rediscovery of the value of this type of writing exercise. I've kept my penchant for penning poetry a secret from most of my friends. In fact I've been doing it intermitttantly for about fifteen years. I have a small pile of examples buried somewhere. Yet I've always wondered whether or not it was a waste of time.

I actually did a public reading about a decade ago. About three people (in addition to the organizers) showed up. I felt self-conscious about doing that, but I found it rewarding in some strange nebulous way. Now that I have been keeping a blog for a year, my reticence about indulging this side of myself seems a bit ridiculous. I've been thinking that I might want to resume the practice. Sometimes the convergence of life's events subtly prods me in a new direction. L.'s challenge last week, along with Thad Kellstadt and Edgar Um's reading the week before, appear to be a sort of clarion call. I don't know if I'll share the product, but I foresee a period of poetry-writing in my near future.