Bukowski's San Pedro home may become a museum - SCPR (1 Viewer)

It is a great idea, of course. I am pretty confident that it could not become a traditional museum as the neighbors would almost certainly object based on zoning, but it could become something more like a cultural center where they set up a room for visiting scholars, etc. I cannot imagine that it would ever be a place that you could just roll up on and walk in.

Bill
 
She wants the house to become a museum after she passes away...

"She wants" is not a plan. And Bill is right, it is a residential area and the people of San Pedro are very vocal and politically active (union town and all). They don't really roll over for anyone. Whoever tried to do that would have a very difficult time of it. But no one is talking about it except her, and "after she passes away" is a convenient cop out. Like saying, "Let someone else try to do it. I'm not going to."

Maybe Lauren and the Bus People will try. If they thought DeLongpre was tough, they are in for a rude awakening in San Pedro.

He lost some ground after being diagnosed with leukemia at age 73. He got it back with transcendental meditation. "It allowed him to open up a space within himself to say these words about himself dying," said Linda Bukowski. "These later poems, death poems, are so acute and so awake and aware and I think that had a lot to do with how meditation allowed him to be creative in his later months and write these poems, that I still cannot read."

Right. Becasue he never wrote about death before that. Um hm.

She sure loves to prattle on about those few months of meditation he did before he died. Maybe that makes her feel better about paying a bunch of monks to chant their Buddhist bullshit at his funeral. But to credit his writing as he was dying to meditation is ridiculously absurd, and it discounts an entire life of hard work often done in the face of adversity and pain.

But what do I know.



(I think I just found the name for my next band; Lauren and the Bus People.)
 
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Maybe Ecco will publish a cookbook such as Hank's favorite macrobiotic recipes, approved by ...
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In one of those last poems, "Sun Coming Down," Bukowski writes:

"but now it's my turn
and there's no majesty in it
because there was no majesty
before it
and each of us, like worms bitten
out of apples,
deserves no reprieve."

The interviewer didn't do his homework:

Sun Coming Down

Books
The People Look Like Flowers At Last - pg. 299 - 2007
The Pleasures of the Damned - pg. 540 - 2007

Magazines
Harlequin - Vol. 2 - No. 1 - Page 11 - 1957
 
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From what Linda told me, everything is arranged already. In financial terms as well as the organisation part. The reason she's waiting till her death is, she's still living there now. The plan would not be a full-time public museum, but something like opening only 2 days a week for declared visitors.

The old room is very nice, if you stand on the balcony after sunset, with all the lights from LA and this mass of lights slowly coming down the freeway. Imagining him standing there between writing two poems made it clear, why he sometimes felt the need to write about that look.
 
Henry Miller's last home is in the area. I drove by it and took photos in the 70s, but it wasn't the sort of neighborhood where you'd just walk up to a house and start poking around. Someone would call the cops in a heartbeat. At that time, the area had that exclusive rich people feel so all you grifters and hobos just keep the hell out.
 
The old room is very nice, if you stand on the balcony after sunset, with all the lights from LA and this mass of lights slowly coming down the freeway. Imagining him standing there between writing two poems made it clear, why he sometimes felt the need to write about that look.

Indeed. Enjoying the San Pedro harbor view from that balcony was sure one of the highlights of my last trip to the States.

In the article, Linda is quoted as saying:
"I don't like the idea of his archive going to a university because they get stuck in these nooks and crannies where only 10 people a year see them and then go back to those places where they get dusty and forgotten about."

I think that's true, especially when it comes to the Huntington Library, where you're supposed to be a scholar (and prove so) to be able to access their collections. I might be wrong, but I'd say not even 5 people have visited the Bukowski collection there.
 
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...And in many of these library archives, once you get your white gloved hands on the rare materials, they won't let you Xerox them or even take photos. So I guess you're supposed to make extensive notes on whatever you have time to read right there, and if that doesn't get you what you need, you come back later or forget about it.
 
"I don't like the idea of his archive going to a university because they get stuck in these nooks and crannies where only 10 people a year see them and then go back to those places where they get dusty and forgotten about."
If she really believes that she should get the stick out of her ass about this site, because without it, all you'd have are those dusty nooks and crannies. FTW.

She can have funding and planning set up, but until someone tries to open a house on that street to the public - even if it's one day a week - they don't know if it will fly. She knows the people down there. She has to know how they would react to that. But I suppose if you got the right politician involved you could force anything down anyone's throat. I just don't think it will be easy. You guys who have been there know what I mean. It's not an ideal place for a museum. In an urban setting like New York or a big European city you can have a semi-commercial place on a residential block. But most of California is not set up that way. You couldn't park three cars in front of Bukowski's house without making the neighbors grumble.

I think I just hate the idea of a Bukowski museum. That's my problem (among other things). It's like the Rock and Roll hall of Fame - who's wrongheaded shit-for-brains idea was that? When you put a piece of "rock history" behind a wall or glass, you kill whatever made it rock in the first place.

Rock and roll and Bukowski are dirt and discomfort and sweat and a stiff middle finger to the world, not a god damned museum with motherfuckers in cheap blue blazers telling you not to get too close to the artifacts. Museums are for mummies, dinosaur bones and dead painters.

That crap has to live somewhere - the papers and manuscripts. I get that. We'll never be able to publish the unMartinized poetry collection without places like that. ;) But the Huntington is an exclusionary joint in one the most wealthy neighborhoods in the country. It's all wrong, and their exhibition was all wrong, and this "acceptance" of Bukowski is just the world's way of cutting off his balls and making him safe for mindless douchebags who aren't supposed to understand him anyway.

Well. Okay. I guess I'll get off that soapbox now. Add this to the list of things I try to stop myself from harping about. Wish me luck.

---

David, Miller lived in Pacific Palisades, which is a long way from San Pedro, both in distance and the mind set of the inhabitants. I worked up there for a few years when I was a printer, and the people are not what you'd call welcoming. Unless you are "one of them." Meaning wealthy and stupid. It's like San Marino with an ocean view.
 
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A digital, portable museum of sorts would be ideal for most people. I have a few ideas as to how to tackle such a project, and there are good platforms out there to implement it.
 
I suppose the "visiting scholars" approach would work best, but, man, why not a "Bukowski Foundation" which offers up the place as an "artist residency" for non-academic writers: free room + 1 month's bills + a small food/beer stipend for a month's residency (or more). Having a worry-free month for uninterrupted writing is what most small press writers I know would dig...
 
[...]

David, Miller lived in Pacific Palisades, which is a long way from San Pedro, both in distance and the mind set of the inhabitants. [...]

I thought about that possibility when I posted, but I hate to be so cautious that I Google before every act, so I went with it, knowing the odds were 50/50 I'd be shot down in flames. But it's not terribly far away, is it? Maybe within 10 miles? Okay, Google tells me it's about 35 miles. I'm all wet.
 
Thirty five miles takes like 26 mins in California. That's pretty close. Compared to Oregon it's really close.

A museum in a San Pedro neighborhood would only work if the visitors were all brought in by buses. I guess were going to have wait for the HD 3D Blu Ray video disc with the aroma feature to get the real feel.
 

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