I guess I've made it (1 Viewer)

[Charlie]

It wasn't too long ago. You can read it in my old posts. Bukowski was god. He was a fling that had never flung. Wait, let me explain that.

The way I work, the way I keep myself sane, or at least sane enough to keep the lawn tame and the nights possible, is to have a thing that I latch onto. I'm a big movie man myself, so usually its a group of films, or its one film, or its a director. There've been weeks devoted to the leading men of the German New Wave, to experimental filmmakers like Stan Brakhage, there was a bit of the Swedes, some Jan Svankmejer, some Don Hertzfeldt, a big Koyaanisqatsi phase. There's books to, hell, anything with energy - Bret Easton Ellis with American Psycho, Hunter S. Thompson with Fear and Loathing and The Great Shark Hunt etc. etc., and Andrew Vacchs........

etc.
etc.
etc.

But Bukowski was a different fling. I had a connection. I think we all had a connection with the old drunk. Hell, if we didn't, we wouldn't be talking about him right here. Yeah, I've got a problem with loneliness. Yeah, I'm not a talkative kind of a jerkoff. Yeah, I'm a bum and a sclub and schmuck. That's why I love Bukowski. Because he was like that, and he made it work. He got away with it. Its like fucking the devil's wife and living to brag about it.

Of course, I thought he was god, or at least god's drinking buddy. I'm a guy who knows good words from bad, and this fucking drunk womanizer was serenading me with books named after genatalia and methods of suicide. What a cocksucker, what a genius, right? That's what I thought.

Then, after a long period of like two years with this guy, I kind of move on. And now, looking back, I'm not so reverential about him. Don't get me wrong, I still consider him one of the best, and I still hold him in high esteem, but I can really look back, like god over his antfarm, and see that it was an obsession and thus a passion fueled by obsession and thus an inflated obsession.

I love Bukowski. But now I know why. And I suppose I'm all the better for it. That's it.

 

[Brandon g]

Hot damn! Lets hang out. I like your... uh I don't know I just like you. It is good. As far as "He made it work" I don't know about that fella. I guess It would depend on buks definition of "what works". I may not know that much about him (not as much as some of the guys around here). But as far as it working, Im not sure Buk would agree. Be careful with that obsesion thing. Mine became literature at a young age, and now Im all fucked up. I think you have an advantage in that respect though since you are unfaithful to your own desires as they are always changing, which might prevent one of those from getting the chance to mess you up good. But then again what the fuck do I know?

 

[hank solo]

[...]The way I work, the way I keep myself sane, or at least sane enough to keep the lawn tame and the nights possible, is to have a thing that I latch onto. I'm a big movie man myself, so usually its a group of films, or its one film, or its a director. There've been weeks devoted to the leading men of the German New Wave, to experimental filmmakers like Stan Brakhage, there was a bit of the Swedes, some Jan Svankmejer, some Don Hertzfeldt, a big Koyaanisqatsi phase. There's books to, hell, anything with energy - Bret Easton Ellis with American Psycho, Hunter S. Thompson with Fear and Loathing and The Great Shark Hunt etc. etc., and Andrew Vacchs........

etc.
etc.
etc.
[...]

Hey Charlie, you sound a bit like John Laroche, in Adaptation. He's always hooked on something new. Thats an oddball movie. I liked it tho.

 

[hoochmonkey9]

a good, roaring post Charlie. keep roaring.

 

[Olaf]

'a passion fueled by obsession'

This is the line that is true. That's what most of Bukowskis writng was about - implicitly. Quantity doesn't necessarily make for quality =but passion and obssession can almost always account for both.

the flame is constant.
and almost nothing
can blow its inspiration
into a curl of dead smoke

 

[poptop]

Nice post.

Yeah, it's called personal growth. You absorb the guy's essense and eventually you're carrying more of your own water (or beef carcass) without needing the joy of being personally worked over by Bukowski's hamfisted father. But I will quickly add that although I'm no longer driven to read him as before, my level of appreciation and gratitude is no less than it ever was. I love the guy in the same way I did when I was soaking him up relentlessly from the water?no, beer trough. When you're feely truly awful, B always managed to get a ray of sunlight through the fog of earthly stupidities. He buys you time to keep making it. Priceless.

Poptop

 

[bongobill]

i'm getting all choked up
reading these posts

 

[cirerita]

I'm sure they have plungers on eBay ;)

 

[bongobill]

hey
the one next to my toilet
worked beautifully

thanks
:D