Yes. Bukowski was a bad influence on me. I was turned onto his writing by a Student Teacher in my first year of college. A Creative Writing course. I was mad with writing, totally inspired, my prime influence being Kurt Vonnegut, and some very cool things were coming out my head and typewriter. It was a briefly-innocent, golden time, where just typing on a piece paper seemed like everything. I mean, writing is still in my blood, this blog too reflects that voracious need to always be typing.
Of course, Bukowski was a hard man, a hard drinker, a bred-in-the-bone alcoholic and a depressive. Somehow that seemed attractive. He was a black hole, a negative vortex with a strangely-dark pull. Bad news for sure. Kind of like Keith Richards being a bad influence, and Hunter S. Thompson too. The Holy Trinity of Bad Influence.
The wrong lesson, at the wrong time. The real key to the Bukowski narrative was not the drinking, the whoring, the gambling on horses, the dark, depressive, alcoholic haze, it was the writing. Words on a page. That was the triumph of the man's life. He was a writer and a poet. He wrote. Despite all the shite, all the bad scenes, and bad blood. He wrote.
The ugliness, the trauma and drama was just hubbub & scenery. The real action was the click and clack of the typewriter. Bukowski's world was a hard world of shite. Once in awhile a sentence of total, gorgeous beauty would be revealed. You lived to discover those little, unexpected gems. They were the whole damn thing.
August 1 today. Summer is already bleeding out.
Time. It flies. Yes. "The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills ..."
"Woke up this morning and it seemed to me,
That every night turns out to be
A little more like Bukowski.
And yeah, I know he's a pretty good read.
But God who'd want to be?
God who'd want to be such an asshole?
God who'd want to be?
God who'd want to be such an asshole?"
