Bukowski had one story, about humans pitting a cat in an alley against a dog..
And how the cat was white, and how the cat wasn’t just fighting the dog.. It was fighting all of humanity.
I still think about that story .
It comes back to me, like good stories do.
I mean, not “good”.
Let’s say “powerful”
Potent, memorable,,,
Someone who tells a story well can do that, They can make it stay with you.
If you care.
If you care about the subject, or if it’s fiction, you care about the character.
I think he was such an interesting guy, because on one hand, you had a common, normal, working class drunk.
But on the inside…
He had universes .
Libraries.
Tied to the Carnal flesh..
(he liked cats)
He did.
I’m really glad I found him, I wish it was earlier, but it wouldn’t have been the same for me.
If I took in that work at 14 or 15…
It wouldn’t hit the same.
Like listening to comfortably numb, and fast forwarding right to the guitar solo.
Or high hopes, or November rain, or fade to Black, or hotel California, or Free Bird ..
You have to eat your vegetables if you want dessert.
You can’t have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat.
You only get the pretty, the lifting, the transcendent… After you traverse the gutter.
So sayeth Justin.
And I can talk as much trash as I want, Because on my worst day…
This world is still crazier.
Crazier.
On its best day, it is a hundred times more crazy than me on my worst day…
And that’s a fact ,Jack.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Take it to the bank.
This little piggy…
(he lacked pretention, Bukowski, he lacked that air of a “writer”… That’s why you like him)
Yeah…for sure…
He never bought into that “special” lie…
And there’s lots of Golden boys and Golden girls out there, with the population numbers being what they are, you will have special ones…
But coming up with guitar players, in a nowhere town… They all thought they were special.
(yourself included)
Yes.
Deep down.
It takes a good while to let go of that.
To get to the place of purity, without dancing.
Without dancing for all of them…
Without jiggling keys to oceans of babies..
It takes a while, to not care.
(at what cost?)
Nothing.
It was natural to the path I was headed down.
There was only one event, one scenario, that was not natural..
That I didn’t expect…
dawn 