The Words Keep The Pictures Honest

For me writing is so very close to photography and at times I find the line between the two almost indistinguishable. I write before, during and after I make photographs and there are times when a photograph only exists as words in one of my little notebooks. In fact I have dozens of books filled with these photographs and there are many times when an image lives best as a collection of words. A great writer whom I used to work for just after I graduated school once told me writing keeps you honest. Last night I enjoyed reading Hunter Thompson's thoughts about writing in his book of essays Songs Of The Doomed. I always read Hunter Thompson as fast as I can, somehow it makes it better, his writing makes more sense and at times has new meaning when read that way.



"But until the [Hell's] Angels I had always been writing in the same mold as other newspaper hacks and I thought that was the way to do it. With the Angels, however, there was a freedom to use words. I'm a word freak. I like words. I've always compared writing to music. That's the way I feel about good paragraphs. When it really works, it's like music. In sportswriting, you have the freedom to use really aggressive words. There's a whole breadth of vocabulary. The Angels gave me that same feeling, like hot damn, the thing was rolling right in front of you. You could touch them on their cycles, you could hear them, and you could see the fear and fright in citizens' faces. And so I took that first $1,500 and went out and bought a motorcycle. At that point it was the fastest bike ever tested in Hot Rod magazine. And then I destroyed the son of a bitch.

I found out then that writing is a kind of therapy. One of the few ways I can almost be certain I'll understand something is by sitting down and writing about it. Because by forcing yourself to write about it and putting it down in words, you can't avoid having to come to grips with it. You might be wrong, but you have to think about it very intensely to write about it. So I use writing as a learning tool."



I think the true test of how cohesive a body of work is, if it really works and the images flow from one to the next and the group as a whole performs how you the photographer, the creator, intend it to is when you write that statement. When you put it in words what the project represents or embodies, it is the words that the images have to stand up to. It is the words that make it complete and allow you to see the work in a whole new light. The words keep the pictures honest.

My Friend

I loved bar room fights.
I fought the biggest meanest men
I could find.
the patrons thought I was
brave.

but it was something else, something
that walked and slept and sat with
me. it ate with me when I ate,
it drank with me when I drank.
I saw it everywhere: in loaves
of bread, on the back of a mouse
running up the wall, I saw it through
torn window shades, I saw it
in the bodies of beautiful women;
I never saw it in the sun but I saw it in
insects; and I saw it riding in buses
and trolley cars;
I saw it in the dresser drawer when I
pulled it open,
I saw it in the faces of
bosses with their dumb wet lips and
little rivet eyes: blue, brown,
green;
I heard it in the click of timeclocks,
saw it spread like powder across the
faces of my landladies;
I saw it it on the bar
stairways
leading to the 2nd
floor of some rooming house in
Houston, New Orleans, in St. Louis,
in L.A., in Frisco;
and I saw it in the doorknobs and I saw
it in the rooms, sitting on the
beds
waiting nicely...
and in some bar after hours of drinking
somebody says, "hey, Hank, you
ever tried Big Eddie?"
Big Eddie grins, I see it in his
teeth, I finish my beer,
nod at him, get up, walk to
the rear entrance, Big Eddie and
the crowd following, and outside
I see it in the moon and the
bricks
as the patrons lay their bets
I am the underdog, and as Big
Eddie charges I see it in his
feet and on the buttons of
his shirt and I hear a horn
sound somewhere far off, and
it's as decent a thing as a man
can know.

-Buk

The Sounds I Hear At Night

Every night like clockwork I hear these sounds:

Midnight- A rusty metal storefront gate coming down slowly
1am-4am-Reckless cabbies driving too fast over the huge sunken pot hole and scraping the manhole cover at the end of it
4am-Motor City pulling down their rusty metal gates quickly
6am- My neighbor slamming his door shut on his way to work and who always seems to forget something and then re-slams the door



Listening

It was a night like all the others. Empty
of everything save memory. He thought
he'd go to the other side of things.
But he hadn't. He read a little
and listened to the radio. Looked out the window
for a while. Then went upstairs. In bed
realized he'd left the radio on.
But closed his eyes anyway. Inside the deep night,
as the houses sailed west, he'd woke up
to hear voices murmuring. And froze.
Then understood it was only the radio.
He got up and went downstairs. He had
to pee anyway. A little rain
that hadn't been there before was
falling outside. The voices
on the radio faded and then came back
as if from a long way. It wasn't
the same station an longer. A man's voice
said something about Borodin,
and his opera Prince Igor. The woman
he said this to agreed, and laughed.
Began to tell a little of the story.
The man's hand drew back from the switch.
Once more he found himself in the presence
of mystery. Rain. Laughter. History.
Art. The hegemony of death.
He stood there, listening.

-Raymond Carver

It Takes Americans To See The Absolute Worst Before They Can Identify A Problem: A Required Reading List

Walker Evans....from the cradle to the factory to the grave.

"Worried that you are falling behind, not living as well as you once did? Or expected to?
That you are going to have to work extra hours, or take a second job, just to stay even with your bills?
That the company you have worked for all these years may dump you for a younger person?
Or that the pension you have been promised may not be there when you retire?
Worried, if you are on the bottom rung of the economic ladder, that you will never see a middle class lifestyle?
Or, if you are a single parent or part of a young working family, that you will never be able to save enough to buy a home? That you are paying more than your fair share of taxes?
Worried that the people who represent you in Congress are taking care of themselves and their friends at your expense?
You are right. Keep worrying."

-A selection from America: What Went Wrong by Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele, Pulitzer Prize winning reporters of the Philadelphia Inquirer.




America: What Went Wrong is an expanded version of a nine part series originally published by the Philadelphia Inquirer in October 1991 and while written nearly 20 years ago this brilliant journalism uncovers how the politicians and dealmakers on Wall Street have rigged the game to benefit the rich, while the middle class and everyone else remain powerless and sink deeper into the bottom economic brackets. This book is perhaps one of the most relevant studies out there in terms of providing a back drop to where we are RIGHT NOW and how we got ourselves into this mess. The politicians and executives have been playing with a marked deck for decades while we sit here watching Monday night football drinking Bud Light as we work our bodies and souls to the bone all for a hot and a cot and a seat on the express train to the graveyard. I am boiling inside.


I am currently reading these and recommend them to all:

-American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto, By Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh
-Tally's Corner, By Elliot Liebow
-Subliminal Seduction, By Wilson Bryan Key
-Code of the Street, By Elijah Anderson
-When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor, By William Julius Wilson
-The Death and Life of Great American Cities, By Jane Jacobs

Instead of providing an Amazon link to these titles, I encourage all to go to your neighborhood mom and pop locally owned book store and buy them there.

There's Blood In The Streets In The Town Of LA

Off to Los Angeles for some midnight journeys. This project is starting to take shape, but, alas, not without a price to pay, it has taken its toll on the mind and soul, I have seen such horror, human beings behaving in the most inhuman ways, crazed and unpredictable, at times I have been so afraid.


"there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late."

-Buk


While in LA, I will be paying homage my hero Bukowski and I hope to check out his former residence and of course visit his favorite race track. You are with me always old friend.

It's Gonna Be A Cold Winter

Photo by Max Ortiz / The Detroit News


Tuesday
About 5 p.m.: Reporter calls 911 and describes the body's whereabouts.
20 minutes later: Operator calls back asking for more specific directions.

Wednesday
4:43 p.m.: Reporter calls 911, waits and is disconnected.
4:46 p.m.: Calls again and explains that he called yesterday but body is still there.
4:55 p.m.: Fire Department calls back for specific directions and reporter offers to meet at the site.
5 p.m.: Fire Department arrives and the homicide department is called; recovery begins.

Read the LeDuff story HERE.

Reminds me of that Raymond Carver story when the fishermen find a dead body in the river but they do nothing and continue to fish all weekend.

Sounds That Eventually Turned Into Words

Lately I have really been feeling Sasha Frere-Jones' music reviews in The New Yorker. Whether it is a profile onLil Wayne or Bon Iver, Frere-Jones makes me interested and gives me reason to keep reading, I trust him and will follow him down whatever path he leads. This is good writing. From his recent profile on Bon Iver:

"It is easy to believe that his lyrics are 'sounds that eventually turned into words,' as Vernon once told an interviewer. In 'Flume,' the language works best as sound-I listened to the album a dozen times before I looked up the words. Among other things, the chorus contains the sequence 'only love is all maroon, lapping lakes like leery loons, leaving rope burns-reddish ruse.' Starting the album with some word salad turns out to work just fine, as it gives you time to adjust to the power of the singing."

I am dyslexic and hearing and listening (among many other things) have been a challenge my whole life. From listening to my mother's rules which I could never seem to get right, to all the voices all speaking at the same time at the art openings I can barely make out what the person next to me is saying into my ear: it is all just one big blur. Music has always been this way for me, one sound, and it takes great focus for me to listen to the lyrics, but when I do I hear that voice, it becomes the most intimate experience.

"And The Moon And The Stars And The World"

Long walks at night--
that's what good for the soul:
peeking into windows
watching tired housewives
trying to fight off
their beer-maddened husbands.

-Charles Bukowski


Off to Atlantic City for some night walks....

Madness. It Just Makes No Sense At All

Noel's frustration about the Magnum photographers' advice to young photographers collected by Alec for the Magnum blog has gotten me thinking. First off, I should be packing, I have to be out of my apt at the end of the month, but I am a procrastinator, so fuck it. Second off, no disrespect, no beef, I have no intentions of offending anyone or starting some photo blog blah blah gossip. With that said, Alec is one of the most generous and caring real deal guys in the game today and he must receive a ton of emails from young photographers seeking advice. I know, because several years ago, I was one of those young photographers writing him for advice. To this day Alec's advice has stuck with me over the years and through the challenges. Now I get emails from young guns asking me for the same advice. To be perfectly honest, those feelings of anxiety and uncertainty that are the theme in these emails, never go away, they just evolve and over time you become used to them. Whether trying to find photographers to assist for so you can pay your rent or feeling unsure how the critics are going to respond to your next solo show or trying to find new clients so you can pay the office space, assistants, retouchers, printers, etc; it never really ends no matter what level you are at, over the years I have discovered that is the one true solid thing about the game. Perhaps that is why there were so many vague answers, we are all always trying to answer the same big question in one form or another and we never really know what is next. As you climb the ladder, challenges don't somehow magically sort themselves out, in fact, Biggie's words couldnt be more true: "More money, more problems." That is the gift and curse of this life we have chosen, there will always be details to figure out along the journey. And of course there is the fear we all have (my greatest fear)....what if one day I just can't hack it anymore, the talent dries up and no matter how hard I try all I can come up with is just crap. It happened to Papa Hem and he put a shotgun to his head because he couldn't take it anymore. And speaking of Hem, this gets me back to where I started. Advice for young photographers.





And so I ask, what happened to the tough guy artists? Guys like Mailer stabbing people in bars, Buk drinking 5 bottles of wine during a poetry reading, De Kooning sleeping in the gutters, crazy Hem stepping into the ring with a bull thinking he was a matador and Hunter's days with the Hell's Angels. These guys are my heros. In my eyes the most important thing about being an artist is living. I wish I could go back to school now and read all the books all over again, listen to the lectures again, take Intro to Photo with Phil Perkis again, having lived and experienced what I have in the last 5 years. It would all make sense. But maybe the Gods made it this way and this is what keeps things interesting. And so I say: live every fucking second to the absolute extreme. These guys were brave and fearless and their approach to life was so vulnerably evident in their work. I tell the photographers who write me to live their lives, do as many drugs as possible, drink as much as you can, fall in love, have your heart broken, get into a fight, go to the hospital, take that trip to where ever it is that curiosity is leading you, make it happen, sacrifice everything you have to do it, jump off that cliff, don't look back, if you don't take that leap and risk falling (failing) you will never know what could be. Somehow I have been lucky and something has always caught me, and something will catch you too as it has caught the ones before us and will catch the ones after us. When Scorsesse made Raging Bull, he said he filmed everyday as if it was his last day and he would never shoot again. Those are great words, allow that to happen. I am a fuck up and I could never hack a 9-5 job for the rest of my life, I just can't, I am not built that way. And so I drift, I live this life as an artist, I get stressed the fuck out and most days I am hustling nonstop working my ass off, but everyday is a true gift, everyday I get to jump off that cliff. I figure the details out on my way down, the greatest line Jay-Z ever had was, "Difficult takes a day, impossible takes a week." You must give yourself to this life. And really it is all the same thing, my life is my love is my art. All of the times I have had my heart broken by the woman I love, the fights and the beatings I have taken in the bars, somehow just making rent on the last day of the month, waking up last New Years Day in an alley on top of a steam vent in New Orleans and then barging into the wrong hotel and kicking down the door of the room I thought was mine, almost being murdered, losing countless women and friends because of this thing inside me that has taken over me, this burning addiction to create, to do my art, whatever it is, let it happen. So my friends, young and old, the rookies and the seasoned veterans, the nobodies and the stars, I will see you all on the way down, and I will look you in the eye and smile because we know what it feels like to fly through that air...it is the greatest feeling in the world.


above pic-me in the emergency room getting things stitched up after a recent bar fight

Father And Son

James Wright and Franz Wright are the only father and son to win the Pulitzer for poetry. Franz has been one of my favorite poets for years and I have been rereading Walking To Martha's Vineyard all night. James and his son Franz had a tumultous relationship. James abandoned his family when he had an affair with writer Anne Sexton and dealt with alcoholism and depression most of his life. When Franz realized he too wanted to be a poet at 15 he sent his father his first poem. James replied, "I'll be damned, You're a poet. Welcome to hell.'' Franz also lived a hard life, a crack addict and alcoholic he spent years on the street before finally sobering up. Here are two from each Wright, in Franz's he references his father's poem in his last lines...


To The Muse

It is all right. All they do
Is go in by dividing
One rib from another. I wouldn't
Lie to you. It hurts
Like Nothing I know. All they do
Is burn their way in with a wire.
It forks in and out a little like the tongue
Of that frightened garter snake we caught
At Cloverfield, you and me, Jenny
So long ago.

I would lie to you
If I could.
But the only way I can get you to come up
Out of the suckhole, the south face
Of the Powhatan pit, is to tell you
What you know:

You come up after dark, you poise alone
With me on the shore.
I lead you back to this world.

Three lady doctors in Wheeling open
Their offices at night.
I dont have to call them, they are always there.
But they only have to put the knife once
Under your breast.
Then they hang their contraption.
And you bear it.

It's awkward a while. Still, it lets you
Walk about on tiptoe if you dont
Jiggle the needle.
It might stab your heart, you see.
The blade hangs in your lung and the tube
Keeps it draining.
That way they only have to stab you
Once. Oh Jenny,

I wish to God I had made this world, this scurvy
And disastrous place. I
Didn't, I can't bear it
Either, I dont blame you, sleeping down there
Face down in the unbelievable silk of spring,
Muse of black sand,
Alone.

I dont blame you, I know
The place where you lie.
I admit everything. But look at me.
How can I live without you?
Come up to me, love,
Out of the river, or I will
Come down to you.

-James Wright



Fathers

Oh build a special city
for everyone who wishes
to die, where
they might help one another out
and never feel ashamed
maybe make a friend,
etc.
You
who created the stars and the sea
come down, come down
in spirit, fashion
a new heart
in me, create
me again-
Homeless in Manhattan
the winter of your dying
I didnt have a lot of time
to think about it, trying
to stay alive
To me
it was just the next interesting thing you would do-
that is how cold it was
and how often I walked to the edge of the actual
river to join you

-Franz Wright

Happy Birthday Buk!

This one's for you buddy...you are with me always

Charles Bukowski 8/16/1920 - 3/9/1994


"Young In New Orleans "

starving there, sitting around the bars,
and at night walking the streets for hours,
the moonlight always seemed fake
to me, mabye it was,
and in the French Quarter I watched
the horses and buggies going by,
everybody sitting high in the open
carriages, the black driver, and in
back the man and the woman,
usually young and always white.
and I was always white.
and hardly charmed by the
world.
New Orleans was a place to
hide.
I could piss away my life,
unmolested.
except for the rats.
the rats in my small dark room
very much resented sharing it
with me.
they were large and fearless
and stared at me with eyes
that spoke
an unblinking
death.
women were beyond me.
they saw something
depraved.
there was one waitress
a little older than
I, she rather smiled,
lingered when she
brought my
coffee.
that was plenty for
me, that was
enough.
there was something about
that city, though:
it didn't let me feel guilty
that I had no feeling for the
things so many others
needed.
it let me alone.
sitting up in my bed
the lights out,
hearing the outside
sounds,
lifting my cheap
bottle of wine,
letting the warmth of
the grape
enter
me
as I heard the rats
moving about the
room,
I preferred them
to
humans.
being lost,
being crazy maybe
is not so bad
if you can be
that way:
undisturbed.
New Orleans gave me
that.
nobody ever called
my name.
no telephone,
no car,
no job,
no anything.
me and the
rats
and my youth,
one time,
that time
I knew
even through the
nothingness,
it was a
celebration
of something not to
do
but only
know.

-Charles Bukowski



"How Is Your Heart?"

during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
whores
I always had this certain
contentment-
I wouldn't call it
happiness-
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occuring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.
it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.
to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade-
this was the craziest kind of
contentment

and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror-
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.
what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.

-Charles Bukowski



"Friends Within The Darkness"

I can remember starving in a
small room in a strange city
shades pulled down, listening to
classical music
I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife
inside
because there was no alternative except to hide as long
as possible--
not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance:
trying to connect.

the old composers -- Mozart, Bach, Beethoven,
Brahms were the only ones who spoke to me and
they were dead.

finally, starved and beaten, I had to go into
the streets to be interviewed for low-paying and
monotonous
jobs
by strange men behind desks
men without eyes men without faces
who would take away my hours
break them
piss on them.

now I work for the editors the readers the
critics

but still hang around and drink with
Mozart, Bach, Brahms and the
Bee
some buddies
some men
sometimes all we need to be able to continue alone
are the dead
rattling the walls
that close us in.

-Charles Bukowski

The Lost Generation

Next month will mark the 51st Anniversary of Jack Kerouac's On The Road. On The Road marks such a signifigant American right of passage, the journey, the road trip, the lustful addiction to wandering. But the journey represents so much more than the mere trip to explore the country and along the way loosing part of yourself as you discover a new you, blah blah blah. It's about having the heart and balls in the first place to just pick up and leave, to really be ready and able to go forward without looking back, devoted and, oh, so loyal to the curiosity, lost doesnt even exist because you have no plans, no set destination, falling in love with the thrill and spontaneity of ending up where you end up. Where has the bravery and love gone? It seems like my generation is broken down on an abandoned highway. Besides the ridiculous notion of the "road trip" between college semesters, the journey along with everything that went along with it have been lost. My generation seems to care more about SAT scores, the name of the college you went to, having a job, being finiacially secure, safe, finding the right girlfriend/boyfriend, getting married, buying a condo, having two kids in a good school.....ugh. I never thought I would say this, but the spirit of my parents generation, the real On The Road guts, the heart and passion and commitment to a life that was everyday, not just let loose on the weekends, shit, man, they had it. They invented the protest, the stood up for what they believed in, they lived, they felt, fought, loved and cried, they didn't give a fuck what happened tomorrow because today was happening right now! Why is my generation too afraid to speak up, fight back, to live and love? Their whole lives have been planned out in some excel spread sheet and they start to sweat when in year 26 the chart says they are supposed to figure out what they what to do with their life, but, red alert red alert, they have no clue. The fact that Bush was even re-elected and everyone just rolls their eyes and talks about the ignornance and long term effects of his mistakes, what we have allowed this government to get away with, and no one does anything, no one is committed to actually making change makes me sick. You think waiting till next election is enough, to choose some canidate who is going to cowardly and strategicaly try to appeal to both the liberals in New York and California and the Evangelicals and those who believe in homeland security that rule those red states. Oh you mean the canidate who is smiling his or her way into the cockpit of the next departing kamikazee plane. Yes, the modern day protest is a police escorted and controlled flag waiving cliche screaming fiesta in which afterwards you can have a drink with your buddies and fake a sense of rebellious accomplishment, but that all changes when you walk into the office Monday morning. Is my generation ultimately content with trading in a life of emptiness and rules, with no real idea who they even are, no idea what it means to fight for something, to chase a dream, to even have a dream, to really feel and understand life's experiences for money, a car with leather interrior, the new fall season must have hand bag, to sit around on the weekend and drink light beer and talk about sports and politics and whatever other shit one can read in the newspaper because you dont have any of your own experiences or ideas to share, to wake up everyday and want to kill yourself on your way to work and come home every night and talk about nothing over diner as your third glass of wine begins to numb everything and perhaps even once a week you will get to fuck the same boring beautiful blond woman you thought you loved in the same four positions, over and over, until you just wish it was....DONE. Where has my generation drifted off to? Has the iphone, the new exclusive dunks, the new retro prohibition era themed bar with $15 drinks, myspace, the job your lifestyle and bank love but your soul despises killed us? Lets wake the fuck up, lets feel and live and act on impulse, do not think, think not repeat, lets move forward and make changes for us, lets get back on the road, lets believe in hope and change and do this together.

Jesus.

Well, folks, on that note I will be on the road for the next month or so and I will be taking a break from the blog. With internet access will come a post or two I suppose. All these blogs lately seem to be a lot of recycled shit, people copying each other, everyone talking about the same shit, doing things one way. Turn off the computer, stop reading the blogs for a minute (its making you stupid) and read a book, live your life, go to the bar and get a drink, start a fight, go pick up some chicks, flirt with some guys, take the train to a part of town you have never been before, stay up all night, try some new drugs, put down the camera and pick up a paint brush or write a story, have some fun and then report back in Sept. with some good stories.

Summer Reading

"Why did he kill himself, Daddy?"
"I don't know, Nick. He couldn't stand things, I guess."
"Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?"
"Not very many, Nick."
"Do many women?"
"Hardly ever."
"Don't they ever?"
"Oh, yes. They do sometimes."
"Daddy?"
"Yes."
"Where did Uncle George go?'
"He'll turn up all right."
"Is dying hard, Daddy?"
"No, I think it's pretty easy, Nick. It all depends."
They were seated in the boat, Nick in the stern, his father rowing. The sun was coming up over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning.
In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.

-From the short story "Indian Camp" by Ernest Hemingway

Tonight I Can Write

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tries to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

-Pablo Neruda

A Story About The Body

The young composer working that summer at an artist's colony, had watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost 60, and he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she made amused and considered answers to his questions. One night, walking back from a concert, they came to her door and she turned to him and said, "I think you would like to have me. I would like that too, but I must tell you that I have had a double mastectomy," and when he didn't understand, "I've lost both my breasts." The radiance that he had carried around his belly and chest cavity-like music-withered, very quickly, and he made himself look at her when he said, "I'm sorry. I don't think I could." He walked back to his own cabin through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the bowl-she must have swept them from the corners of her studio-was full of dead bees.

-Robert Hass

....and back to you C.G., hope you are feeling better

Searching For The Ghost Of Hunter Thompson...

In Vegas. Bad luck city, the land of fake tits, fake tans and fake smiles.

The Times Square Gym

One of my favorite books of all time is John Goodman's The Times Square Gym. There are not that many boxing photographs out there that do it for me, but, baby, these sing to me!






Pete Hamill wrote a wonderful introduction for the book in which he discusses one of my heros, Sugar Ray Robinson:

"Robinson had one other quality that the fans of the era had come to cherish and which remains essential to any good prizefighter. He had what the fighters call 'heart.' By 'heart,' they don't mean simple courage. They know that it requires a certain amount of courage simply to climb into a ring in front of strangers. The mysterious quality called 'heart' is about the willingness to endure punishment in order to inflict it. When a fighter is young, carried forward in the first great rush of his talent, knocking out everyone who faces him, his reputation still remains suspect. We won't know about him, the old timers say, until someone knocks him on his ass. And so 'heart' is about getting up. It's about seeing the cut above your brow, as Robinson did in his second fight with Randy Turpin, and calling on some secret reservoir of the self to dominate and win. The war veterans saw in Robinson the spirit of the warrior; anyone can be a hero when the other side is running away. But Robinson was never better than he was when fighting a tough opponent, never more dangerous than when he had been hurt. And when he did lose, beaten by the crazy energy of Turpin in their first fight, decisioned in a fight by Jake LaMotta, he handled defeat with grace."

The Beast Has Returned

The boxing matches on TV tonight bored me so I decided to do some digging in my piles and piles of magazines, newspapers, maps and whatever various randomness has found a home in The Monstropolous Beast. Recently I have been thinking a lot about artists and the other things they did, the efforts they are not known for (this will be a future post...stay tuned). I find myself returning to Mailer. At an anniversary party for all involved in the making of the film "Tough Guys Don't Dance," in which Mailer directed the film adaptation of his own novel, Mark Singer was in attendance and observes in this Talk Of The Town piece:

""Tough Guys' turned out to be the last movie Mailer directed, but not the end of his celluloid legacy. At one point, Leslie Shatz, the sound designer, described Mailer's perfectionist quest to capture the sound of a punch in the face. 'Norman said, 'The sounds of the punches in movies are all phony,' Shatz recalled. 'He wanted me to record his own punches. He was a boxer, of course. So we were in my cutting room with a portable digital recorder, and I remember thinking at the time, I'm watching Norman Mailer hit himself and I'm not stopping him. He hit himself at least twenty times-in the face and the chest-until we finally got it right. I saved that sound effect, and I've used it in about twenty movies since. I always tell other directors, 'You hear that? That's Norman Mailer punching himself. He's in your movie.'"

Norman, Enjoy The Next Life My Friend

Norman Kingsley Mailer
January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007



In one of his last interviews Norman Mailer, interviewed by Andrew O'Hagan for The Paris Review in the Summer 2007 issue, talks about reincarnation.

Interviewer: You believe in reincarnation. So what are you coming back as, Norman?

Mailer: Well, I'm waiting, right? I'm in the waiting room. And finally my name is called. I go in and there's a monitoring angel who says, Mr. Mailer, we're very glad to meet you. We've been looking forward to your arrival. Let me tell you the good news, absolutely good news, is you've been passed for reincarnation. I say, Oh thank you, yes, I really didn't want to go into eternal peace. And the monitoring angel says, Well, between us, it isn't really necessarily eternal peace. It can be a little hectic. But nonetheless, the fact of the matter is that you've been passed for reincarnation. Let me see, before I look and see what we've got you down for, we always ask people, What would you like to be in your next life? And I say, Well, I think I'd like to be a black athlete. I don't care where you put me, I'll take my chances, but yes, that's what I want to be, a black athlete. And the monitoring angel says, Listen, Mailer, we're so oversubscribed in that department. Everybody want to be a black athlete in their next life. I don't know now..I can't begin to...let me see what we've got you booked for. So he opens the big book, looks, and says, Well, we've got you down for a cockroach. But here's the good news: you'll be the fastest cockroach on the block.

Interviewer: Not bad.

Mailer: Reincarnation is the best evidence of God's sense of wit and judgement. God, I repeat, is not a lawgiver. He is a creator, and creators have judgement.



Mailer was the last of an exceptional breed. When artists were tough, brave and they were heros. They lived in a time when America was not ruined by television, celebrity sightings and people didn't walk down the street sipping $4 frappochinos. Mailer discusses the fall from grace of the American novelist in his O'Hagan interview, which on a side note I nominate and award as the best interview of the year. There shall be more on Mailer in this blog for sure...To Be Continued...

Happy Birthday True Man!

Happy Birthday Bukowski. You are the one man besides my dead grandfather that I wish I could have had a beer with. My father had his night in the 70s with Hunter Thompson in Houston when their night out drinking turned into a fight after Hunter threw a beer bottle at my father. You are a truuu man Buk and you will always live in my heart and be an inspiration to my work. I have found a friend in your writing for 14 years and there will be many many many more.





oh yes

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
its’s too late
and there’s nothing worse
than
too late.



Beware the average man, the average woman, beware their love. Their love is average, seeks average. But there is genius in their hatred, there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you, to kill anybody. Not wanting solitude not understanding solitude they will attempt to destroy anything that differs from their own. Not being able to create art they will not understand art. They will consider their failure as creators only as a failure of the world. Not being able to love fully they will believe your love incomplete and then they will hate you. And their hatred will be perfect like shinning diamond, like a knife, like a mountain, like a tiger, like hemlock their finest art.




blue collar solitude

picking up two six-packs
after work
to hell with dinner
going to the apartment
and stripping down
to your shorts
throwing your clothes
on the floor
climbing onto the bed
no shower
no bath
sitting up against
the pillow
and cracking open
the first tall beer can
lighting a cigarette
nothing to do
nobody to talk to
looking at the wallpaper
yesterday's dishes
stacked in the sink
look out the window
the room getting darker
open the second can
of beer
no wife
no tv
no children
sitting in your
underwear
drinking beer
alone
everything's gone
the foreman
the time clock
the grocery store clerks
the newspaper
the coffee shops
the phone rings
you listen
and listen and
listen
until it stops
another beer
hearing the breath
whistle up your
nostrils
wiggling the right
toe
watching it.




well, that's just the way it is...

sometimes when everything seems at
its worst
when all conspires
and gnaws
and the hours, days, weeks
years
seem wasted-
stretched there upon my bed
in the dark
looking upward at the ceiling
I get what many will consider an
obnoxious thought:
it's nice to be
Bukowski.