posted November 26, 2008 03:26 AM         

by Charles Bukowski

Tom Waits reading "the laughing heart"

posted November 26, 2008 05:30 AM         

"When you clean up the city, you kill it...
The Puritans, the Christians, they've cleaned it up,
they've dried it up, but no rose will ever grow there again."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imTaNy4w4-M&feature=related

Charles Bukowski talks of the death of Hollywood and the life of the streets
& bars of old Hollywood. [Clip from "Charles Bukowski Tapes" (1985)]

posted November 26, 2008 06:21 AM         

More Bukowski:

trailer of the bukowski documentary, "born into this":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94y4lApb-Fo

bukowski reading "the strongest of the strange"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auLjApC1Z2I&feature=related

bukowski reading "the genius of the crowd"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5ZmVIB-1YQ

bukoswski "the light of jesus"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-BPPHBeJCA&feature=related

bukowski "born into this"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrrj-BnjLqY&feature=related

bukowski "love is a dog from hell"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71zQRxGdLC4&feature=related

bukowski "the secret of my endurance"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCrn1LDDoRc&feature=related

bukowski "a report upon the consumption of myself"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJzFzcFpG54&NR=1

bukowski "only the truly lost"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmPmnepmZv8&NR=1

posted November 26, 2008 06:38 AM         

The Ordinary Madness of Charles Bukowski - Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niyvYhmqOXY&feature=related

The Ordinary Madness of Charles Bukowski - Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSGYvm4Lrwc&feature=related

The Ordinary Madness of Charles Bukowski - Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCBIr7XdPJw&feature=related

posted November 27, 2008 08:56 AM         

the shoelace
by Charles Bukowski.

a woman, a
tire that's flat, a
disease, a
desire: fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard...

it's not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he's ready for, or
murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood...
no, it's the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse...

not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left ...

The dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can kill quicker than cancer
and which are always there -
licence plates or taxes
or expired driver's license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink's stopped-up, the landlord's drunk,
the president doesn't care and the governor's
crazy.

lightswitch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
sears roebuck;
and the phone bill's up and the, market's
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out -
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it's
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.

then there's always crabs and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they're
your friends;
there's always that and worse;
leaky faucet, christ and christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.

or making it
as a waitress at norm's on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a carwash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady's purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of 80.

suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and china and russia and america, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
pot, except maybe one to **** in
and the other one around your
gut.

with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.

posted November 29, 2008 02:05 PM         

People are also so different on video/ in real life from what you imagine them to be from their work. I watched an interview with Grace Slick recently and thought she'd be really zany as her singing is so full of character - I am a huge fan of her voice. Well, I was most disappointed - she was SO boring - her expression barely changed, and the content of the interview sent me to sleep - I had to ask myself, "why am I bothering to watch this person talk, when all they've done is just sung a few notes in a song somewhere? Shut up!"

Then I listened to an interview with Sylvia Plath and her voice was *different* from what I expected it to be (actually, more expressive) - but I had a lot more sympathy for her because I myself speak in a nasal, clipped tone, and what she had to say was a great deal more engaging. But then I think she had more "onion layers" to her as a person. The sort of person you could get used to - more of a real, rounded person than a cardboard cut-out or a mouthpiece.