Free Screams From the Balcony by Charles Bukowski Page B

instruments are played by human beings and that the human voice is just another instrument?”
    Which is a pretty damning argument, but I still say the voice is more direct , and that something is gained (not lost) by letting it come down through the fingers (violin or piano). Which is essentially why I am ashamed of the one or 2 drunken phone calls g.d. put through to you: because I had only the voice and the voice could not say, never damn can. [* * *]
    And what my bottle bloody knife fireblast friend said was right: I am glad there is space between us, so that if I am a phoney or a coward or a rotten human being you will jes. christ never know it
    because all you see is a sheet of ape ass paper
    and you don’t see me
    or what I really am—
    which is not much,
    but which is me and which is working toward some saliva and red end of everywhere, and which is repeat the rift of the wind and I am tired, shit, and you are tired, listening…
    Only the boy who came in and spewed his venom on me, I have, for a long time, been trying to get rid of but did not want to hurt his feelings. I hope this does it. But I sense that he will be back. It is too good this way.
    But life does not always hold the Brutus within its sleeve. I was walking out toward the parking lot after the 9th race and somebody shoved 50 cents at me and said, “Can you give me a ride, my friend pulled out without me.” I asked where he was going and since it was a couple of blocks away, I told him to forget the 50 cents and get in. Turns out I had driven him in earlier in the year only I was drunker and didn’t remember, only that time I was a big winner and flashing broken teeth and mug. And so we talked, quietly, weary, smashed, as I tangoed in and out of traffic, slipping through with my sometime smoking car, and we talked the gambler’s talk, the rough days, the good days, but essentially nothing important. I let him off at Hollywood and Western. “Goodby, Hank,” he said. “So long, Nick,” I said, and I took a right, circled round and came back into the liquor store where I billed an I-owe-you for $11.50.
    Now, this is not bad, It adds up into living. No great words. Nothing. But somehow good. How can you explain it? [* * *]
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    [To Jon and Louise Webb]
    April 1, 1963
     
    [* * *] I agree with you on the Creeley, but am not too amazed that a lot of people don’t. They believe you have pot-shotted him, but they seem to forget that you have published him and his , plus their theories. You are going to hear a lot of stuff about how there were always “schools,” and you are going to hear some big names of the past mentioned as proof of those who have created and created damned well in spite of (or, they would like to say, because of) schools. What these good people forget is that the past does not prove the present. The past may have called for schools, whether they were created for self-survival of IDEA , or whether created by critics. The present, I feel, does not call for schools; with our speed-up of transportation and communication, it MIGHT become apparent to some sensible & feeling people that we touch too much , we are now slowly becoming ground down to the same thing. The only hope of survival is to escape as much as possible from the mass-hypnosis, of which the “school,” be it Black Mountain, Kenyon and/or etc., is still part of the grouping-thing and too many men in a closet (or make it bed for some of them). The only defense of a bad work is to create a better work, not to have some disciple of a school come to bat for you. In some places it helps them to teach English; in other places they gather as homos or smokers of pot. They need the trunk and then they feel pretty good as branches. Politics is often, it seems, involved with Art; and as Politics often stinks, their creations do too. If I want to join a Lonely Hearts Club I will go to a genuine place where I might make some old woman happy. Otherwise, all I need is a