Don't kill yourself

"I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room."

Blaise Pascal

There is a lot of deep-breathing involved in a life that includes chronic pain, lost friendship, addiction, hangover, disappointment and the search to get yourself cured by exercise, wrestling with self-doubt and taking advice from those that can see from outside of your wretched subjectivity. You find yourself in another universe at times. You find yourself anxious and longing for the comfort of your former rut. You find yourself yearning for another one and are afraid that you'll seek out the same old path, but with different faces, voices and stranger bartenders. You're tempted to rip away from the whole game. Drop all your crutches and crawl away from home to see what the universe will throw at you without all your shields and masks.
Skip town, quit the job, shave the head, sell the car and walk to somewhere else.

"Basically, I have one feeling...the desire to get out of here. And any other feelings I have come from trying to analyze, you know, why I want to go away...See, I always feel uncomfortable and I just want to...walk out of the room. It's not going to any other place or any other sensation, or anything like that, it's just to get out of "here."

Richard Hell (from a PUNK Magazine interview with Legs McNeil that was quoted from in the oral history by McNeil and Gillian McCain PLEASE KILL ME)

If you're lucky you know that all of it will pass and your vision will clear. If you're tortured, you don't know. You are certain that there are no options.
The flood of emotions is like an acid trip. If you haven't had the experience before, you panic. You start thinking "crazy thoughts" and if you don't have anyone to talk to that can tell you that the moment is indeed not all, you jump to extreme conclusions.
There is no light at the end of the tunnel; or if there is, it is the afterlife calling you to the other side.
I don't have any answers for those that have mental illness or behavior issues. Get help and be good to yourself. There is something: BE GOOD TO YOURSELF. You can be an asshole to others and treat them unfairly and you can also do the same to yourself. I think there should be a new and all-encompassing commandment to take the place of those ten that we've seen handed about and "down" to us: DON'T BE AN ASSHOLE!
I was in St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan once. There was a mass going on one morning, but there were people milling around taking pictures and sight-seeing. Anyway, I was turning around from wherever I was pointed when a baglady grabs my sleeve. I look down at her and she asks me if I read the Bible and I told her that I had, indeed, read the Bible. She says, "That's good. Then you should know the only commandment!"
"Yeah? The golden rule, you mean?"
"No, Dummy! The only commandment is DON'T BE AN ASSHOLE!" and she kind of harumphed and walked away.

"In all probability committing suicide would be the proper course, yet I find myself reluctant to take the final step. Periodically all through my life I've contemplated doing away with myself---either by jumping from a tall building or preferably shooting myself through the temple. At moments such as the present I find my existence overwhelmingly futile and know it is pointless to continue on when there can be no change.
It is simply that I haven't the nerve. I lack the drive required to push myself over the brink. It is like all I do---at the crucial moment I fail. I am as negative as one can imagine and have always found it more difficult to finish even the simplest task if the opposition becomes even slightly evident. Certainly there can be no wrong in eliminating a nonentity.
What is particularly strange to me is that---although I feel little other than loathing of myself and fully recognize my insignificance---and am weary---miserable---discouraged---and wish for death---way down inside something remains stubbornly alive."

Suicide by Herbert Huncke from his journal and The Herbert Huncke Reader

So, people are in pain and misery and they freak out and think that they can't live inside their own bodies and decide to end their lives. It is heartbreaking stuff leaving friends behind to deal with the mess, even if it is only emotional.
I may end up having more to add to this, but I write it only as an introduction to this fascinating documentary. Enjoy and notice the mention of St. Louis and an unnamed bridge in one of the stories. Oh and Jay Farrar pops up on the soundtrack singing Son Volt's World Waits for You from their 2005 album Okemah and the Melody of Riot.



...and read this if you haven't. The posts are interesting and shed much light on the extreme emotions surrounding the act of suicide. It can even piss of the advertisers!

...and finally, here is a song that our friend Hunter S. Brumfield penned, recorded and that later became a fan favorite of the band Bad Folk (reprinted here from Tim Rakel's blog, Trashcanvas):

The Laughing Song (lyrics by Hunter Brumfield III)

He's sorry that things turned out as they did, it's a god-forsaken shame
small was the box in which that he hid to temper his poisonous brain
he reached for the stars, came back with stumps (maybe stubs?)
in a downpour, yearning for rain (though i was told "urine" was the lyric, i thought "yearning" more poetic and gave Hunter credit for the ambiguity)
happiness got him once he hit bottom
gonna laugh his way through all the pain

Believe him it's easy to drink and be sleazy
as your conscience just limps along
mistaking freedom for license, he screamed in the silence
and his echo said boy you're all wrong
well, life is absurd, haven't you heard?
keep laughing boy, that's your best bet

Giggling Through Another Stupid, American Life

Sometimes, you get the idea that you are living a special life. You think you are on to something.
You are convinced that your existence on the rock is somehow a little bit better than the lives of the rest of the monkeys. You witness the beauty of a sunset or a car crash or perform, perfectly, a straight-set badminton victory. Perhaps you feel a little bit better about your status on the planet because you sat in on a jury that put away a guy who molested his step-daughter through her entire childhood or you performed a double mastectomy on a jive-ass transvestite. Sometimes, all it takes to feel like you are doing things right is to enjoy a sandwich. You bite into a concoction that makes your saliva perform like godcum on the first Sunday and you feel lucky. You can sit back sipping your Sanka and remember how you slammed it home after the give-and-go and Karen slipped your socks off.

Sometimes, you are an idiot. Sometimes, you get the wind knocked out of you by a 25-mile-per-hour, 295-pound psychopath because you forgot to raise your hand for the fair catch as you set to recieve the punt...and you realize you forgot to wear your cup. Most of the time, it is the little disappointments that will drive you nearer to the idea of practicing a series of little suicides or one big one.
Read the man: Bukowski.
-------------------------

The Shoelace

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 -
license 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.
light switch 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 piss 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.

so be careful
when you
bend over.

---------------------------

You find yourself crying at work one day and realize you are nothing like you thought you were and it all seems hopeless. Every second is another dagger set between your ribs. You want to go back to your youthful days of self-destruction and have visions of your grave or you dying, alone.

...and then, you don't know exactly what it is...somebody pisses you off or the world tilts slightly under a full moon...the waitress spills hot coffee on her tits and smiles instead of screaming.

Something cracks and you are able to see a way to go on.

...and this has nothing to do with anything, except it made me laugh.

Don't Try

SHOULD YOU TRY???


Check out this cool story about this grave by clicking here:

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994): A friend of mine recently found himself in the bustling metropolis of San Pedro, California, the whimsically dumpy harbor area of Los Angeles, famous for not really a whole lot else as far as I know other than being where the Great American 20th Century Poet Charles Bukowski is buried, underneath a modest in-ground marker that reads “Don’t Try.” This was, of course, the advice Bukowski gave, while he was still alive, to poets, writers, and everyone else looking to become the type of person that makes a city famous for being buried in it. But in death, I think it was his advice to humanity in general, his final pearl of wisdom imparted to mankind. Don’t try, at anything. Just be. There’s a certain amount of disingenuousness inherent in this statement; after all, when Bukowski was still just a alcoholic mailman, sending hand-copied manuscripts to magazines and publishers, he was definitely trying. And you don’t write as many poems, novels, and screenplays as Bukowski did during his life without putting out some effort. But just like the more spiritual epitaphs usually found on the gravestones of the honest Christian men, Don’t Try is more of the goal, the life’s lesson learned. It’s the advice Bukowski would have given to himself, a fittingly narcissistic thought for a man who made a career out of relating his sexual exploits, drunken loutishness and otherwise self-serving behavior. He was like Thoreau with a taste for booze, choosing the slums of LA, instead of Walden Pond, as his personal purgatory, with women and barflys serving as his woodchucks, ants, and squirrels. And like Thoreau, he didn’t remain there forever; after the slums had served their purpose he moved on, eventually living, and eventually dying, in the comparatively upscale San Pedro, a white wine-sipping old timer. My friend went to the graveyard to pay his respects. The people there had no idea what he was talking about. They finally looked it up, gave him directions and sent him out there; no historical monument, no literature about the life and work of the late great Charles Bukowski. Just a plot number. He found the grave, there with all the other graves. There was nothing spectacular about it. It could have been the grave of anyone, and I guess it is, as far as most people are concerned. Except it says, right on there. Don’t Try.

So you want to be a writer
by Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

___________________________________________________________

So, I have to think that Buk would appreciate this bit of drunken idiocy



So I know you can't see it through the glare of the flash, but it says something amidst the mispelled scribbles. Who is going to make this bumper sticker?

DON'T TRY
BUKOWSKI
TRY
BUKKAKE

Of course, it is disgusting, but can we not reward a play on words and the recognition of our most worthy poet?

Oh, you don't think he's culturally worthy?

I dare you to read this book and neglect his prowess!

THE PLEASURES OF THE DAMNED

...OR, YOU CAN PERUSE THESE OTHER VOLUMES:

Novels

* Post Office (1971)
* Factotum (1975)
* Women (1978)
* Ham On Rye (1982)
* Barfly (script) (1984)
* Hollywood (1989)
* Pulp (1994)

Poetry

* It Catches My Heart in its Hands (1963)
* The Days run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969)
* Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (1972)
* Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame (1974)
* Love is a Dog from Hell (1977)
* Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit (1979)
* The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1996)
* Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories (1996)
* Bone Palace Ballet (1998)
* what matters most is how well you walk through the fire. (1999)
* Open All Night (2000)
* The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps (2001)
* Sifting the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way (2003)
* The Flash of Lightning Behind The Mountain (2007)
* The People Look Like Flowers At Last (2007)
* The Pleasures of the Damned (2007)
* The Continual Condition (2009)

Short story collections

* Flower, Fist, and Bestial Wall (1960)
* Run With the Hunted (1962)
* Cold Dogs in the Courtyard (1965)
* Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts (1965)
* At Terror Street and Agony Way (1968)
* A Bukowski Sampler (1969)
* Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness (1972)
* Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (1972)
* South of No North (1973)
* Hot Water Music (1983)
* Tales of Ordinary Madness (1983)
* The Most Beautiful Woman in Town (1983)
* All's Normal Here: A Charles Bukowski Primer (1985)
* Portions from a Wine-stained Notebook: Short Stories and Essays (2008)

Nonfiction

* Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969)
* Shakespeare Never Did This (1979); expanded (1995)
* The Bukowski/Purdy Letters (1983)
* Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters (1993)
* Living on Luck: Selected Letters, volume 2 (1995)
* The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998)
* Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters, volume 3 (1999)
* Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondense of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli (2001)

"Our misery that afternoon, in which the smell of tears mixed with the scent of sun cream, was a reminder of the rigid, unforgiving logic to which moods appear to be subject, a logic that we ignore at our peril when we encounter a picture of a beautiful land and imagine that happiness must naturally accompany such magnificence."


"It is perhaps sad books that console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love."
from THE ART OF TRAVEL by Alain De Botton

_____________________________________________________________________________

“The sky is a buffoon’s attempt to conceal chance.”
Cassandra Stark Mele, “In Case of a Storm” 1995


To You, Cloudy Girl

Darkness and rain fall silently on rocks
where no brains understand.
Happiness is more than a mood, kid,
and a smile is less than bliss.
It’s a façade like the sunshine
that only clears when vapor’s gone.

The moon exists when it’s hidden.
There is more to nature than weather.
We are fools to hang our consciousness on
such thin, categorical tethers.
No revelation is there—no unseen truths,
just a continuing spray of babble.
Just remember, now please, don’t despair.
Our spirits aren’t lost when no longer here.

If we wait, another mood will pass.
My lips eclipse will no longer persist
and my teeth will show like blue sky.
If you stop to consider this inevitability;
if you wait for it to happen;
if you listen and watch as the process unfolds;
then your patience will be more than
any bottle could ever hold.

You will see that your waiting can carry you further
than any flittering flight of a fit.

So please try to find a hole in
the wall of balled up sounds
that tell you all is in your mind,
that completely dismiss the soul.

The mind is only a means.
Science is but a key.
But to find the way to unblemished truth
we must wait indefinitely.
For if we rush past all the clues
towards an end for which we lust,
we’ll miss the meaning of every connection
as gods smile while we wait for the bus.


Brett Lars Underwood, 1994

New Music Circle Announces 51st Season

New Music Circle Announces 51st Season Lineup

Contact:
Ryan Harris
New Music Circle
nmc.ryan@gmail.com
314-479-3001
www.newmusiccircle.org

But, what if...?
ST. LOUIS, MO - September 2, 2009 - New Music Circle opens its 51st consecutive season of innovative arts presentations on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2009 at the Mildred Bastian Theatre on the campus of Forest Park Community College. The concert starts at 7:30 pm, and features composer/performer James Hegarty's new work, eXscapement, showcasing solo pieces for piano, interactive robotic sound objects, and video projections. He will collaborate with his artist daughter, Anna on the project.

In addition to the opening concert on October 3, the organization has booked a full season of the finest new music talent from an international scope. Featured presentations include Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core (Oct. 9 - Sheldon Concert Hall), Rob Voisey's 60x60 Dance (Nov. 8 - MadArt Gallery), local electronic composer John Tamm-Buckle (Mar. 13 - Kranzberg Arts Center), and granular systhesis pioneer Curtis Roads (May 1 - Mildred Bastian Theatre) performing a new work FLICKER TONE PULSE with video artist Brian O'Reilly.

New Music Circle will also continue its CAMA program, now in its third season, by empowering five artists to produce new collaborative works utilizing local talent. The five CAMA artists for the 2009-10 season are Tom Hamilton, James Hegarty, Craig Hultgren, Kelsey LaPoint, and Van McElwee. They will help produce and present a variety of artistic adventures that blend new music, video, dance, and performance. Among the CAMA events, one in particular will feature a collaboration produced by Hegarty that blends the visual art and music of Zimbabwe Nkenya and Douglas Ewart. Ewart was a past president of the acclaimed AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), based in Chicago, IL. Nkenya, a multi-talented local improviser, has played and recorded throughout the United States.

A full listing of the season's events with detailed info can be found by downloading our newsletter at the following link: New Music Circular. Tickets to all New Music Circle concerts are $15 at the door, or $7 for students/starving artists. Season ticket memberships can be purchased for $80 (regular) and $40 (students/artists), and include admission to all 10 of NMC's presentations. For more info on tickets, please contact newmusiccircle.info@gmail.com, or visit www.newmusiccircle.org

Finally, in celebration of New Music Circle's 50th birthday - the 50th year since the 501(c)(3) was actually incorporated, NMC will host a birthday party at the Kerr Foundation Building on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2009. For more details, please visit our website.

NMC logo
New Music Circle is a not for profit organization dedicated to presenting a variety of cultural events emphasizing contemporary music and enhancing Saint Louis' reputation as a significant location for the creation and performance of improvisational and experimental music. NMC has presented a continuous season of concerts since 1959, making it one of the oldest organizations of its kind in the United States.

Sponsored by MAC, RAC, A&E

Hafiz and John Cage are good enough for today

The Five Days Remaining (by Hafiz)

The goods produced in the factories of space and time
Are not all that great. Bring some wine,
Because the desirables of this world are not all that great.

Heart and soul are born for ecstatic conversation
With the soul of souls. That’s it. If that fails,
Heart and soul are not in the end that great.

Don’t become indebted to the Tuba and Sidra trees
Just to have some shade in heaven. When you look closely,
My flowering cypress friend, you’ll see that these trees are not all
that great.

The true kingdom comes to you without any breaking
Of bones. If that weren’t so, achieving the Garden
Through your own labors wouldn’t be all that great.

In the five days remaining to you in this rest stop
Before you go to the grave, take it easy, give
Yourself time, because time is not all that great.

You who offer wine, we are waiting on the lip
Of the ocean of ruin. Take this moment as a gift; for the distance
Between the lip and the mouth is not all that great.

The state of my being – miserable and burnt
To a crisp – is proof enough that my need
To put it into words is not all that great.

You ascetic on the cold stone, you are not safe
From the tricks of God’s zeal: the distance between the cloister
And the Zorastrian tavern is not after all that great.

The name Hafez has been well inscribed in the books,
But in our clan of disreputables, the difference
Between profit and loss is not all that great.

-Translation by Robert Bly


...and, of course, on days like today, I think of Bukowski who wrote about days like today. He said that it is good to fall asleep behind the sofa for a couple days. Lie around in the dark for a couple days. Take time for yourself. Let the juices replenish.
You have to do it,you know?
If for no other reason than to remember what a crazy, fucking life you live and how mad and beautiful it all is when you let it be.

Post-festival moans

Just survived another crazy weekend of bartending and rock n' roll and thought to share this piece that was written after another crazy weekend behind the bar.

Oyster Festival, Saturday Night, 2006
You had the winner last night.
I commended you this morning
as I woke myself up laughing
on my lonely mattress
in my South Side flat.
We were side-by-side
amidst a sort-of war,
battling glasses and masses
who wanted more beer,
more shellfish,
more vodka.
"Give me more delusion
ten minutes ago",
their faces said.
A man the size of two Coke machines
was banging a less-fortunate patron's
head off the bar above us,
unbeknownst to us at the time.
Soon he would threaten to send
a manager into the afterlife.
But downstairs, you said that you
had a serious problem.
I, in my selfish-brood, said that
I kept imagining that I might
carve up people's faces
with the remnants of a broken
bourbon bottle.

Earlier an off-duty co-worker,
drunk on scotch, had smashed a
glass of straws against a pillar,
showering the bar with shards of detritus.
He did so despite the fact
that the brewery's owner was sitting
next to him.
Welcome!
Said the chards to those sitting
with ice that would never melt
in their drinks
on their clothes.
Thankfully, not in their eyes.
But you, sensing a need to lighten the mood,
said,
"No, I have a serious problem.
I can't keep my hands out of my pants."
I insisted that you climb atop the
rail and lessen the crowd with your
lust, almost barking the order, in jest.

After that, the rest of the night
shed its gravity
and no one was shooting at us.
I knew that all was
quite manageable
even though we had lost quite a bit
of faith and hope,
plenty of bodily fluids,
including a little blood.
It was all quite manageable and
we could sort out our regrets
and do our second-guessing later
after double-douching the place,
locking the safe
and going to our reserved places of rest
to awaken in twisted sheets,
though mine were less twisted
than usual thanks to you, my friend.