so you want to be a writer? (plus)

Two items. Charles Bukowski's "so you want to be a writer" and Bob Dylan's "Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie."

A writer friend sent me the Bukowski poem last year and I printed it and taped it to my desk for a while. I'm not sure from which collection it comes.

The Dylan poem is the last track on The Bootleg Series Volume 1. I posted the YouTube clip only for the audio (it was the only place I could find it on-line). Apparently an artist has made a scrapbook inspired by the poem. But if you have a history of motion sickness then I recommend taking your dramamine before viewing, or just looking away from the computer screen and listening (or opening the link to the text at bobdylan.com and reading along).

___________________

by Charles Bukowski

so you want to be a writer?

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.

________________


by Bob Dylan

Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie

I WISH I WAS A MOLE IN THE GROUND
by Bascom Lamar Lunsford, vocal and banjo
Recorded in Ashland, Kentucky, April 1928

Paul Muldoon site; Litquake

A big thank-you to Anthony for starting the blog. Here's my first contribution, the URL for the homepage of Paul Muldoon, one of my favorites:

http://www.paulmuldoon.net/

Also, if anyone's in the city this evening, the Litquake festival is hosting a "Litcrawl" in the Mission:

http://www.litquake.org/the-festival/lit-crawl/

for details.

cheers,

Ben

"The first rebellious act...refusing to sleep"

Above is an excerpt from the film Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen (1965). The film, directed by Roslyn Schwartz and Josef Reeve and produced by the Canadian Film Board, follows Mr. Cohen around his hometown of Montreal in 1964 while he is visiting "to renew his neurotic affiliations" from his current residence on the Greek island of Hydra.

I agree, as one reviewer pointed-out, the film does sometimes boarder on the pretentious. But I find it fascinating not least as a portrait of Mr. Cohen the famous Canadian novelist and poet but also as the man who would become the world famous singer songwriter.

In the last of the 5 YouTube clips for this feature, starting at 2:56, there is a scene where the filmmakers have invited Mr. Cohen to view the film. We see some of the film footage interspersed with Mr. Cohen observing and commenting. He says, "it's a very privileged thing to see yourself sleeping." In the footage, after he gets-up from his bed, they even film him taking a bath. At this point the film viewing Mr. Cohen comments, "Here in 1964 a man has invited a group of strangers to observe him cleaning his body." Then we see him in the bath inscribing on his wall "CAVEAT EMPTOR" and the film viewing Mr. Cohen says I wrote that "to let the man watching me know that this is not entirely devoid of the con." He also says, "I look much more like a man than I thought...I'm of a different style than I thought I was..."