Hi Tony again
the package is made
everything that I described in precedent e-mail is in
a good size parcel very well packed
in an Amazon cardboard I had kept for it
good luck uncapping it
just joking
should be easy
although lots of scotch tape
if I do not mail it tomorrow
it will be done Monday
by air mail
I sent some books in French
because I know you will get the drift
and one day you might be able to read some part of them
if you go in France for the promotion of you books
I don't know if I told you about a very good friend of mine
that is very well known in France and all French territories
is name is Marc Villard and he started as a poet of counter-culture
and after a few books he wrote some «Romans noir», dark thriller novels
and what he brought to that style was the presence of rock'n'roll and blues and jazz
so far he has published 20 books in the Gallimard Black Thriller Collection
which is a real consecration and they have recently made a graphic novel
with passages from a few of his books and it his very good
so your French publisher has got to know him
and 2 other very well known writers friends of mine
YVES SIMON
PATRICE DELBOURG
Go see the Yves Simon website
and click the video section
and listen to a song he made on Baskiat
he made the video himself and it his very sharp
this guy wrote more than 10 novels and as much albums
as far as Patrice Delbourg he is a well known journalist
and a poet with also one or two novels I think
I also made a book with one of the most well known counter-cultural writer
is name is Claude Pélieu and he died at more than 70 years old in New-York
I did mention him I am sure and we made a book together 2-3 years before he died
I told you he was part of the Beat Generation and intimate with Burroughs (he translated his books)
and although I was maybe harsh on him about his translations of Burroughs they are pretty good
and one has to take into consideration that he was a pioneer in translating a not so easy type of writing...
anyway
untill then
so far so good...
lucien
best of
NE CHERCHE RIEN AILLEURS QU'ICI: LES GITANS REVIENNENT TOUJOURS SUR LES LIEUX DE LEURS AMOURS!
Hi Tony....
I was reading «Songs from...» at Starbuck downtown Montreal and I had on the table all your books, the 2 covers of «Down and out...» etc... A girl from McGill University was doing her session paper or something and she glanced toward my table and kind of froze there reading the titles... I got shivers going thru «Stardust memories»... what a fucking well written piece of life, or is it fiction, or a bit of both: in any case the story hit me all the way to my soul! So good, so intense and so perfect: the rhythm, atmosphere, choice of words, images etc... So that is why this book is important and you will have to salvage all the stories in it, although I haven't read all of them I am sure that they are all as good as «Stardust» and they could maybe be the first part of a 2 part book of short stories... Bukowski style, or you know that girl writer who wrote Bare Back Mountain, can't get her name I think it is Proulx... anyway she wrote good short stories about Montana I think I read some of them... and short stories are in vogue, as hot as those «graphic novels»... So far tony you have a pretty good body of work around a very precise thematic: life on Low Life Street... «exile on Main Street«... and you should I think keep on expanding that body of work... although it in the heavy metal aspect of that hardcore life, there is sensibility and despair etc... You are to the addict life style what Bukowski was to booze, without destroying yourself in real life... you did not get caught in the Destroy Trip... thanks to Nico and Vanessa! But from what I feel so far from reading you I think you should dig more and more into that aspect, at least until you have the fell for it and love writing about it... after well you will see... or maybe you'll keep on going in that vein (no pun etc)... I had fun playing around with all kind of variation of Stardust Memories and Seizure Wet Dreams... mixing them together etc... Some were sounded pretty good...
So far you have manage to construct a universe that belongs to you... very personal and sincere and written in a literature quality... A lot of people have lived what you write about, like a lot of people did what I did... but who as the guts and talent and inspiration to lay it down on paper or on tape or on the stage! You are on your way to a great literary realization! You have found what is so hard to find and sometime impossible: a voice of you own, a tony O'Neill poetic singularity... and that is not a gift from the gods or God... it has to be stolen from the Devil, fucking the Muses till they scream »Please write your motherfucker!»... And we obey, we do it... I am talking here about the type of writing we do, and writers like Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Corso, Bukowski, Fante, etc... and Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Lautréamont, Breton, Tzara etc... it is another story for writers like I don't know, ... ? Rilke, Claudel, and all those poetic precious poet... the heavy-metal hard-core soul searchers, «star fuckers», brain blowers that we love to read and that made us write do not take writing for granted, like it is a birth gift given to the few... the writers I like went to hell and got the devil so scared that he ran by the back door... no forward address... gone! the writers I love are soaked in blood sweat and tears... I do not know if that make any sense but I tried to translate what makes me tick and adopt a writer for life... I know that from the start... It was that when I read the first paragraph of «Down and out...»... Hooked from the start, and addicted without any remorse...
Here Tony I will give you a description of the books I am sending you so keep this part of this e-mail:
1. Express pour l'Eden, my most recent book of poems... I am proud of it... good stuff... maybe you will get the feel of it just glancing thru it...
2. Roman d'amour, a very early book, a collector's item here and in France... out of print... a kind o f novel «à la Brautigan» but on the junk side of writing...
3. Chants de l'Amérique inavouable, all the lyrics I wrote... most of them recorded with Aut'Chose and Francoeur...
4. Des images pour une gitane, a book and a cd: love poems that I wrote for Claudine in the eighties and that were published in small number and in traditional typesetting and artisanal paper... I will give you the original editions when we meet, if we do and I hope we do... There was 3 books at the time and they are collected here with a lot of modification from the original poems and some never published poems... People went nuts when it was published: some said I had sold out with that soft poetry other said it was the mark of great writers (I tend to believe those were right!)
5. Chansons d'épouvante, a cd released 2-3 years ago... sold well in Quebec: a re-recorded the songs of my 3 first albums under the name Aut'Chose (my cration of a band) but the musicians that formed that new Aut'Chose were legend of alternatif rock of the nineties: Voivod (world known), Groovy Ardvaark, Grimskunk... We played the songs live on tape, with no arrangements: we kept the songs the same exactly... the sound was more powerful... And that edition of the CD is special it contains 2 cads second cod with a bonus song of Francoeur... that was a limited edition... can't find it no more...
6. Rimbaud: this pocket book edition was the first one ever published and the one that we all read and made us love Rimbaud... it is a legendary edition... we can still find some in used books library... not often though! That book carries all kind of memories for me... the jacket was perfect with that legendary drawing from Verlaine...
7. Le calepin d'un menteur, a very original little book, worth a lot of money for collectors... impossible to find like Roman d'amour... very vulgar exercise in writing... stuff written on napkins, piece of papers, matchbook covers etc... on the road from Mtl to Vancover to L.A. to Frisco and back and on acid booze junk etc etc... Very outrageous book...
8. Neons in the Night, choice of poems from all the books that were published at the time of the translation... it was well received... I think it either won a prize or a mention in translation... You will notice that the early stuff is very hermetic... we were creating a new language at the time... lsd poetry: new words, English words and expression, surrealistic effects, organic images etc... All the French poetry of the sixties and seventies in France and Quebec had to experience that intense exploratory language searching... while the Canadian and American poetry was more realists and still is... The closer to what we were doing are Philip Lamentia and ee cummings... and maybe other that you know better than I do or cannot think of now... In the eighties, I started to write in a more direct style and everybody followed my traces... And today everybody does what one wants, in all directions... there is a lot of weak and bad stuff... some think that all you have to do is tell a story and that is it... if the story is good great but if it is weak then it isn't worth shit! Myself and a few other are called by the literary academics the «californificateurs» (californificators) or the «américanistes»... we wanted to be part of the American counter-culture, the flower-power movement, de psychedelic revolution: that is why we had to use American words and expressions etc... The stuff is great when you smoke a joint or drop an acid tab... like listening to Sgt Pepper or The Doors... I am due for another translation of my stuff... I would not put the French version of the poems in it... I might put in that book those poems as the first part called Neons in the Night and a second part with new translations of poems not included in here... I have to work on that sometime...
so that it
hope you enjoy either reading some of the stuff or listening to some other or just look at it...
take care Tony
lucien xxx
rock-desire
I think that is it
I still have to send you a few other books
and 2 dvds...
I am reading POW-WOW, book of jazz poems by Ted Joans, and at the same time, SONGS FROM THE SHOOTING GALLERY/Tony O'Neill! Wow! Deux livres vraiment VRAIMENT et plus encore! Aussi je viens d'acheter BEATS, une «graphic history» de la Beat Generation: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso, Ferlinghetti, Lamentia, et d'autres encore... Dessins supers! Textes d'accompagnement de Harvey Peckar et Tulli Kupferburg... C'est «in» présentement les «graphic novels»... mais attention y'a du n'importe-quoi! Prudence: tout n'est pas à la hauteur des prétentions! Il faut lire ALCOOLIC de Haspiel... et aussi: HEAVY LIQUID de Paul Pope, le Jim Morrison de la bédée! Vient de paraître des inédits de Hugo Pratt: deux volumes géants de la série Sgt Kirk! À tout prix et coûte que coûte! et ici on peut se le garder pour soi le jeu de mot facile avec un «r» à se mettre là où vous appliquez la préparation ___ (8e lettre de l'alphabet)! C'est aussi cette lettre le titre d'un poème des ILLUMINATIONS de Rimbaud qui se termine par: «Trouvez Hortense!» Bon ben trêve de forfanterie littéraire et que le diable emporte le(s) reste(s) in a doggy bag, ça me rappelle la chanson du Godfather of Soul, j'ai nommé James Brown: «Papa's got a brand new ___»! -«Ben moé man cé pas mon bag...» qui dit l'autre à Johnny Frisson en train de se fixer des idées noires avec Wendy DeBreeze et Nancy Beaudoin au Motel Francoeur à St-Louis du Ha, en attendant le retour de Tony Truand et Poppy Highsmith... Moé je tourne en rond sur un trente-sous, waiting for the man, qui est en l'occurence une fille ldu nom de Flo DiVague, une fille des Hautes-Altitudes... ça va mal à shop! Moi, non plus! Prends une chance avec moé! J'chante comme le monde parle et rien moins! Get the show on the road... and the road on the show! Let it all hang out! Cé moé l'freak de Montréal... Ne cherche rien ailleurs qu'ici: les gitans reviennent toujours sur les lieux de leurs amours... Parole de menteur! j'allais dire Francoeur... ouvert! 24 sur 24 et 365 par année! Pas de vacances pour les déviants! No u-turn, point de non retour, pas de veine... veinard, tiens! Happiness is a warm gun... And I am gone, bound for Nowhere Land! Et puis tiens voilà Jojo Mendez, un gars de Los Angeles avec du bon stock plein les poches... sous les yeux! les cieux! Et tout le monde le sait: dieu est mort... ou pas fort! Kilroy was here! Me 2! Ciao, en attendant: silence, on tourne! e,t pas à peu-près! Love me tender: rock-désir ad infinitum!(scuze les fôtes,sôrré!)
Wow Tony!
So glad that all that is happening
very good man...
I wish I could go
and may be I will manage
Virginie goes to New York quite often
she has friends in Soho
to bad we don't have the TGV (Train Grande Vitesse)
we would be in NYC every week end!
but it's not for tomorrow
they have that in France
and they can go all over Europe
but here in Quebec
they are scared shit of the bad USA
so no way they gonna build a TGV
I bought a few books of Fante
-1933 was a bad year
-Wait until spring Bandini
-Full of life
-Ask the dust
Thursday I will mail to you a few things, more than a few… And if I cannot send you in one shot everything I will send the rest next week…
It would be cool if I could shake my ass and be at one of your reading in NYC… I will try…may be Virginie will get me off my ass1
Anyway, can’t wait to see «Notre-Dame du Vide»… Claudine will be able to read you… If you can’t send me a copy I will get it here… but may be you can ask the publisher to put me on his mailing list because I will talk about the book on my radio-net show and he can listen… So if you talk to him tell him to send me a copy and Claudine could also talk about it on her 3 radio shows one on FM and 2 on the internet… She in on «cnv.ca» just before me on Friday from 10 to 11 AM… and she has another radio show on the net but with a French station… and she is also on FM so tell him to send one to me and one to Claudine Bertrand… he can go and look into «mouvances.ca»… there are big names from France there and from all over the world… so he will get a buzz from that for sure when he sees name like: Bernard Noël, Arabal etc etc…
So talk to you soon again Tony!
Best of
Francoeur
Rock-desire!
Hi there Tony!
Thanks for reading my e-mails even if they are a bit long! Was at the library tonight and I was glad to see «Down and out…» on the shelve and I took one copy and put it in display on a table; I do that with the books of authors that I like! And with my friend’s books! A bit adolescent but what the fuck! I am 60… am I not returning to infancy?....
About the drawing on the door: what a fucking stupid thing to do... but like I was saying Buddhism is great but the human beings that practice it are, well, nothing more than human beings...
The Sokka Gakai is one of many organizations but it seems to be the easiest one to reach... there is good in it and there is bad (mostly when you meet the people... some are devotees and can't do anything without the organization and the master President Daisaku Ikeda, who is a well respected man etc... but what I like is the writing of the founder of that practice Nichiren Daishonin in the middle age... he was pretty far out and determine and sometime violent! he said that if you chant «nam myoho renge kyo» on and on you will attain the highest state of life etc... the Tibetans have their own mantra and the Vietnamese Buddhist... you see tony there is as many type of Buddhism as there is types of Christianism divided between Catholics and protestants etc so one has to fin the one that one likes and that one can use in his own life... for me the Nichiren Buddhism as the Sokka Gakai makes available for daily practice suits me fine but I stay away from the fanatics... as much as possible.. In this Buddhism we practice part of one well known sutra in the Buddhist canon: The Lotus Sutra… I have memorized the 2 chapters (2 and 16) that we chant in what we call Gongyo (the practice of the sutra) where we chant the Daimoku (nam myoho renge kyo) in front of the Gohonzon (a Sanskrit parchment that was written by Nichiren)… So I have all that in a place of my house ready for practice… I hit the gong (made like a boll) and light the candles and incense and make the offering (fruits and water) and open the Butsudan that holds the Gohonzon and start reciting the Sutra with a type of necklace of beads… Anyway I like all that ritual and objects etc… It is easier than going to Tibet or in other sect… The building of practice of the Sokka is modern and has regular chairs and you do not feel too weird… in L.A. the main building is on Wilshire and they have other center all over the state and the USA… Some other Buddhist organization despises the Sokka: jealousy, envy, doctrinal theology, etc… I do not give a shit about what everybody say I like the practice and from my study of Buddhism and believe me Tony I can teach Buddhism in any University in the world and that one is as good and as authentic as any… But like in any religion there are wars of words and beliefs… They have very good website… were everything is explained and defined… These days I am not doing the ritual morning and night but just chant the daimoku (nam myoho…) while I drive or walk etc… I was very busy in doing it for 10 years… And I met the top people of the organization and was even talked about in Japan (Home of that Buddhism and many others) because I was on a French TV Show about that Buddhism and everybody loved what I said… So I became king of a «star» very fast and some people hated me for rising so fast: again, human beings are human beings and that is why they are practicing and will have to practice a lot to become better human beings… myself included!
I bought 1 book of Fante: Ask the Dust. I will buy 1933 and Bandini tomorrow… it is the only one they have… and maybe another title: «…bunker» something! I love the idea of L.A. in his books so far… Can’t wait to start «Ask the dust» but I have to finish Jim Thompson’s «Heed the Thunder»… which is starting to be very very good… I read the «Alcoholics» and loved it… I will read all his books for sure and I have all of them but 4… People ask me why I read so much of these thrillers… I tell them because they are maybe the most intense writers in the world and sometimes the less known… Like tonight I bought «Nightfall» David Goodis… you cannot find any of his book… they had that one out of nowhere! Now listen to this Tony this guy, Jewish and gay, was hired by Hollywood after the success of «Don’t shoot the piano player» … But he hated it and went back to home in Philadelphia where he spent the rest of his life miserable and writhing some of the best books in the world and was directly published in paperback, it goes to tell how much he wasn’t respected! A French producer made a movie of that book and also of another one: «The moon in the gutter»… He is very dark, NOIR as hell… all his books were always available in French but you could not find them for the last 50 years… recently there is renewed interest in his writing… The same for Horace McCoy (They shoot horses don’t they)… and so many others… Chester Himes (how great his thriller with Grave Digger Jones etc) and all his other books about being black in America… He was publishing his first books in French in France because nobody in the States wanted to publish him! Man even today you pick up some of those university anthology and Kerouac is not in as a novelist! Nor a poet! So that should make you feel good tony and make you patient and more determined… even myself I am still not in some anthology… even if my poems and songs are being studied in all levels of schools… I am still left out! Some of that intelligentsia anthologist despises me for my popularity etc… In the States the intelligentsia has interest only for Hemingway and Faulkner and Wolf (Thomas) and Steinbeck…. I am not saying that I don’t like them…. But you know what I mean!
Like James Cain also no books of his on the shelves but may be The Postman… And John D Macdonald who sold millions of books… you only find «Cape Fear»… and what about the most despised: Mickey Spillane… Fuck no books of his but only sometimes vol 1 and vol 2 containing each 3 novels… there should be a vol 3 with 3 other novels… his 9 first Mike Hammer are unique… And Richard Stark? And Pronzini? And Marcia Muller? Now I did know much about these writers 10 years ago… but I started getting interested when I was re-reading Kerouac and was wondering what these guys were exposed to as far as books are concerned, and also when I read Chandler and Hammett and wanted to know more about that type of literature, the pulp area, hard boiled etc in relation to jazz etc…I even as far as reading The Shadow and Doc Savage… and even Spicy Detective Pulp Mag…. And I started to collect the original paperback edition with those superb covers... I have sixties edition of «On the Road» and «Dharma Bums«… tonight I bout the paperback edition of «On the road» the scroll version… cannot wait to start reading it! I forgot another writer of those thriller masterpieces and it is Shell Scott (pen name?)… And there is another one I forget the name but his hero was Race Williams and he is the originator of «hard boiled» literature…
I modern thriller writer is Ian Rankin… I like all his rolling stones titles…. And is hero inspector John rebus… I read so far 5 of his novels and The Black Book, the 5th, is the one that I like best… I read all Connelly, Harry Bosch novels are great… he likes jazz and I buy every album that he listens to in a story…
Rebus likes the Stones albums… Oh yeah… Tony… looks at this publisher’s books: HARD CASE CRIME founded by Charles Ardaï… all the covers are vintage inspired… good nostalgia!
Concerning your title… Sick City sound good… You are right about that Thompson novel, very odd but great anyway… and like I wrote before I am still looking for the thriller aspect of Jim Thompsons’s novels so far but I only have read 3… I am thinking of Patricia Highsmith who wrote 30 novels and is just being accepted as an important writer in the States… again we are not doing so bad with our writing Tony! Man 30 books, not to mention those 5 Ripley’s masterpieces… and no recognition in her own country for more than 40 years!!!!!! I made it big in Quebec and a little in France… but I am nobody in the world… that depresses me sometime… But it is my karma: a rock-poet pop-star in a small country!
I hate methadone… I heard about subutex… but I would have to reduce my dose and for the time being no way I can to that without risking the relapse into heroin… I love the stuff so much… I miss it… And I am mad at myself to have gone so high on methadone that I cannot feel H anymore… I shot a point a month ago and got a good buzz in the head but after that not much… I would have to stop the methadone for 2 days then shoot some H and see what it does! But I am not there… Ibogaine for sure I did a research on that and I wanted to try it but did not know where to go… And I am not sure about the result… I will one day look more into it because I guess I will have to maybe get off methadone… but the truth is that I cannot risk going down… I went down a lot 18 months ago… from 165 to 65 with no bad feelings… but then I felt like trying H and I went back on my 165 fast… And being on methadone keeps me from antidepressant! That is why I went that high on methadone to stay away from the antidepressant that my doctor wanted t me to take… and no way! I also hate that AA bulshit… I talked a lot about it on radio showing the lies and contradiction… the whole concept of sickness is a lie and so depressing when they say that there is no cure… and that God is the only way… and the prayer hand in hand and the godfather and the telling the sharing in front of the group I hate it… and there are other groups that are criticizing AA openly now… you could not have done that 10 years ago… they are now advertising on TV and radio and one of the sacred rule was never to do that: it says «no soliciting» or something like that… it is a sect and nothing more… all the people I know that are in that are like in a sect… they speak the doctrine they teach it they live it they dream it… someone told me I would not read the same book once I was in it for good and I told him well thanks for warning me I’ll make sure I stay away from you people… if you are scared of books you are very week people and I believe now that yes you are sick! No cure for you guys! Stay there… they even go in AA disco and club… and leave their wife or girlfriend to go out with a girl from the meetings… and they talk at Dunkin Donut till 3-4 in the morning smoking cigarettes after cigarettes and they go home smelling like shit! Worst then when they were on the skid… Fuck they and good if it does well for some of them… some people I know saved their lives going to meeting but they lost their drive, torque… and became boring! Fuck that!
Next time I write I will tell you about French Quebec literature, English Canadian Literature etc… a little crash course on the subject… Thanks for all the info’s you are giving me and the things to look into… I really appreciate it and make the best of it believe me!
So enough for now…
I will go and read and watch rerun of Magnum PI (I have the same Ferrari… same year same color…also have a Delorean 1981…not much of a car but a great looking one… stainless steel body… and I have a Lotus Europa 1969, a Porsche Carera 1988, a Fiat Spider 2000 1981, a Triumph TR6 1974, a Mustang GT Fast back (like the one in Bullitt with the plate: California Bullitt 1967), and a Porsche 944 1984 red (Virginie was almost born in it… I’ll tell you the story sometime)… If I find the time I’ll send you the pictures of those cars and of my bikes… A pity and a shame that I haven’t driven them for 5 years… they are all over in garages and cost me a fortune to maintain and etc… I might sell all of them before I get to old... my car friends all want to buy them because I have mint cars and they were all showed on TV here and in France… it is part of my legend here in Quebec… the only car that I did not buy was a Corvette Stingray split window 1966… my passion for cars stopped just before I had the time to buy it… and also I started smoking smack… I must have forgotten one car I am sure… memory weak! Did I love to drive those cars in the country smoking grass…? But you know Tony it is a full time occupation and while I was into that I was not writing or reading… only in garages with car collectors… who are mostly jerks… some have real class but they are the few! Either obsessed people or pretentious or very boring!!! I even bought my first car with a grant for a book in 1981, that I still have, and there’s the one I forgot to mention: Corvette 1981, beige, glass top… I didn’t even have money to put gas in and my guitar player at the time Alan Lord lent me money for the gas… We smoked a joint and laughed our ass out! After that I bought them like you buy t-shirts… oh yah I also have a song « Mercedes 1987(for the Joplin O Lord…»)… I made a lot of money I spent a lot and too much on coke… more than 100,000 on that shit in less the 18 months and close to 200,000 in 2 years and a half… easy to make the calculation: between 2,000$ and 3,000$ each weekend| I was earning 1,600$ every week end in discos, paid in cash and it all went into coke… at the time I had my own TV show Sunday night «Le Blues à Francoeur» and was doing the drive home in the number one radio in Montreal and doings the disco paid in cash plus adds all over etc etc… it lasted 12 years… I saved money although I spent a lot… I am not rich but I could have been… I missed my chance because I loved the fast life too much and because I am a poet and fuck Wall Street… Most of the people I know who became rich saving money and investing etc are dull, or sick or dead! So I guess I did the right thing… You know Tony, Celine Dion could buy me 1,0000 times but I was there when she started and she was poor and I helped her and she still remembers those days and kisses me hard every time she sees me… I was driving my Corvette at the time and she was young and very impressed… But now man I am a poor man compare to her! But she will not be studied in schools and will be forgotten when she dies… but us Tony, we will stay forever… there will always be a Tony O’Neill book lying somewhere for someone to read… and here I am not taking into consideration that you could come a best seller author… and if you do not your books will be legendary! But you have to keep at it… and write and write and write… do not loose time Tony… keep on writing: poems, novels, notebooks dreaming etc etc… I wish I could write novels like you… I envy you much… I am slowly re-reading «down and out…» and I am amaze of how easy it seems: that is the magic of a great writer…make it look easy…well sometime we find also great writers who make it seem hard… ee Cummings for instance or Proust…or Barthes… or Joyce…
Ciao
Lucien
Take good care my friend!
Great e-mail!!!!
Fisrt, Am I a great fan of Mickey Rourke... man what a comeback and he has that Chet Baker ravaged look, looks like he has been on junk for the last 10 years... and the clothes he wears kink of zuit-suit and pimp... if I would be 2- pound slimmer I would kind of dress a bit like that for my shows although I am so used to my urban cowboy style... but I have grown those sideburns gypsy style long and thin... I have to see The Wrestler... I have been raving about it since I saw Rourke on tv talking about it!!! He is in the Brando and Nicholson league... with Depp, Penn, and some others... About FAST AND FURIOUS, you had the chance to see a trailer... I did not! Anyway it was an evening with Virginie... I just drove her to a friend's place... very rich people that I do not know... She has her crowd and is doing great!
You know Tony I was in the street when I was 14, in 1964 or something and in New York, a run away from home, probably one of the first... and the youngest beatnik in Greenwich Village! I made it by myself... with a little bit of help from some friends and mentors... but mostly by myself... If I had been in the States or in France I would be filthy rich! I managed to make the most out of a small place like Quebec... All those cars and bikes and other stuff that I own and that house and stuff in California is great to have, although I do not enjoy them anymore... my life burn out and methadone down and you know I paid my dues and it has taken its toll on me... Luckily I still look ok, do not look 60, do not feel like it, never was in hospital... but my soul is so tired and old... I was told that I am a very old soul at the end of my reincarnation... Maybe... and the concept of «soul» is not even Buddhist... it is Christian... And I despise all that judeo-christianism... but I had Virginie baptized... because I belong to catholism... hate it but I am what I am and was born in that religion... I do not drive my cars nor my bikes anymore... sometimes I go and look at them, smoke a joint and remember all the rides that I did... Today I saw a clip on TV about surfing in California and I almost cried... I was surfing a lot in the past...well up to 6 years ago... but after H and methadone all that lost its appeal... or I lost the urge to do those things... drive and surf... and even travel... I was in France 4-5 months a year and in California 3 months a year... Haven't been to France since 6 -7 years and California 3-4 years... I was there last summer because Virginie made me go... It's like I am in my bubble and I am kind of happy there but the Francoeur that I was still comes and is hunting me... and I have spasm of nostalgia... it hurts so much I want to cry or scream... but the methadone keeps me in line... me the rebel... the Freak of the Underground... kept in line by a substance... well you got to go with your karma and destiny... there must be a reason behind that... If I am there and brought me there... It has a meaning, a «raison d'être» and I have to go along with it... I never fought the impossible... always was wiser and I am still there...
About the Sokka Gakaï it is a great organization... but it is made of people and you know what and or people are... but the teaching and practice is great...Tina Turner and Herby Hancock are members... they have centers all over the world and are despised for that... other Buddhists say that it is a millionaire sect... But they make it possible for anyone to practice without having to be a millionaire like Richard Geere and have the luxury to go to Tibet with the Dalai Lama... or having to renounce everything, family and friend and career and go to a monastery in the mountain... The Sokka makes it possible to practice wherever you are... Anyway it did me good for 10 years when I was practicing every day, morning and night... and loved it... reciting the Sutra of the Lotus in Sanskrit... and the mantra: NAM MYOHO RENGE KYO... They have a website so take a look... It is a very personal choice and I made it but the after 10 years I got sloppy under H and stop the practice... but I still light the candles and make the offerings and burn the incense... and it makes me feel connected to something greater than this reality... But the best practice is the love of our child.... Loving Virginie change my life... I would probably be dead had she not come into my life! So, so far so good... I guess we have the life that we make for ourselves... but I have problem with that when I think of Africans etc... And all the misery in the world... but Buddhism has a better explanation of all the religions... it is not even a religion: but a philosophy... I God exist and he is all powerful he must be mad or vicious to permit or better to have created all that misery and if a Christian says that he gives us liberty as the best gift of all I say well if he is all powerful how come he give to a being of his creation the choice of good or bad when he perfectly knows that that being cannot make that choice because he has created him imperfect and knows that he (us) cannot make the right choices... tank about that I say to Christians «friends» of mine! Buddha has created nothing...
and he is not powerful but he has found some truths and has taught them... nothing more... All the beats were into that... and Nietzsche said it was the most intelligent and rational of all religions! Him being an atheist!
Well o well... Here is a little anecdote... I read every day at the Coffee Shop and write in my notebooks... and I see that as a private moment... and my friends if they are my friends respect that and if they want to come and see me they do it very politely... But do I hate those fucking buggers and beggars that come and do not respect that it means that they do not think that reading (and for that matter books) are worth the respect I think they mean to me... and when they say: «May I borough a bit of your time?» I do not even raise my eyes and if they do not go I raise them and they see fire... or I tell them like I did this morning tell to one of those assholes: You are a liar and he says why and I say you cannot borrow me a bit of time or 5 minutes or whatever because you will never give it back to me so tell the truth at least and ask if you may steal some of my time and maybe I will accept to lose that time on the basis of honesty... man the guy looked at me and he knew who I was and just went numb and said he was sorry and left... And I could not go back to my reading! >But I at least proved a point for the sake of showing some truth to someone who does not respect the privacy of a reader or writer or whatever... But most of the times I do not even register their presence... Christ! Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were everyday at the Deux-Magots and nobody would dare disturb them... When I read I am in my world and accept only my real friends into it and they know how to come into my privacy... or any good looking chicks... there you go! That's the rock poet talking! Well I think you would do the same Tony! A foxy chick has all rights! Must have or this life isn’t worth shit!
I was reading this morning my second book of Jim Thompson and was kind of into it when that guy came and made me lose my concentration... but I got some good out of it because I realized that I had read 80 pages without getting the meaning of what I was reading so later in the day I reread those pages and saw that I was reading a fucking good book... The first one was good but it was not a thriller and I did not understand why they say it is a thriller... not even a noir novel... so that second book gave me the same impression and I was getting mad and starting to hate him for not being a thriller writer and being identified as one... all his books are in the mystery thriller section... and although it is not a real thriller it has the elements of one and it is very well written sot I will keep on reading him... I read all French literature and all American... I mean the classics and the avant-garde up to the 80's... But 5 years ago I got into the roman noir and cinema noir and jazz a lot... And when I get into a writer, like let's say Ross Macdonald or John D Macdonald I buy all their books... it means a lot of books to buy and then read but I am like that and I have to read them chronologically... So you can imagine all the books of that genre that I have to read... David Goodis, Chandler, Hammett, Connolly, Parker, Pronzini, Crumley, Burke, Reichs, Muller, Highsmith etc etc... And when I am fed up all go back to the classics or regulars and recent writers... but for a while I am into that literature... And I know that Kerouac and Burroughs had read them... And all the French writers since the 1920s... as a matter of fact weren't not for the French writers 80% of the thriller-noir-pulp writers of usa would have been lost... The French intellectuals had a crutch on those American thriller writers... Sartre saw in Chandler and Hammett and Goodis etc the real existentialist’s writers... and Camus wrote l'Étranger (the Stranger) trying to imitate James Cain (the Postman...) and he did not make it but he won the Nobel prize for a flunked thriller that became a master piece of absurd literature!!!! How that for an example of the strange ways life makes things is happen!
Well I will let you go and if you come in Montreal we will have at least a coffee and we will talk about life and writings and whatever...
Talk to you later Tony
Hope it is not too long… and boring… read what you can! Ciao! Lucien
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