Comfort Words
20 Letters: #15
This is the fifteenth instalment of a series, 20 Letters, where I share letters I wrote and sent via the post, throughout 2020 and 2021, to people in my life. Read more here.
Dear CD,
Surprise! I suppose I could have waited a few weeks to keep you in suspense but that’s not my style. As you know, one of my goals for 2020 is to write and send 20 letters. This is letter #15. All of my letters thus far have been inspired by music. Since I know how much music is an intrinsic part of your life, I thought it would be fun to use prose and poetry as a jumping-off point instead. One of my all-time favourite writers is Charles Bukowski, and ever since I discovered him as a teenager, I’ve turned to his words for comfort. He was a major literary figure in 1960-70s American counterculture, so you may know his stuff already; forgive me if any of this is old news. This summer, I read three of his novels, and one section, in particular, stood out to me:
“I liked to watch the fights. Somehow it reminded me of writing. You needed the same thing, talent, guts and condition. Only the condition was mental, spiritual. You were never a writer. You had to become a writer each time you sat down to the machine. It wasn’t that hard once you sat down in front of the machine. What was hard sometimes was finding that chair and sitting in it. Sometimes you couldn’t sit in it. Like everybody else in the world, for you, things got in the way: small troubles, big troubles, continuous slammings and bangings. You had to be in condition to endure what was trying to kill you.”
- Charles Bukowski, Hollywood
