All Eyes on Ai Weiwei: Life Under Surveillance … and on Twitter … After His Arrest

in Art, Current Affairs | June 1st, 2012

As the one-year anniver­sary of Chi­nese artist and dis­si­dent Ai Wei­wei’s release from jail draws near, the whole world seems to be watch­ing his every move. The whole world, that is, except for the Chi­nese peo­ple.

Ai is cut off from most of the pop­u­la­tion of his own coun­try after the gov­ern­ment shut down his blog and stopped him from using Chi­nese social media. When he was released from jail on June 22 of last year, after 81 days of deten­tion, Ai found that the gov­ern­ment had installed sur­veil­lance cam­eras all around his Bei­jing home and stu­dio. He count­ed 15 with­in a 100-meter area. In response, he set up four of of his own cam­eras inside his home ear­li­er this spring and began stream­ing a 24-hour live webfeed, called “Wei­wei Cam.” The regime quick­ly shut that site down, too.

But the Chi­nese author­i­ties have not com­plete­ly cut off Ai’s access to the world out­side of Chi­na. More than 147,000 peo­ple fol­low him on Twit­ter, one of the many West­ern sites blocked in Chi­na, and a steady stream of for­eign jour­nal­ists have been mak­ing their way to his Bei­jing com­pound for inter­views. Last week The New York Times pub­lished a har­row­ing account of the day in April, 2011, when police pulled a hood over Ai’s head and drove him to an undis­closed deten­tion cen­ter. And this week Slate pub­lished an arti­cle, “Some­one’s Always Watch­ing Me,” along with videos (above and below) of an inter­view with Ai con­duct­ed by Slate Group Edi­tor-in-Chief Jacob Weis­berg on May 14. “I feel that what makes them most fright­ened,” Ai told Weis­berg, refer­ring to the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, “is my inter­na­tion­al pro­file, my inter­views with West­ern media.”

Ai is restrict­ed to Bei­jing until June 22. When­ev­er he leaves his house he must tell the police where he is going and who he will meet. “I basi­cal­ly obey their orders,” he told Evan Osnos of The New York­er in Jan­u­ary, “because it does­n’t mean any­thing. I also want to tell them I’m not afraid. I’m not secre­tive.” Every week he has to meet with the Pub­lic Secu­ri­ty Bureau for a chat. Like the for­eign jour­nal­ists, the Chi­nese police are eager to learn what Ai plans to do when restric­tions on his move­ment are lift­ed lat­er this month. “They asked me what I would do next when I met them last week­end,” Ai told a reporter for The Tele­graph this week. “They tried to make it very casu­al. After a chat, they said, ‘What comes next?’ I said: ‘It is an inter­est­ing ques­tion. What does this nation do next?’ ”

The Art of Making a Flamenco Guitar: 299 Hours of Blood, Sweat & Tears Experienced in 3 Minutes

in Music | May 31st, 2012

The Fla­men­co gui­tar grew up in Andalu­sia, the major province in south­ern Spain, where it became inte­gral to the cul­ture dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry. The mod­ern fla­men­co gui­tar (a first cousin of the mod­ern clas­si­cal gui­tar) is typ­i­cal­ly made with two of three woods — spruce on the top, and cypress or sycamore on the back and sides. When put in the hands of the right luthi­er, the gui­tar can become a thing of beau­ty. Case in point: This art­ful video by Greek film­mak­er Dim­itris Ladopou­los brings you inside the work­shop of Vasilis Lazarides, who spe­cial­izes in mak­ing high qual­i­ty fla­men­co gui­tars by hand. (Vis­it his gui­tars online here.) 299 hours of blood, sweat, tears and love go into mak­ing each fine gui­tar. But you can watch it all hap­pen in a mat­ter of three min­utes, with the music of Edsart Udo de Haes pro­vid­ing the sound­track.

If elec­tric gui­tars hap­pen to be your thing, you can also watch Fend­ers being made in 1959 and 2012.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch FLAMENCO AT 5:15, a Life-Affirm­ing, Oscar-Win­ning Doc­u­men­tary About a Fla­men­co Dance Class

Hear Metallica’s “Noth­ing Else Mat­ters” Cov­ered in Unex­pect­ed Styles: Gre­go­ri­an Choir, Cel­lo Ensem­ble, Finnish Blue­grass, Jazz Vocal & More

Charles Bukowski: Depression and Three Days in Bed Can Restore Your Creative Juices (NSFW)

in Life, Poetry, Psychology | May 22nd, 2012

Pico Iyer once called Charles Bukows­ki the “lau­re­ate of Amer­i­can lowlife,” and that’s because he wrote poems for and about ordi­nary Amer­i­cans — peo­ple who expe­ri­enced pover­ty, the tedi­um and grind of work, and some­times frayed rela­tion­ships, bouts of alco­holism, drug addic­tion and the rest. Bukows­ki could write so elo­quent­ly about this because he came from this world. He grew up in a poor immi­grant house­hold with an abu­sive father, took to the bot­tle at an ear­ly age, worked at a Los Ange­les post office for a decade plus, and had a long and tumul­tuous rela­tion­ship with Jane Cooney Bak­er, a wid­ow eleven years his senior, who drank to excess and died at 51, leav­ing Bukows­ki bro­ken.

And then there’s the depres­sion. Bukows­ki expe­ri­enced that too. But he knew how to chan­nel it, how to turn days of dark­ness into sources of per­son­al and cre­ative renew­al. He explains it in some char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly NSFW detail above.

To gain a more in-depth under­stand­ing of depres­sion and its bio­log­i­cal basis, we’d rec­om­mend watch­ing this lec­ture by Stan­ford’s Robert Sapolksy.

Here’s a tran­script of what Bukows­ki has to say:

I have peri­ods where, you know, when I feel a lit­tle weak or depressed. Fuck it! The Wheaties aren’t going down right. I just go to bed for three days and four nights, pull down all the shades and just go to bed. Get up. Shit. Piss. Drink a beer down and go back to bed. I come out of that com­plete­ly re-enlight­ened for 2 or 3 months. I get pow­er from that.

I think someday…they’ll say this psy­chot­ic guy knew some­thing that…you know in days ahead and med­i­cine, and how they fig­ure these things out. Every­body should go to bed now and then, when they’re down low and give it up for three or four days. Then they’ll come back good for a while.

But we’re so obsessed with, we have to get up and do it and go back to sleep. In fact there’s a woman I’m liv­ing with now, get’s around 12:30, 1pm, I say: “I’m sleepy. I want to go to sleep.” She says: “What? You want to go to sleep, it’s only 1pm!” We’re not even drink­ing, you know. Hell, there’s noth­ing else to do but sleep.

Peo­ple are nailed to the process­es. Up. Down. Do some­thing. Get up, do some­thing, go to sleep. Get up. They can’t get out of that cir­cle. You’ll see, some­day they’ll say: “Bukows­ki knew.” Lay down for 3 or 4 days till you get your juices back, then get up, look around and do it. But who the hell can do it cause you need a dol­lar. That’s all. That’s a long speech, isn’t it? But it means some­thing.

via Bib­liok­lept

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Bukows­ki:

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

The Last Faxed Poem of Charles Bukows­ki

Charles Bukows­ki Reads His Poem “The Secret of My Endurance”

1377 TED Talks Listed in a Neat Spreadsheet — And More Stellar Culture Links on the Web

in TED Talks | May 11th, 2012

A quick fyi for TED heads. In ear­ly 2011 we men­tioned that some­one put togeth­er a handy online spread­sheet that lists 1377 TED Talks, with handy links to each indi­vid­ual video. It’s worth men­tion­ing the spread­sheet again because this evolv­ing Google doc has now grown beyond 1200 talks. That works out to more than 340 hours of “riv­et­ing talks by remark­able peo­ple.” Because the page gets updat­ed on a reg­u­lar basis, you’ll def­i­nite­ly want to book­mark it and keep tabs on the new addi­tions.

Now time for more good cul­ture links, all pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on our hap­penin’ Twit­ter stream.

Archae­ol­o­gists Unearth Ancient Maya Cal­en­dar Writ­ing

Vir­ginia Woolf. Play­ing Crick­et

Delta Dawn: How Sears, Roe­buck & Co. Mid­wifed the Birth of the Blues

Mau­rice Sendak’s Last Video Appear­ance with Stephen Col­bert

‘Madame Bovary’ in Pie Chart Form. (Did Some­one Say Pie?)

From Whistler to Warhol, Famous Artists Paint Their Moth­ers

Jose Sara­m­ago’s First Reac­tion after Watch­ing the Movie Blind­ness

All 268 Pages from Leonar­do’s Note­books Pre­sent­ed in High Res iPad App

Mar­garet Atwood Rec­om­mends That Mar­tians Read Moby Dick to Under­stand Amer­i­ca

Biog­ra­ph­er Robert Caro Dis­cuss­es Polit­i­cal Power—How to Get It and Use It

A Record­ing of 24-Year-Old John Ash­bery Read­ing His Poems

John Peel’s Mas­sive Record Col­lec­tion Now Avail­able Online

The Strange Pol­i­tics of Gertrude Stein

David Sedaris Reads “Six to Eight Black Men” from the Album ‘Live at Carnegie Hall’

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus or Email, and we’ll bring intel­li­gent media right to you. We’re at your ser­vice, you know?

The History of Rome in 179 Podcasts

in History, Podcasts | May 10th, 2012

What with so many open-end­ed inter­net media projects out there, I admire any that come to a close. Peo­ple start plen­ty of things on the net that wind up peter­ing out, but few dis­play the con­vic­tion to work toward a deci­sive end. Then again, this goes for all forms of human endeav­or; even the builders of the Roman Empire must have oper­at­ed on the assump­tion that it might go on for­ev­er. We now know, of course, that it would­n’t, and this knowl­edge pro­vides for­mal and intel­lec­tu­al premis­es for Mike Dun­can’s pod­cast, The His­to­ry of Rome (iTunes — RSS). The Roman Empire end­ed by the year 476. The his­to­ry of the Roman Empire in pod­cast form end­ed last Sun­day, after almost five years, 179 episodes, and 1654 near-uni­ver­sal­ly lauda­to­ry iTunes reviews.

I reviewed The His­to­ry of Rome myself back in 2009, for the Podthoughts col­umn I write for MaximumFun.org. Pod­think­ing has taught me that his­to­ry as a sub­ject suits this ver­bal, episod­ic, straight-into-your-mind type of medi­um almost ide­al­ly. Though Dun­can choos­es to get straight to the point and tell the Roman Empire’s sto­ry in a clear, asceti­cal­ly unadorned man­ner, dif­fer­ent pod­casts deliv­er their slices of his­to­ry with styles and sen­si­bil­i­ties all their own. If you his­tor­i­cal­ly inclined pod­cast-lis­ten­ers have already been keep­ing up with this show, oth­ers await you: Dan Car­lin’s Hard­core His­to­ry, Twelve Byzan­tine Rulers, A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects, and (my own cur­rent lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence of choice) Top­ics in Kore­an His­to­ry, to name but a few. But if you haven’t been, sit down and let Mike Dun­can tell you about a cer­tain Romu­lus and Remus, with whom the his­to­ry of Rome myth­i­cal­ly began.

More cours­es on the Ancient world, includ­ing the his­to­ry of Rome, can be found in the His­to­ry sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 1150 Free Online Cours­es.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Decline and Fall of the Roman (and Amer­i­can?) Empire: A Free Audio­book

Rome Reborn – An Amaz­ing Dig­i­tal Mod­el of Ancient Rome

How Many U.S. Marines Could Bring Down the Roman Empire?

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Flash Mob Fun Part II: Copenhagen Philharmonic Plays Grieg’s Peer Gynt in the Subway

in Music | May 8th, 2012

Ah, the Copen­hagen Phil­har­mon­ic strikes again. Last year, they broke out some Ravel’s Bolero at Copenhagen’s Cen­tral Sta­tion. This year, it’s Peer Gynt in the sub­way itself. The Copen­hagen Phil dates back to 1843, mak­ing it one of the old­est pro­fes­sion­al sym­pho­ny orches­tras in Europe. But stodgy and bound by tra­di­tion they’re not. Hope the clip helps start your day. H/T Mefi

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus or Email, and we’ll bring intel­li­gent media right to you. We’re at your ser­vice, you know?

Fight For Your Right Revisited: Adam Yauch’s 2011 Film Commemorates the Beastie Boys’ Legendary Music Video

in Film, Music | May 5th, 2012

By now you’ve heard the news. Beast­ie Boys co-founder Adam Yauch has died at the age of 47. The cause, sali­vary can­cer. The Beast­ie Boys broke onto the nation­al scene in 1986, with the release of Licensed to Ill, which became the best-sell­ing rap album of the 1980s and the first hip hop LP to top the Bill­board chart. Either then or some time since, you’ve like­ly heard their best known song from the album — (You Got­ta) Fight for Your Right (To Par­ty!).

The orig­i­nal music video for the song (below) became some­thing of an MTV main­stay and played on themes from George A. Romero’s zom­bie movie Dawn of the Dead. 25 years lat­er, Adam Yauch pro­duced Fight For Your Right Revis­it­ed, a 30 minute sur­re­al film that picks up where the orig­i­nal video left off. It stars Eli­jah Wood, Dan­ny McBride and Seth Rogen. You can watch it above in full. It’s also added to our meta col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Mubi.com

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Free Science Fiction Classics on the Web: Huxley, Orwell, Asimov, Gaiman & Beyond

in Audio Books, Books, Sci Fi | March 26th, 2012

Today we’re bring­ing you a roundup of some of the great Sci­ence Fic­tion, Fan­ta­sy and Dystopi­an clas­sics avail­able on the web. And what bet­ter way to get start­ed than with Aldous Hux­ley read­ing a dra­ma­tized record­ing of his 1932 nov­el, Brave New World. The read­ing aired on the CBS Radio Work­shop in 1956. You can lis­ten to Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

(FYI: You can down­load Hux­ley’s orig­i­nal work — as opposed to the dra­ma­tized ver­sion — in audio by sign­ing up for a Free Tri­al with Audible.com, and that applies to oth­er books men­tioned here as well.)

Lit­tle known fact. Aldous Hux­ley once gave George Orwell French lessons at Eton. And, 17 years after the release of Brave New World, Hux­ley’s pupil pub­lished 1984. The sem­i­nal dystopi­an work may be one of the most influ­en­tial nov­els of the 20th cen­tu­ry, and it’s almost cer­tain­ly the most impor­tant polit­i­cal nov­el from that peri­od. You can find it avail­able on the web in three for­mats: Free eText — Free Audio Book – Free Movie.

In 1910, J. Sear­le Daw­ley wrote and direct­ed Franken­stein. It took him three days to shoot the 12-minute film (when most films were actu­al­ly shot in just one day). It marked the first time that Mary Shelley’s clas­sic mon­ster tale (text — audio) was ever adapt­ed to film. And, some­what notably, Thomas Edi­son had a hand (albeit it an indi­rect one) in mak­ing the film. The first Franken­stein film was shot at Edi­son Stu­dios, the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny owned by the famous inven­tor.

Stephen King and Joyce Car­ol Oates — they both pay homage to H.P. Love­craft and his great tales. And you can too by spend­ing time with his col­lect­ed works, avail­able in etext for­mats here and audio for­mats here (Free Mp3 Zip File – Free Stream).

Philip K. Dick pub­lished 44 nov­els and 121 sto­ries dur­ing his short life­time, solid­i­fy­ing his posi­tion as one of Amer­i­ca’s top sci-fi writ­ers. If you’re not inti­mate­ly famil­iar with his nov­els, then you almost cer­tain­ly know major films based on Dick’s work – Blade Run­ner, Total Recall, A Scan­ner Dark­ly and  Minor­i­ty Report. To get you acquaint­ed with PKD’s writ­ing, we have culled togeth­er 14 short sto­ries for your enjoy­ment.

eTexts (find down­load instruc­tions here)

• “Beyond the Door”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “Beyond Lies the Wub”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “Mr. Space­ship”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “Piper in the Woods”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “Sec­ond Vari­ety”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Crys­tal Crypt”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Defend­ers”
  • iPhone/iPad – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Eyes Have It”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Gun”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Hang­ing Stranger”
  • Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Skull”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Vari­able Man”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “Tony and the Bee­tles”
  • Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “We Can Remem­ber It For You Whole­sale”
  • iPad/iPhone

Audio

• “Beyond Lies the Wub” – Free MP3
• “Beyond the Door” – Free MP3
• “Sec­ond Vari­ety” – Free MP3 Zip File – Stream Online
• “The Defend­ers” — Free MP3
• “The Hang­ing Stranger” – Free MP3
• “The Vari­able Man” – Free MP3 Zip File – Stream Online
• “Tony and the Bee­tles” – MP3 Part 1 – MP3 Part II

Back in the late 1930s, Orson Welles launched The Mer­cury The­atre on the Air, a radio pro­gram ded­i­cat­ed to bring­ing dra­mat­ic, the­atri­cal pro­duc­tions to the Amer­i­can air­waves. The show had a fair­ly short run, last­ing from 1938 to 1941. But it made its mark. Dur­ing these few years, The Mer­cury The­atre aired The War of the Worlds, an episode nar­rat­ed by Welles that led many Amer­i­cans to believe their coun­try was under Mar­t­ian attack. The leg­endary pro­duc­tion, per­haps the most famous ever aired on Amer­i­can radio, was based on H.G. Wells’ ear­ly sci-fi nov­el, and you can lis­ten to the broad­cast right here.

Between 1951 and 1953, Isaac Asi­mov pub­lished three books that formed the now famous Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy. Many con­sid­ered it a mas­ter­work in sci­ence fic­tion, and that view became offi­cial doc­trine in 1966 when the tril­o­gy received a spe­cial Hugo Award for Best All-Time Series, notably beat­ing out Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Even­tu­al­ly, the BBC decid­ed to adapt Asimov’s tril­o­gy to the radio, dra­ma­tiz­ing the series in eight one-hour episodes that aired between May and June 1973. Thanks to The Inter­net Archive you can down­load the full pro­gram as a zip file, or stream it online:

Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3| Part 4 |MP3| Part 5 |MP3| Part 6 |MP3| Part 7 |MP3| Part 8 |MP3|

Before the days of Har­ry Pot­ter, gen­er­a­tions of young read­ers let their imag­i­na­tions take flight with The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia, a series of sev­en fan­ta­sy nov­els writ­ten by C. S. Lewis. Like his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis served on the Eng­lish fac­ul­ty at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty and took part in the Inklings, an Oxford lit­er­ary group ded­i­cat­ed to fic­tion and fan­ta­sy. Pub­lished between 1950 and 1956, The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia has sold over 100 mil­lion copies in 47 lan­guages, delight­ing younger and old­er read­ers world­wide.

Now, with the appar­ent bless­ing of the C.S. Lewis estate, the sev­en vol­ume series is avail­able in a free audio for­mat. There are 101 audio record­ings in total, each aver­ag­ing 30 min­utes and read by Chris­si Hart. Down­load the com­plete audio via the web or RSS Feed.

Neil Gaiman has emerged as one of today’s best fan­ta­sy writ­ers. He has made comics respectable and pub­lished nov­els, includ­ing one that will be adapt­ed by HBO. A great deal of his out­put, though, has been in the form of short sto­ries, some avail­able on the web in text for­mat, oth­ers in audio.

Audio & Video

Between 1982 and 2000, Rudy Ruck­er wrote a series of four sci-fi nov­els that formed The Ware Tetral­o­gy. The first two books in the series – Soft­ware and Wet­ware – won the Philip K. Dick Award for best nov­el. And William Gib­son has called Ruck­er “a nat­ur­al-born Amer­i­can street sur­re­al­ist” or, more sim­ply, one sui gener­is dude. And now the even bet­ter part: Ruck­er (who hap­pens to be the great-great-great-grand­son of Hegel) has released The Ware Tetral­o­gy under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, and you can down­load the full text for free in PDF and RTF for­mats. In total, the col­lec­tion runs 800+ pages.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: ‘How Much Would You Pay for the Universe?’

in Astronomy, Science | March 19th, 2012

“Nobody’s dream­ing about tomor­row any­more,” says astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson in this com­pelling lit­tle video on the decline of the Amer­i­can space pro­gram. “After we stopped going to the moon, it all end­ed. We stopped dream­ing.” The video was put togeth­er by Evan Schurr with mate­r­i­al from var­i­ous sources. In it, Tyson asks us to imag­ine the pos­si­bil­i­ties for tomor­row if NASA’s bud­get were increased to just one pen­ny for every tax dol­lar. It’s a point he raised ear­li­er this month before a U.S. Sen­ate com­mit­tee (read the full tes­ti­mo­ny here), when he said:

The 2008 bank bailout of $750 bil­lion was greater than all the mon­ey NASA had received in its half-cen­tu­ry his­to­ry; two years’ U.S. mil­i­tary spend­ing exceeds it as well. Right now, NASA’s annu­al bud­get is half a pen­ny on your tax dol­lar. For twice that–a pen­ny on a dollar–we can trans­form the coun­try from a sullen, dispir­it­ed nation, weary of eco­nom­ic strug­gle, to one where it has reclaimed its 20th cen­tu­ry birthright to dream of tomor­row.

via The Dai­ly Beast

Charles Bukowski Reads His Poem “The Secret of My Endurance”

in | March 18th, 2012

–From Dan­gling In The Tourne­for­tia (1982)

I still get let­ters in the mail, most­ly from cracked-up
men in tiny rooms with fac­to­ry jobs or no jobs who are
liv­ing with whores or no woman at all, no hope, just
booze and mad­ness.

Most of their let­ters are on lined paper
writ­ten with an unsharp­ened pen­cil
or in ink
in tiny hand­writ­ing that slants to the
left

and the paper is often torn
usu­al­ly halfway up the mid­dle
and they say they like my stuff,
I’ve writ­ten from where it’s at, and
they rec­og­nize that. tru­ly, I’ve giv­en them a sec­ond
chance, some recog­ni­tion of where they’re at.

it’s true, I was there, worse off than most
of them.
but I won­der if they real­ize where their let­ters
arrive?
well, they are dropped into a box
behind a six-foot hedge with a long dri­ve­way lead­ing
to a two car garage, rose gar­den, fruit trees,
ani­mals, a beau­ti­ful woman, mort­gage about half
paid after a year, a new car,
fire­place and a green rug two-inch­es thick
with a young boy to write my stuff now,
I keep him in a ten-foot cage with a
type­writer, feed him whiskey and raw whores,
belt him pret­ty good three or four times
a week.
I’m 59 years old now and the crit­ics say
my stuff is get­ting bet­ter than ever.