Dedicated to Jim Lowell
true art, the Create, it is usually for two decades to two centuries ahead of its time, when compared to the system and the police. The true art is not only understood but is also feared, because to build a better future must declare that this is bad, bad, and this is not an easy task for those in power - threat least their jobs, their souls, their sons, their wives, their new cars and their rose bushes. "Obscenity" is the word they use to justify their own depravity and to censor the works in the outposts and raiding of creative men. Jim Lowell's Library has undergone a raid in the same period as that of Steve Richmond, here on the west coast, because the cancer has spread throughout the nation, and as someone said to me: "We returned to 'Scream . This shows that we have come a long way since then. The trouble with these raids is that the judges themselves are only little more experienced on current police and the meaning of pure creation. The "small magazines" have poor circulation, not because writers write badly but because there are enough players ready to understand, appreciate and digest the avant-garde writing. The creative artist has always been constantly harassed by bureaucracy and the public - Van Gogh was mocked by the children who threw stones at the window. He was lucky to have a window. He was lucky to have one ear. Hemingway was fortunate to have a gun. And right now I'm lucky to have this typewriter, this room, to write this, to tell you. I do not ask for mercy the artist, do not ask for public funds, do not ask even understanding, I only ask that they leave us in peace, joy, horror and mystery of our work, and if our works sell for millions of dollars when we are dead, after we will be dragged away from our rooms full of cockroaches, full of mice, full of ghosts, full of bottles, is their business. But I ask that they leave us in peace now - you have left for good women, castles, new cars, TV sets, war, steaks, shoes for forty-five dollars, the funeral for five thousand dollars, the cactus gardens long a mile, the original Van Gogh -, let us at least at peace with your "obscenity" and then broke into newsstands with their pictures of tits and ass, page after page after page of stupid silly naked flesh, meat neutral expressionless that high school boys use to get the saws, to crazy with faces covered with mud that then violate the children, you broke there, you break into this industry millionaire IF YOU HAVE TO DO SOME SHIT OUT OF THE ERUPTION but leave us alone Leave us alone. A century from now, those books that you are now confiscating will be taught in your university, if your leaders will not be so ignorant as to make us rot in hell. I think that when you do it to burst your fears, your consciousness (in what little is left), and then burst with anger, the loss of your souls. Do not ask you to understand everything. Please do not ask me to force myself to let you know. I am busy with other things.
C. Bukowski
