Today I thought I’d pay homage to some of the writers who have most inspired me to do this. One big influence on me is Jack Kerouac. I don’t remember what came first, me reading ‘On the Road’ or my fascination with the counterculture of the sixties, but I know whichever came second only amplified my interest in the first one. I always planned to eventually save up enough money to take a trip around the world, visiting as many countries as I could and making lots of strange friends along the way, sharing laughs and trippy experiences. I have done a bit of travelling, but the worldwide trip thing hasn’t happened yet, and sadly the world doesn’t really seem to be the way I imagined it back in those innocent years of early adolescence, so I don’t know if I even feel like trying to make it happen anymore. Maybe it isn’t really as bad as it seems, or maybe it both is and isn’t at the same time. That’s actually the most likely conclusion, but it’s sad that life has, in a way, conditioned me to see more of the bad in everything by this point. I really miss being as excited to get out there and live life as I was back in those early days. ‘The Dharma Bums’ was another good read by Kerouac, not as inspiring as ‘On the Road’, but inspirational nonetheless, and an overall enjoyable read, as well as ‘Big Sur.’ Now, along the same lines as Kerouac, another writer who has greatly influenced me has been Charles Bukowski. I have a line I really like on my verse for our track ‘Belong,’ from ‘The Come Up 11’, my latest collab album with my bro Kalvonix. It’s a play on words or double meaning on how I feel like Charles Bukowski because I live in the bars, although I am obviously referencing musical bars when you listen in context of the verse, but we all know Bukowski pretty much lived in bars as well. In all seriousness though, there are very few writers, if any, that I can feel like I relate to as much as Bukowski. Even though some of my biggest inspirations are religious and spiritual texts of various religions, Bukowski’s works are not really inspiring to me in the same sense. See, I don’t read Bukowski so I can learn how to live better. I have only lived what he lived at a much, much smaller scale, and I can say with confidence I am no hurry to repeat most of those experiences any time soon, if ever, so I don’t really look at Bukowski as a role model, to be honest. What I deeply admire about him and his writing is just how brutally honest he was willing to be, and how he could bring a sense of beauty to the darkest subjects, with his poetic style and the words he chose to use. Writing was inside him, and he never gave up on it, which ultimately paid off. I could also relate to his pain, because it was the pain of the ordinary person, the everyday person like you and me, who has big goals and dreams, but who finds his or herself standing all alone against a cold world that doesn’t care for anything but itself. Anyway, these are two of my biggest literary influences. There are a lot more I could write about, a few more which have been extremely influential to me, but for now I have enough words for today’s post, so we’ll leave it at that. As always, I appreciate you reading.
If you have a few minutes listen to my song ‘somewhere out there.’ I appreciate you.
rebel eye 