#889 Charles Bukowski - Let me bore you to sleep (Jason Newland) (18th September 2022)

Hello, hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Jason Newland dot com dot com. My name's Jason Newland.

This is Let Me Bore You to Sleep. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. Now, I've, I've been thinking, been thinking, shall I make these podcasts available on video, you know, as YouTube as well as podcasts? And there's a big part of me that don't want to do it.

There's, it's kind of can't be bothered. There's a degree of faffing around to do that. There's more, there's more to do.

And then I was thinking, then I was thinking, with podcasts, people listen on the day, they listen, you know, on the week, maybe for a few weeks. But the chances of someone listening to this episode in six months time is on a podcast is quite slim. But on YouTube, there's more chance people may come over it, come across it and, and listen or watch.

And that's more to do with just the way YouTube is. And with podcasts, things can get lost. I know, I guess YouTube as well, but I think things can really just almost disappear, especially when you make as many recordings as I do.

So, you know, on a on a good week, I make one of these, let me bore you to sleep every day. And then there's the version with background music, then there's the five hour version and 10 hour version. Now, I'm not going to upload those to YouTube, they will just be on the podcast.

But you can see how things can get a little bit lost, you know? Hmm. I don't know. I mean, I've got the setup, I've got the microphone here, this is the microphone for the podcast, I've got the zoom recording studio there.

I've got the cloud, the cloud lifter for the microphone here to the zoom. And then I've got the iRig preamp from this microphone to the phone. So there's, there's a lot going on.

It's very busy. Very, very, very busy. And hopefully, hopefully, this microphones, oops, just bash the microphone.

Sorry. Hopefully, this microphone is working. Okay.

I won't know until I watch the video back. Now that of course, I could do both at the same time, I could just make the video, I could make the audio. There's different ways I could do this.

I could just do it all on here on the phone, and extract the audio and put that on to YouTube. Or I could get rid of this microphone, just use this microphone, film on the phone, just film normal audio with a video, and then just sync it up and do it like that in editing. So there's different ways of doing it.

I mean, technically, I could probably do it without a microphone. But I just prefer the sound quality of a microphone compared to how it is without, if you know what I mean. And I do have this.

I've got this camera. It's a Sony, a Sony ZV-1. But that will, that would involve editing and all that stuff.

So this just seems a bit better, a bit easier. Although it's not easy, really, it is easy. It is but it's not, it is but it's not, you know, it's kind of, it is.

But it's still a fair bit to do. Post production, editing, you know what I mean? Yes, yes, yes. So I've got all these leads going everywhere.

I just need to try and get rid of them. I don't need the leads. I do need the leads.

But the problem with sometimes recording is electrical leads do get in the way as far as they can cause disruption sound wise. I've had that in the past. So what I'm doing now is I've got this desk here.

Oh, you can't really see the desk, can you? But I've got behind me, there, another desk right behind me. That desk is where I'm going to do the work on the laptop and the iPad. That's and also preparing, studying, stuff like that.

That's the desk for that. This is just going to be the desk for recording only. Nothing else.

So everything will stay on here. I'll get rid of that cable. In fact, I might move the whole cable over there to the, to the other side, as far away from the electrical equipment as possible.

And yeah, so that's this is spending the last couple of days working on the I had it in my mind. I had it in my mind kind of where I wanted things to be. And now I'm feeling all right about it.

It's yeah, it ain't perfect. It's never going to be perfect, especially with me because I have to, there is a little bit of a perfectionist within me. But I've hidden him because I can never get anything done.

I'm not I'm not talented enough to be a perfectionist. I think that's the that's the obvious thing. Yeah, is so for things like editing, I'm never gonna well, I started saying don't say never, but I can't be bothered to learn all of the like really complicated video editing software.

Now I'm saying that now but I'm thinking of giving it a go and really learning the Adobe system. But at the same time, I have to limit myself from how much time I put into that so that it doesn't overrun and so I don't get obsessed with it. Or so I don't get fed up with it.

If you know I mean, if I like, Oh, had enough of this. Because the most important thing is that I make new recordings. Especially the let me bore you to sleep ones because these are just a little don't use the word throw away.

But they're not. I just do one every day and my eyes are staring. I'm doing one every day.

I do one every day, generally try to and then they're pretty much forgotten as soon as I've made them. Then another one comes along and then there's another one. And I'd like some of my stuff to be remembered.

It might sound egotistical. But as I think about some stuff that I'm planning to do in the future, pain relief specifically. I don't want that just to be a recording that I've made and then it just disappears.

And maybe a few people listen to it. And then it's gone. I want it to stick around.

If you know, I mean, I want and maybe that's the problem. Maybe making too many recordings gets in the way of people listening or watching. Now that doesn't make sense, is it? Okay, maybe gets in the way of appreciation of something that's a bit better.

Maybe it all kind of becomes the same level of mediocrity when actually something like a pain release session, I'd like to think would be on a higher level of skill or usefulness, maybe possibly rather than me when I do these rambling. There's no point to this. This is to let me bore you to sleep other than just to let me bore you to sleep.

We just ramble on, talk about this, talk about that, talk about nothing for an hour. And there really isn't kind of any point to it. Which is the whole point of it being pointless.

Yeah, that made sense to me. It kind of made sense, but then it kind of never. So I still would like to tidy this desk up.

Now I've got my headphones, I'm not wearing them. Well, if you if you're watching the video, you'll see that partly because I find they're very restrictive. However, they are good for listening.

Because then I can hear what's in the background and what the microphone is picking up. Now, I've listened to the first few minutes as I was preparing. So hopefully, I mean, nothing's been moved.

There's no reason why it should be any different to what it was. I'm sitting in the same position. I'm about the same distance, pretty much between both the microphones.

So it should be okay. Should it should it should it should. Oh.

And what was I saying? So I've got my third. Well, I've got another I've got, I've got three bookcases. I did have five, I think.

But a couple of them broke along the way. Years and years and years ago, I got them. So I've got two bookcases over there.

I don't know if you can see them behind me. One right in front of me, which is near the wall. And I've got this bookcase here, which is kind of half a bookcase.

And I inherited that from my nan. So I will have this for the rest of my life. This will be here, or wherever I'm living.

This will be with me. Because I inherited a table, which is over there, you can't see it on the camera. I inherited this bookcase, a chair, two chairs that go with the table.

And a long, quite small, quite low, but quite long to a table. It's you put like my nan used to put photographs and stuff like that on it. And then I've got a television kind of case, not case, but a stand.

Now I don't know if you can see behind me, but my television, it can't, there isn't many stands big enough for it, because I've got quite a big telly. I'm thinking about putting it on the wall. But what I've got, go figure, it's a bit weird, but I've got a wardrobe turned on its side and the doors taken off.

So it's basically the TV is nearly the length of the wardrobe. There's marginal space between the ends. And the bottom of the wardrobe, because it's empty, I can put stuff in there.

It's quite a nice little storage area. So, and the TV's at the right height for me. I mean, I could have it on the wall, I suppose I might end up doing that.

But right now, I quite like it the way it is, actually, it suits me. So I've been trying to organise this room. So I've got my punch bag there, which I kind of would like to move it.

And a few other bits, I got a light there, light there, light there, light there, which seems to be light enough for this. I'm not 100%, I guess. Generally, I'm just not 100%.

I'm not there. I'm just not there 100%. I think it's working.

Okay, I got no light shining in me, in my glasses. And I've been working on organising my books. So that they're kind of well organised, I guess.

So on this bookcase ahead of me, I've got self hypnosis books on the top. The second shelf down, I've got my pain books for pain, like pain relief, hypnosis and pain and stuff like that. So there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.

15 is that all? Oh, yeah. Whoops, there's been a microphone. No, there's more, more than that.

There's, there's, there's some others. And then I've got my books for working with children. So there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 8 hypnosis for children books.

I got clinical hypnotherapy books, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. And I've got a few others that are like that. And these are more big books, you know, big clinical textbooks, the kind of stuff you'd expect to almost see, read, to become a doctor kind of thing.

They're not to become a doctor. They're those kinds of books. And the reason I say that is because I used to look, I used to go into the bookshops in London.

And there used to be a section in one of the books, maybe it was foils. I'm not sure. But it was for, I'm clicking my chair there.

I'm fidgeting. I'm fidgeting. There used to be this whole section for surgeons.

This is the early 90s. I could use a knife to cut up fish fingers. That was about all I was going to be doing with a knife.

I was never going to be a surgeon. I didn't have, well, I wasn't a surgeon. But I was fascinated with, I mean, they sold surgical equipment, which I imagine, I don't know, just seemed a bit weird to sell scalpels and stuff like that in a bookshop.

But they were for sale. You could buy them. They were all behind a glass case.

Very expensive. I guess that's do-it-yourself Jack the Ripper courses or something. I don't know.

And I used to look at the books and it actually would show you how to do pretty much any operation. There was books and books and books upon books of surgical procedures, some of them with photographs, some with drawings, some with photographs. And they were expensive, hundreds and hundreds of pounds for these books.

And I kind of wanted to collect them. I've collected books since I was a kid. And I've gone through different phases of kind of books I collect.

The only reason I didn't collect those books is because they were so expensive. I couldn't. I mean, not even now.

At no point during my lifetime have I spent £100 on a book, I don't think. I spent £60 on a book once. Maybe I've spent, maybe I have spent £100, but it's not something that I've done regularly.

I mean, £100 is a lot, but hundreds of pounds, especially on something that I'm never going to be able to actually, I can learn, but I can't do. You can't learn to be, to do, to take someone's appendix out. Well, you can learn it, but you can't do it unless you're a qualified surgeon.

So, you kind of, why learn it? But then, it's interesting, isn't it? I suppose. So, I've got the pain relief books, the clinical hypnotherapy, children and hypnosis books. Again, I'm not going to be working with anyone.

I'm not going to be doing any hypnosis with people one-on-one. It's all going to be online. Facebook, not Facebook, but, you know, YouTube, my podcasts.

But I have been thinking of maybe trying to be a bit more proactive and a little bit more focused, maybe. Because in some ways, I mean, this is probably the least focused thing that I could do. I mean, I literally could knit and do this at the same time.

I can't knit, so that's not a good example. But doing something that doesn't take my attention, or doing something else that does take my attention, and I could still do this at the same time, because this does not need my full attention. Because half the time, I am wandering off anyway, like in my mind.

But then I'm talking about what I'm thinking about when I'm wandering off in my mind. Yeah, I'll have a drink. Oh, here, and you can see on there, these are my books for this podcast.

They're all on top. So I've got British Useless Information, 52 Things to Do While You Poo. Is this ridiculous? Choosing and Keeping Chickens.

Weird But True 2022. I've got all these different books that are just basically weird facts and stuff. And then under here, I've got a big book of different hypnotic techniques and scripts and techniques and all kinds of stuff like that.

So I've got a whole collection just here. So, you know, I'm gonna be looking at doing more. And over there, I've got two bookshelves, bookcases, rather.

Psychotherapy books. Other hypnosis books as well. I've got some Buddhist books.

I've also got some reading books, you know, fiction, fiction, fiction. And so yeah, I want to do a bit more reading. Yeah, so maybe do like a little bit of a book review once a week.

So read a book, do a book review on here with a boring, like a boring book review. And, you know, do that once a week. So it just gives me a target to read one book a week, like a, I shouldn't really call them storybook, should I? Because that sounds, I sound like a small child.

But, you know, I mean, fiction, storybook, as opposed to, because the reason I say storybook is because most of the stuff I read is pretty much textbooks. So to read something that has a story with a plot, characters, and you know, all that stuff. That's kind of unusual for me because I don't read much like that anymore.

I've got quite a few books still. And I tried to replace my book collection years ago. And then I gave up because there was so many.

But in the process, I did end up getting quite a few books from my childhood, or from my younger adulthood. And yeah, it's nice. You know, I've got books, the only problem is I've read them, you know, because if it's a book that I read when I was 13, I've read it.

And I've got a different brain to what I had when I was 13. And I'm not sure that that book is going to satisfy me the way that it did when I was 13. It was an Adrian Moll book, Adrian Moll, 13 and a half or something.

And it was a really big book at the time. It was very popular at a TV show and everything. It was very popular book.

And maybe I'll read it again just for a giggle. And I've also got like Charles Bukowski books. I was a big fan of Charles Bukowski in the early 90s.

And it all came from, yeah, it all came from the whole, I guess, Karawack on the road, and the Beat Generation. And I started listening, I started reading Ginsburg and other Karawacks, other book, what was it? I forget. But there was a few, a few.

And I basically bought all of them. Well, I bought all the ones I could get hold of. So some of them were poetry, some of them were just like, you know, fiction books.

And out of that bunch of people. Oh, yeah. Also, Junkie, what's his name? Who did Junkie? I read a few of his books.

His name's gone out of my head. Dharma Bums, that's the one. That's what he Karawack did, Dharma Bums.

What was his name? Who did Junkie? He did quite a few books. And I didn't find them easy to read, if I'm honest. And some of the street language or the hip language of the 50s, 40s and 50s or whatever, with Karawack, it just, I don't know, it's kind of made up.

I know all that stuff's made up. And when you see young people saying certain phrases like, oh, I'm catching feelings, like what? Just as an example, I'm catching feelings. I'm like, what do you mean you're catching feelings? Because I saw it on this TV show and they were talking, yeah, I'm catching feelings, man.

And I'm like, what are you talking about? Well, basically what it means is you're starting to like someone a bit more than you thought you might do. Maybe even love. I'm catching feelings.

You caught feelings? No, I never. No, I never caught feelings. You did.

You're catching feelings. I mean, I don't know where it came from. I'm guessing someone that doesn't speak English very well.

And misunderstood and mixed together a few different phrases, not really understanding what they were saying. And then that caught on. And someone like, oh, okay, catching feelings.

It's weird. But there was that going on in the on the road. It was very is a bit of a like the whole beatnik way of living and, you know, getting onto trains and traveling across America and, you know, jumping onto the back of trains and stuff.

I'm not sure if you can still do that these days. I imagine there'd be a charge. And then I came across Charles Bukowski.

I'm not sure how. I'm not 100% sure how. But I read his first book, Post Office.

And loved his style of writing. Very honest, very open, very kind of disgusting in sometimes, you know, but unapologetic. And so as soon as I discovered him, I was I went and I read every book I could get.

I bought pretty much every book I could get out of I did. So I had loads of books, because he did a lot of poetry books as well. As well as, you know, fiction.

Ham with a ham on rye. Diaries of a dirty old man. So he did Post Office.

I don't know. He did quite a few anyway. And I liked them.

I liked them a lot. And I suppose from him, I moved on and I started because he wasn't officially part of the beat generation. He was more someone who lived the life.

And didn't really talk about it until later in life. He wasn't living the life and talking about it while he was doing it in a sense. And you feel a little bit like Paul McKenna, don't I? Weird.

I ended up looking like Paul McKenna. Now, how he looks now, strange. Now, you feel really good.

And you know how you thought that maybe you could experience those kinds of feelings moving through your body. And that's that's my Paul McKenna impression. And then you could really feel this way.

I can't do a fake voice. I do. I guess, I guess, I guess what I do a hypnosis recording.

Yeah, it's a little bit more softly. And it's like, then you feel and try. No, no, no, I can't do that.

No, thanks anyway. But I'm not going to. No, I give it a miss.

Thank you. So yeah, I'm trying to think who else. So Charles Bukowski, there was some other writers that were around his time.

But he was a severe alcoholic, and he talked about it. And that's the lifestyle he chose to live. And so when he was a he was he worked at the post office for quite a few years.

So when he was working at the post office, he wrote. So when he wasn't working, he was writing and drinking. And that's sort of how he lived his life.

And then apparently, he was selling books at the same time. And his publisher said to him, we Charles, why don't you become a full time writer. And Bukowski didn't want to do it.

He was scared, because he had security with his job. And his publisher promised him that he would pay him a guarantee to pay him money every single month for the next 20 years or something like that. If he leaves his job, and concentrates on writing.

And at this time, there was, you know, the books are being sold. And you know, people started to really get to know him. I think this is before post office became a like a huge hit.

And was it factotum post office. There was a there was like a collection of three books that were all kind of connected to each other. factotum post office factotum is another one.

It wasn't racetrack. That's another thing that he loved doing. He loved going to the racetrack.

So the three things that he did, he drunk, he wrote, he went to the racetrack. And he made love. You know, he said he's the things that he was most interested in writing, drinking, and the racetrack, gambling, I guess.

Those were the three things that he he loved doing. And Oh, can't remember. There's lots of books, he did a lot of them.

I've only got about four, five, six books of his, maybe less. Should we have a look? No, I mean, he's getting up, kind of bothered. Shall I get up anyway? I'll get up anyway.

Oops. So annoying things just banging around everywhere. Right, I'm getting up.

Here we go. Now I've only got five books of this. Five.

Five. So I've got five books. These are Charles Bukowski books.

That's it. Right, the first one, Post Office. So this is Charles Bukowski, the classic American bestseller published by Virgin Books, 2009.

Okay, but originally 1971. So there's that one. And then Factotum.

Inspired. This was from 1978. Okay.

Women. This is, I think this is like the one that kind of goes together with the three, but I might be wrong. I might be wrong, you know.

Pulp. 1978. So he produced this the same year as that one.

This is Women. And then there's Tales of Ordinary Madness. I think this was taken from some stories that he did in a magazine.

So 1967 was that he first produced these. Tales of Ordinary Madness. So it's basically short tales, short stories.

Very good. And lastly, this is the last of the ones I've got, is Notes of a Dirty Old Man. You dirty old man.

And this is from 1969. Again, I think this is, ah, it even says it here. Foreword.

More than a year ago, John Bryan began his underground paper, Open City, in the front room of a small two-story house that he rented. Then the paper moved to an apartment in front, then to a place in the business district of Melrose Avenue. Yet a shadow hangs, a hell of a big gloomy one.

The circulation arises, but the advertising is not coming in like it should. What is this? LA Free Press. That's the name of the place, huh? I don't know.

Anyway, that's that book, Notes of a Dirty Old Man. You dirty old man. So yeah, this was, I've only got, what, one, two, three, four, five books.

Used to have, I don't think I had all of his books, but I did have a lot. And there's quite a few books of, um, poetry as well. See, this is weird, like novels, Post Office, Factotum, Woman, Pulp.

I used to have Pulp. Anthologies, The Most Beautiful Woman in Town, Tales of Ordinary Madness. So yeah, I used to.

Go away, fly. Now, poems, New Poems 1, New Poems 2, New Poems 3, New Poems 4. No, I had books of poems which actually had names. Brilliant.

Oh, that's weird. I want to see what the name of the poems were. No, that's not right.

There was actually books of poems like with, um, like Blackbird from Hell or something. I used to have this memory. Nope.

So these are re, these rebranded and they're, maybe they've just stuck all the poems together. But that's no good. That's no good at all.

That's not even mildly good. Oh, nevermind. So that's them.

That's the books on, uh, old Charles Bukowski. He did, uh, there was a, there was two, two films made about him or, you know, based on his novels. One had Matt Dillon play him and the other one had, uh, I think it was Barfly, I think it was called.

And it had, um, Madonna's husband. Oh, uh, Madonna's husband, you know, Madonna's husband, the actor and his brain, his name's gone out in me head. And Madonna's one of her husbands.

Oh, his name's great actor. Uh, anyway, he played in, I think in Barfly. And then the second one, it might be pulp or might be in post office.

Uh, but that was Matt Dillon. Now it seemed weird having Matt Dillon play him because Matt, Matt Dillon is, he's just a very, very pretty. Matt Dillon's a very pretty man and he's, uh, he's, he's about 90 years old and he looks about 25.

And it's the same with, um, Madonna's husband because Charles Bukowski, he had a certain look and you wouldn't expect, he just had a certain very, um, original look about him. I mean, I guess most, a lot of people are very original with their look, but he was very, yeah, they, I guess they couldn't really find an actor that could maybe play him. Uh, apart from who's the actor that played hell boy, you know, the original hell boy from 20 years ago or whatever, he would have played him quite well.

Charles Bukowski. He, yeah, he'd have, I think he'd have pulled it off because he, he was, he was quite a big bloke, quite rough looking. And yeah, I'm a big fan, big fan of the old Bukowski.

Bukowski, Charles Bukowski. I do, do like Charles. Weird because he, he just, some of his poems are really, um, not the most uplifting at times, if I'm honest, but then, you know, if he was drinking, which he was drinking a lot, which he was, um, there's that thing, isn't it? Alcohol being an, uh, it's not, it's a depressant, isn't it? So I suppose chances are that it affected his mood and he wasn't perhaps always in the, the most happiest places.

But the, you know, I remember he, he talks once and it's, it's like his poems are more like a story or just what he's thinking. And there's some, I used to have some tapes of him talking at home where he was reading out the poems. And then I also had some tapes of him live, reading out poems at universities and colleges in around, um, around America.

So he'd travel around, he got paid to do it. He'd sit there at a table at the front with wine and beer or whatever, and smoking, and he'd just drink and he'd read his poems until he got too drunk. And so I had some recordings of that, of him doing that as well.

And it was strange because his voice fitted his writing. Now, I guess it's quite easy to say that, isn't it? I mean, if I'd have heard a different voice and someone had said, this is the real, this is Charles Bukowski. And it wasn't, it was actually Bob Rupert.

Then, then they, then they played me Charles Bukowski a year later. I'd probably say, no, no, Bob Rupert is the, that's the one that sounds like him. That, that other bloke, this, this bloke of, no, that's not, oh no.

So I guess, you know, but it just sounds right to me. He had that rough, like, rawr, voice that he had. And so I think he passed away about 1995, 94, 95.

And he was, I don't know what it was. There's something about him. Now I'd never seen the man.

There was no internet back then. So I hadn't, on YouTube there are videos of him being interviewed and stuff like that. And again, I knew what he looked like because there was pictures of him on, no, what actually, what is it? No, I got a book, which was a book about him, like an autobiography or biography.

And there was loads of pictures of him and loads of pictures of him as a child. And yeah, so talking about his life and his story and how he, you know, basically just his life story. So I had that.

So I knew what he looked like. I'm unsure as to whether his picture was on the back of his books originally. I don't recall.

Because these books, the ones I've got here, these are reprinted, redone, 2009, no picture of him on the back. I don't know why. Why would they not want him to be, unless, or is it, no, he's not even on the inside cover.

Why would they not show the man? I don't know. So he, would you want your, if he was a, if he was a writer and you wrote a book, hence being a writer, I guess, would you want your picture on the book, like on the back cover? I don't know if I would or not. I don't know.

Would you? I mean, it's not something I've needed to worry about or concern myself with, to be honest. But I wonder, would I want that? Is that something that I would need, that I would feel the need for, to have my name on the back of a book, my picture on the back of the book, rather? I don't know. I really don't know.

I mean, more important is the quality of the content of the book, surely. But that, I guess that goes without saying. I mean, someone wanting to have their name on the back of the book, on the picture of the back of the book, it doesn't mean that they don't care about the content, does it? Why would you ask such a thing? Why would you even consider that that might be the case? It's all about me.

So, yeah, that's about it, really. I've got some pads being delivered today from Amazon, some writing pads, because I need to start working on, I want to start getting a bit more prepared especially with some hypnosis recordings I'm going to be making. I want to get a bit more prepared, a bit more structured, perhaps.

Yeah, that's one of my things I want to get going and get doing and start looking through the books and getting some ideas about some new techniques, some old techniques, redoing stuff, changing things, you know, just seeing what's about and just offering my audience options. Give you a chance to choose something maybe that you don't know about. Give you a chance, an opportunity to discover new ways to relieve tension and to make changes in your life, if that's what you choose.

Yeah. So, thank you for listening. Remember to be kind to yourself because you deserve to be happy.

And be gentle with yourself, be gentle. And I will return again tomorrow with another one of these Let Me Boy to Sleeps. Lots of love.

Bye.