Love how there's no dislikes because we all listened to this for the same reason. We all feel lonely lost and just don't fit in. Truth and a man who lived the roughest life and still gives us the truth. Rip Henry
I understand this first hand. I was sold into slavery at age 17. By my father who immigrated to Canada for a better life, but soon realized he had to work way harder than he imagined to have even the basics. So he sent me to work in some fabric printing company that was owned by one of his old friends who defected from Soviet Armenia. This guy didn’t just want you to slave for him, he wanted to destroy your soul. I made $70 a week for 50 hours of work. Then I finally got the minimum wage, 1982 minimum wage, and regularly worked 60, 70 even 80 hour weeks. I could write an entire book on it. But I have to let this go now...
Maybe writing it down, and perhaps even writing it into a book would be a way of letting it go. It must still haunt you in a way that just writing a few words in a youtube comment could never describe. You chose to tell us about it though, and maybe it didn't make you feel any better about it...but it gives me the sense that you had hoped it would. Maybe just telling us, a handful of rare Bukowski fans, wasn't enough. Maybe you need to tell the whole world in order to feel a little bit better about it...and truly let it go. Who knows, upon getting it out there you may discover people who have had similar experiences. It might inspire them to tell their stories and let them go too. I wish you all the best of love and luck for the rest of your life! ❤
Reality is truly sick isn't it, funny we always have those days where we actually think about reality and you went right out and said what we were all thinking. Thank you for being such a beautiful writer I love listening to your stories because they actually make me think and view the world in different angles.
August 12, 1986 Hello John: Thanks for the good letter. I don’t think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from. You know the places where I came from. Even the people who try to write about that or make films about it, they don’t get it right. They call it “9 to 5.” It’s never 9 to 5, there’s no free lunch break at those places, in fact, at many of them in order to keep your job you don’t take lunch. Then there’s overtime and the books never seem to get the overtime right and if you complain about that, there’s another sucker to take your place. You know my old saying, “Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.” And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don’t want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does. As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can’t believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did? Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: “Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?” They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds. Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned: “I put in 35 years…” “It ain’t right…” “I don’t know what to do…” They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this. Why couldn’t they? I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait? I just wrote in disgust against it all, it was a relief to get the shit out of my system. And now that I’m here, a so-called professional writer, after giving the first 50 years away, I’ve found out that there are other disgusts beyond the system. I remember once, working as a packer in this lighting fixture company, one of the packers suddenly said: “I’ll never be free!” One of the bosses was walking by (his name was Morrie) and he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life. So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I’m gone) how I’ve come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die. To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself. yr boy, Hank
Jesus! you are doing wonderful work getting this material onto the internet. It is a great comfort to me that the AI program that will come to replace humans will have Bukowski rattling around deep in it's files. Thanks for your efforts. No mater what keep going!
What hurts most is enslaving oneself. Heroin was an escape until your mind screams in agony. So much for that escape plan from this dreary fucking life!
In case this got you down here is something positive from a normal "realism" advocate = *"If we affirm one single moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves, but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event-and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed."* - Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Will to Power (Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale translators). New York: Random House, 1967.
I dig this but must correct "slaves" are NEVER paid {just kept alive enough to work-usually entirely possession-less except the "clothes" usually rags on their back}, what he describes is like indentured servitude more than slavery but he's damn right though TRAGICALLY
@terminalgremlin Weak government controlled unions is one of the reasons USSR failed... Strong 3rd Party unions as we see in the nordic countries is one of the reasons we have good working conditions, work rights etc. Your message shows your ignorance.
"to not to have entirely wasted ones life seems to be the worthy accomplishment"
Love how there's no dislikes because we all listened to this for the same reason. We all feel lonely lost and just don't fit in. Truth and a man who lived the roughest life and still gives us the truth. Rip Henry
Vic Ya, i noticed that too. Stay strong mate. Rip Henry.
R.i.p Henry
RUclips doesn’t show dislikes, people get emotional over it
I understand this first hand. I was sold into slavery at age 17. By my father who immigrated to Canada for a better life, but soon realized he had to work way harder than he imagined to have even the basics. So he sent me to work in some fabric printing company that was owned by one of his old friends who defected from Soviet Armenia. This guy didn’t just want you to slave for him, he wanted to destroy your soul. I made $70 a week for 50 hours of work. Then I finally got the minimum wage, 1982 minimum wage, and regularly worked 60, 70 even 80 hour weeks. I could write an entire book on it. But I have to let this go now...
I am sorry for all the pain you have went through, no one should ever have to go through that!
I hope you are in a better place now! ^_^
Maybe writing it down, and perhaps even writing it into a book would be a way of letting it go.
It must still haunt you in a way that just writing a few words in a youtube comment could never describe. You chose to tell us about it though, and maybe it didn't make you feel any better about it...but it gives me the sense that you had hoped it would.
Maybe just telling us, a handful of rare Bukowski fans, wasn't enough. Maybe you need to tell the whole world in order to feel a little bit better about it...and truly let it go.
Who knows, upon getting it out there you may discover people who have had similar experiences. It might inspire them to tell their stories and let them go too.
I wish you all the best of love and luck for the rest of your life! ❤
Just let it go. No need to allow weirdos to live rent free in your mind.
Your lazy father is in hell. I know you're an atheist but you're wrong there
Respect❤ What a bastard to treat you like that.
Most of Polish people are like that. We wtorek 12hours , 6 data cery often and sałaty is 1000 euro.
Reality is truly sick isn't it, funny we always have those days where we actually think about reality and you went right out and said what we were all thinking. Thank you for being such a beautiful writer I love listening to your stories because they actually make me think and view the world in different angles.
You have a perfect voice and this is perfect! I watch so many times.
My God, the way he writes ❤️, and the way the parable reads ❤️. Perfect combination. I'll never enjoy this anywhere else. It has to be here.
August 12, 1986
Hello John:
Thanks for the good letter. I don’t think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from. You know the places where I came from. Even the people who try to write about that or make films about it, they don’t get it right. They call it “9 to 5.” It’s never 9 to 5, there’s no free lunch break at those places, in fact, at many of them in order to keep your job you don’t take lunch. Then there’s overtime and the books never seem to get the overtime right and if you complain about that, there’s another sucker to take your place.
You know my old saying, “Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.”
And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don’t want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does.
As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can’t believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did?
Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: “Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?”
They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.
Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned:
“I put in 35 years…”
“It ain’t right…”
“I don’t know what to do…”
They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this. Why couldn’t they? I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait?
I just wrote in disgust against it all, it was a relief to get the shit out of my system. And now that I’m here, a so-called professional writer, after giving the first 50 years away, I’ve found out that there are other disgusts beyond the system.
I remember once, working as a packer in this lighting fixture company, one of the packers suddenly said: “I’ll never be free!”
One of the bosses was walking by (his name was Morrie) and he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life.
So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I’m gone) how I’ve come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die.
To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.
yr boy,
Hank
Jesus! you are doing wonderful work getting this material onto the internet. It is a great comfort to me that the AI program that will come to replace humans will have Bukowski rattling around deep in it's files. Thanks for your efforts. No mater what keep going!
the fact i listened to this today blows my mind . 8/12/2021
Your writing is exquisite. Your soul will remember pure soul.💕💔
To not be a thoughtless sheep herded into narrow lanes of "life" takes immense courage.
Heartbreaking..
The choke up at 2:35 almost got me. Great read.
3:32
He let out this delicious cackle of a laugh. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
“People simply empty out.”
I truly know and understand
I’m 67 . Waisted my life.I did have two Great Children
Hey paul
Bhavya Kumawat hello
I am 20,and i am glad i found the beauty of life early, but still i feel like i am waisting my life
What it looks like when you see from there, how your early 20 looks like
I think this is my favorite
What hurts most is enslaving oneself. Heroin was an escape until your mind screams in agony. So much for that escape plan from this dreary fucking life!
A truly great 'Dear John' letter.
My heart cries out for my irredempt spirit
A stirring line.
You can be redeemed
Thank you again!
I'm so glad I subscribe to your channel my friend hey come here every year or so
Bukowski is that bitter concoction you imbibe so that all else seems that much sweeter.
I'm always here.
In case this got you down here is something positive from a normal "realism" advocate =
*"If we affirm one single moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves, but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event-and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed."*
- Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Will to Power (Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale translators). New York: Random House, 1967.
law of assumption :)
this is so damn good
wow!
This is my life put in verse except I have not gotten through the murder, the mess and the moil.
The voice of the 99%. RIP bukz 🍺
P.s.
Briefly looking at some of the other comments posted here; F.Y.I.
Charles bukowski passed away,in 1995...
Truth.
Still here my guy
Thank You Mr Wamble
In the ‘70’s I worked for a factory that made cassette tape. The day after Christmas, they sent each employee a telegram laying them off indefinitely.
Wow
Your Boy
- Hank
People simply empty out.....
The cubicled life
It's never 9 to 5
Gracias
Freedom is an illusion.
Brilliant
"They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work" ... damn
I dig this but must correct "slaves" are NEVER paid {just kept alive enough to work-usually entirely possession-less except the "clothes" usually rags on their back}, what he describes is like indentured servitude more than slavery but he's damn right though TRAGICALLY
Who actually is jermy ward?
This is why we need unions!
@terminalgremlin you're a liar
@terminalgremlin Weak government controlled unions is one of the reasons USSR failed... Strong 3rd Party unions as we see in the nordic countries is one of the reasons we have good working conditions, work rights etc.
Your message shows your ignorance.
@terminalgremlin I think you're misinterpreting my own history lol :D
An 8 hour job is hell, and people expect you to be grateful for it.
Eyes forward
I drive by and see zombies along the highway construction sites...sad!
Hahaha @ 3:29.
9 to 5 has been slavery, it has always bored me...ZZZ the Belfast poet Andrew Beattie, food for thought......
You play the game then they change the rules.
Anyone that truly wants to know, call me
Don’t eat the Chinese food from Canton Village. It gave me bad diarrhea.
Hank was the first millenial
What the fuck is that creepy intro man??
The only thing that actually changes,for us unskilled proletariat? The progression of calenders,of years and of time...
I.e; nothing.