I Met A Genius - Charles Bukowski. Genius is different than you think.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ม.ค. 2025
- Charles Bukowski tells us a story and shows us what genius really is. deubel.substac... It's that ability to see what others can't, to peek through the cracks and see what's behind the curtain. To see the world as it really is - not as culture educates us to believe so. #bukowski #poetryreading #poem
David Deubelbeiss is a homeless mind, an author, world citizen and traveler, writing numerous books and many volumes of poetry through over 5 decades. Live simple, simply live - his motto. He's the author and creator of Naked And Alive. Read some of his stuff there -
www.poetryfoun...
Charles Bukowski was a prolific underground writer who used his poetry and prose to depict the depravity of urban life and the downtrodden in American society. A cult hero, Bukowski relied on experience, emotion, and imagination in his work, using direct language and violent and sexual imagery. While some critics found his style offensive, others claimed that Bukowski satirized the machismo attitude through his routine use of sex, alcohol abuse, and violence. “Without trying to make himself look good, much less heroic, Bukowski writes with a nothing-to-lose truthfulness which sets him apart from most other ‘autobiographical’ novelists and poets,” commented Stephen Kessler in the San Francisco Review of Books
I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and we both looked out the window at the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.
it was the first time I'd
realized
that.
Since some people seem confused I'll add my interpretation.
The boy was a genius because he looked at the ocean and saw that the label he had been trained to place on what he was seeing didn't apply. The issue is not whether the ocean was pretty or not, it's that we've been conditioned to believe certain things about the world when we are very young and we don't reexamine those beliefs to figure out if they were ever correct or at least if they apply to the specific thing in front of us.
I've thought about this with cows. We are told that a cow is an animal that says moo, and so on. We tend to assume therefore that we understand them. So it's quite interesting to look at a cow as a bizarre, alien creature that you don't understand, moving past whatever beliefs you acquired from your teacher in preschool.
Not the most useful way of thinking for the sake of survival, but it's arguably closer to the truth given our fundamental ignorance about everything in our sensory experience.
That' a great way to think about this and summary. As I espouse --- one big struggle in all our lives is to "think for yourself". It begins with questioning and often ends with a surprising, different conclusion.
Thanks for the explanation, I love that. It can be applied to greater concepts, like love.
One could argue the genius here is recognizing that a seemingly mundane comment is actually profound.
Totally!
Bukowski might not have considered himself a genius; in fact, he likely would have rejected that label, as those who truly possess it often do. I don't think he's suggesting the child is a genius in the traditional sense, but rather highlighting how children offer unfiltered observations. His rare sensitivity to the child's comment stands out amidst the common adult perception that kids lack keen observation or intellectual depth. His willingness to value the insight speaks volumes about him: A. He acknowledges a child's observation as significant, and B. he accepts that the ocean isn't inherently 'beautiful,' but simply exists.
In my opinion, this ability to recognize and appreciate such nuances is what in part defines a genius.
@@deathchips926In that case, he would be a genius for discovering the profound within the mundane and at the same time no genius for rejecting his own genius. Which highlights that things often are two opposites within a dimension at the same time, depending on what facet you are looking at. For instance, you often could be seen as good and bad, wise and stupid, etc. - all of which is true. One could say that my comment was genius too, which however only builds on those comments before me. So maybe we all are geniuses - and at the same time nobody is.
Interesting perspective, and I do follow your line of thinking as it relates to the occasional paradoxical nature of genius. I would counter by arguing that Bukowski rejecting the idea of genius doesn't negate the possibility of him being so, I also don't think anything can be arbitrarily regarded as genius, even though theres a degree of subjectivity to regarding a piece of work or person as such. The reality is, this concept is highly abstract, unscientific, and at times limiting as a quantifier.@@Jack432-c6t
I used to use this poem when I trained teachers - getting them to stop pre-judging students and allowing them to see all students are "special", and especially those in special education.
How important tones are. If you spend time with your grandma, you start recognizing her tone. Then you start to dismiss and disregard the things she says, because it has that tone. Then, one day, you hear something she says, and think "I almost missed that because I've been tuning out her tone!" It scares you, and you start wondering, "How many things has she told me already that I didn't even hear?" Then you just start listening to people, tone and all. Tone❤
@@MicahScottPnD A wonderful comment and observation. So much of human to human communication is in paralinguistics, the nuance and most personal human part of it. Tone is so close to what we call "voice" in writing, it's the biggest aspect. Find your tone!
How creative he was!!!!, Poetry is all about your feel, that's what he felt at that moment!!! He felt that the boy was genius, and true he was!!!
WRONG, Poetry is all about rhythm, rhyme and telling a story, Bukowski's work doesn't have any of those things, just negative misery.
@@Lili-BenoventWrong, you fail to see his greatness that's all.
@@radiocontrolled9181 He was just a drunken fraud who happened to put his depressive musings down on paper, musings that he stole from all the other barflies, there's no poetry here and to call him a poet is a denigration of all the other real poets, they would be rolling in their graves to hear that Bukowski's drivel is called poetry, any schoolchild could do better.
Beware the Genius of the crowd...
That boy sure taught Bukowski how to see the ocean. Me, I'm unaffected by such illusions. To me the ocean doesn't have enough words for it to exist
This is real poetry
The Ego in children hasn't fully developed. As adults if we could conquer the Ego we would all be geniuses.
Not bad at all👍
we did the montage slay so hard tho. you inspired me !
Inspiration is good when it is done naturally, comes naturally.
oh, i am so happy to have made your acquaintance! thank you.
Same here! Hope you find something that "means" - I try to push buttons, yours, mine, us all.
@@nakedandalive i like your difference of being. it is rare in here, and out there. how refreshing! thank you.
Pretty is nice, unthreatening, to a young boy an ocean is pretty overwhelming. To the sailor who loved the sea in the song "Brandy" it probably was pretty, though still deadly.
He added [and we both looked out the window at the ocean]
Ocean is pretty! I do love hank though!
Nope it's not never understood why ppl find ocean pretty 😂
They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I agree, what I rate as beautiful is surely not necessarily rated as being so by everybody else.
Wow! So so so profound!!!!!!! Ya right….🤷🏻♂️
I guess I’m not smart enough to think the ocean isn’t pretty. Maybe next lifetime. 🙂
You might be a different kind of genius ...
Lol how do you not get it? Have you ever been on a boat in the ocean... I assume not. Go out miles into the ocean on a boat. You will realize that water is your death. Don't be a TV brain, you have more potential I am sure of it.
@@theinfjgoyim5508 but that’s why I love the ocean! Because it seems so intent on swallowing me! I find it delightfully terrifying!
@@theinfjgoyim5508 If you took this poem as a literal truth, then you missed the entire point. Just because something is dangerous, or life threatening, does not mean that it can not also be simultaneously beautiful. Space is an utterly gorgeous spectacle, but it is also an environment of death and sheer chaos. Does that then make space not pretty? Perhaps, Bukowski was trying to show us that pretty things have a level of ugliness to them that makes them so visually appealing in the first place. Or perhaps, given the name of the poem, he was applauding a person's ability to see the opposite of something, alluding to what makes a genius is the exercise of going against popular belief and finding a deeper understanding of something. Please be nicer to people on the internet :)
You could be right. We each have our own adventure, we each seek our end, in our own way ...
Kiitos siitä janne saari
I do love the Ocean tho.. really any body of water.
Deep thoughts by Jack Handy
The crows seemed to call out his name, thought Caw.
I don’t get it, can someone explain to me?
Hmmm. Maybe someone can help you. I got to refuse. It's kind of like explaining your jokes, once you start, you are in trouble. Give it time, it will come to you!
I think the kid saying it wasn’t pretty is the opposite of what most people would say and the kid saw the darkness that comes with the ocean or recognised it’s ugly parts. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how I took it.. Sorry if I’m way off!
The only thing you need to be considered genius is certainty and a different opinion. That's a low bar probably.
Well it depends. Depends on whose bar it is, who is holding that bar. All too often, genius is never recognized because genius is someone "outside" and thus able to see the illusions everyone believes is real. Anthropologist from Mars a la Sachs. Defamiliarization is the realm of genius, the ability to see things as they are, beyond the skirt tails of culture. Poets and comedians are our modern day social anthropologists. I mean, look around you - you see everyone just looking into shiny screens. Isn't that insanity? But if you mention it - people say no, bla bla bla rationalization, benefits. They've drank the koolaid. Same goes for wearing ties - isn't that the kookiest thing around? And we think bones through noses is stupid.
@@nakedandalive Are you insane? You had to look into a shiny screen to listen to the poem and reply to me...
Never said I wasn't one of the guilty ones. But I'm trying my damndest.
@@nakedandalive If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. Teehee only messing - I'm insane too xox
hahaha or in Spanish jajaja. I've tried that and it only works for some things, on some occassions. I'm more of a middle road, buddhist guy these days. Old Hank, nobody ever wrote about all the times he tried to go all the way and didn't make it. Booze, cigs, women ... Life is bigger than us, often, I suppose.
Nice
Yes, a classic. Good old Hank sure knew how to end a poem.
actual message from the poem: if you are rolling down the comment section for what it means, yes you, you are not the genius.
Wow ok.
If being a genius is to see things as they are, not as they've been taught or told to be, and the boy has not yet been taught or told about the ocean, then how is he a genius?
He's self-taught. What did someone say, "the difficulty of life is to remain as a child?" Few do so. And then we have Illych's - School is the advertising agency that makes you believe you need the world as it appears to be.
How is an opinion genius? The carpet is beautiful-guess I am also!
The genius laid in being able to think differently from society and to form an opinion for himself. It is not the opinion that was genius, it was the ability to form it.
@@redeyed33333kid is authentic but still no genius.
Poetry isn’t for everyone buddy
I met a genius today
I sat next to a 6 month old on a train
He shit his pants
It stunk
He laughed 🤌🤌
We took a train and traveled down the coast and we came to the ocean...?? WTF??? If you're on the coast, you're already by the ocean, are you not?
Oh I've driven along the coast many times and for long stretches never saw the ocean ... but hey, poet's have a license, poetic license, stretch reality a little ...
This is hilarious, the clapping of the hip pretentious ones at the end makes it even funnier. Imho however, the added 'moral' at the end telling us what genius is, it is completely superfluous.
Agree about the hipsters. We still have 'em and they were around back then too. Probably Socrates had his fans that laughed just because ...
i met a genius
What the duck does this even mean
Think for your self, construct your worldview around tangible things that you can understand, rather than what those tangible things are supposedly offered to you to be by others.
@@anattablue more simplistic English please
@@Paapi_purush "Think for yourself, build your outlook on real things that you can know first hand, rather than looking at things the way you have been taught to look at them".
This comment is hardly the worst to pick up on, but it'd be nice if more people would see that using words from a latinate base doesn't just make you witty; though *many* people do mistake it for wit.
But as for the clip itself, I know nothing about the man speaking, but the take I'd agree with would that the child isn't just listening to adults say "look at how pretty the sea is!" - he's probably just thinking for himself and perhaps seeing it as foreboding and dark. This isn't to say the sea *is* ugly, or any one thing. I think it's most right to say that the sea, like most things, is all of these things at once.
👏
the best musicians, are porch musicians. Was he a porch musician?
I believe so. He took the time to sit back and sing.
just made it up as he went along really
thats why Celibidache was a genius
I will have to google that!
@@nakedandalive google away
U didn’t meet me?
Ha ha, it's a bit like when one meets a new born. Then you're obliged to say, "oh, how pretty!" and such.
Exactly! So much is automatic reflex. Much banal like this, some deadly.
Bukowski might have had a genius for self promotion but that's about it.
Oh, I don't think so at all. He was practically unread most of his life, just in his later years, gained a few readers and able to drink as much wine as he wanted.
Johnny Depp then I guess@@nakedandalive
Well you never been broken to understand him
Pretty is subjective. As a kid i also found girls not particulary pretty.
Maybe like Schopenhauer said, men is the beautiful gender, and as a kid unclouded by hormones you recognized this 😂
Yeah I got out to the west coast with these beach bum plans it’s a fckn open cold sewer that literally wants to kill you and then there’s the street people looking to steal your shit place is all kinds of grimy add to all that beach time is before noon unless you wanna be covered in spf30000 who knew that just staying home and chilling with my dog is where it’s at❤
I hear you brother. Loud and clear. Enjoy your dog. Lost mine over a year ago in Nicaragua. He went out fighting and died on his feet but still hurts. Will add a video of some poems I wrote about it - but still too raw. Again, enjoy your dog!
This world and the product of it, all these lost souls a mechanism, a perpetual sick sadistic machine spitting out mostly doomed souls mere shawdows it is so beyond not so pretty, a tomb , the entry in to purgatory
So true. Don't bury your head. Walk and stand tall ...
jesus, just use photos of bukowski, the royalty free footage is awful
We got plenty of the other too.
I met a youtube curator that bastardised bukowski today
Glad you didn't like it. You are alive! Hank and I are tight, he's okay with it. The cats loved it, it's all that really matters.
Ei niiden vielä tarvinnu tuli kuitenkin
Sooo you hates yourself...genius..
Bukowski, a story of self indulgent misery, he enjoyed misery and his scribblings are so depressing, if you pretend to like his work it's only because you want to be trendy.
Oh, I see where you are coming from but there is more to it than that. What of peeps like myself, reading Bukowski pamphlets on the shitter in te 70s? Were we just pretenders then too? A lot of joy in Bukowski, you just need to read him more.
@@nakedandalive Firstly, he was not a poet, his work lacked rhythm, rhyme and any sort of story unless it centered on misery and depression, his philosophy was basicly about his observations of life through a drunken haze. You see Sophists at art galleries all the time trying to explain their interpretations of a piece of abstract art, the wine buffs who waffle on about the attributes of one glass of wine over another, it's all ego driven fakery and it's the same with people who pretend to understand Bukowski.
Anyone can write real poetry about misery E.G. here's one of mine.
DIFFERENT EYES Lili
The rat infested holes in which we Derros dwell
Fighting for our daily bread with us as much as them
For others looking at our lives perceived as living Hell
If we can find an alley, with a corner safe and dry
Then we are Kings for just a night and we don’t question why
We’re creatures of the shadows from which existence stems. -
The city is a cruel Lord and all we have is time
There’ll be no hand to lift us up, no help to find a bed
We waste our time wandering, with others of our kind
Talking dreams, opportunity, reality and crime
And those among us jackals, put their brothers on the spike
Promise bliss for just a time, escape from life, sublime. -
It’s all our fault we are told, by people who don’t know
Just get a job and buy a house but none will ever employ
A black who can’t afford to eat, a white who’s tired and slow
For this is what the streets give us and Winter is the worst
The frozen parks, incessant rain, back in our holes we go
We try the subway, bus stations; move on, the middle class comes first. -
Charity comes with a hook, the drone of pray to God
We’ll give a little, not a lot, endeavour to change your life
To one of fierce obedience to Jesus in the sky
And if you let us take control for one small meal a day
You’ll struggle on and on through life and then one day you’ll die
A mansion awaits you in the clouds, if you pray and pray and pray. -
But Spring brings hope, all Nature’s good, to creatures all awake
Nature provides enough to eat, a nest a tree a cave
But man must find their own abode and man exploits the poor
So back into the tents on streets us Derros slink once more
And every day it seems there’s more, one paycheck from the street
This lucky country prosperous once, now greed’s a festering sore.
@@nakedandalive He wasn't a true poet, his work has no substance and no value.
@@Lili-Benovent But why? No value? What is your Ars Poetica? What do you think a true poet is? Point me there and I'll respond. Otherwise, we just got an opinion and we know what a good poet would say about an opinion, just like an asshole, everyone has one. - a phrase good old Hank was quite fond of.
@@nakedandalive It's no wonder you like Bukowski, you have the same toilet wall mindset as him and it doesn't do you any credit.
There have been many outstanding poets over the years but Bukowski wasn't one of them, Poetry should have rhyme and rhythm, it should also tell a story or have a moral, Bukowski's work was drunken prose at best.
My worst poetry is far better than any of Bukowski's drivel. E.G.
FOREVER LOST - Lili
I sat upon a lonely beach, watched the gulls and crabs devour
The remains of one large man, no clothes, no eyes, one hand
As I enjoyed the morning sun, the waves had washed him clean
I lazed there for a little while and then began to dream
And wondered of his story, his sad demise upon the sand. -
I slowly woke when day had cooled and found I wasn’t alone
A Spectre sat at my right side and smiled at my surprise
I was a wanderer he said, a Tramp, a Sailor wild
And I pray the sea will take me and scatter all my bones
I’ll tell the story of my murder, no profit now in lies
For I was just a Gypsy, stolen from my tribe as child. -
Sunken deep within the mire of crime, four lads with time to kill
And kill we did whenever, we found the chance of coin
The guilty and the innocent, none spared or conscience felt
The hand of Satan on my shoulder, the tempest in my loins
But treachery’s around us all and treachery was dealt
When I stole within the clan, a wench I didn’t own.-
I lost my eyes, I lost my hand, I’m destined now to roam
The lonely shore for evermore, no life, no friends, no hand
He wandered back to where his form lay rotting on the sand
Sometimes I hear a wailing, from that Spectre in the foam
He cannot see, he can’t be free, his anger, hate demand
The death of any stranger who happens by his home. -
The beach looks so inviting for swimmers to its shore
Currents deep and fast, take the unwary to the deep
Every Summer takes its toll, the Spectre calls for more
The warning signs upon the sand, only tempt the brave
Dragged out to sea among the fish, reward eternal sleep
There’ll be no sleep for the vagabond, the sand his lonely grave.
Lol
Charles Bukowski is really over rated.
Gay