When two sons of famous people meet for a live reading and spoken words, when these two people, themselves famous, have a casual talk about the times they hung out with Bukowski, Hubert Selby (‘Requiem for a Dream’), without mentioning other unnamed rock and movie stars,… well, I am interested!
Jonathan Shaw, a legendary ex-tattoo master turned writer, is the son of jazz legend Artie Shaw and the glamorous Hollywood starlet Doris Dowling (Billy Wilder’s ‘The Lost Weekend’). However this Hollywood royalty has done it all, he now lives in Rio de Janeiro but his bio describes him as ‘a world-traveling outlaw artist, gonzo journalist, novelist, blogger, spoken-word performer, witch doctor, anti–folk hero, and underground philosopher.’ He simply said that, after having made a lot of money as a tattoo artist for 25 years – he did ink many stars – he felt like a ‘big fat whore’ and felt he would have died if he hadn’t found a higher purpose, a deeper meaning of life, and this si why he started writing.
This spoken words event at La Luz de Jesus in Hollywood, was celebrating the release of Shaw’s infamous cult classic novel ‘Narcisa – Our Lady of Ashes’ presented by Harper Perennial and Johnny Depp – no Johnny was not there despite my high hopes but he is a good friend of Jonathan. Apparently music is not the only thing Depp is interested by, as he is republishing Shaw’s novel through his HarperCollins imprint, after previously put out Woody Guthrie’s ‘House of Earth’ and Bob Gruen’s ‘See Hear Yoko’.
I was totally foreign to ‘Narcisa’, a cult novel previously published in 2008 and very-hard-to-find without Depp’s decision to republish it. The novel is described as a ‘powerful story that captures the destructive addiction of love, sex and drugs, embodied in two people whose irresistible passions threaten to destroy them.’ I must say that the pages that Shaw read at the end of the talk gave me a good idea of the tone and hot rhythm of the book, which undoubtedly reminds the works of the great authors such as Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Irvine Welsh, and Hunter S. Thompson, all of them influenced him greatly, as well as science fiction writers like Ray Bradbury, H. P.Lovecraft
Dan Fante was moderating the talk, and although I have never read anything from him, he is John Fante’s son, a mythic writer (‘Ask the Dust’, ‘The Road to Los Angeles’) that has fascinated me way before I knew I would end up in Los Angeles! Should I add that John Fante was Bukowski’s favorite writer? I was in excellent company, surrounded by a crowd of fans of the underground literary scene, musicians and tattooed people.
And in case you would want more endorsements, Narcisa’ is prefaced by many rock and movie stars from Marilyn Manson, Jim Jarmusch to Iggy Pop who describes Jonathan Shaw as ‘the great nightmare anti-hero of the new age’
And this is how special guest Howie Pyro introduced the book, ‘Shaw’s Ongoing nightmare’, before letting Fante and Shaw discuss about writing and creation,… this was the most interesting part. They were passionate about it and compared writing to a ‘gift and a curse’, ‘The universe started downloading stuff into me’, said Shaw, ‘the characters were channeling ghosts creeping out of the past’… Fante added that writers are consumed by the process and become slave, servants of the process itself. They were in total agreement, ‘Some people are driven to write’ said Fante, ‘what was your catalyst?’ he asked Shaw, ‘It was write or die!’, he answered. Then he talked about the day he stalked Bukowski with a pack of beer and some cigars and whiskey, and the two became best friends.
Shaw read a few excerpt of his book, spoken word style, accompanied by some music by Gregg Foreman of Cat Power, and Brandon Burkart of The Saint James Society. The funny thing is that he was reading most of it from his phone (he wrote his whole book on his phone as he is allergic to computers), and it was making complete sense that he was standing in front of an excellent caricature of Nick Cave (La Luz de Jesus is an art gallery after all)… and what is Shaw’s best advice for aspiring writers? ‘Don’t try’, he replied, but as you know, this is also what is written on Bukowski’s tomb.