The Words Find Me

Thanks to bookstores, past and present, for the cure to literary ennui

‘The Words Find Me’

I had moved back to San Francisco to tune in, turn on, and drop out.

I had spent the end of the ‘80s in Hollywood, and when my job as associate editor of Hollywood Magazine ended with the termination of the magazine’s printing, I decided it was time to go back home.

I have always been a reader of books, and as I was plowing through John Steinbeck, Joan Didion, Charles Bukowski, and Jack Kerouac, I knew there was a short window for me to be a darma bum, and I took it.

I moved into a small apartment on Fillmore Street, with a lovely literate boyfriend and a brindle boxer named Trout - after Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America. Trout wiggled like a fish, so it was a perfect moniker.

I began picking up gigs writing about music for San Francisco Weekly and BAM Magazine, while making rent working part-time at a gym and an architecture firm. In those days, you could make your rent as a darma bum.

I had acquired a degree from UC Berkeley a few years earlier that had included English Literature, and when I wasn’t at a punk show or a bar, I was reading. Shortly after graduating from college, I hit a reading wall. It was something to do with one too many books on existentialism, so I made the trek to City Lights Books, and I told the employee about my troubles. He said, “I have your cure.” And he walked me over to the James Ellroy section, and with the first book I plucked off the shelf, I was indeed cured.

Books have always rescued me.

I didn’t know I was looking to be rescued on that day I stumbled into Marcus Books on Fillmore. I was walking Trout back from a Pacific Heights park, and he had a giant tree branch in his mouth, which was the norm.

I parked Trout and the branch outside and made my way into the bookstore. Marcus books was a historic black-owned bookstore that started in Oakland in 1960, and thankfully, it is still there in the East Bay today.

We lost the one on Fillmore in 2014 due to predatory loans and the cruelty of gentrification, but on that day in 1991, its doors and arms were held wide open for me.

It was on that day that I purchased a book that would change the trajectory of my life and the life of many others - The Autobiography of Malcom X.

It was that book that I was reading when I saw Ice T and Body Count perform at the first Lollapalooza, and that book that inspired me to pursue writing Ice T’s book.

As I listened to Ice T’s lyrics, I realized that reality rap music - as he called it - was the cure to the vapidity of the hair band scene. It was also vital to get his words out to a wider audience. This was the new revolution, and I only knew that because I read books.

It breaks my heart that Marcus Books is no longer there on Fillmore to offer inspiration and history lessons for the curious minds who happen by.

I am grateful that City Lights Books is still there. After publishing the Definition of Down with Ice T’s longtime love, Darlene Ortiz, in 2015, I went back to City Lights and as blessings go, that same employee who had led me James Ellroy 30 years prior still worked there.

I was able to thank him for helping me rekindle my love jones for reading in a moment of literary ennui.

I have been thinking a lot about books ever since Volodymyr Demchenko - a Ukrainian soldier - came on RadPod. He has an advantage in cognitive warfare - where the human mind is the battlefield - because he has always read books. He can see right through Russian propaganda. He quoted Dante and Plato during our interview.

He reminded me that Dante’s Inferno was woven into my first writings about the importance of Ice T’s lyrics. I have often thought that an uneducated mind is a great tragedy. We know we have this one life, and to live it without the richness of great literature and knowledge of history is a crime against humanity. We cannot forget that there is a reason that books are banned. It is easier to sell unreality - a key component of the fascist creep.

A mind is truly a terrible thing to waste, and bookstores so often have the cure.

I am lucky to live in a community with bookstores. A chance meeting during Christmas week at the cafe of the bookstore Vroman’s led to the best conversation I have had in two years. I shared a table with a fellow cinephile, and it was a match of wits unprecedented in the history of cinephiles. The gentleman I was conversing with not only reads books, he translates books from the Middle Ages. I was gobsmacked.

My understanding of the Middle Ages is limited to Ingmar Bergman films, so I have much work to do.

Thankfully, there are books for that.

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Bette Dangerous is a reader-funded publication. Thank you to all subscribers, and thank you to those who generously donate coffee tips. A special thank you to paid monthly, annual, and founding members. Also, a very special thank you to Jason Van Tatenhove for being a surprise guest at Sunday’s Bette Dangerous ‘Speakeasy.’ Jason answered questions from members about his experience testifying in front of the January 6 Committee, and shared stories from his upcoming book, Perils of Extremism. The next Bette Dangerous ‘Speakeasy’ for paid members at all levels is set for January 29. Hope to see you in the squares!