Find what you love and let it kill you.
The words took root the same year social media hit critical mass.
It was the first year more than half the population had a supercomputer in their pocket, in the form of a smartphone.
It was the same year a nation was stunned to its core by Sandy Hook and then watched conspiracy theories emerge in its aftermath.
And in that year, 2012, Millennials were coming to the realization that the time, money and effort they'd invested in their futures hadn't paid off... maybe it never would.
The nine-word quote felt like permission. It felt like truth.
But Find what you love and let it kill you, ascribed to late poet Charles Bukowski, was actually a test of a formula: Misinformation, misattribution, mutation… mantra.
What follows is an investigation, not just into a quote, but into the ways truth gets twisted and cynicism becomes commonplace. And it's a search for the more beautiful truth underneath, one that leads somewhere nobody expected.
The fog between truth and fiction is only getting thicker.
Can the instinct to care about the truth be restored?
Backstory
A decade ago I started noticing the quote. First it was on a respected friend's cover page. She, the friend, was a lawyer for the Innocence Project. She threw herself into her job. It made sense that she would subscribe to the notion you should "find what you love and let it kill you." But as I dug into the quotes origin and I saw it on tattoos and posters and barroom walls, I began to worry that people were romanticizing selfish existences. That's nothing new... but it's still a fallacy. Stephen King has written about his false belief that alcohol was necessary to be a great writer. He unlearned that belief. Jack Kerouac is another. Kerouac didn't turn things around, however. People tend to forget that he died in his 40's of a ruptured stomach caused by heavy drinking.
When I discovered that Bukowski didn't even write the quote, I thought it would make for a great existential road trip to drive to search for the author and talk about the interpretations of the quote... along the way we'd also talk to people about the way they live their lives and whether you really should "find what you love and let it kill you."
But the rabbit trail branched in multiple directions. There was the matter of the quote and there was the matter of the fabricated "Bukowski" love letter that made quote suddenly viral.
After years of investigation, the clues began to line-up. The origin of the quote and he origin of the love letter became unmistakable. Neither involve Bukowski. Neither can be attributed, as some have concluded, to Kinky Friedman.
The answers will be revealed at the 30th Annual Charles Bukowski Festival in Berlin come August.
Sincerely (not falsely) yours,
Kevin Patrick Allen
Background on Kevin Patrick Allen
I am a documentary storyteller and investigative journalist with a persistent curiosity and an inherent instinct to explore rabbit trails that yield new truths. From making sense of building codes that ultimately put firefighters in danger, to uncovering 40-year-old evidence in a murder case that pro football preferred to forget, I chase stories that others miss because they often hold the deeper truth.
I grew up the son of a jail and prison chaplain who modeled something rare: how to be street-smart and compassionate at the same time. He was suspicious of easy narratives and rejected the notion that a pressed-shirt and a smile made you trustworthy, but he carried empathy even into the darkest places.
My work has ranged from reporting on the dot-com boom and bust in Silicon Valley to quietly helping families turn tragedy into change. A short film I produced, The Anna Westin Story, told the tale of a young woman who died of an eating disorder and helped lead to federal legislation. I worked to earn the trust of Anna’s grieving dad and shared her life through his perspective. In Beneath the Shadow, I spent years investigating the forgotten legacy of Jim Tyrer, ultimately prompting the Pro Football Hall of Fame to reconsider a man long-erased due to a misunderstanding of why his behavior drastically changed. That investigation involved locating never-before-revealed medical information, conducting numerous sensitive interviews and navigating trauma with nuance.
I’ve worked in markets from San Francisco to Washington D.C., Chicago to Kansas City, and grew up in Kansas, but my style isn’t defined by geography. It’s shaped by a passion for research, revelation and authentically crafted, compelling stories.
I embrace new tools as they come to market, from the latest AI platforms to nonlinear editing environments (think Adobe Creative Suite… like Final Cut or Pro Tools) and I’ve worked across formats: film, radio, podcasting and multimedia.
CONTACT: KEVIN PATRICK ALLEN AT KP @ KPPLLC.NET
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