Practiced improvisation ...

... Writing in the realm of fire: August Kleinzahler. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Others have wondered whether Kleinzahler, whose father worked in real estate and sent his son to the elite Horace Mann school in New York, assumes a bad-boy mask shaped for the authentically pock-marked features of Charles Bukowski or Gregory Corso. To Kirsch, the "roughneck persona" appears to be "the product of a persistent American neurosis about poetry and art being unmasculine. To compensate for their presumed loss of masculine status, certain writers make alcohol and fighting part of their literary persona."

I don't know. Low places also have an appeal all their own, and friends in low places are at least valuable as those in high places, and often more trustworthy.