Writer
This music video makes me irrationally happy.
…”Downtown Train,” track #17 from side 2 of Tom Waits‘s remarkable 1985 album, Rain Dogs.
Fun fact: that’s legendary middleweight and all-around hard-knock knucklehead Jake LaMotta in the opening sequence.
The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.
…Tom Waits, from Vanity Fair, in conversation with…well, precisely the type of person you imagine Tom Waits in conversation with.
My theory is that songs have to be anatomically correct. They need to have weather in them and the name of a town and usually something to eat — in case you get hungry.
Notes from the wall above my writing desk, No. 2:
…you don’t understand.
…from Track 2 of Closing Time, which is inarguably one of the Top-5 Greatest Debut Albums of all time.
There’s no light in the tunnel
No irons in the fire
Come on up to the house
And your singin’ lead soprano
In a junkman’s choir
You gotta come on up to the house
…Come On Up to the House, track 16 from the holy prophet‘s Mule Variations.
Money’s just something you throw off the back of a train
…Tom Waits, from Long Way Home, track #3 on disc 2 of Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards