Download PDF - ARTisSpectrum

Tom Waits for no oneby Lynda PogueTom Waits is his own man: an artist who waits for no one. He gets on with the business of life.With Mr. Waits, on the surface you’ll find a street-smart gravelly rumbling man who comes at the world sideways through his ownunique blending of jazz / blues / rock ‘n roll. However, if you go deeper, you’ll find a brilliant workingman’s poet laureate with aninsight into humanity that will rock your socks.Imagine Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs,Robin Williams, Bob Dylan, KeithRichards, Leonard Cohen, NeilYoung, Francis Ford Coppola,Satchmo, Long JohnBaldry, Joe Cocker and Einsteinall mixed up in a blender and youmight have a remote idea of whatTom Waits is all about.I I call what I’m doing animprovisational adventure or aninebriational travelogue... If I’mtied down and have to call myselfsomething, I prefer storyteller.(Note: all italics are words that eitherTom Waits has said in an intervieworhas penned in his lyrics.)Tom WaitsHe crooks his warped gifted fingers at you and invites you to experience his world as he paints mind images with his scurrilous,soulful, inventive words / phrases / pronouncements. And how he combines his words (and music) stretches the reader or thelistener’s psyche in new ways. You are right there in the seedy hotel room, or car, or truck, or bar with him… can’t you just see hiswaitress that has marmalade thighs with scrambled yellow hair? (Lyrics from The Ghosts of Saturday Night)He walks as if he wants to go three ways at once. He’s a bolt of lightning. He’s bent like a half-smoked cigarette in a bucketfulof sin. You get the sense that he’s seen it all through the eyes of Croce’s junkyard dog. The key to his work is his concreteacknowledgment of people whom many of us would prefer to pass by in silence; an affirmation that they exist.He knows our underbellies.Your eyes will cross and smoke will come out of your ears if you try to apply logic to many of his musings… what you must dois go for the ride with him. And, as an analogy, because you are interested in the Visual Arts, consider how many remarkablepieces of artwork do this same thing... if you take the time to read / to listen to the story in an artist’s painting (sculpture / photo)and go along for the ride WITH the artist, you may extend his/her story into profound insights for your own work… your own life.92 ARTisSpectrum