It's time that you love and it's time, time, time in Normal entries

So, I was cleaning out my pipes — wait, ya damn degenerates, that’s not a euphemism, I was running everclear through my tobacco pipes — and I wanted something to listen too, you know, pipe cleaning music, and decided I’d let YouTube be my DJ. I picked Tom Waits – select songs for her. And yeah, I could have just done a random play on every tom waits album I have, but, you know, I wanted to see how someone else would pick it out.

Yeah, I’m not ashamed of my heavy fandom, especially not of Tom Waits. Being a Dylan fan was a bit cliché when I was growing up, being a Springsteen fan was damn cliché, being a warren zevon fan depended on the crowd. Being a Coltrane fan usually just shut up my midwestern butt-rock buddies, and I’ll just say classical music fan too which dropped some jaws and shut em back up. It’d be stupid to name off composers, those guys were dead, I never heard them play. My dad would take me to a lot of classical concerts and, occasionally to a jazz concert or two, though in the sixties he didn’t like the vegetable smoke and he thought Miles had lost his motherfucking mind and was just showing off his chops in a kind of directionless way. Not only was entitled to his opinion but his opinion should be respected if not, necessarily agreed with.

I love me a good singer songwriter and I love me a band that can tell a deep story without words. Music, instrumental music, is like dreams. If your sub-conscious could tell you directly or an axe could speak plain, they would, but it’d take hours to tell what a dream can in seconds or an axe can in a few minutes.

Anyhow, the selection wasn’t all songs about chicks, because, you know, it’s Tom Waits; all his songs are about chicks and not about chicks, and it should be noted, on a personal level, he’s been married forever and not a single “me Too” mentioned his name. Tom puts the hopeless in hopeless romantic. One of the prettiest songs written by man or beast is Ruby’s arms; a guy leaving his girlfriend for reasons unstated, sad, pretty, compassionate.

I have a bristle pipe cleaner soaked in everclear and am knuckle deep in a flame grain asymmetrical Becker apple and I’m damn near crying. I’ve cleaned that pipe fifty times and heard that song a thousand and … I don’t know. Beautiful and sad and gives you the feeling that time has got behind you and letting you outpace it.

Some of the better things I’ve written in my life I had to scrap because they were unintentional idea theft from either tom waits or Kurt Vonnegut. All my other idea theft has been intentional. I’ve written five novels in my lifetime, one of them actually worth reading. While writing them I would not start, end or consider any existing novel or listen to any music with lyrics. Even when I actually outline a novel (ok, so I did that once and it wasn’t the novel worth reading) I still write as the notion comes to me, not necessarily free association, but a close cousin. I get the voice and the pace and think with my fingers. It’s impossible for me to not be influenced by the immediate present, so I stay away from literature and music I like. That’s not likely to ever be a problem again. At the rate my mind is racing downhill by 2020 song lyrics will all I’ll be able to remember. Also, I’m a little to mentally sound these days to consider writing another novel. Sound like a contradiction? Fuck you.

I’m about to load some escudo into my freshly cleaned pipe (either the aforementioned Becker or a Radice hawkbill or possibly a Moretti brown morta) and step away from the keyboard. One more problem I have with listening to Tom Waits, ok two, but one that’s more pressing, is; reminds me of Sunny, who pops up now and again on my instant messenger with nostalgic shit. I don’t hold grudges well, which I like to think of as a virtue, so I have to remind myself she killed my dog and my girlfriend not only is hot and kind but an exemplary human being without even trying. Sunny can be anything you want, but she try’s, she try’s hard, and she’ll kill your dog. The other reason is I don’t do well with music as background, everything else is background. I had to concentrate on the pipe cleaning.