The first time I ever heard Tom Waits I remember feeling so strange and asking my friend Bart what the hell this was.
Freshman year of college, my roommate had the exact same experience. He came into our room, the song above blasting so loud he heard it walking down the hallway, confusion growing more and more with each step. A slight frown on his face, he said, What the fuck is this?
Two months later, he’d come in the room and tell me to play that cookie monster song and I knew exactly what he was talking about.
I rattled the windows and shook the floor while stomping my feet, screaming these lyrics into the ceiling, the roof, into the falling rain while the thunder clapped along with all of us down below.
This song is not buried in my heart but bursting through my belly. I shout it with my whole chest, feel it trembling through each of my limbs, sending them spinning and wiling out while my fellow goblins cobble together our jangling dance of rattled bones and a voice growling from the buried ribcage of a giant trapped in the belly of a mountain.
Grinding stones, blood and bones, we howled and barked in a cement basement conjuring rain at 3am, drunk as shit, smashing bottles against our walls, our floor, drowning in darkness, in night, a bestial cry possessing my body.
Without her love, without your kiss
Hell can't burn me more than this
I'm burning with all this pain
Put out the fire
Make it rain
I'm born to trouble, born to fate
Inside a promise I can't escape
It's the same old world, but nothing looks the same
Make it rain
Make it rain
I love Tom Waits.
I love him in a way that I’ve rarely mentioned here on this newsletter. I’m typically walking you all through some deep emotions. But Tom Waits, to me, is the sound of my heart opening and leaping and howling with joy, with glee, with an effervescence.
Tom Waits makes me feel alive. Makes me love being alive.
The other day, I introduced my son to the wondrous world of Tom Waits and now I get to listen to my favorite musician and he thinks it’s his idea
This is how you level up your parenting, babies.
Anyway, the reason I’m emailing you on your precious weekend is to make you aware of a few sales.
Colony Collapse and Howl are in there! A whole lot of other books are in there for real cheap or free though! Including books by Kelby Losack and David Simmons.
Anyway, pick up Colony Collapse for $0.99 and Howl for $0.99! I’m also discounting the Howl paperback to $9.99.
Also pick up Kelby Losack’s Mercy and David Simmons’ Ghost of East Baltimore. Two of the best books from last year.
And then here are a bunch more:
Once I went to see Tom Waits in Edinburgh with my dad and in the afternoon before the show we went into a music shop. Someone was in there and the someone was Tom Waits. We lurked around the shelves until we crossed paths. He said hello because he's polite and maybe I was slightly staring. I said hello and introduced my dad and said how much we were looking forward to the show tonight. He said thanks. He was looking forward to it too. We shook hands and walked out extra normally... went round the corner and then jumped in the air shouting OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD. I don't get a chance to tell this story very often, so there you go. I love Tom's voice. I love his songs. I enjoyed reading your piece.
REAL GONE is one of the greatest albums of all time for me