First Kiss - Tom Waits

She drove a big old Lincoln
with suicide doors
and a sewing machine in the back
and a light bulb that looked like
an alligator egg
was mounted up front on the hood

and she had an Easter bonnet that had been signed
by Tennessee Ernie Ford
and she always had saw dust in her hair
and she cut two holes in the back of her dress
and she had these scapular wings
that were covered with feathers and electrical tape
and when she got good and drunk
she would sing about Elkheart, Indiana
where the wind is strong
and folks mind their own business

and she had at least a hundred old baseballs
that she'd taken from kids
and she collected bones of all kinds
and she lived in a trailer under a bridge
and she made her own whiskey and gave cigarettes to kids
and she'd been struck by lightning seven or eight times
and she hated the mention of rain

and she made up her own language
and she wore rubber boots
and she could fix anything with string
and her lips were like cherries
and she was stronger than any man
and she smelled like gasoline and root beer fizz
and she put mud on a bee sting
I got at the creek
and she gave me
my very first kiss
and she gave me
my very first kiss

talking 'bout my little Kathleen
she's just a fine young thing
someday she'll wear my ring
my little Kathleen

Some Sunday morning early Tom

1977: "Tom Traubert's Blues", based on the Australian bush ballad, "Waltzing Matilda":

Wasted and wounded, it ain't what the moon did
I got what I paid for now
See you tomorrow; hey, Frank, can I borrow
A couple of bucks from you to go
Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda?
You'll go waltzing Matilda with me 

I'm an innocent victim of a blinded alley
And I'm tired of all these soldiers here
No one speaks English and everything's broken
And my Stacy's are soaking wet to go
Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
You'll go waltzing Matilda with me 

Now the dogs are barking
And the taxi cabs parking
A lot they can do for me
I begged you to stab me
You tore my shirt open
And I'm down on my knees tonight
Old Bushmill's, I staggered
You buried the dagger
In your silhouette window light to go
Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
You'll go waltzing Matilda with me 

Now I've lost my St Christopher now that I've kissed her
And the one-armed bandit knows
And the maverick Chinamen and the cold-blooded signs
And the girls down by the striptease shows go
Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
You'll go waltzing Matilda with me 

No, I don't want your sympathy
The fugitives say that the streets aren't for dreaming now
Manslaughter dragnets and the ghosts that sell memories
They want a piece of the action anyhow, go
Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
You'll go waltzing Matilda with me 

And you can ask any sailor and the keys from the jailer
And the old men in wheelchairs know
That Matilda's the defendant, she killed about a hundred
And she follows wherever you may go
Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
You'll go waltzing Matilda with me 

And it's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace
And a wound that will never heal
No prima donna, the perfume is on
An old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey
And goodnight to the street sweepers
The night watchman flame keepers
And goodnight, Matilda, too

And if you've never heard very early Tom, before he developed his characteristic voice, I present "I Want You", an incredibly beautiful and simple song, of which there are all too few nowdays:

I want you, you, you
All I want is you, you, you
All I want is you
Give you the stars above, Sun on the brightest day
Give you all my love, if you would only say
I want you, you, you
All I want is you, you, you
All I want is you

Tom Waits - Satisfied

How I missed this video til now I do not know.

When I’m gone
When I’m gone

Roll my vertebrae out like dice
Let my skull be a home for the mice
Let me bleach like the bones on a beach
I’ll be hard like a pit from a peach
Now the ground has a branch
Now the hound has a ranch
The old tressel’s just junk
The Edsel is on blocks
The old said so… won’t talk
I’m a blimp that’s straining, cut’er ties
I’m a moth in training, flutter by
Huh…

When I’m gone
When I’m gone

I said I will have satisfaction
I will be satisfied
I said I will be satisfied
When I’m believing: satisfaction
When I’m grieving: satisfaction
When I’m shaking: satisfaction
When I’m praying: satisfaction
When I’m staying: satisfaction
When I’m carousing
When I’m a thousand

I said I will have satisfaction
I will be satisfied
Before I’m gone
Before I’m gone
I will have satisfaction
I will be satisfied
I will have satisfaction
I will be satisfied

Now Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards
I will scratch where I’ve been itching
Now Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards
I will scratch where I’ve been itching

Before I’m gone
Before I’m gone
Before I’m gone
Before I’m gone

Let me go back into the barrel
Let the bullet go back into the barrel
Let the bullet go back into the barrel
Let the bullet go back into the barrel
Before I’m gone
Before I’m gone

I said I will have satisfaction
Let the bullet go back into the barrel
Let the bullet go back into the barrel
Take a left off the straight and the narrow
Let the bullet go back into the barrel
Before I’m gone
Before I’m gone

Keith Richards, incidentally, is playing the guitar on this recording (with Les Claypool on bass).

Father's Day, witbier, and mules

Apologies for the radio silence; my laptop's been out of commission for two weeks (still is) and I can rarely be arsed to schlep over to the library when something blog-worthy pops into my head. That said, came across an amusing passage in BLGF today that I realized I could turn into a belated Father's Day post.

Here (Serb, Orthodox) Constantine is recounting the difficulty of establishing friendly relations with his (German, Lutheran) mother-in-law:

"And from her side the efforts to be friends with me are often not very good, though in time she came to like me. It is so with the white beer. Do you know white beer? It is the last of all that is fade in the world, and it is adored by the petite bourgeoisie in Germany. They go to the beer-gardens in the woods and by the lakes and with their little eyes they look at the beauties of their Germany, and they drink white beer, which is the most silly thing you can drink, for it does not taste of anything and cannot make you drunk. It is just like the life of the petit bourgeois in liquid form, but it is gross in its nothingness, so that some of them who have shame do not like it, and order raspberry syrup to add to it. But there are those who are not ashamed of being fade and they would not spoil it with a flavour, and they order 'ein Weisses mit ohne...' Mit ohne, mit ohne, could you have anything that is better for the soul of the petite bourgeoisie that is asked what it wants and says, 'I want it with without.' That is to be lost, to be damned beyond all recovery, and yet there they are very happy, they sit in their beer-gardens and ask for mit ohne. It is altogether delicious, it is one of those discords in the universe that remind us how beautifully God works when He works to be nasty. 

Once I said this in front of the mother-in-law, and do you know ever after she gives me to drink this horrible white beer. And my wife has tried to tell her she should not do so, and my mother-in-law says, 'You are foolish, I have heard him say he likes very much mit ohne,' and my wife she says, 'No, you have it wrong, it is the expression mit ohne he likes,' and my mother-in-law says, 'How can you say such nonsense, why should he be pleased when people say they will have white beer without raspberry syrup?' And to that there is nothing to be said, so I must drink white beer, though I am a Serb and therefore not a petit bourgeois, but a lord and a peasant."

(In case you couldn't figure it out, "white beer" is wheat beer, so if you're one of those ridiculous hefewiezen/ Belgian white types, Constantine's bitching about you.)

This called to mind the day I came back from Russia. Driving back to the Island from JFK, my father asked me how it came to be that I found a mule to ride in the middle of St Petersburg. Now I drank quite a bit in the motherland, but not so much that I'd ride a mule, tell my father about it, and forget the entire episode. Suddenly I remembered that sometime during my final week, when I was having a very rough go of things for a variety of reasons, I'd made my Facebook status, "Got to get behind the mule in the morning and plow." This is, of course, a lyric from one of my favorite Tom Waits songs, aptly titled "Get behind the mule", which is basically about sucking it up and putting your emotional shit on the back burner because there's work to be done. My father, of course, had simply assumed that I'd gone mule riding.

Big Jack Earl was 8'1
He stood in the road and he cried
He couldn't make her love him
Couldn't make her stay
But tell the good Lord that he tried

Got to get behind the Mule
In the morning and plow

(It's also a song about trying to cover up a murder and associated business, but that does not concern the present narrative.)

Point is, my father thought I was literally plowing a field instead of being vaguely emo. He is the best. May we all strive to think so well of our loved ones!

This is just a Tom Waits fan blog at this point, isn't it?

Confession time: I first listened to Tom Waits after my Russian TA told me he was very popular in Russia my freshman year of college. Total poseur that I am, I immediately set out to learn as much about him as I could, hoping a) to figure out what so endeared him to my fellow Slavs and b) that I too would fall madly in love. As quintessentially American as Tom is, I don't think it's hard to see what about his gutter ballads and striking imagery appeals to the Slavic psyche, and luckily for me I didn't have to work to enjoy his music. I remember sitting in the Comp Sci building watching a video for "Army Ants", listening to him literally recite a lecture about grotesque habits of various insects, and feeling like I was having the time of my life:

"And as we discussed last semester, the army ants will leave nothing but your bones."

Despite his huge discography, I immediately wanted more. I felt like I'd stumbled into a new universe and was eager to know more of its populace. After a bit of research I was disappointed, but largely unsurprised, to find that Tom really was sui generis.

Four years later what started as an exercise in cultural exploration has metastasized into incurable obsession, and while his lyrics are slowly becoming proverbs in my vernacular ("I don't have a drinkin' problem 'cept when I can't get a drink!") and my voice takes on more gravel and rasp every time I sing, I've learned that he's not quite as alone as I first thought.

For your edification I present: 

EIGHT ACTS THAT AREN'T AS GOOD AS WAITS BUT EVOKE ENOUGH OF HIS QUALITIES TO MERIT A LISTEN

1. Captain Beefheart

Too obvious, I know, but given his recent passing I can't resist plugging his music.

Weird voice, funky instrumentation, seemingly acid-inspired lyrics-- it's all here, man. Looking at his live performances, a lot of his showmanship has clearly rubbed off as well. Here's one of my all time favorites, "Nowadays A Woman's Got to Hit a Man". Be sure to check out "Bat Chain Puller" and of course "Ice Cream for Crow" as well, which are a bit more on the absurdist side than this fairly straightforward (for Beefheart) blues-rock.

"Men you been lookin' all around for the women
But they always been right there
Nowadays a woman has to haul off and hit a man
T' make him know she's there."

2. Man Man

Sleek Waitsian gypsies. Here's "Banana Ghost":

"I don't even have the strength to begin to imitate the dying little bird you've saved."

They will be performing in DC on June 3rd. You know you want to come with me. End of story.

3. Firewater

Carnivale! Fast, light, occasionally ska, but not too much, I promise. Here's "The Man on the Burning Tightrope", which, while far and away their best song (in my humble opinion), isn't incredibly representative-- but if you like indie-klezmer type stuff, you'll have fun with them.

"Well once upon a time
there was a happy ever after to this story
but you won't hear one today."

4. Howlin' Wolf

Moving away from the Roma and back to the Delta! His wailing here in "Smokestack Lightin'" and Waits's own "Don't Go Into That Barn" define hauntings so thoroughly in my brain that I don't understand the point of horror movies set outside the deep south.

5. Jolie Holland

Frankly it wouldn't be hard to list bluesmen, prog rockers, accordion outfits and whatnot til the sun comes up-- so long as they're all male. What does a female equivalent of Tom even mean? Try to conceptualize it-- Joni Mitchell? Thalia Zedek? Finally I settled on Jolie Holland, whose "Old Fashioned Morphine" was a staple in the immediate days after my surgery.

6. Morphine

Speaking of which... "Thursday":

7. Peggy Lee

But back to the womenfolk. Tragic cabaret jazz with cold piano and the occasional monologue. "Tango":

"A medieval tapestry hangs like a warning
A needlepoint forest of dark green and brown
The scene is the hunt, you will notice the hunter
He takes careful aim as your eye travels down

And finally rests upon the real victim
Lying quite still in a silk dressing gown
Lying quite still at the edge of the carpet
One arm flung out for the peacocks to peck
Blending in well with the blue and green background
Except for the bright scarlet sash round the neck."

8. William Elliott Whitmore

I may have saved the best for last. Whitmore: the only good thing ever to come outta Iowa. Happens to share a label with Tom (ANTI-)! Most of my favorite songs about death are his.

"One Man's Shame":

He might be my second favorite songwriter ever-- his melodies are simple but beautiful and eminently singable (an oft-ignored quality!), his poetry memorable, and his themes endlessly compelling to an occasionally fatalist romantic like myself.

"Don't alter my altar
don't desecrate my shrine
My church is the water
and my home is underneath the shady pines
Don't underestimate the spine in a poor man's back
when it's against the wall and his future's black

One man's story is another man's shame
I ain't bound for glory, I'm bound for flames
Take to the woods boy, and cover up your tracks
Go away child and don't look back

Sad is the lullaby from a mother's heart and soul
when she knows her child has strayed from the foal
The parish will perish
by death's cruel hand
and finish the job that fate began
All that static in the attic,
that's just an old drunk ghost
His chains are rattlin' but his end is close
Ain't no hell below and ain't no heaven above
I came for the drinks but I stayed for the love."

Gratuitous Tom Waits post (Updated)

"I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things."

- Tom Waits in a 2002 NPR interview

Well I broke down in East St. Louis
On the Kansas City line
and I drunk up all my money
that I borrowed every time
and I fell down at the derby
and now the night's black as a crow
It was a train that took me away from here
but a train can't bring me home

UPDATE: A TANGENT ON CIGARETTE HOLDERS 

The above video is one of very few instances where I think a man with a cigarette holder works (besides the incredibly obvious). Lover of all things tobacciana that I am, I nevertheless have a hard time getting on board with cigarette holders-- they're so damn prissy!

I could just stop this post right here.

Anything motivated by a desire not to smell of smoke clearly cannot be trusted.

It seems to me that cigarette holders can be understood either as campy or aristocratic. I've written before about the strange ways cigarettes interact with class:

"...in the original Wall Street Gekko is never seen smoking a cigar, only cigarettes. I, being me, read a lot into this- everyone else in Wall Street who matters smokes cigars- Bud Fox, his father, and Gekko smoke cigarettes...

In Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, I don't think I saw a single cigarette, and Gekko smoked plenty of cigars. I actually think this makes sense- destabilized, insecure, and with a fraction of the money he did prior to incarceration, he no longer has the luxury or the confidence to play himself down- there's a scene where he greets some other financial bigwig only to be awkwardly brushed aside and ignored- now, he needs every superficial wealth-and-power-signalling accessory he can find, for himself, probably, more than for anyone else."

For Thompson and Waits, the holder is clearly about camp, whereas with just about everyone else, it always comes across to me as trying too damn hard, one of the biggest damnable offenses in my book. Cigarette holders done right are a lot like gold teeth-- a potential status symbol that, having found its way into the lower classes, has been recontextualized and reimagined so thoroughly that no one outside of a very particular milieu would dare embrace it.

Actual elegance is about simplicity and understatement-- someone trying to appear sophisticated by holdering their cigarettes seems rather like a little girl stumbling around in her mother's shoes.

But then of course I've never really had any patience for people dandying up their poisons.

Snark Dump, Vol I

So for the past forever I have been doing the thing where I skim through Google Reader or Twitter (omg follow me) racking up tabs like cigarette butts during finals season intending to a) read and b) write about them at some point in my rapidly shortening life, and never doing either, so I'm trying out a new and largely despised genre: link-dumping. It's rightly despised in every case except mine, because I actually do subscribe to every single blog on the internet and read more interesting things than you do, so suck it up and enjoy.

EVIL LAUGH: UR DOIN IT WRONG

But then it is Crazy Mickey we're dealing with here.

DOLEFUL GERMAN PROVERBS AS A WAY OF KNOWING

"Wehe dem Kind, das beim Kuß auf die Stirn salzig schmekt, er ist verhext und muss bald sterbe," translated is "Woe is the child who tastes salty from a kiss on the brow, for he is cursed, and soon must die," referring to a common cystic fibrosis symptom, salty tasting skin. This saying predates serious medical documentation of CF by well over a hundred years.

CONSISTENCY IS THE HOBGOBLIN OF EXPATRIATE JOURNALISM

Two headlines published in the St Petersburg Times on the same day (22 Feb 2011):

"EXPATS, FOREIGN QUALIFICATIONS STILL IN DEMAND"

"FOREIGN WORKERS NOT WELCOME"

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT ALL THE CHURCH APP MADNESS HAD DIED DOWN

The Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America to the rescue!

"The app—available free of charge in the App Store and on iTunes—incorporates a wide range of features, including daily scripture readings, photo and video galleries, Armenian spiritual and folk music, a calendar of events, a directory of Diocesan parishes, a prayer request function, and much more. Log on to post a comment, share an image with friends, or read the latest news from the Eastern Diocese."

A VERY MERRY UNBIRTHDAY TO ME

Monday was Rare Disease Day. Do not celebrate by looking at photos of quinsy on the internet. Definitely do not celebrate by watching videos of tonsillectomies on Youtube, and for the love of all that is good and pure in this world do not look at photos of recovering tonsillectomy patients either (you're lucky I love you all so much; the photos I've been taking of my own throat to monitor recovery/figure out when I can smoke again are much more detailed and graphic than anything I've found online).

YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT MENTAL ILLNESS LIKE IT'S A THING

Promoting "depression awareness" by wearing capes in April. In related news, I've actually been promoting lupus awareness by accessorizing like a gypsy for the past six years.

DICHOTOMY: NIETZSCHE/CHARLIE SHEEN

WENDELL BERRY'S LETTERBOX IS CLOGGED WITH ANONYMOUS LOVE LETTERS FROM THOM YORKE

"I heard that fucking Radiohead record and I just go, 'What?!'... Them writing a song about a fucking tree? Give me a fucking break! A thousand year old tree? Go fuck yourself! You'd have thought he'd have written a song about a modern tree or one that was planted last week. You know what I mean?" 

- Liam Gallagher of Oasis

THIS, YOU CALL PROGRESS?

This is a Camel billboard in 1941 that continuously produced five-foot-wide smoke rings:

This is a 1964 version:

In 2010, this is all that remains:

"WHY IS EVERYTHING TERRIBLE ALL THE TIME?" "BECAUSE WE'RE CONSERVATIVES."

Catholic anarchist Monsignor Ivan Illich is deliciously sharp-tongued in this 1968 speech "To Hell with Good Intentions" delivered at the Conference on Inter-American Student Projects. Would that we might listen to such realist wet-blanketry today (says the girl who briefly considered applying to the Peace Corps hoping for placement in Armenia or Bulgaria).

"And finally, in Latin America the Alliance for Progress has been quite successful in increasing the number of people who could not be better off - meaning the tiny, middle-class elites - and has created ideal conditions for military dictatorships. The dictators were formerly at the service of the plantation owners, but now they protect the new industrial complexes. And finally, you come to help the underdog accept his destiny within this process!

All you will do in a Mexican village is create disorder. At best, you can try to convince Mexican girls that they should marry a young man who is self-made, rich, a consumer, and as disrespectful of tradition as one of you. At worst, in your "community development" spirit you might create just enough problems to get someone shot after your vacation ends...

If you have any sense of responsibility at all, stay with your riots here at home. Work for the coming elections: You will know what you are doing, why you are doing it, and how to communicate with those to whom you speak. And you will know when you fail. If you insist on working with the poor, if this is your vocation, then at least work among the poor who can tell you to go to hell. It is incredibly unfair for you to impose yourselves on a village where you are so linguistically deaf and dumb that you don't even understand what you are doing, or what people think of you....

I am here to suggest that you voluntarily renounce exercising the power which being an American gives you. I am here to entreat you to freely, consciously and humbly give up the legal right you have to impose your benevolence on Mexico. I am here to challenge you to recognize your inability, your powerlessness and your incapacity to do the 'good' which you intended to do."

BUT WAIT, THERE WAS NO TOM WAITS IN THIS POST

WRONG: As of February 24th, "Tom is currently in the studio working on his next album." It's worth holding on for a few more months after all.

Now I'll never see heaven or home

Some longer pieces about CPAC '11 are in the works, but in the meantime I figured I'd take a cue from Leah and give you some songs to mull over this Valentine's Day (will I ever turn down an excuse to beat you over the head with Tom Waits?).

I'd like to start with what I always think of as a collapsitarian love song: "Tables and Chairs" by Andrew Bird.

"I know we're going to meet some day

in the crumbled financial institutions of this land.

There will be tables and chairs,

there'll be pony rides and dancing bears,

there'll even be a band,

'cause listen, after the fall there will be no more countries,

no currencies at all, we're gonna live on our wits,

we're gonna throw away survival kits,

trade butterfly-knives for Adderall.

...

And we were tired of being mild,

we were so tired of being mild,

and we were so tired..."

Next up: a traditional American folksong that apparently dates to the War of Forced Industrialization, "Lorena". I first learned this singing Jeff Douma's arrangement with the Yale Glee Club, and there are many variations. I've embedded Kent Stewart's version.

The beautifully haunting melody aside (not to mention its eminent singability, a quality many modern love songs, thanks to divas and autotune, fail to achieve), I've always loved how this song deals with duty, fate, and memory. As with most folksongs, there is no canonical list of verses, but here are some of my favorites:

"We loved each other then, Lorena,

more than we ever dared to tell,

and what we might have been, Lorena,

had but our loving prospered well.

But then, 'tis past, the years have gone,

I'll not call up their shadowy forms.

I'll say to them, 'Lost years, sleep on,

Sleep on, nor heed life's bitter storms.'

The story of the past, Lorena,

Alas! I care not to repeat.

The hopes that could not last, Lorena,

they lived, but only lived to cheat.

I would not cause e'en one regret

to rankle in your bosom now,

'For if we try we may forget,'

were words of thine long years ago.

Yes, these were words of thine, Lorena,

they are within my memory yet.

They touched some tender chords, Lorena,

which thrill and tremble with regret.

'twas not thy woman's heart which spoke,

thy heart was always true to me.

A duty stern and pressing broke

the tie which linked my soul with thee."

Fast forward about 150 years and we arrive at Chester French's "She Loves Everybody", which did very well on the charts in 2009.

"But you feel so clean!

Well she craves affection,

so I use protection.

And I know she loves me-

she loves everybody."

Speaks for itself.

If I can be sappy for a moment, I have to pimp Ingrid Michaelson's cover of "Can't Help Falling in Love", which is actually heartbreaking.

And the grand finale... I must admit I had a hell of a time picking just one Tom Waits song for this post, but in the end it was always "Lucinda".

Death by hanging, unforgivable and unspeakable transgressions, the criminal underworld, sacrificial love, all tied together with a beat that evokes alternately the last wheezes of a 19th century locomotive or the weary axe falls of a chain gang.

"Well, they call me William the Pleaser,

I sold opium, fireworks and lead.

Now I'm telling my troubles to strangers,

when the shadows get long I'll be dead.

Now, her hair was as black as a bucket of tar,

skin as white as a cuttlefish bone...

I left Texas to follow Lucinda,

now I'll never see heaven or home.

...

As I kick at the clouds at my hanging,

as I swing out over the crowd,

I will search every face for Lucinda's

and she will go off with me down to hell.

I thought I'd broke loose of Lucinda,

the rain returned and so did the wind.

I cast this burden on the god that's within me,

and I'll leave this old world and go free.

...

Now I've fallen from grace for Lucinda,

whoever thought that hell be'd so cold?

I did well for an old tin can sailor,

but she wanted the bell in my soul.

I've spoken to the god on the mountain,

and I've swam in the Irish sea,

I ate fire and drank from the Ganges,

and I'll beg there for mercy for me."

So, happy Saint Valentine's day! If, like me, you are single, "just remember that being alone on Valentine's Day is no different than any other day of your life."

Hell's bells

(Note: all photos in this post were taken by me when I visited the Kremlin in July 2010. Click to see larger versions.)

Taking a break from researching/writing a speech about the American justice system for the Yale Political Union's Gardner-White Prize Debate on R: Bring back the stocks tonight. In between skimming Gresham Sykes's The Society of Captives and wading through the Bureau of Justice Statistics's Survey of Sexual Violence, I've been going through my music library looking for songs about prisons, criminals, gangs, etc. Of course ended up listening to one of my top five Tom Waits songs, "Hoist that Rag", and a certain line caught my attention in a new way:

(I can never resist posting live performances, but you can hear the studio version, which is brilliant and perhaps more palatable to less seasoned Waits fans, here.)

"Well, we stick our fingers in the ground,

heave and turn the world around.
Smoke is blacking out the sun,
at night I pray and clean my gun.
The cracked bell rings as the ghost bird sings;

the gods go begging here.
So just open fire when you hit the shore,

all is fair in love and war."

I've listened to this song probably at least a hundred times, but this time the image of the cracked bell caught me and reminded me of Leonard Cohen's "Anthem" (which I heard for the first time a few weeks ago, courtesy of the Ochlophobist):

"So, ring the bells that still can ring,

forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything,

that's how the light gets in."

New Haven, where I've lived for nigh four years now, is full of the noise of bells, from the widely hated carillon in Harkness Tower to the more modest Christ Church bells, rung before Compline on Sundays. Bells have in their call an unnerving mix of the joyful and the ominous, every peal containing within it the calm foreboding of Gust Avrakotos's Zen master in Charlie Wilson's War: we'll see, we'll see, we'll see, yes, yes, we will see.

"The weak sounds of wood and metal remind us of the unclear, mysterious words of the prophets, but the loud and vigorous play of bells is like the rejoicing of the Gospel, radiating out to all corners of the universe and lifting one's thoughts to the angelic trumpets of the last day."

(note: don't have access to the book I got this from at the moment, will cite source later)

"The bell played an important part in material as well as spiritual culture through its technological tie-in with the manufacture of cannon. Already by the late fourteenth century--only a few years after the first appearance of cannon in the West--Russians had begun to manufacture cannon along with bells; and, by the sixteenth century, they had produced the largest of each item to be found anywhere in the world...

They represent the first example of 'overtaking and surpassing' a superior technology. But they illustrate as well the artificiality of of the accomplishment. For the bell was too large to hang, the cannon too broad to fire."

- James Billington, I&A

Not only was the Tsar'-kolokol (Tsar-bell), as it was called, too large to hang, but it in fact cracked while it was still being cast. During a massive fire in 1737, cool water was thrown onto the bell while in the casting pit to prevent it from melting-- the sudden temperature change left us with the bell you see below.

So then: cracked bells, how do they work (as symbols fraught with theological, historical, and literary significance approaching the self-indulgently gravid in these three distinct, unrelated, and arbitrarily selected contexts)?

First we have this Waitsian image signalling perversion of the natural order, both summoning us to, and heralding our arrival at, the Absurd, the Surreal-- "The Lowside of the Road", as Tom himself might put it (which, incidentally, is also the title Barney Hoskyns chose for his unauthorized TW biography). "Lowside" was released on 1999's Mule Variations, five years before Real Gone and "Hoist that Rag". Think of the darkest, most inscrutable moments in O Brother, Where Art Thou? "Lowside" not only describes that world, but makes us realize we've been there too, and might be there still.

"The moon is red and you're dancin' real slow,
twenty-nine miles left to go.
The chain monkeys help you with your load,
you're rollin over to the lowside of the road."

...

Well the clapper has been ripped out of the bell,
The flapper has been kicked right out of hell.
When the horse whips the man that he rode,
you're rollin over to the lowside of the road."

Again: soundless bells announcing the unexpected, the contrary, the impossible: "the gods go begging here," "the flapper has been kicked right out of hell".

Cohen, despite imploring us to acknowledge our inescapable imperfection, seems to present a much brighter vision, one that echoes in its simplicity and joy the bells of early Rus', or perhaps the end of Gogol's Dead Souls: "Where art thou soaring away to, Russia? Give me the answer! But Russia gives none, save the bell pouring forth marvelous sound..."

But here I think the reality of the Tsar-bell links Cohen and Waits: intended to signal to the world the strength, expertise, and piety of "the New Jerusalem", it was undone by nothing grander than one of the basic elements. It stands both as an impressive monument and a humbling castigation-- it is an absurdity, a paradox, a thing both of beauty and of shame. Like the maimed bells of "Lowside" and "Hoist that Rag", it reminds us that we are in a world beyond our comprehension, and like the one beginning Cohen's "Anthem", it assures us that our feckless, discordant acts of worship are loved nevertheless.

Photo 1: Колокольня Ивана Великого/Ivan the Great Bell Tower

Photo 2: Царь-колокол/Tsar-bell

Photo 3: The giant crack in the Tsar-bell

It's Friday! Let's ponder death.

"The Mercy Seat" - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

And the mercy seat is waiting

And I think my head is boiling

And in a way I'm spoiling

All the fun by all this truth and consequence

An eye for an eye

And a tooth for a tooth

And anyway I told the truth

And I'm not afraid to die.

I would be remiss not to point you to Johnny Cash's hauntingly brilliant cover as well.

And the mercy seat is smoking

And I think my head is melting

And in a way that's helping

To be done with all this twisting of the truth

A lie for a lie

And a truth for a truth

And anyway I told the truth

But I'm afraid I told a lie.

"Hush (Somebody's calling my name)" - Nashville Bluegrass Band

Oh my brother, now won't you hush, hush

Somebody's calling out my name

O my Lord, O my Lord, what shall I do?

"Sometimes our dreams float like anchors" - William Elliott Whitmore

Oh the skin, oh the skin

That this old world has put me in

I can't wait to shed, I can't wait to shed

Lord, I'll be free when I'm dead.

"Parting Friends" - Word of Mouth Chorus

Farewell my friends, I'm bound for Canaan,

I'm traveling through the wilderness

Your company has been delightful,

You, who doth leave my mind distressed

I go away behind to leave you, perhaps never to meet again

But if we never have the pleasure, I hope we meet on Canaan's land.

And, inevitably...

"Romeo is bleeding" - Tom Waits

Romeo is bleeding

He climbs to the balcony at the movies

and he'll die without a wimper

like every hero's dream

like an angel with a bullet

and Cagney on the screen.

You'll never recognize yourself on Heartattack & Vine

Tired of reading about Lady Gaga? I'm not, but just in case you want to see what actual musical decadence looks like (first song starts around 1:10):

"Heartattack and Vine"

liar liar with your pants on fire,
white spades hangin' on the telephone wire,
gamblers reevaluate along the dotted line,
you'll never recognize yourself on Heartattack and Vine.

doctor lawyer beggar man thief,
Philly Joe Remarkable looks on in disbelief,
if you want a taste of madness, you'll have to wait in line,
you'll probably see someone you know on Heartattack and Vine.

Boney's high on china white, shorty found a punk,
don't you know there ain't no devil? there's just God when he's drunk,
well this stuff will probably kill you, let's do another line,
what you say you meet me down on Heartattack and Vine?

better off in Iowa against your scrambled eggs,
than crawling down Cahuenga on a broken pair of legs,
you'll find your ignorance is blissful every goddamn time
you're waitin' for the RTD on Heartattack and Vine.

"Til the Money Runs Out"
check this strange beverage that falls out from the sky,
splashin' Bagdad on the Hudson in Panther Martin's eyes,
he's high and outside wearin' candy apple red,
Scarlet gave him twenty seven stitches in his head,
with a pint of green chartreuse ain't nothin' seems right,
you buy the Sunday paper on a Saturday night.

can't you hear the thunder? someone stole my watch,
I sold a quart of blood and bought a half a pint of scotch,
someone tell those Chinamen on Telegraph Canyon Road,
when you're on the bill with the spoon there ain't no time to unload,
so bye bye baby baby bye bye.

droopy stranger lonely dreamer toy puppy and the prado,
we're laughin' as they piled into Olmos' el dorado,
Jesus whispered eni meany miney moe,
they're too proud to duck their heads that's why they bring it down so low,
so bye bye baby baby bye bye.

the pointed man is smack dab in the middle of July,
swingin' from the rafters in his brand new tie,
he said I can't go back to that hotel room; all they do is shout,
but I'll stay with you, baby, till the money runs out,
so bye bye baby baby bye bye.

Lady Gaga, love her though I do, is really for those trying to up their performativity. Tom Waits sings for everyone who's passed the aesthete's point of no return.

For I am a rain dog too

A fairly arbitrarily selected list of twelve of my favorite Americans, real and fictional, whose admirable and/or compelling qualities I find distinctly American, offered in no particular order and without further commentary (for now):

1. Hunter S. Thompson
2. Ernest Hemingway
3. Tom Waits
4. Jay Gatsby
5. Denis Leary
6. Tony Stark
7. William F. Buckley, Jr
8. Richard Nixon
9. Jack Donaghy
10. Jay-Z
11. Kanye West
12. Woody Allen

Honorable mentions:
Roger Sterling
Dagny Taggart
Charlie Wilson
Nicolas Cage
Johnny Cash
Humphrey Bogart

"A rain dog is - you notice it more in lower Manhattan than anywhere else - after a rain in New York all the dogs that got caught in the rain, somehow the water washed away their whole trail and they can't get back home so about 4 in the morning you see all these stranded dogs on the street and they're looking around like - won't you help me get back home, sir, please - excuse me sir - excuse me sir - can you help me find my way back home - all makes and models, the short ones, the black ones, the tall ones, the expensive ones, the long ones, the disturbed ones, they all want to get home.

So that's a rain dog. It's like falling asleep somewhere and you thought you knew where you were and when you woke up - it's like Mission Impossible - they changed the furniture and the walls and windows and the sky turned a different color and you can never get back..." - Tom Waits

Bubblegum Cigars & Marlboro Reds

"Warm beer and cold women, I just don't fit in;
every joint I stumbled into tonight,
that's just how it's been.
All these double knit strangers with
gin and vermouth, and the recycled stories
in the naugahyde booths,

with the platinum blondes,
and tobacco brunettes...
I'll just be drinkin' to forget you-
I light another cigarette...
and the band's playin' something
by Tammy Wynette,
and the drinks are on me tonight."

"Warm Beer and Cold Women", Tom Waits

When that song makes sense with a cigar or pipe smoker, I'll feel kinship.

People outside the dirty soap bubble that is tobacco culture sometimes assume we're a monolith- that a Marlboro man can down whiskey with a thirty-something chomping a Davidoff Grand Cru and achieve some kind of smokers' intersubjectivity. Any serious cigarette smoker will laugh in your face if you suggest that they have something in common with someone who knows their way around a meerschaum.

Don't get me wrong-- while I loathe the smell of cigars I do enjoy pipe tobacco once in a while, and sometimes mix it in with mine when I roll my own. But we do not share a culture, or even an understanding of what it means to be smokers, and we never did- even before the state stepped in and made it nigh impossible.

It's a damn shame, because politically, cigar and pipe smokers have much more clout than we lowly filter-suckers- but we are distinct groups, and have often looked on one another with mutual disdain. Sometime last year I combed Manhattan for a smoking-friendly bar, only to find numerous "cigar bars" with signs bluntly noting that cigarettes were completely unwelcome. Cigar and pipe aficionados, noting the easy class distinction between themselves and we, the maligned remnant, sold us out long ago to preserve their own skins. It's worked out well for them, thus far. Unfortunately the War Against Tobacco is merely a battle in the larger War Against Risk, and they will soon find themselves in the crosshairs- but that's a story for another time.

Frankly, the Federation of Tobacco is rather like Yugoslavia in the early 80s. Ignorant outsiders assume that because of various geographic, ethnic and religious ties that Yugoslavs must, at the end of the day, band together. Unfortunately, a Serb is not a Croat, a Catholic is not Orthodox, and a South Slav is not an Arab; likewise, the man who reaches for a cigar to congratulate himself on the birth of his son or a successful business venture has nothing in common with the nicotine-starved paradox that is the cigarette smoker.

Richard Klein notes that "the pleasure of cigarette smoking is distinguished from that procured by other forms of tobacco consumption insofar as it defies the economy of what Freud calls the pleasure principle. According to that principle, which interprets pleasure on the model of need, the satisfaction of desire results in the elimination of desire... Cigarettes, however, defy that economy of pleasure: they do not satisfy desire, they exasperate it. The more only yields to the excitation of smoking, the more deliciously, voluptuously, cruelly, and sweetly it awakens desire- it inflames what it presumes to extinguish."

In other words, cigars and pipes, despite the costly accessories those habits demand, are utterly bourgeois; cigarettes are tragic, and therefore inherently aristocratic, despite the common proletarian manifestation.

It makes perfect sense, to my mind, that in bygone years, before the Puritan resurgence in American government, cigars were peddled to children as bubblegum, and cigarettes as sugar. Bubblegum is brightly colored and flavored, familiar, and impermanent- one spits it out behind the trashcan on the corner when one is done. The thin sugar sticks that passed as candy cigarettes don't taste anything but narcotic and have little to no aesthetic appeal beyond what they manifestly are, and there's no escaping their effect. The ten year old pays a buck fifty for his Potemkin Lucky Strikes, shoves four or five straight down the alimentary canal, climbs trees for an hour and passes out in its shade when the high recedes.

And then he reaches for another.