Tom Waits Interview.
I really like his answer to question two.
via mijn broeder, aaron..
This is a great interview. Here are a few of my favourite bits :
Q: What’s heaven for you?
A: Me and my wife on Rte. 66 with a pot of coffee, a cheap guitar, pawnshop tape recorder in a Motel 6, and a car that runs good parked right by the door.
Q: What’s wrong with the world?
A: We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. Leona Helmsley’s dog made 12 million last year… and Dean McLaine, a farmer in Ohio made $30,000. It’s just a gigantic version of the madness that grows in every one of our brains. We are monkeys with money and guns.
Q: Can you tell me an odd thing that happened in an odd place? Any thoughts?
A: A Japanese freighter had been torpedoed during WWII and it’s at the bottom of Tokyo Harbor with a large hole in her hull. A team of engineers was called together to solve the problem of raising the wounded vessel to the surface. One of the engineers tackling this puzzle said he remembered seeing a Donald Duck cartoon when he was a boy where there was a boat at the bottom of the ocean with a hole in its hull, and they injected it with ping-pong balls and it floated up. The skeptical group laughed but one of the experts was willing to give it a try. Of course, where in the world would you find twenty million ping-pong balls but in Tokyo? It turned out to be the perfect solution. The balls were injected into the hull and it floated to the surface, the engineer was elated. Moral solutions to problems are always found at an entirely different level; also, believe in yourself in the face of impossible odds.
Q: Do you have words to live by?
A: Jim Jarmusch once told me “Fast, Cheap, and Good… pick two. If it’s fast and cheap it wont be good. If it’s cheap and good it won’t be fast. If it’s fast and good it wont be cheap.” Fast, cheap and good… pick (2) words to live by.
Q: Tom, you love words and their origins. For $2,000…what is the origin of the word bedlam?
A: It’s a contraction of the word Bethlehem. It comes from the hospital of Saint Mary of Bethlehem outside London. The hospital began admitting mental patients in the late fourteenth century. In the sixteenth century it became a lunatic asylum. The word bedlam came to be used for any madhouse- and by extension, for any scene of noisy confusion.
Q: What is a gentleman?A: A man who can play the accordion, but doesn’t.
FREECONOMY
This guy is my new hero. I’ve thought for a long time about stuff like this but I’ve never had the courage to do anything about it. Big respect to him. Favourite quote…
‘What have I learned? That friendship, not money, is real security. That most western poverty is of the spiritual kind. That independence is really interdependence. And that if you don’t own a plasma screen TV, people think you’re an extremist.’
You can join in and do your little bit here.
![joncherry:
Some of my new work from the Bethanie farm.
I lived at Bethanie for the last 36 days.
It was a mixture of things; not least was the inspiration that can be found there.
The photographs are a mixture of cross processed, colour and black and white.
Would love to hear some thoughts.
Email jon [at] joncherry [dot] net
chez’s new work is ace. check it out.](http://4.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ks6pf6ocSO1qzqci1o1_500.jpg)
Some of my new work from the Bethanie farm.
I lived at Bethanie for the last 36 days.
It was a mixture of things; not least was the inspiration that can be found there.
The photographs are a mixture of cross processed, colour and black and white.
Would love to hear some thoughts.
Email jon [at] joncherry [dot] net
chez’s new work is ace. check it out.
“ ‘I don’t want my leaves to drop,’ said the tree.
‘I don’t want to freeze,’ said the pool.
‘I don’t want to smile,’ said the sombre man.
‘Or ever to cry’, said the fool.
‘I don’t want to open,’ said the bud.
‘I don’t want to end,’ said the night.
‘I don’t want to rise,’ said the neap-tide.
‘Or ever to fall,’ said the kite.
They wished and they murmured and whispered,
They said that to change was a crime.
Then a voice from nowhere answered,
‘You must do what I say’…
Brian Patten, ‘The Tree and the pool’ in ‘A Pilgrim Way’ (via mattlong)
stop whispering
Please forgive me for my distance
The pain is evident in my existence
Please forgive for my distance
The shame is manifest in my resistance
- fiona apple
