Waits and Brautigan: Wrong for all the Right Reasons

 It's the birthday (1949) of Tom Waits. He was born in California, went to high school in Chula Vista, and describes himself as a "rebel against the rebels." This has been interpreted as a rebuke to the hippie culture in SoCal during his teens and a nod to the earlier beat generation -- the Kerouacs and Ferlinghettis and Brautigans. Waits is said to have been inspired by Bob Dylan and other early folk-rock figures.

Mr. Waits is a brilliant songwriter and dedicated individualist. I really like his stuff, especially the holiday classic "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis."

 Brautigan and Waits shared an affinity for the mundane and the absurd, as in this little gem from Brautigan:

Private Eye Lettuce

Three crates of Private Eye Lettuce,

the name and drawing of a detective

with magnifying glass on the sides

of the crates of lettuce,

form a great cross in man’s imagination

and his desire to name   

the objects of this world.

I think I’ll call this place Golgotha

and have some salad for dinner.

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The Double-Bed Dream Gallows

Driving through   

hot brushy country

in the late autumn,   

I saw a hawk

crucified on a

barbed-wire fence.

I guess as a kind   

of advertisement   

to other hawks,   

saying from the pages

of a leading women’s   

   magazine,

“She’s beautiful,

but burn all the maps   

to your body.

I’m not here

of my own choosing.”

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Thanks for stopping by and please enjoy some music and poetry of your own choosing.