Terrible Maladies Telling Me Beautiful Things

Wednesday is books. Or writing. This week's little story is a bit like last Wednesday's - the baggage you carry with you and the certain soundtracks it enables/ruins... Happy Reading!

Watching some music videos the other day, old concerts, some we’d seen and others we hadn’t, and it was going well. It was good. Until I put on ol’ Tom Waits. And almost as soon as he crooned I fell out of tune with it all.

I love Tom Waits. But I barely listen to him these days, and now I know why.

There he was, all fraud-boho, all fake-hipster, brave though – he could have been found out at any minute but he was still nailing it. Living it. Loving it. Faking it in the very best way.

I sat cringing. Thinking of when I would take my Tom Waits CDs with me to the pub. I’d sit there drinking alone, getting a pizza delivered to the bar, and my order would include that they play The Heart of Saturday Night or Blue Valentine through the house system.

It was always such fun until it was time for the bar to empty out, then the stumble home to start the next day early. There were so many things to right, but far more importantly, there were too many things to write.

My heroes included Charles Bukowski and Tom Waits. Suzanne Vega, Janet Malcolm, Burroughs and other Beats, Bob Dylan and Neil Young…

One day Paddy Gower told me I would struggle if I aimed at the life of a freelance writer. I laughed as I wrote back to him. The Heart of Saturday Night still on in the background.

“…let’s shoot it full of wine/Fishin’ for a good time starts with throwin’ in your line”

I said something about how I was gonna do it, gonna make it. He told me there were very few that did, or do. Steve Braunias was one. I said that was good cos he was a hero of mine. As if deciding that meant I’d simply follow suit. (I didn’t even own a suit, I can’t even tie a tie).

Wellington was my old stumbling ground and I stumbled around until I finally found a version of happiness.

Now it’s actual; real. It’s wedded bliss. Back then, it was just blistering winds and withering looks and all it took was a word in the wrong direction and I was wound-up but with absolutely nothing to be angry about. That, in fact, was the source of my frustration.

Self-sabotage. But why?

Gabor Maté says it is down to childhood trauma. But there was none. It was never there. Everything was clear. I just couldn’t be fucked (in all senses).

A bottle of red would maybe calm the dread and ward off the Wednesday or Thursday or whatever day was sneaking up next. But this was never my fault. It was Charles Bukowski’s. Or it was Tom Waits’.

I knew the truth when I was hammered and listening to James Taylor. I knew the regrets when I heard Neil Young’s lonesome blues. I knew the game, but never acknowledged that the game was done when I heard Tom Waits playing it up.

It was not his fault. It was never his fault. It was always mine.

And then, some 20 years on, sitting there almost cowering, definitely uncomfortable while Tom is singing, “wasted and wounded, it ain’t what the moon did” and “I don’t have a drinking problem/’Cept when I can’t get a drink” and it’s only now that I think about how it was always up to me. I was always trying to be ‘up’ you see. But I was never at home to answer the phone, I was always alone. And it was always my choice. My voice would howl like a dog’s (like Tom’s if I only ever knew how).

Sometimes when you’re there on a Sunday night with the computer playing you its blues, you think, finally, you might have it all worked out.

Your best girl is there by your side. You’re on the other side of all of your blues, whatever the world threw up at you. Whenever you threw up all over that world.

It’s either Tom Waits’ fault, or it was never his fault.

“They all know they could be just like Romeo/If they only had the guts…”