Tom Waits 12/01/16

Tom Waits

- born 7^th January 1949
- is an American singer-songwriter, composer and actor.
-  has depression/bipolar disorder 
-  in his music he incorporates blues, jazz and experimental styles

His lyrics can often be described as grotesque which could be used as a stimulus or as inspiration for our final experimental play.When watching an animated interview of Waits, things were revealed about his personality and characteristics that showed just how much of an interesting person he was. You get the feeling that from what he said in the interview that he does not think in the same way as most people.  For example he mentioned that he often laughs in church because he finds that it is funniest to be laughing in places where you shouldn't. You can see that he is quite outspoken as he says things that I think a lot of people may be too scared to say. I noticed from his speech that he just allowed the speech to completely stream out of his mouth. He didn’t stumble or stutter, he just spoke with no filter and without any fear of being judged. He also didn’t seem to be trying to make sense of what he was saying because he was allowing himself the freedom to just say whatever he wanted to.

Tom Waits Stimulus Exercise:

We were given different sheets of lyrics from songs written by Tom Waits. We were asked to pick a sheet that had on it lyrics that we would then use as a stimulus or inspiration for an improvised piece.

In my group, we used the lyrics from two different songs.
 The songs were Ant Army and 9^th & Hennepin.


Here are the lyrics to both songs:

Army Ants:

The whirly-gig beetles are wary and fast, with an organ to detect the ripples.
The arachnid moths lay their eggs inside other insects along the borders of fields or roads in clusters of white cocoons.
The ribbed pine bore is a longhorn beetle; their antennae’s are half the length of their body, and they feed on dead red pine.Robber flies, with their immobile heads, inject a paralysing fluid into their prey that they snatch from life in mid-air.
The snow flea’s mode of locomotion - strange and odd, with a spiny tail mechanism with hooks, and a protracted tube from the abdomen to enable moisture absorption.
The female praying mantis devours the male while they are mating.
The male sometimes continues copulating even after the female has bitten off his head - and part of his upper torso.
Every night, wasps bite into the stem of a plant, lock their mandibles into position, stretch out at right angles to the stem, and, with legs dangling, they fall asleep.
If one places a minute amount of liquor on a scorpion it will instantly go mad, and sting itself to death.
The bombardier beetle, when disturbed, defends itself by emitting a series of explosions, sometimes setting off 4 or 5 reports in succession.
The noises sound like miniature pop-gun blasts, and are accompanied by a cloud of reddish-coloured vile smelling fluid.
It is commonly known that ants keep slaves.
Certain species, the so-called "sanguinary ants" in particular, will raid the nests of other ant tribes and kill the queen and then kidnap many of the workers.
The workers are brought back to the captors' hive where they are coerced into performing menial tasks.
And as we discussed last semester, the army ants will leave nothing but your bones.
Perhaps you've encountered some of these insects in your communities, displaying both their predatory and defence characteristics while embedded within the walls of flesh and passing for what is most commonly recognized as human.

9th & Hennipin:

Well it's 9th and Hennepin

And all the donuts have

Names that sound like prostitutes

Well its 9^th and Hennepin 

And the moon's teeth marks are 

On the sky like a tarp thrown over all this 

And the broken umbrellas like

 Dead birds and the steam 

Comes out of the grill like 

The whole goddamned town is ready to blow

 And the bricks are all scarred with jailhouse tattoos 

And everyone is behaving like dogs 

And the horses are coming down

 Violin Road And Dutch is dead on his feet 

And the rooms all smell like diesel 

And you take on the Dreams of the ones who have slept here

 And I'm lost in the window I hide on the stairway I hang in the curtain I sleep in your hat 

And no one brings anything Small into a bar around here 

They all started out with bad directions 

And the girls behind the counter has a tattooed tear 

One for every year he's away

she said Such a crumbling beauty, but there's 

Well, nothing wrong with her that $100 won't fix

That only gets worse

With the clang and the thunder

Of the Southern Pacific going by

As the clock ticks out like a dripping faucet 

Till you're full of rag water and bitters and blue ruin 

And you spill out 

Over the side to anyone who'll listen

And I've seen it 

All through the yellow windows 

Of the evening train

We decided to combine the text from both lyrics to create a more interesting piece.

We combined the idea of aggressive animals (insects) likening them to men specifically soldiers and their imagined infatuation and interactions with women specifically prostitutes having not been around them for a long period of time. 

The lines that inspired us to do so were:

‘And everyone is behaving like dogs’- makes a comment on dogs being on heat likening them to men

‘The male sometimes continues copulating even after the female has bitten off his head - and part of his upper torso’- makes a comment on how some people may believe men will do anything for sex

‘The workers are brought back to the captors' hive where they are coerced into performing menial tasks’ – mimetic of how pimps collect prostitutes and put them to work

‘And all the donuts have Names that sound like prostitutes’- makes a comment on how prostitutes and donut are so similar being that they are sweet and pleasurable. It’s been proven that ants are attracted to donut's which could be mimetic of how army soldiers would be attracted to prostitutes. 



‘Donuts’ are a metaphor for prostitutes and ‘army ants’ are a metaphor for army soldiers.'the female praying mantis devours the male while they are mating' - shows that the female has a strength and a power greater than or equal to that of the males.

‘She has that razor sadness’ – perhaps this shows the link between how the prostitute may have a mental disorder that causes her to cut herself with razors which links to the themes of our piece (the brain and mental health)

The structure of the piece was that three characters march up and down as soldiers, as a character standing on a red chair ( to signify the red light district) dances seductively making it obvious that they are a prostitute. The marching soldiers then notice the prostitute and captivated by her beauty march towards her. They then notice that she is cutting herself with razors and smearing the blood from her wounds which make her think that she is making herself look more beautiful because her beauty is the only thing that rewards her. Despite the fact that she is clearly not in a right mental state the soldiers still drag her off the chair, taking their opportunity to take advantage of her. They begin to rip at her clothing, smell her hair and pull her around. There is a power struggle as the prostitute begins to regain her power pushing the army soldiers away which is linked to how the female praying mantis devours the male while they are mating showing how the female still has the same if not more power over the male in the same way that the prostitute has more power over the soldiers. The soldiers are now begging on their knees for her and as she slaps them, they transform into puppy dogs, muttering and squealing as they are forced into paying for their time with the prostitute. The piece shows the struggle of desire, mental health and the struggle between male and female.
Our piece was successful as we were able to portray the metaphors we had created in a coherent way as the audience seemed to be able to understand what our intentions were. It would have been more successful if we were to use more text from the lyrics so that the audience would have something to relate it to. It would have also been better if the soldier characters had conversed with the prostitute to show the brutality and aggressive nature of the soldier and his intentions as a character however we tried to avoid this in our piece because we felt that our pace and physicality were enough to convey the intentions of the characters.