Fret Not

I guess everyone knows who Tom Waits is, the singer with a voice like rocks being dragged over sheet metal - go ahead: take a quick listen - but I’ll bet not everyone knows how grateful and quietly pleased he seems to be with life. It's something I learned by hearing him talk with Terry Gross of NPR’s “Fresh Air” a few months ago when his latest album came out.The first cut on "Bad as Me" is one where you’re just sure you’re hearing the pops and clicks of vinyl; you think it’s a record. Nope: that’s the sound of chicken on the barbecue, a sound so like the sound of a record you’re positive he had a phonograph there in the studio.So too he said he could name no better way to get the sound of snare drum than to jump on a trampoline in November when it’s all weighed down with an autumn windfall of sticks and branches.The man takes that kind of delight in the world; a child’s delight.He said he’s been known to put a tape recorder inside a trash can and wheel it around the yard to see what kinds of sounds he gets, what kinds of rhythms suggest themselves.You don’t need to worry even if you haven’t written for a whole year, he said, because the music is always there and all music has rests in it; you know that. You, you’re just on a rest if you're not creating right now. No worries.He also said he often just sings spontaneously, making up any old tune as he goes along, as does his collaborator and wife Kathleen Brennan. "What's the choreography of a bee?" he said rhetorically near the end of this interview. Bees don't have instruments. Bees don't take lessons in how to weave the patterns of their flight. They just fly.It seems like a perfect lesson for a brand new week: Just fly. Just sing. You don't need a guitar, he said, 'cause one thing is sure: “There are no frets on your neck.”No there aren't. In other words, sing or write any old way. That's what I take this to mean. In other words, we make the path by walking, as the proverb goes.Now here's the nicest tune on Bad As Me, in my book anyway, something called "Back in the Crowd" which owes a lot to Elvis and a lot to Mexican music as you'll probably hear right away. Enjoy![youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCbPkr9AEG4&feature=relmfu]

The Best Book I Never Wrote

What’s nicer than helping other people feel that they can write? Encouraging them to, I mean? My chance to do this came the day an 85-year-old lady from my church called up to ask if I would teach a course to be called Writing from Personal Experience at the local Senior Center."We've all been talking,"  she said and we know you write for the paper each week."  They had all already decided it seemed that I would teach them once a month -  "on Mondays we thought, in the afternoon, since we  don’t like to go out at night.” I would prepare a lesson each time and assign a writing topic. Then,  at the next meeting, I would collect up all their pieces, take them home,  write comments on them and report on them at the next meeting at which time I would repeat the process..."And oh!” she added cheerfully, “course we wouldn't be paying you anything; that’s our policy here at the Center."What do you think?"What did I think?! My palms had begun sweating at her first sentence. Why had I even picked up the phone? How could I POSSIBLY do this?  I’m too busy! What about all these kids in my kitchen every night!Then I had one of those rare moments where I felt that someone way bigger than I am was nudging me forward.I gave in to it. “OK,” I said meekly.And so began a three-year odyssey that ended in a book whose title comes from a poem by Robert Frost  about the near-impossible task of raking leaves, something we all know a little bit about at this season for sure. We began each class saying something about the day itself and then we would start.Once Bill Jeffery  read aloud a remembrance from childhood, his voice broke and he had to stop. “Let it out!” cried the lady across the table who had been in his First Grade Class some 70 years before.“My wife says I’m emotionally unstable,” he joked before clearing his throat and going on.But permission had been given: from that day on we were unashamed to show our feelings.Looking back, I now realize there were tears at every session. We listened to one another’s memories and we cried. Because of this, class member Clarence, who wrote for most of his 96 years, called the classes my “séances.” (He once dropped me a note in his bold hand, “Lately I haven’t been well enough to get to too many of your séances...”)Maybe he thought we were conjuring the dead in that basement room with the orange tulips painting the outside of our little window come spring.Maybe he was right. Here is one of his poems now:

The Cat

 The Cat is a creature of infinite grace,

It spits on its forearms and sponges its face.

It licks and it sponges itself every place.

It licks and it sponges itself without haste,

It uses no soap no powders, no paste,

No cold-cream, no napkins, no towels to waste

Very efficient - but how does it taste?

 Witty eh? But his best work – indeed everyone’s best work appeared when they looked back to the early decades of the last century – the meadow and the field, the bucket and soapstone sink – and to those long-gone ones who populated that world.If you'd like to give this book to a friend download the same form I referred to in the last two posts. Again I’ll cover the shipping costs.I’m smiling now just thinking of those stories: of ladylike Eleanor Matson taking off her coat in church – only to look down and see she had forgotten her skirt. Ah bless them all for having the courage to believe that harvest was anything but meager! The evidence is all right there.This photo at the top is just me at a talk I gave on this and other books  for the Friends of the Abington Library, speaking of cool older people.And underneath here is more about the book. Just click on it to make it easily readable.