why we create… thank you Tom Waits for articulating it

(A four minute song and a piece of flash fiction that takes four minutes to read are a lot alike. Except songs are better in every way.)

“Most (songs) fail miserably. I go looking in other people’s songs for their sailors and their towns. Everybody has things they gravitate toward. Some people put toy cars or clouds or cat crap. Everybody puts something different, and it’s entirely up to you what belongs and what doesn’t. Songs are interesting little vessels of emotional information, and you carry them in your pocket like a bagel.”

— Tom Waits

(You write in the hopes that your sailors, towns, toy cars, clouds and cat crap might resonate with someone else as you hurl the words out into the abyss. Or, if nothing else, you can understand them and yourself a little better.)