Tom Waits

The Other Tom sends me this interview with Tom Waits.

All the interesting creative people I know are great accummulators of interesting bits of this and that, consumers of oddity.

I just went to see the Joseph Cornell show at the Smithsonian American Museum/National Portrait Gallery. I was tired about halfway through, just because it demands such attention, not because it was boring. Because it totally was not boring. Cornell was a man who could not see a newspaper article with the title "Our Debt to Flowers" without reaching for the scissors and glue.

Cornell produced a newsletter called the Joe Goop's Poultry Press. It was part collage part his own writing, parody of a small-town newspaper. Funny funny stuff. They also did a sort of recreation in a vague sort of way of his apartment - at least of the working part of it, which must have been a little kingdom of wonders. Where do you get that many watch faces or small plastic lobsters? A purity of attention and impeccable sense of the authentic in his choice of objects, that's why I like him so much.

I am delighted to see that Waits carries a notebook around and jots down things like laws about what you can legally throw out of a car window.

Oh, the National Portrait Gallery has on loan from the Netherlands a portrait of Maurice, Prince of Orange, the father son of the great great William of Orange.

Update: Fixed a typo as you can see.