20. 9th & Hennepin - Tom Waits
University was not a particularly satisfying time for me. Actually, it remains the greatest disappointment of my life.
This was thanks to the gulf between my expectations (a challenging environment filled with people and resources to learn from) and the reality (an institution so enslaved by the dollar that the educational experience has been utterly compromised).
But I am very glad that I combined my Commerce degree with an ‘impractical’ Arts degree. That part of my time there was closer to what I expected, though with many more cliché ‘Arts students’ than I expected.
The be-hatted tie-dye enthusiast repeatedly parroting Marx’s line about religion and opiates is a potent memory of that time.
No, university was not a very enjoyable time.
But, at the same time, I was working practically full-time in a call centre in Richmond.
And that was an enjoyable part of my life.
I had found, as luck would have it, a group of people much better read and cleverer than me that I could learn from.
A group of people with much better taste in music and more experience with the real world than me.
A group of people, luckily, all too happy to show me around the better bars and pubs of Melbourne.
They just weren’t at my university.
Those memories of lounging around on a Wednesday afternoon – like all good uni students - slowly getting drunk while talking nonsense with close friends are ones that I treasure.
I mean, they’re hazy, but they’re ones I really value.
I had never spent time with people remotely intellectual before.
The mere idea of intellectualism was something I’d avoided for a long time – that was for pale, spineless, ivory tower dwellers. I came from working stock, people as far removed from debates on post-modernity as can be.
Hell, a girl once left me speechless by telling me they thought I’d definitely end up as an academic, that they could ‘really see it’.
Shocked, I was, and insulted. Although, to be fair - I was 16 and easily insulted.
Anyway.
I’d never been privy to these kinds of conversations before.
I was out of my comfort zone discussing such things as Marxism, post-modernity, matriarchal societies, capitalist critiques and gender theory.
I never wore a beret, or smoked thin European cigarettes, and I could still roll my eyes at the patronising excesses of theory, but I talked too much about things I knew little about to people that knew better.
Yet there I was – neck-deep in an Arts degree, ticking a few more of the cliché boxes than I was comfortable with.
I never could fully commit to life as a reader though.
I always left early to make sure I was ready for work the next day. I was still studying Commerce, after all, and all the critiques of capitalism won’t change the underlying requirement to pay ones rent on time.
So I never could completely disconnect from the realities of our capital system long enough to embrace a life of intellectualism.
Which is why I’d roll out from these bars – warm, close, cozy, with fraying furniture, sticky carpet and wordsmith bartenders – to the wet streets of Windsor or Fitzroy or Richmond before the others.
I’d shove my hands into my pockets to try and retain the warmth from the bar for a few seconds more, as I’d head to the nearest train station.
The cars would dribble past, headlights illuminating the windows and tram lines and puddles. The ground would feel a bit rubbery underfoot, thanks to that honey vodka still coating my tonsils.
A cold wind would be blowing down Chapel Street, direct from the bay and from Antarctica before that, pushing me to look behind me to see if there was a tram I could hop on. But there never was.
(The first rule of living in Melbourne – there’s never a tram when you need one. Until you are exactly halfway between stops)
The rain may have stopped, temporarily, leaving water everywhere, water that was keen to work its way into my shoes and soak my socks.
The lights of the passing cars would blend and pulse along the shiny tram lines, and reflect in the gutter puddles.
Everything was shiny, but the fumes and litter and vomit kept it all from feeling even remotely clean.
That doorway, some poor soul’s trying to cobble together a few hours sleep. That one, some obnoxious footballer is emptying his bladder, that one, it’s a huddle of recently inebriated girls waiting for a taxi.
I was from the ‘burbs.
My cynical youth had left me very aware of the existence of this grimier side of life – and with a comforting distrust of the general public.
But knowing it existed and seeing it in all its glory are very different ideas.
I’d trundle onwards, knowing that I was still at least an hour or two away from my warm and comfortable bed in suburbia.
That I had a train trip, a wait, a bus ride and then another walk before I could get to my house.
Walking along, reliving the conversation, re-treading over what was said, what I didn’t say but meant to, what I’d learnt and what I’d forgotten.
Treading carefully, not looking around, chin buried into my chest to keep some warmth in, seeing the shiny world around me, but dutifully avoiding eye contact.
I was 20 and those long trips home left a lot of time for looking, thinking and wondering.
* * *
I’m not sure when, or how, I first came across Tom Waits music.
I imagine it was in reading one of those damned Rolling Stone lists or articles, or finding his response to his Best Alternative Album award funny (‘Alternative? To what?’).
But I well remember adding his Rain Dogs album to my first, white, iPod.
I’d plug in those white headphones on my way back to the train station and put that album on, knowing it was the perfect soundtrack to that time between last drinks and the last train.
It’s a harsh album on first listen, the sounds of a tired beast borne of carnival touts and bitter polka bands.
The music was – is – unique to my ears, a symphony of history and ancient instruments. The melodies are simple, at first, until you realise he’s playing three different melodies on two instruments, with his raw charcoal voice on another melodic journey.
The percussion is, well it’s bloody weird to tell the truth.
All of it is.
In a wonderful, beautiful, eye-opening and ear-jangling way.
And atop it all is a collection of lyrical poetry telling disturbing stories of the grim parts of life.
The title itself is a good indication we’re not dealing with your usual pop music here - Rain Dogs is the term given to dogs that run away from home during a storm and can’t ever find their way home as the rain has washed away all scent.
It’s the sound of late nights, dark activities, darker thoughts and the odds and ends of society we all try to ignore.
It’s hard for me to recall now, but I think it was a challenging listen early on. Until something clicked.
Or until I properly listened to 9th & Hennepin for the first time.
1:57 minutes. 250 words. 1 instrument. 1 voice.
Every word, every syllable, is perfect in this song. It’s a fairly simple tale – guy travels past the dicey part of town on his train ride home.
But it’s a collection of utterly perfect words completely in sync with the story they’re being harnessed to.
They’re cynical, hopeful, bitter, scarred, tender and forlorn.
It was as close to poetry as I could handle for a long time, and it captured – pretty well – the underbelly of the city I was walking through after these sessions.
And the moon's teeth marks are on the sky
Like a tarp thrown all over this
And the broken umbrellas like dead birds
And the steam comes out of the grill like the whole goddamn town's ready to blow
Maybe it was the conversations beforehand (or the vodka), but it also made me look around while I was walking, looking for the little details that can transform it from a chore to a song.
While trying to avoid that line where it crosses into pretension, around the time you’re watching a plastic bag fly around in the wind.
It rarely worked – you need a eye far keener than mine to complete that transformation – but it helped open my eyes to what was happening.
What was happening around the corner, or down that path, or up those stairs, or behind those doors.
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
The hesitant staccato beat of the words lets the story roll out, but in a manner that makes it clear the storyteller doesn’t care if you hear it.
Because it is a series of stories, told by the words left out.
And all the rooms they smell like diesel
And you take on the dreams of the ones who have slept here
And I'm lost in the window, and I hide in the stairway
And I hang in the curtain, and I sleep in your hat
And no one brings anything small into a bar around here
All over a bumping on the keys of whatever contraption he’s using to play that tune. ‘Play that tune’ – more like bumping his hands absent-mindedly as he finishes his cigarette.
It sounds like a grizzled past-it performer noodling with words and a beat-up piano, to an empty bar.
She has that razor sadness that only gets worse
With the clang and the thunder of the Southern Pacific going by
And the clock ticks out like a dripping faucet
And one of very favourite deliveries of a line in any song, ever:
Till you're full of rag water and bitters and blue ruin
It’s a piece of art, this song, and that was a new idea for me at that time. But so was the realisation that art can exist in the mundane darkness of the city.
It was an eye-opening time for me, between university, new friends, conversations and music. If nothing else, it helped dissolve some of that comforting cynicism.
And I've seen it all
I've seen it all through the yellow windows of the evening train
Some of it, anyway.
