Category: People’s History of Science

Tom Waits and his dad, Frank.

Ever since I first noticed in 1999 how often Tom Waits refers to the Moon, I’ve wondered what else could be said about it, other than Tom Waits likes to refer to the moon. At least one valiant attempt to really get something said has been made, but I don’t think a “big picture” has ever been drawn. I’ll give it a try.

Waits has said he likes his songs to have some weather, a map in case you get lost, and something to eat in case you get hungry. This strategy — of, sort of, getting enough furniture into his rooms that you can live them — winds up being crucial to how his fans react to his work. People who love Waits clearly love doing the work involved in sorting out his references. They ask, what’s Mulligan stew? Where’s Murfreesboro? What’s a big black Mariah? Who’s Wilson Pickett? And the moon is part of this same song writing strategy — often, Waits even gives you the phase of the moon, maybe so you can find your way around in the dark.

Reading over the list of moon references, I’m reminded of my own aim for The Celestial Monochord, which is like the challenge some artists set for themselves — if you only stick to one medium and one theme, you could explore the whole world through them. It hardly matters what you choose — you can pull the entire universe through a little buttonhole. The iterations, the returning to the subject over and over again, eventually polishes the subject into a mirror that will reflect whatever you put in front of it. The moon face is ever-changing but repetitious, and seems to invite an artistic project like that. Waits chose the moon as one of his Great Themes — but really, it could have been anything.

Waits has always been an outlandishly romantic writer. Of course, especially lately, I mean romantic in the sense that the love notes he sings to his wife Kathleen can be heartbreakingly sweet. But, especially early in his career, I also mean that other romanticism — an unrestrained belief in impractical fictions, a body-and-soul dedication to lovely baloney. For example, Waits has said that he’s embarrassed by his early work, when he pursued the romance of the Great American Drunk (and he made sure that life and art did uncanny imitations of each other). And so, what could possibly be a brighter sign spelling “romance” (in both senses) than the moon? In a recent song, Waits asks, “What could be more romantic than dying in the moonlight?”

Waits is one of those musicians I mentioned earlier in the context of Mike Seeger — a middle class adventurer in revolt against his class, one who “can come most fully into possession of himself only in disguise.” As a young man, in the name of searching for his own true nobility — the diamond in his mind — he fashioned himself into one of The Common Folk that lived in his imagination. He renounced his Nobility in order to find it again.

In this context, I think about a line from “Shore Leave,” in which a sailor on leave writes home wondering “how the same Moon outside over this Chinatown fair could look down on Illinois and find you there.” It’s a reminder that the moon really does have a “universality” to it — it’s leveling, a commonality. The very same moon has been seen by Plato, Genghis Khan, Galileo, Hitler, Shakespeare, George Bush, Regis Philbin. It’s the ultimate folk image, because it’s been independently, organically rediscovered by everybody who ever had eyes.

I think Waits has used the moon’s commonness, it’s dailiness (actually its nightliness, which suits Waits better) to insinuate himself among us, among the ordinary — something he has needed both artistically and personally. The image of the moon — with its powerful combination of romance and ordinariness — is an emblem of that transcendent quality which Waits has always sought in being just plain folk.

Tom Waits in wine country.

In 1999, I made a partial list of references to the Moon in Tom Waits songs. Since then, I’ve seen a few others do the same, but I don’t think a complete list has ever been made. I estimate it would be about 100 entries long — averaging over 3 lunar references every year for more than 3 decades.

Below is only about 40% of the known references. I don’t know whether you can make it through this, but I hope it will vividly convey the way Waits returns to the Moon, over and over, sort of turning it around in his mind to see it from as many different angles as possible.

The moon’s all up, full and big — apricot pit in an indigo sky.

You wear a dress, baby, and I’ll a tie, and we’ll laugh at that old bloodshot moon in that burgundy sky.

Outside another yellow moon has punched a hole in the nighttime.

Looks like a yellow biscuit of a buttery cue ball moon rollin’ maverick across an obsidian sky.

The moon’s a yellow stain across the sky.

November only believes in a pile of dead leaves and a moon that’s the color of bone.

The Moon is a cold chiseled dagger and it’s sharp enough to draw blood from a stone. He rides through your dreams on a coach and horses and the fence posts in the moonlight look like bones.

And then they all try to stand like Romeo beneath the moon cut like a sickle, and they’re talkin’ now in Spanish all about their hero.

The moon’s a silver slipper, it’s pouring champagne stars.

Every time I hear that melody, something breaks inside, and the grapefruit moon, one star shining, can’t turn back the tide.

I know I’m gonna change that tune when I’m standing underneath a buttery moon that’s all melted off to one side (Parkay). It was just about that time that the sun came crawlin’ yellow out of a manhole at the foot of 23rd Street and a dracula moon in a black disguise was making its way back to its pre-paid room at the St. Moritz Hotel.

Everything has its price. Everything has its place. What’s more romantic than dying in the moonlight?

The Moon ain’t romantic, it’s intimidating as hell.

Cheater slicks and baby moons, she’s a-hot and ready and creamy and sugared and the band is awful and so are the tunes.

It’s 9th and Hennepin, and all the donuts have names that sound like prostitutes, and the moon’s teeth marks are on the sky like a tarp thrown over all this.

The moonlight dressed the double-breasted foothills in the mirror, weaving out a negligee and a black brassiere.

Just then Florence Nightingale dropped her drawers and stuck her fat ass half way out of the window with a Wilson Pickett tune and shouted “Get a load of this!” and gave the finger to the moon.

Now the moon’s rising, got no time to lose — time to get down to drinking and tell the band to play the blues.

And Zuzu Bolin played “Stavin’ Chain” and Mighty Tiny on the saw threw his head back with a mouth full of gold teeth and they played “Lopsided heart” and “Moon over Dog Street.”

I like to sleep until the crack of noon, midnight howlin’ at the moon, goin’ out when I want to, and comin’ home when I please.

They be suckin’ on Coca Colas and be spittin’ Day’s Work until the moon was a stray dog on the ridge and the taverns would be swollen until the naked eye of 2 a.m.

I talked baseball with a lieutenant over a Singapore Sling, and I wondered how the same Moon outside over this Chinatown fair could look down on Illinois and find you there — you know I love you, baby.

It’s funny you know, cause every now and then — yeah, every now and then, when the moon’s holding water, they say old Joe will stop and give you a ride.

Wasted and wounded, it ain’t what the moon did — I got what I paid for now.

I never saw the east coast until I moved to the west, I never saw the moonlight until it shone off of your breast.

And the evening stumbles home with his tie undone, and the moon sweeps 7th Avenue as usual. You lie awake at night, you remember when …

Well, Jesus gonna be here, he’s gonna be here soon. He’s gonna cover us up with leaves, with a blanket from the moon.

You gotta roll out the carpet, strike up the band, break out the best champagne when I land. You gotta beat the parade drum, hit all the bars — I want the moon and stars!

I got the moon, I got the cheese, I got the whole damn nation on their knees.

My eyes say their prayers to her and sailors ring her bell, the way a moth mistakes a light bulb for the moon and goes to hell.

I’ll wait beneath a blood-red moon, a blood-red moon, a blood-red moon, ‘neath a blood-red moon. I’d rather die than part from you.

My baby ripped my heart out with every turn of the moon.

Every night the moon and you would slip away to places where you knew that you would never get the blues. Well, now whiskey gives you wings to carry each one of your dreams, and the moon does not belong to you.

There’s a golden moon that shines up through the mist, and I know that your name can be on that list. There’s no eye for an eye, there’s no tooth for a tooth, I saw Judas Iscariot carrying John Wilkes Booth.

When the moon is broken and the sky is cracked, come on up to the house.

When the weathervane’s sleeping and the moon turns his back, you crawl on your belly along the railroad tracks.

Well, the smart money’s on Harlow and the moon is in the street.

The Moon fell from the sky — it rained mackerel, it rained trout.

The moon in the window and a bird on the pole, always find a millionaire to shovel all the coal.

That’s the way the market crashes. That’s the way the whip lashes. That’s the way the teeth gnashes. That’s the way the gravy stains. And that’s the way the moon wanes.