When you're writing, you're conjuring. It's a ritual, and you need to be brave and respectful and sometimes get out of the way of whatever it is that you're inviting into the room.
Tom WaitsRead
Most of us have the residue of thousands of songs in our ears, that if you end up songwriting, I think you're mostly smoking the residue of all that material you absorbed over time.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Creative work often builds on influences from past experiences and knowledge.
In this quote, Tom Waits suggests that songwriters draw inspiration from the multitude of songs they've heard throughout their lives. The 'residue' refers to the lasting impact of those melodies and lyrics, implying that every artist's work is a reflection of their absorption of existing art, consciously or unconsciously shaping their own creative output.
Themes
SongwritingInspirationMusicCreativityInfluence
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a songwriting workshop to emphasize the importance of musical influences.
More from Tom Waits
All quotes →If you're in the middle of the ocean with no flippers and no life preserver and you hear a helicopter, this is music. You have to adjust to your needs at the moment.
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I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox.
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Don't plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it, you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me - choke those little bad days. Choke 'em down to nothing.
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My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.
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Now its raining its pouring the old man is snoring now I lay me down to sleep I hear the sirens in the street all my dreams are made of chrome I have no way to get back home I’d rather die before I wake like Marilyn Monroe and throw my dreams out in the street and the rain make ‘em grow
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