Alex Hates Music: Fun-a-Day 2015

Day 8

TODAY'S SONG:

"Get Lost" by Tom Waits

The first thing my iTunes actually landed on was “Beret and Pancakes” by Mitch Hedberg. But since that is a comedy routine and not a song, I decided to skip it and move on to the next track. And frankly I'm glad I did. I like Mitch Hedberg a lot, but I love Tom Waits.

“Get Lost” is from Bad As Me, the most recent Waits studio release. It also happened to come out right around the time that Kayleigh and I had moved back to Buffalo and I had started going to grad school. There was a website streaming the album before it was available for purchase, so I ended up listening to it a lot while I was reading for my classes. I didn't have my bike with me yet, so I did a lot of walking back and forth from my apartment down Elmwood Ave to the Buff State library. I really enjoyed all the isolated desks that they had there. It was always very quiet and underutilized. After I had finished my readings and prepared for class, I would look around at some of the weird books they had on theology and sociology. I thought to myself, “One of these days, I'm gonna come back here and just read these, one by one.” Well, I graduated a little over a year ago and have not been back since.

The Butler Library

Anyway, I've got a huge list hanging on my wall of all the books I want to read. We also go to any of the several area libraries at least once every week so I've always got a stack to peruse here at home. Also, my feverish need to learn about philosophy has significantly decreased in the past decade. I watched I Heart Huckabees last night, a movie about existential detectives, so this is kind of fresh on my mind. When that movie came out in 2004, I was really interested in some of the philosophical questions it presented. Now I feel pretty comfortable with what I've got figured out about life and none of those big picture questions, like “Why are we here?” and “Why do bad things happen to good people?”, are troublesome at all.

"I was walking down the street with my friend and he said, 'I hear music.' As though there's any other way you can take it in. You're not special. That's how I receive it too. I tried to taste it, but it did not work."

Rest in peace, Mitch.