Tom Waits: Maker

From: Brian Sawyer <bsawyer@oreilly.com>
Date: August 6, 2010 6:33:19 AM PDT
To: Dale Dougherty <dale@oreilly.com>
Cc: Brian Jepson <bjepson@oreilly.com>
Subject: Tom Waits: Maker

I’m listening to Sebastopol resident Tom Waits’ “VH1 Storytellers” album (excellent, amazing, perfect, a format made for him), which, unfortunately, doesn’t appear available for purchase anywhere I can find it (got it from a Cambridge colleague, who got it where, I don’t know).

Anyway, this passage from one of his stories struck me as relevant to the Make: audience:

I started building crystal sets when I was a kid, and I was so excited. It almost sounded like, for me, if you build your own radio and then you turn it on, it’s like you’ve also produced the music. You make a connection with it that you don’t make when you go to the store and buy a radio. So I felt like all the songs that came out of the radio, I had a lot to do with them.

—
Brian Sawyer
Editor, Head First
bsawyer@oreilly.com