Tom Waites

Tom Waites is the stimulus for our piece. He is an American actor, director, singer and songwriter. His suffers from depression and bipolar, so is an interesting role model to study when doing our piece on mental health.

This is the interview we watched in class and as soon as I listened/watched him I felt entranced by his carefree demeanour and how he spoke his mind like no one I have ever witnessed. Not only did his tonal quality glue me to each word he spoke, the undeniable resemblance to Heath Ledger's joker gave his whole person a grotesque, creepy aspect. His words were like a poet; just a poet who smoked a lot of cigarettes. I fell in love with the way this man worked as soon as I heard him. He is the voice of the voices in the back of your head that have been silenced by society and etiquette. He is not there to be understood, but interpreted, a quality that belongs to few humans who have the joyous talent of speaking there mind in the most unapologetic manner.

Looking at some of his lyrics I found one I particularly liked; a song called Alice. After backspacing an explanation to the song, I realised that is the reason I liked it- it had the ability to be loved without having any plausible explanation. You can't 'fall through the ice of Alice', but you can interpret that as whatever you want.

We have talked a lot about what is art and what makes a true artist and my answer is Tom Waites- a man who does everything just because he wants to and because why the hell not?