you need to be brave and respectful and sometimes get out of the way

I've had Tom Waits and Charles Bukowski on the brain for a while, thanks to conversations elsewhere with friends. This is a reading by Waits of Bukowski's "The Laughing Heart," from Betting on the Muse.


And this is Waits' "I Hope that I Don't Fall in Love With You" from The Early Years Vol. II.


This is Bukowski himself, reading "Consummation of Grief"--my favorite of his poems, from Mockingbird Wish Me Luck.


[the title quotation is by Tom Waits, and reads in its entirety: "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."]