It's funny how your life becomes mythology to you. The pivotal places. The mountains and the green parts near the rivers. We grow up telling ourselves these stories, and then tell them to our children and our friends, and they become our histories, our common histories, the earth from which we understand our place, the need for this cannot be overstated. Our children and friends must hear our stories - over and over again. That is how we know who we are. Because in America there is nothing that lasts, no marker you can return to remember or imagine your relatives and ancestors. Everything is disposable, and everything is disposed of.

The Tropicana where Tom Waits and Rickie Lee Jones lived, and Marianne Faithful fell down by the pool, the headquarters for punk on the west coast, was torn down without a moments hesitation. As was the drugstore on the corner of crescent heights and sunset - where who was it was discovered. I met Mickey Roarke there before he made movies. He said. Look, I've already forgotten the name of it. Schwabbs. Who will remember these things, these days and people who made us what we are. In Paris, you can walk by any building and it can recite to you every great moment that has slept on its steps or jumped from it's windows or argued across it's tiny tables. You can feel it reverberating from corner to corner. Things have been planned here, history was made and for all you know is still being made. You are a part.
But in America who knows if you're a part of anything. Maybe you're just some piece of paper blowing by and we don't any of us give a shit about you and we will not remember you unless you get your ass on T.V. right now. Now, it has to happen Now. It doesn't matter what you say just say Something. This rage that has crushed the spirit of creation here in America I think happens because greed has overtaken our culture. Culture, actually is just a by word for what we have. We don't actually have a culture because nothing is established.

Except as legend, as myth, it is actually being passed down in the traditional way the old Hebrew way, the Indian way - by word of mouth. By story. By changing the story as it goes, each person telling, adding and subtracting, the stories of what has gone on or sorted through and retold or discarded. But I know Tom and Chuck used to go out and steal black jockeys off the lawns of rich people in Beverly Hills, with me looking out, even while my record was number one, and Tom was already a legend in Hollywood. And I know other stories, and you know stories, and what we can do here is tell them, because there is no true telling in the selling of an artist - you won't find any truth in Spin or VH 1 or .....because they’re selling it to you.

We have to build our own ruins that no one can tear down, and tell the stories to our children, and make sure they know what America is. That is not and never was politics, or religion, or T.V. They are anomalies of our century. Religion has become politics on T.V. That's what they'd like you to think America is. But don't you let them.

America is the train Lincoln took to Springfield, and the highway my mom drove on to go back to Chicago. And the Churches and gas stations and farms were only put there to wave to you. You were never supposed to stop driving.

Yet what part of the story do you decide to keep to yourself. ? Should we sing these Woody Guthrie diaries? Or were they to be spoken to himself, hammers hammering, bells ringing, warning, warning, danger!!!

These American self created men, like Woody, or Tom, or I can't think of anybody else, but I see them driving by sometimes, they create a language for themselves and stick everybody in a car and drive to where people can understand what they're saying.

We feel fierce about these people. We want them to exist, we want them for ourselves, not just on magazine covers, but we want to live next door to them. We want to be a part of the best of ourselves.

And that is why we tell the best of ourselves over and over again.