My Nerves

I'm afraid that I sometimes get too much credit for a literary bent that exists mostly in some critics' minds. Of course I'll take it. I seem to have been a little something of a critics' darling and I'm pretty sure that it's due to my obscurity. You know, we all like to feel like we are in on the best kept secrets.

When I was a kid my grandmother always told me, "My nerves are bad tonight," when she had the blues. Now I never wanted to see Grandma sad but I always liked the ring of that phrase. When I came as close to growing up as I was ever gonna get I knew that sometimes my nerves were bad.

I wrote a throwaway song called My Nerves Are Bad Tonight and named the record after it. I still get e-mails from kind folks letting me know that they admire my work and the poems that t.s. eliot left us. Who knew that sometimes his nerves were bad at night, too.

I remember when it occurred to me that "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows," meant just that. You don't. I'm a bigger fan of Bob Dylan's now than I was in 1964. Every Jewish kid from Minnesota needs an act to be in showbiz. This crazy, old croaking guy is the real thing. Luckily for all of us he lived long enough to become the act.

I suppose that I should disclose here that t.s. and I are unrelated.