Oh! I just found out something amazing, which is this: Glitter and Dust. Tom Waits. Summer Tour 2008. When I first looked at the dates the first Texas date I saw was Dallas. June 23rd.
And I can’t go to a concert on June 23rd cause I’ll be in the hospital.
but I looked again, and saw this: Houston, June 22nd.
Wah-Wow!
I will be in Houston June 22nd. It’s the day between my birthday (June 21, summer solstice, longest day of the year) and my bilateral mastectomy (June 23, MD Anderson, pray for clear margins and clean path report).
To me, it seems like the perfect day to see Tom Waits, my all-time favorite. I can’t think of a better way to spend the hours that would otherwise be spent waiting, waiting, worrying.
I’ve never been in the hospital before. I’ve had these breasts ever since they grew there, right around the time I started listening to Tom Waits (okay, the breasts came a little before…. but after so many years it’s all a blur). I’m kinda nervous about this whole mastectomy deal.
Tickets go on sale May 16, one week before my final chemo treatment. And I will do what I can to get tickets, but it’s like buying tickets for a U2 show; they’re going to sell out FAST. In mere minutes, most likely. the last time I saw Tom Waits (the only time, the only time I possibly could have, actually, because he doesn’t play that much) I waited in line starting at 6 in the morning, just hoping I was actually in the right line, because they didn’t announce the location of the ticket sales until 9:00, which was also the start of the ticket sales. (Luckily, I was in the right line, and I got a great seat.) When the announcement came at 9:00 that tickets were being sold at the Paramount Theater box office, people literally stopped their cars in the middle of Congress Avenue, jumped out, and got in line. Two huge herds of people came pounding toward the theater from opposite directions: one group had been standing in line at Waterloo Records, several blocks west, and the other group came stampeding from the convention center or somewhere vaguely to the southeast. It was amazing. It was like an end of the world movie, except that we who were in the right line felt elated rather than terrified. So I guess it was like an end of the world movie. The Rapture. “In the event of Tom Waits tickets, this vehicle will be unmanned.” That sort of thing.
So I really want to go to this show. The timing seems perfect, in a truly unbelievable way. It seems like something I would wish for, but that I would never really expect to happen. It’s like a weird personal hallucination. So obviously I will try to get tickets, but I have decided I will also do this: write an open letter to Tom Waits. See if he will help me out here. It’s a once in a lifetime thing. I will happily pay for the tickets, even if I have to add the cost to my ever-rising cancer credit debt. But I would sure feel a lot of comfort if I knew there were tickets for me, and I didn’t have to stress over getting them.
So here goes.
Dear Tom Waits,
In 1985, when I was a poet, I found a black-and-white ad for Rain Dogs in Rolling Stone magazine. I cut it out and put it in the cover of my poetry notebook, along with other soul-stirring mood-making scraps of media. Rain Dogs is still my #1 Desert Island disk, the canvas I stretch out to live my life against, the perfect album for me… it found me at the perfect time, held me in a perfect place, fused me to the world in a way that I needed. Bam. Music can do that, lyrics can do that. Rain Dogs did it to me.
And I’ve been hooked ever since. So I’m a fan. And I remember things like this: David Lettermen asked you about your parents, what they must have been like, and you said, “Well, David, my father was a tombstone and my mother was a tree.” Terry Gross asked what was the first instrument you ever played and you told her it was a cardboard box. Every time I read “Mr Brown can moo, can you?” by Dr. Seuss, I wish you would record a children’s album and include that book: “Boom boom boom, Mr Brown is a wonder. Boom boom boom, Mr Brown makes thunder. Mr Brown makes lighting, splat splat splat, and it’s very very hard to make a sound like that.” Cue the cacophony. Roll the thunder. Bring out the megaphone. Dance.
So, I’m a fan, and I always wanted to see you perform, and you never played, and I would dream… literally, I would fall asleep and dream that I was walking through some New York/Tokyo/Caligari ghost town and I would turn a corner and walk in through a doorway and there you would be, playing the piano, maybe, singing your songs, wearing a hat. And finally you played in the town where I lived and it was like your only show that year, or the year before, or the year after, I don’t know, and I got to see you play and it was awesome. Really like a dream. Like a Christmas morning when you only get one present but it’s the one you really wanted. A pony or whatever. A sparkly pink jeep. The best thing.
And now it’s years later and I still listen to you when I’m not listening to the Wiggles, and I’ve got a four-year-old tap dancing kid named Vivian Starlight, and I’m not young anymore, and I have cancer. A really crummy kind of cancer called IBC, or Inflammatory Breast Cancer, and it’s rare and it’s deadly and it’s scary and the treatment is this: six months of chemotherapy, wait four weeks, bilateral mastectomy, wait four weeks, once or twice a day radiation for six or four weeks, hormonal therapy for five or more years, wait and see what happens. And I’m just trying to make it so I can be with my kid while she grows up.
I get my treatment in Houston at MD Anderson, which is, you know, a good cancer hospital, and the thing is this: you’re playing in Houston on June 22, which is the day after my birthday and the day before my surgery. So I would really like to go to the show. I think it will transform that in-between day from something scary to something star-kissed and magical. And I’m just wondering if there’s any way you could make sure I could have two tickets…. one for me and one for my dear friend who is flying in from Seattle to be with me. I will gladly pay for the tickets. I’ll even buy a t-shirt! I just would like to know that I have them, if possible, without having to stress about getting up early and getting on line and calling calling calling and being put on hold and not being fast enough.
So, please, if there’s anything you could do to help me, it would really be making a dream come true for me, a dream I didn’t even know I was having, and I would dearly appreciate it. As soon as I figure out where to send this, I’m enclosing a fairy doll that I made during my first round of chemo, and if there’s anything else I could send you I will gladly do it. A jar of Texas salsa? An embroidered tea towel? A Barbie doll whose hair has been replaced with the hair I cut off my own head before I started chemo (I’m making one for my daughter right now: I’ve probably got enough hair for two)? A simple thank you note?
Really, anything. Let me know.
And thanks for everything. It’s been nice having a little company on some of my stranger journeys.
wishing you the best,
glitter, and doom,
Missy Diggs
P.S. I’ve never done this before, written to an artist and asked for something, except once, when I was like 6, and my mom took me to see Peter Pan at the Schubert Theater in Chicago, and I wrote to Sandy Duncan and asked her to send me a picture, and when the picture came in the mail I was so excited I ripped the envelope and tore the photo. All of which is to say, I’m not really a jerk who just goes around asking for things other people have to pay for or stand in line for. I just wanted you to know that if I had thought of it, I would have wished for this show, and I really hope you can understand that and help make sure I get to be there. It would mean more to me than this letter has been able to express. It would help weave this whole cancer experience into the bigger picture of my life, and that’s a job that takes some doing.