Tom Waits’ strange fascination with moles: “They live out their life like a decorated soldier”
It’s no news flash that Tom Waits is an eccentric, a man almost incapable of writing a lyric or answering a question with a cliché.
His thought tangents, at times, can seem quite random or surreal, but there are at least a few very niche subjects he has consistently returned to over the decades, and one of them, for some odd reason, is moles. You’d be forgiven for assuming this might refer to the skin growths, as the variety and character of such aesthetic imperfections would seem well suited to a Waits analysis, but in actuality, the singer seems to be mildly obsessed, or at least very intrigued, by the burrowing mammals with the long noses.
One of the earliest cases of Tom pontificating about these subterranean critters came in a 1988 interview with journalist Chris Roberts, when he was asked if there were any places on Earth he’d like to visit but hadn’t yet had the chance. “I’ve never been to Stonehenge,” he replied, “There are moles beneath Stonehenge; the most elaborate system of mole catacombs is beneath Stonehenge. There are more moles beneath Stonehenge than there are anywhere in the world.”
What a phenomenal left turn by a true master of the unpredictable; at first, it looks like Waits might have a somewhat traditional answer to the question posed, a desire to learn about the mysteries of one of the UK’s most popular tourist attractions, but his interest in the 5,000-year-old landmark was pretty much entirely mole-centric.
“The [mole] community,” he continued, “They reward moles that have the courage to tunnel beneath great rivers. It takes an understanding of physics and engineering, that type of thing. Because if you make a false move, you bring the river in on you, you wipe out the whole world. They have executions for moles that have made the wrong turn.”
According to most resources available, moles are somewhat famously known to be solitary animals, and the idea that they come together to reward their best engineers or to enforce capital punishment on the worst ones, I’m afraid, Tom might have pulled this information from a dubious storyteller’s prosterior (most likely his own).
Almost 30 years later, though, Waits clearly hadn’t read any new texts to dispute the mole knowledge he’d acquired in the 1980s. Talking with the Miami Herald in 2016, he repeated a very similar factoid, claiming that moles that successfully tunnel under great rivers are “honoured and decorated” by their fellow moles. “They bring those moles flowers and food,” he said, “They live out their life like a decorated soldier”.
Dig into Waits’ music, pun intended, and you’ll find this mole fascination goes back even further, existing as the focal point of the song ‘Underground’ from the 1983 album Swordfishtrombones: “They’re alive, they’re awake / While the rest of the world is asleep / Below the mineshaft roads, it will all unfold / There’s a world going on underground.”
The imagery and potential metaphors are understandably appealing, but did Waits have any actual kernels of truth inspiring his tall tales of the mole underworld? Well, in more recent years, scientists have warned that Stonehenge could be under threat of collapse due to global warming; specifically, the increase in earthworm populations caused by warmer temperatures could lead to a rise in moles digging under the landmark, eroding the land that supports the stones’ weight. Imagine what rewards would await the lucky mole who brought down an ancient human monument?
