Watch Her Disappear

During my three hours trip to San Jacinto Mountains, and on the way back to Los Angeles I listened to a song from Tom Waits' Alice over and over: Watch Her Disappear.

For years I have been addicted to Tom Waits. I discovered him sometime in 1990, or 1991. I listened to Frank's Wild Years at a friend’s house, where we used to listen to music and drink alcohol, both being offenses punishable under Iranian law.
I remember I discovered Tom Waits the same night I drank Stolichnaya vodka for the first time. In a country where you didn’t have a CD store, in a country where you couldn’t find any drink other than terrible homemade raisin vodkas, “TomWaits/Stolichnaya” was a great mixture, a heavenly pleasure.
Tom Waits reminds me of Tehran, the city I hate and the city I love, both for the same reasons: for all the pleasures and sufferings that makes its character, and all the sorrows it carries on its shoulders.

Watch Her Disappear
(Tom Waits/Kathleen Brennan 1992)

Last night I dreamed that I was dreaming of you
And from a window across the lawn I watched you undress
Wearing your sunset of purple tightly woven around your hair
That rose in strangled ebony curls
Moving in a yellow bedroom light
The air is wet with sound
The faraway yelping of a wounded dog
And the ground is drinking a slow faucet leak
Your house is so soft and fading as it soaks the black summer heat
A light goes on and the door opens
And a yellow cat runs out on the stream of hall light and into the yard

A wooden cherry scent is faintly breathing the air
I hear your champagne laugh
You wear two lavender orchids
One in your hair and one on your hip
A string of yellow carnival lights comes on with the dusk
Circling the lake with a slowly dipping halo
And I hear a banjo tango

And you dance into the shadow of a black poplar tree
And I watched you as you disappeared
I watched you as you disappeared
I watched you as you disappeared
I watched you as you disappeared