Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Tom Waits performs with such intensity and focus that time seems to stand still, creating an immersive atmosphere.
In plain terms
His performance is so absorbing it feels like time stops.
What can you take from it?
Great art can make you lose track of time.

Where it applies

  • live music
  • artistic performance
  • deep listening

Putting it to work

  • focus on live performance
  • appreciate immersive art

Questions to consider

  • When did you last lose track of time?
  • What makes a performance immersive?

Another view

This is a poetic exaggeration rather than a literal fact.

More from Tom Waits

  1. Apparently the highest compliment our culture grants artists nowadays is to be in an ad - ideally naked and purring on the hood of a new car . I have adamantly…

    Permalink to quote #30
  2. 'I always wondered how Tom Waits would sing 'Greensleeves'....' --Loreena McKennitt, 'The Visit'

    Permalink to quote #32
  3. In response to a heckler at his concert at Toronto's Massey Hall in the late 1980's who complained that he could not hear Waits, he replied: 'I haven't screame…

    Permalink to quote #29

Related quotes

  1. The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides.

    Artur SchnabelArtur Schnabel quote #2
  2. Music isn't enough. Performers aren't enough. There must be someone that loves music as much as life. For you, and remember this always, those of us with somet…

    William KapellWilliam Kapell quote #1
  3. The most necessary, most difficult and principal thing in music, that is time.

    Wolfgang Amadeus MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart quote #1