I can't say I'm a big Tom Waits fan – it seems to me to be an acquired taste – but it's hard not to respect him and the path he's on. Like that line from The Band song "Cripple Creek:" "I can't stand the way he sings, but I love to hear him talk."
Well, Waits did talk at length with Terry Gross on an episode of Fresh Air and I thought his musings on songwriting could be applied to any creative endeavor — just insert the name of the medium, say photography instead of songwriting — and change a few details and, voila, same deal:
"For a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made of, and wonder if you can make one, too," he says. "And you just do it by picking up the needle and putting it back down and figuring it how these people did this magical thing. It's rather mystifying when you think about songs — where they come from and how they're born. Many times, it's very humble and very mundane, the origin of these songs."