Real Gone | How's It Gonna End Mystery Cache

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seldom|seen: Now that the last finders have found, it's time to retire the last one in the series, except Clang, Boom, Steam which will be renamed and remain in play as a reminder of what will now live on in infamy.

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Hidden : 10/20/2009
Difficulty:
4 out of 5
Terrain:
2 out of 5

Size: Size: regular (regular)

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Geocache Description:

The barn leaned over
The vultures dried their wings
The moon climbed up an empty sky
The sun sank down behind the tree
On the hill
There's a killer and he's coming
Thru the rye
But maybe he's the father
Of that lost little girl
It's hard to tell in this light

And I want to know
The same thing
Everyone wants to know
How it going to end?

Drag your wagon and your plow
Over the bones of the dead
Out among the roses and the weeds
You can never go back
And the answer is no
And wishing for it only
Makes it bleed



Pitchfork: I'm sure you know Scarlett Johannson is recording an album of your songs, are you excited to hear it?

Tom Waits: I don't know if I'm excited to hear it, but I'm curious. People make songs so that somebody else will hear them and want to do them. I guess it's an indication that the songs aren't so ultra-personal that they can't possibly be interpreted by anyone else. When you get a hold of somebody else's song, you make it your own. That's all you can do. And that usually requires a certain amount of tailoring. Cut the sleeves off, lay some buttons. Everybody does something different to a song, that's the tradition.

Pitchfork: In your artist's statement for the new record, you say that your voice is really your instrument, which certainly seems true to anyone who has ever heard your records. Some of my favorite singers are the ones who sound a little out of control. Are you ever surprised or offended by what your voice can or cannot do?

Tom Waits: If you're still pushing the envelope and wanting to find out what this baby can do, or if you're still trying to imitate things-- most people start out by imitating. Slowly you develop your own voice. I like vocal word stuff. But I don't always write with an instrument, I usually write a capella. It's more like drawing in the air with your fingers. It's closest to the choreography of a bee. You're freer. You have no frets to constrict you, there are no frets on your voice, and that's a good feeling. So for composing melody, it's something you can do anywhere.

Pitchfork: Did you always know you wanted your voice to sound a certain way?

Tom Waits: I talked to Robert Siegel, the newscaster on NPR, and he said that most announcers and people in radio, they want their voices to sound older. Because a lot of the news you're delivering is very serious and very heavy, and you don't want to sound like a little kid talking about how thirty-three people were killed in a roadside bomb. You have to compose your voice and your whole demeanor so that it's situated to give weight, dignity, and gravity to all the things you're saying. You want the same thing for your voice when you're a singer. You want your voice and how you're approaching it to suit the material.

Pitchfork: There is a rich and wonderful American history of tough, scrappy songwriters-- everyone from Ramblin' Jack Elliott to Bob Dylan-- compulsively mythologizing themselves, inventing backstories, changing their names, developing personas to work alongside songs. Is there a Tom Waits mythology?

Tom Waits: I'm sure there is. The fact is most of the things that people know about me are made up. My own life is backstage. So what you "know" about me is only what I allowed you to know about me. So it's like a ventriloquist act. And it's also a way of safely keeping your personal life out of your business. Which is healthy and essential. I'm not one of those people the tabloids chase around. You have to put off that smell-- it's like blood in the water for a shark. And they know it, and they know that you've also agreed. And I'm not one of those. I make stuff up. There's nothing that you can say that will mean the same thing once it's been repeated. We're all making leaner versions of stories. Before there was recording, everything was subject to the folk process. And we were all part of composing in the evolution and the migration of songs. We all reached out, and they all passed through our hands at some point. You dropped a verse or changed the gender or cleaned up a verse for your kids or added something more appropriate for your community. Anything that says "Traditional," it's "Hey, I wrote that, I'm part of that." Just like when a joke reaches you-- how did it reach you? If you could go back and retrace it, that would be fascinating.

excerpted from a 2006 interview by Pitchfork after the release of Bawlers, Brawlers & Bastards. Tom discusses his persona, cover songs and his contributions to the music collective.


ABOVE COORDINATES ARE NOT ACTUAL COORDINATES

You'll need to solve this puzzle to determine the final coordinates which are

N44° 13.xxx W088° 28.xxx

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Jung'f va n anzr? Jung pna lbh qb jvgu n anzr? Jub npghnyyl bjaf guvf pnpur? Va gur jbeqf bs Trar Jvyqre, "Ab, jnvg, erirefr gung..."

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)


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