When Colby President William "Bro" Adams gave the college's Baccalaureate speech last week, he admitted that he secretly harbored a lifelong desire to be singer Tom Waits.

That made us smile. It's pretty hard to imagine the trim, efficient and tidy Adams in the guise of the gravel-voiced, whiskey-soaked, Beatnik-and-Bukowski-loving Waits, whose career began when he was an opening act for the deeply weird, but brilliant, Frank Zappa. Waits subsequently made a name for himself as the troubadour of latter-day Skid Row love songs: a dark, defiant and dyspeptic crooner of perversely tender lyrics and melodies. This is from his song "I don't want to grow up:"

"I don't wanna have to shout it out

I don't want my hair to fall out

I don't wanna be filled with doubt

I don't wanna be a good boy scout

I don't wanna have to learn to count

I don't wanna have the biggest amount

And I don't wanna grow up"

These are the words of Adams' alter ego? Ah, the truth is out!

We were moved by that thought to imagine the musical alter egos of other well-known personalities in our state.

Take Sen. Peter Mills, for example, the Republican maverick whose independence and social liberalism has hobbled his ability to advance to higher office by winning statewide approval from his party's more conservative stalwarts. Surely there's a Lyle Lovett wannabe lurking in Mills' soul. This Lovett song could be Mills' next campaign theme:

"They don't like me

I can feel it

And I don't like them

It's the same old song

They don't like me

I just know it

But I'd be happy

Just to get along"

And we're wondering: Is Sen. John Martin, Democrat of Eagle Lake, hiding an affinity for that hard-working scrapper from East Tennessee, Dolly Parton? "I always wanted to be a star," says Parton, who could have taken the words right out of Martin's mouth.

Martin, who has served longer in the Statehouse than most pieces of furniture there, is arguably the living impetus for the passage of term limits -- yet he hasn't departed the marble halls of power for decades. On that score, the lyrics of one old Parton song are prophetic:

"If I left you I couldn't stay gone

So there's no use in going

Loving you is a habit I can't break"

That Bro Adams is a Tom Waits wannabe is oddly fitting -- on the flip side of every buttoned-up college president, perhaps, lies an unbuttoned and madly gifted Bowery bum. We're tempted to extend this concept to other well-known Mainers:

Is Sen. Susan Collins, who constantly reminds us of our first-grade teacher, really yearning to bust loose as debauched singer Amy Winehouse?

Is conservative, tightfisted Waterville Mayor Paul LePage's alter ego the notoriously extravagant and libertine Mick Jagger?

Might prolific horror-story author Stephen King want to be a rock star like ... Oh, that's right, he is a rock and roller, playing with a literary bunch of fellow crooners like Dave Barry, Amy Tan, Matt Groening, Roy Blount, Jr. and Barbara Kingsolver in a group called "The Rock Bottom Remainders."

Says Barry: "The band plays music as well as Metallica writes novels." The Remainders' album, "Stranger than Fiction," is available from Don't Quit Your Day Job Records.

Which brings us to the end of this little flight of fancy. Ultimately, the universe needs order, which means it's good that college presidents remain college presidents, and senators do their jobs as senators.

Yet the universe also needs whimsy and a little rhythm. So, closeted rock and rollers that we are, if we were to hear of a concert being given by Adams, Collins, LePage, Martin and Mills, you can bet we'd be the first in line for tickets.