Before and after dawn ( possibly only of interest to those who take an interest in Bob Dylan) / A song from the distant past comes to mind / Where am I now?

*

*

The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure To live it you had to explode And at the last hour of need, we entirely agreed Sacrifice was the code of the road

(Bob Dylan -- 1978) 

Porch garden / Indoor garden / Gardener with Ideas / Bettye LaVette singing "Ain't Talkin"

(pastel drawing by am from the 1980s:  Gardener with Ideas)



"As I walked out tonight in the mystic garden ..."

Totem Pole / No self and No not-self

I'm just average, common too
I'm just like him, the same as you
I'm everybody's brother and son
I ain't no different from anyone
It ain't no use a-talking to me
It's just the same as talking to you

I was shadow-boxing earlier in the day
I figured I was ready for Cassius Clay
I said, "Fee, fie, fo, fum,
Cassius Clay, here I come
26, 27, 28, 29, I'm gonna make your face look just like mine
Five, four, three, two, one,
Cassius Clay you'd better run
99, 100, 101, 102, your ma won't even recognize you
14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, gonna knock him clean right out of his spleen ...
-- Bob Dylan, from 1964, "I Shall Be Free No. 10"



A sage has no self, yet there is nothing that is not himself.
-- Shih-T'ou (700-790)

"No Time To Think" / "Bob Dylan goes to see us"

In death, you face life with a child and a wife
Who sleep-walks through your dreams into walls
You’re a soldier of mercy, you’re cold and you curse
“He who cannot be trusted must fall”

Loneliness, tenderness, high society, notoriety
You fight for the throne and you travel alone
Unknown as you slowly sink
And there’s no time to think

In the Federal City you been blown and shown pity
In secret, for pieces of change
The empress attracts you but oppression distracts you
And it makes you feel violent and strange

Memory, ecstasy, tyranny, hypocrisy
Betrayed by a kiss on a cool night of bliss
In the valley of the missing link
And you have no time to think

Judges will haunt you, the country priestess will want you
Her worst is better than best
I’ve seen all these decoys through a set of deep turquoise eyes
And I feel so depressed

China doll, alcohol, duality, mortality
Mercury rules you and destiny fools you
Like the plague, with a dangerous wink
And there’s no time to think

Your conscience betrayed you when some tyrant waylaid you
Where the lion lies down with the lamb
I’d have paid off the traitor and killed him much later
But that’s just the way that I am

Paradise, sacrifice, mortality, reality
But the magician is quicker and his game
Is much thicker than blood and blacker than ink
And there’s no time to think

Anger and jealousy’s all that he sells us
He’s content when you’re under his thumb
Madmen oppose him, but your kindness throws him
To survive it you play deaf and dumb

Equality, liberty, humility, simplicity
You glance through the mirror and there’s eyes staring clear
At the back of your head as you drink
And there’s no time to think

Warlords of sorrow and queens of tomorrow
Will offer their heads for a prayer
You can’t find no salvation, you have no expectations
Anytime, anyplace, anywhere

Mercury, gravity, nobility, humility
You know you can’t keep her and the water gets deeper
That is leading you onto the brink
But there’s no time to think

You’ve murdered your vanity, buried your sanity
For pleasure you must now resist
Lovers obey you but they cannot sway you
They’re not even sure you exist

Socialism, hypnotism, patriotism, materialism
Fools making laws for the breaking of jaws
And the sound of the keys as they clink
But there’s no time to think

The bridge that you travel on goes to the Babylon girl
With the rose in her hair
Starlight in the East and you’re finally released
You’re stranded but with nothing to share

Loyalty, unity, epitome, rigidity
You turn around for one real last glimpse of Camille
’Neath the moon shinin’ bloody and pink
And there’s no time to think

Bullets can harm you and death can disarm you
But no, you will not be deceived
Stripped of all virtue as you crawl through the dirt
You can give but you cannot receive

No time to choose when the truth must die
No time to lose or say goodbye
No time to prepare for the victim that’s there
No time to suffer or blink
And no time to think

Copyright © 1978 by Special Rider Music

What a woman who works the tunnel between the buses and the backstage area at an arena outside of Atlanta remembers about Dylan is not that she saw him; what she remembers is "I was not allowed to look at him."

He was, of course, on his way to the stage when he passed her averted eyes—on his way to be looked at and listened to. It sounds like a paradox typical of Bob Dylan, worthy of Bob Dylan, but it's really pretty straightforward as an exercise of star power. The crossed relationship between Bob Dylan and his audience is the most enduring one in all of rock 'n' roll, and it keeps going—and will keep going to the last breath—because from the start he laid down a simple and impossible rule:

We don't go to see Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan goes to see us.

(quoted from here)

("Flashback," linocut by am, 1970s and "I Watch Movies," drawing made with computer trackpad by am, 2007)

Marcel, Walt, and That Extraordinary Beloved Mockingbird named Bob

After having followed a link at wood s lot to Paintings in Proust (Vol. 1, Swann's Way) and reading from Proust, it occurred to me that the rhythm of Marcel Proust's voice was reminding me of Bob Dylan's voice in his 2004 memoir titled Chronicles:  Vol. 1.  

By Googling "Bob Dylan" together with "Proust," I found this and this and then came upon this:

"The men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially and even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in reflecting power and not in the intrinsic quality of the scene reflected."

(Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove)

"... I left town at dawn with Marcel and St. John ..."

(Bob Dylan lyrics from "Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)" from the album titled "Street Legal.")

Back in the beginning of 2003, I belonged to an informal group of people who met once a month to read and discuss poetry.  For one month, Walt Whitman's poetry was chosen as a focus.  Among other poetry by Walt Whitman, I read his Civil War poems.  During those early months of 2003, a movie titled "Gods and Generals" was released. I would not likely have watched it if my Richard hadn't recommended it and had I not learned that the movie included a song written by Bob Dylan called "'Cross the Green Mountain."  Not long after that when I found the lyrics of "'Cross the Green Mountain" via Google, I was startled to read:

A letter to mother 

came today

Gunshot wound to the breast

is what it did say

But he'll be better soon

He's in a hospital bed

But he'll never be better

He's already dead

That sounded to me a whole lot like one of Walt Whitman's Civil War poems that I had just read.  Sure enough, it was:

Open the envelope quickly,

O this is not our son's writing, yet his name is sign'd,

O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken

mother's soul!

All swims before her yes, flashes with black, she catches the

main words only,

Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry

skirmish, taken to hospital,

At present low, but will soon be better.

Ah now the single figure to me,

Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and

farms,

Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,

By the jamb of a door leans.

Grieve not so, dear mother, (the just-grown daughter speaks

through her sobs,

The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay'd,)

See dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.

Alas, poor boy, he will never be better, (no may-be needs to

be better, that brave and simple soul,)

While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,

The only son is dead.

Now I'm wondering if I noticed what I noticed before Bob Dylan's mockingbird tendencies began to arouse controversy in July of 2003.

"... Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,

Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle ..."

"... I celebrate myself, and what I assume, you shall assume,

for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you ..."

"... You are also asking me questions and I hear you,

I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself ..."

"...Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems ..."

(from "Song of Myself," by Walt Whitman)