The King of Bohemia
“I can tell by the way people hold their cigarettes if they like Ricky Nelson.”
The first time I got acquainted with Bob Dylan was when he was interviewed by Playboy in 1966.
When he was asked if switching from folk to folk rock had improved him as a performer, he said:
I’m not interested in myself as a performer. Performers are people who perform for other people. Unlike actors, I know what I’m saying. It’s very simple in my mind. It doesn’t matter what kind of audience reaction this whole thing gets. What happens on the stage is straight. It doesn’t expect any rewards or fines from any kind of outside agitators. It’s ultra-simple, and would exist whether anybody was looking or not.
I was 17 and in the navy. That interview, cut from the magazine, was a prized possession. This was somebody who was powerful in himself, not because he was part of a powerful class or organization, or even a society. He was something different.
People who knew Dylan in New York would recall that if he wanted one of their records he’d probably take it with him when he went home, because he was learning all these folk songs. He thought he was going to be a folk singer, like Woody Guthrie. He didn’t yet suspect that he was going to arguably be the greatest poet of his generation.
Once the cask of his mind was opened, poetry flowed like fine wine. After he wrote “Like a Rolling Stone,” he realized he was into his own mind. He had found what he liked, whether anybody else liked it or not. That’s when the real magic started to happen.
I guess I was going to quit singing. I was very drained, and the way things were going, it was a very draggy situation — I mean, when you do “Everybody Loves You for Your Black Eye,” and meanwhile the back of your head is caving in. Anyway, I was playing a lot of songs I didn’t want to play. I was singing words I didn’t really want to sing. I don’t mean words like “God” and “mother” and “President” and “suicide” and “meat cleaver.” I mean simple little words like “if” and “hope” and “you.” But “Like a Rolling Stone” changed it all.
What was most interesting to me about Bob Dylan in this interview I could not explain, but I knew it directly. Now I know I was hearing a right brained man being interviewed by a left brained man. It was like comparing a train to an airplane.
Mistake or not, what made you decide to go the rock-’n’-roll route?
Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I’m in a card game. Then I’m in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia …
And … he’s off! He could spin a story out of the air because he wasn’t confined by linear thinking. He was part of an evolving consciousness characterized by the equality of the right and left, which externalized as a movement toward gender equality. Without it, no evolution. In literature this shifting, without drawing any lines, showed up in such genres as magical reality.
“A short time later, when the carpenter was taking measurements for the coffin, through the window they saw a light rain of tiny yellow flowers falling. They fell on the town all through the night in a silent storm, and they covered the roofs and blocked the doors and smothered the animals who slept outdoors. So many flowers fell from the sky that in the morning the streets were carpeted with a compact cushion and they had to clear them away with shovels and rakes so that the funeral procession could pass by.” (One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
There is no, “And now he imagined,” or, “He dreamed,” there is no demarcation between linear processing and symbol processing. They are working together to create something new. When I heard Dylan, when I read Ferlinghetti and Burroughs, it wasn’t about being on one side or the other. It was about seeing the direction of evolution. And it becomes ever more clear what separates the right from the left, and why the right can’t be trusted. It is when the war is lost that the worst atrocities are committed in a desperate attempt to get power back again.
Idiot wind Blowing every time you move your mouth Blowing down the back roads headin’ south Idiot wind Blowing every time you move your teeth You’re an idiot, babe It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe (Idiot Wind, by Bob Dylan)
