Some rain is gonna fall
reflections in a shard of Bob Dylan’s mirror
Some rain is falling here, finally, after months of waterless light.
Light with water brings rainbows, only when there is both fire and water.
Anyway.
Last Wednesday,
doing the dishes,
listening to some music
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
Bleeding hammers, black branches and wild wolves.
Well, quite.
It reminded me of an interview I just read. More on that, later.
So this week’s letter, apparently, begins with Bob Dylan.
I feel in no way authorized to talk about Bob Dylan. Why?
Because I’m no expert.
That is a ridiculous reason not to talk about Bob Dylan.
The image of a broken mirror appears.
All the pieces have once reflected the same object. Let’s say, Bob Dylan. But every time he, or his work, is reflected in someone else, the mirror is fractured and a new shard of this mirror bursts out.
And so the Bob Dylan mirror cracks into an almost infinite amount of shards, they themselves reflecting reflections into the world.
If one was to find all these pieces of the Bob Dylan mirror, and put the mirror back together, what do you get? What image would appear? Will it appear to Bob Dylan as Bob Dylan? Or is it something endlessly more than the sum of its parts? The ultimate and endless Bob Dylan?
Why share this image?
My guess is, to justify myself. To make clear that all I’m doing is picking up the shards of my particular Bob Dylan mirror. I may be no Bob Dylan expert, but I might be a decent mirror repairman.
Let’s see if that’s the case.
The interview, then.
It’s 1964. Dylan is 23 years old and working on his fourth album. Much of the interview is about Dylan’s absolute need of and search for freedom. It is pretty amazing to see his clarity.
But first, something I became aware of, reading this article: in reading interviews or stories from a different time, you can really step into this time, where people were, at the core, the same. But the culture was different. This brings fresh perspectives on the outer layers of who we are (culture), and the inner beings we have ‘always’ been. Especially with artists, the outsiders who haven’t conformed to the status quo, this perspective opens up. Like a timeless vessel in time.
It brings up the question: how much of ‘me’ is culture, how much of ‘me’ is true, authentic, timeless self?
Ok, the interview.
Below are some quotes.
Or, and I would suggest this, read the article.
Another reason for Dylan’s impact is the singular force of his personality. Wiry, tense, and boyish, Dylan looks and acts like a fusion of Huck Finn and a young Woody Guthrie. Both onstage and off, he appears to be just barely able to contain his prodigious energy. Pete Seeger, who, at forty-five, is one of the elders of American folk music, recently observed, “Dylan may well become the country’s most creative troubadour—if he doesn’t explode.”
Dylan is always dressed informally—the possibility that he will ever be seen in a tie is as remote as the possibility that Miss Baez will perform in an evening gown—and his possessions are few, the weightiest of them being a motorcycle. A wanderer, Dylan is often on the road in search of more experience. “You can find out a lot about a small town by hanging around its poolroom,” he says. Like Miss Baez, he prefers to keep most of his time for himself. He works only occasionally, and during the rest of the year he travels or briefly stays in a house owned by his manager, Albert Grossman, in Bearsville, New York—a small town adjacent to Woodstock and about a hundred miles north of New York City. There Dylan writes songs, works on poetry, plays, and novels, rides his motorcycle, and talks with his friends. From time to time, he comes to New York to record for Columbia Records.
What a life, no?
Now, on freedom:
The N.A.A.C.P. is a bunch of old guys. I found that out by coming directly in contact with some of the people in it. They didn’t understand me. They were looking to use me for something. Man, everybody’s hung up. You sometimes don’t know if somebody wants you to do something because he’s hung up or because he really digs who you are. It’s awful complicated, and the best thing you can do is admit it.
During recording:
“Forget it,” Wilson said. “You don’t think in terms of orthodox recording techniques when you’re dealing with Dylan. You have to learn to be as free on this side of the glass as he is out there.”
Dylan again:
It’s hard being free in a song—getting it all in. Songs are so confining. Woody Guthrie told me once that songs don’t have to rhyme—that they don’t have to do anything like that. But it’s not true. A song has to have some kind of form to fit into the music. You can bend the words and the metre, but it still has to fit somehow. I’ve been getting freer in the songs I write, but I still feel confined. That’s why I write a lot of poetry—if that’s the word. Poetry can make its own form.
To the interviewer:
“My background’s not all that important, though,” he said as we left the studio. “It’s what I am now that counts.”
And right after, of course, the piece continues with Dylan’s background.
Some more:
I was kept around for kicks at a fraternity house. They let me live there, an’ I did until they wanted me to join.
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I looked around and saw all these people pointing fingers at the bomb. But the bomb is getting boring, because what’s wrong goes much deeper than the bomb. What’s wrong is how few people are free. Most people walking around are tied down to something that doesn’t let them really speak, so they just add their confusion to the mess. I mean, they have some kind of vested interest in the way things are now. Me, I’m cool.
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All I can do is show the people who ask me questions how I live. All I can do is be me. I can’t tell them how to change things, because there’s only one way to change things, and that’s to cut yourself off from all the chains. That’s hard for most people to do.
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“I kept running because I wasn’t free,” he said. “I was constantly on guard. Somehow, way back then, I already knew that parents do what they do because they’re up tight. They’re concerned with their kids in relation to themselves. I mean, they want their kids to please them, not to embarrass them—so they can be proud of them. They want you to be what they want you to be. So I started running when I was ten.”
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Everybody has to find his own way to be free. There isn’t anybody who can help you in that sense.
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I don’t care how great an old song it is or what its tradition is. I have to make a new song out of what I know and out of what I’m feeling.
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The conversation turned to civil rights, and the actor used the term “the Movement” to signify the work of the civil-rights activists. Dylan looked at him quizzically. “I agree with everything that’s happening,” he said, “but I’m not part of no Movement. If I was, I wouldn’t be able to do anything else but be in ‘the Movement.’ I just can’t have people sit around and make rules for me. I do a lot of things no Movement would allow.” He took a long drink of Beaujolais. “It’s like politics,” he went on. “I just can’t make it with any organization.”
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Exhausted by his monologue, Dylan sank back and poured more Beaujolais. “People talk about trying to change society,” he said. “All I know is that so long as people stay so concerned about protecting their status and protecting what they have, ain’t nothing going to be done. Oh, there may be some change of levels inside the circle, but nobody’s going to learn anything.”
Moving on. This letter is not about freedom. Some other time maybe.
More ‘old’ (young) Dylan. Here is an interview from a year later, 1965:
Talk about a different culture. Then, there, this ephemeral creature in the midst of all this attention, like a bubble being pinpricked, but never bursting. There seems to be a great gap between the audience, their questions and Dylan. It’s almost as if they exist in different layers of the same universe.
Sometimes Youtube comments are better than the video.
A man who loves ideas being confronted by a crowd who loves facts
Anyway.
When, while doing the dishes, ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ came on, I immediately thought of Patti’s Smith’s performance of this song, in honor of Bob Dylan receiving the Nobel prize for literature.
Which makes me cry every time.
As the first YouTube comment states:
All pretense was sucked out of that room. We are vulnerable children wandering in an often brutal wilderness and Patti Smith reminded us - using Dylans’ words - of that.
Using Dylan’s words, and showing and acknowledging her vulnerability, on a stage where that is almost impossible.
“I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it”
Vulnerability always brings the deepest form of connection. Through our wounds (vulneras in Latin) we are in the most direct contact with the world. In vulnerability, or, openness, there is connection, and a passageway to forgiveness. Which, all of a sudden, is obvious. How else to connect? Through a closed door?
This reminds me of a beautiful passage of Satish Kumar’s book ‘No destination’, where Vinoba, an Indian advocate of nonviolence and human rights and considered a National Teacher of India and the spiritual successor of Mahatma Gandhi, tells Kumar:
Take the example of a house. You want to enter this house, but is has high walls around it. You go to the wall and fight to get past it. You cannot. What happens? Your head is broken. But if you find a small door, you can get into the house and go wherever you want. But you have to find the door. Like that, when I meet a landlord he has many faults and shortcomings, and his egotism is like a wall. But he has a little door. If you are prepared to find this door, it means you have risen above your own egotism and you can enter his heart. Don’t worry about his faults, only try to find the door. I am in search of that little door in every capitalist landlord. If sometimes I can’t find the door, it is my fault, my fault that I am banging my head against his shortcomings.
But more on that book in another letter, probably.
Back to Dylan’s lyrics.
The last verse goes:
Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
It is interesting that in this last verse, the forest, the mountain and the ocean all reappear, having earlier appeared in the first verse.
But now
I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
The mountain-like vigor is striking. I will think it and speak it and breathe it. I will be it. There is no other way, whatever happens.
When a man’s thinking, feeling and doing is aligned, he is truly in balance, with a deep keel, and thus, almost unshakable. Storms may try, but this boat will float.
Also, reflection, ‘so all souls can see it.’
And then the last line:
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
Which speaks somewhat ironically in light of Smith’s performance. But Patti Smith knew her song well. For knowing your song is knowing your own voice. And also, this was Bob Dylan’s song, after all!
But it was her song also.
Here she explains more about her performance, at around the 2:30 minute mark.
I just had this: tell the truth - if you tell the people the truth they are very forgiving (…). I could feel everyone with me (…). I learned a great lesson from that: everyone was so happy, so happy to see me, and so happy that I was so flawed, and had such a rough moment, because they all do. Because they felt a kinsip. We all go through it.
Truth and vulnerability, inextricably linked.
Patti Smith is great. ‘Just Kids’ is one of my favorite books of and about artists and living a truthful life, which, I guess, may be the same.
She is also a breath of pure, fresh mountain air on Instagram.
Back to Dylan, one more excerpt from the New Yorker piece:
I fell into a trap once—last December—when I agreed to accept the Tom Paine Award from the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee. At the Americana Hotel! In the Grand Ballroom! As soon as I got there, I felt up tight. First of all, the people with me couldn’t get in. They looked even funkier than I did, I guess. They weren’t dressed right, or something. Inside the ballroom, I really got up tight. I began to drink. I looked down from the platform and saw a bunch of people who had nothing to do with my kind of politics. I looked down and I got scared. They were supposed to be on my side, but I didn’t feel any connection with them.
Here were these people who’d been all involved with the left in the thirties, and now they were supporting civil-rights drives. That’s groovy, but they also had minks and jewels, and it was like they were giving the money out of guilt.
I got up to leave, and they followed me and caught me. They told me I had to accept the award. When I got up to make my speech, I couldn’t say anything by that time but what was passing through my mind. They’d been talking about Kennedy being killed, and Bill Moore and Medgar Evers and the Buddhist monks in Vietnam being killed. I had to say something about Lee Oswald. I told them I’d read a lot of his feelings in the papers, and I knew he was up tight. Said I’d been up tight, too, so I’d got a lot of his feelings. I saw a lot of myself in Oswald, I said, and I saw in him a lot of the times we’re all living in. And, you know, they started booing.
They looked at me like I was an animal. They actually thought I was saying it was a good thing Kennedy had been killed. That’s how far out they are. I was talking about Oswald. And then I started talking about friends of mine in Harlem—some of them junkies, all of them poor. And I said they need freedom as much as anybody else, and what’s anybody doing for them?
The chairman was kicking my leg under the table, and I told him, ‘Get out of here.’ Now, what I was supposed to be was a nice cat. I was supposed to say, ‘I appreciate your award and I’m a great singer and I’m a great believer in liberals, and you buy my records and I’ll support your cause.’
But I didn’t, and so I wasn’t accepted that night. That’s the cause of a lot of those chains I was talking about—people wanting to be accepted, people not wanting to be alone. But, after all, what is it to be alone? I’ve been alone sometimes in front of three thousand people. I was alone that night.
Those people at that dinner were the same as everybody else. They’re doing their time. They’re chained to what they’re doing. The only thing is, they’re trying to put morals and great deeds on their chains, but basically they don’t want to jeopardize their positions. They got their jobs to keep. There’s nothing there for me, and there’s nothing there for the kind of people I hang around with.
Chained to what they’re doing. Feeling free, but actually being imprisoned. That might be the best (and thereby worst) prison there is, for, not knowing you are inside one, why try to break out?
Awards, then.
Can you still be free, the outsider watching in, accepting awards?
I remember wondering, why, exactly, Dylan didn’t attend ‘his’ Nobel prize ceremony. Now, in this article, it seems, the answer.
Which reminds me of Frank Ocean’s quest for freedom.
Frank Ocean is finally free, mystery intact.
Let’s listen to a Frank Ocean song.
Back to Bob.
Back to awards.
Back to Bob’s words.
First, a 23-year old Dylan, now, the same person, 52 years later, having won the Nobel prize, says:
Then, out of the blue, the most uncanny thing happened. He (Buddy Holly) looked me right straight dead in the eye, and he transmitted something. Something I didn’t know what. And it gave me the chills.
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I had something else as well. I had principles and sensibilities and an informed view of the world. And I had had that for a while. Learned it all in grammar school. Don Quixote, Ivanhoe, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, Tale of Two Cities, all the rest – typical grammar school reading that gave you a way of looking at life, an understanding of human nature, and a standard to measure things by. I took all that with me when I started composing lyrics. And the themes from those books worked their way into many of my songs, either knowingly or unintentionally. I wanted to write songs unlike anything anybody ever heard, and these themes were fundamental.
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So what does it all mean? Myself and a lot of other songwriters have been influenced by these very same themes. And they can mean a lot of different things. If a song moves you, that’s all that’s important. I don’t have to know what a song means. I’ve written all kinds of things into my songs. And I’m not going to worry about it – what it all means. When Melville put all his old testament, biblical references, scientific theories, Protestant doctrines, and all that knowledge of the sea and sailing ships and whales into one story, I don’t think he would have worried about it either – what it all means.
John Donne as well, the poet-priest who lived in the time of Shakespeare, wrote these words, “The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts. Not of two lovers, but two loves, the nests.” I don’t know what it means, either. But it sounds good. And you want your songs to sound good.
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And I don’t know what it all means either. These shards of mirror.
Just some parts of Bob Dylan, reflected in me, throughout my life, recollected and now reflected back, to you, for you to read and think, feel and do with whatever you want. Or I’m not sure ‘wanting’ has anything to do with it. But I’m not going to worry about it.
The end is in sight.
So let’s pick up the last reflecting fragments lying around.
This song.
Listen to it, to the lyrics, to the story.
This righteous anger at the injustice of it all, reverberating through it all.
If I make space for it, and truly listen, it’s always there.
Incredible.
I still remember the first time hearing it.
Hurricane.
Another shard.
For me, one of the great opening segments of any film.
The song fits perfectly.
The scene is set.
Watchmen.
I think I watched this film at precisely the right time in my life, and loved it.
(As always, if you really enjoy the art, go to the source. In this case, the comic)
It has the line
Beneath me, this awful city, it screams like an abattoir of retarded children. New York.
which is quite something.
and
Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says "But, Doctor,... I am Pagliacci.
Is this similar to…?
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
Similar. But different.
Nihilistic dread versus seeing the ugly, acknowledging the existence of all things horrible in this world - and speaking the truth about it, and to it.
Only in not hiding from it, only in confronting it, as ugly and scary as it is, can one stay standing upright and face and fight one’s fears.
Where the first verses were about the question where he’s been, what he’s seen, heard and who he’s met, the last verse is about the question what to do:
Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
Well,
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
He stands, talks, thinks, speaks, breathes; he knows his song, his truth, and, most importantly, hopefully,
sings.
Thank you for reading these reflections.
Love,
from,
Louis
More?
More.
Some more shards, thoughts, threads and endeavors I didn’t get to:
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“I return once again to Homer, who says, “Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story.” - a quote from Dylan’s Nobel prize speech, which neatly fits into my previous newsletter about artistry and modesty:
In my losch playlist, the following Dylan songs:
Man in the Long Black Coat
Boots of Spanish Leather
Not Dark Yet
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
The Times They Are-A Changin’
Hurricane
Like a Rolling Stone
Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right (been trying to play this on the guitar. Need to practice more)
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I still haven’t seen ‘I’m not there’.
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I’m two-thirds into Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
Love rolling along with the Revue, so far.
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Re-watching the Watchmen opening segment, I now hear, for the first time, during the moon landing scene, Neil Armstrong say “good luck, Mr Gorsky.”
This is the story:
When Apollo Mission Astronaut Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only gave his famous “One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind” statement, but followed it by several remarks, including the usual COM traffic between him, the other astronauts, and Mission Control. Before he re-entered the lander, he made the enigmatic remark “Good luck, Mr. Gorsky.”
Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, [they found] there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs.
Over the years, many people have questioned him as to what the “Good luck, Mr. Gorsky” statement meant. On July 5, in Tampa Bay, FL, while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26- year-old question to Armstrong. He finally responded. It seems that Mr. Gorsky had died and so Armstrong felt he could answer the question. When he was a kid, Neil was playing baseball with his brother in the backyard. His brother hit a fly ball which landed in front of his neighbors’ bedroom window. The neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Gorsky. As he leaned down to pick up the ball, he heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky, “Oral sex? Oral sex you want? You’ll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!”
Which, unfortunately, is a joke.
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Almost, but look there: a tiny fragment in the corner:
I once had a conversation with Satish Kumar. If interested, you can listen to it here.
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And now, all pieces Dylan have truly been picked up. Or, at least, all that have been reflecting in me today.
And,
before I get to some self promotion,
first,
a farewell to the Queen:
To me,
the most beautiful scene in the film ‘the Queen’,
the moment, when,
all alone,
when it is all too much,
the Queen gives in to her vulnerability,
breaks,
and is,
just momentarily,
without crown,
and fully human.
The scene may not work without context.
So watch the film.
Or, if you have seen the film,
watch the clip
with the stag
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This is me on Instagram and Twitter.
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This playlist is called ‘Sunday afternoon chill album shuffle.’ It might also work on a Saturday.
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I give a course on living and working with the seasons and how to find a natural rhythm in life, with my brother in spirit Simon Ohler. If you want to join, that is entirely possible, by clicking here for example.
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Also, with this same brother in spirit Simon person, a podcast has emerged called Spiritual Mischief. You might like it. The episodes eat up just a bit less of your time than this letter.
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Also, here are some (Dutch) programs I have developed with Matthijs Schouten.
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I think I actually have nothing to add now.