It happened in a flash of light. I picked it up, and I put it down. The lines were rapid-- I tried to rip them into shreads to understand first. I held onto each word like my life depended on it, created a million visions out of them, grabbed them so tight that they couldn't even move. But that is no way to take the man down. I know that now.
It was the weirdest trip of my life. I wonder if this was how he felt when he read Bound For Glory, or probably he didn't--i seriously doubt that our minds--well, at least our hearts--work similarly.
I'll cut to the chase--I'm done with Chronicles, Volume One. I'm glad I'm done with it, cause god knows, my whole life was on hold since the day it landed in my hands. I read it through lectures, between lectures, i read it waiting for the bus, on the bus, at home, at school, on the streets while people passed me by with a wondering look in their eyes--I read it the minute I opened my eyes in the morning, and I read it right before I closed them. It was enchanting, it was magical, there wasn't much I could do about it. Even when I wasn't reading it, I kept it there on the desk, at the corner--as some teacher told me about some useless info on some useless political scheme, he just kept looking at me with a crooked, half beaten look on his face, almost telling me, well--more like snarling, "Is this some kind of a joke?"
And now I have tons too tell, but I'll try to make it quick and clear here and don't turn this into a needlessly bottomless pit. It's not a personal book, I'll start with that. Yeah, it's far more insight that he had ever given on anything but still, something's off. You circle and circle around him, you get to see his face, his ears, his mouth, you get too see all others hanging out by him, but you still can't get in. It's shut, it's too far off. It's just foreign. Whether or not its his intention--i know better than assuming when it's him we're talking about--or maybe, to him, it isn't even that way--but me, I'm still just lost. I'm still just as stranded and confused, just as ignorant.
But there are a few snapshots here and there that just lifts up the veil and you see a moment of his life--an image, a word --something, something that is more intimate and private than others. I'm not talking about some fancy romantic scene with a woman, or some insanely detailed explanation of inner self. Na-ah, nothing of that sort. Maybe it's the crazy way my brain works, but what really got to me, of all the rest, what rose up above the ground and shone like a bright star--was something much more simpler. He talks about--at the first chapter I think--about how he used to sneak into the kitchen of Cafe Wha?, with a pal of his while they were both playing there, and there would be a burger waiting for him, and they would munch on that. That's it, that's the singlehandedly most effective, radiant, mind blowing, magical moment of the book for me--this 20 some year old kid, with two piercing blue eyes, cocking a smile at a greasy burger.
Everybody has their own Dylan, and I think I found mine after much ravaging-- he's that one from Cafe Wha?'s kitchen on a snowy, freezing New York evening.
Let me see.. What else...man, I can talk about this all day. And everytime I start of a sentence, I realize that it's really not what I've been thinking to say at all, and I try to change it, but I don't know. I can't say much on the book other than the fact it just creeped me out--and I see that now--as if I entered some forbidden territory, and that all my prior convictions were bound to be burnt at the stake, along with my misguided, misled, selfish idoltary.
OK, that was a lie. There was nothing in that book that made me care less about his words or his songs or his way of thinking---but there was stuff in it that made him much more, well, ordinary. The parts about recording stuff. that for example, was very human and obviously very mechanical---not the usual way you picture these things to happen--because you expect him to create in a moment of craze and delusion, and you expect the muse to hit him hard--sort of sending him to a trance, but it doesn't have to work that way. I saw that. Another thing I saw--very very very rarely, maybe in one moment, or two--a more vulnerable figure than I took him to be.
But over all, I saw a man. That's it. A man of flesh and blood, of words that are worth saying and words of no importance whatsoever, of moments crucial and moments downright awkward; of a vague, human carelessness and a fiery way of defending territory at times, of childhood faith, anticipation, joy and confusion, anger, even pain, of a compassionate heart sometimes and a frowning one at others, of lifting a finger high up in the face of everyone who pushes and presses, then an unexplained desire to explain...
A man of not so much to discuss. He puts it out there, the way he wants to, and you can't take that too seriously.
There's too much in my head crawling--and it will be there for a few days until i digest--but until then, I'll bend my head sideways and peek through the cracked door, and a man-kid of 20 will be sitting on the kitchen counter, with a friend next to him, a bright smile on his thin but long lips, his insanely blue eyes jumping out of his pale face, and in his hands an hamburger large enough to devour him instead. And the man-kid keeps smiling, and takes a bite, then keeps on talking about whatever the hell he was talking about right before.
"Eventually, different anachronisms were thrust upon me--anachronisms of lesser dilemma--though they might seem bigger. Legend, Icon, Enigma (Buddha in European Clothes was my favorite)--stuff like that, but that was all right. These titles were placid and harmless, threadbare, easy to get around with them. Prophet, Messiah, Savior--those are tough ones."
Bob Dylan--Chronicles, Volume One
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