The Animated Bob Dylan (Disney's got nothin' on him!)

I remember stumbling across this oddity years ago, and have just rediscovered it. It's an animated version of an interview he did at age 20, around the time portrayed in the much-hyped biopic. It's actually very well done, except that Bob doesn't quite look like that. But he looks a whole lot of different ways. I want to do something with this, but I'm not sure what. 

Gut feelings (a sort of postscript)

 

And as a sort of postscript to my non-review of the Dylan biopic, yes, I've been struggling, and no, no one is listening, just like those whisperers in Dylan's song drowned out by a chorus of howls. On New Years Eve, I will be having the most festive CT scan of my life, and a few days after that I have to have a sort of bullseye painted on my belly so they can tell where my colon leaves off and the rest of me begins. (Actually, it's in case they have to remove the whole thing.) They will draw my blood and analyze it, and they will listen to my heart with its odd skipping rhythm. Then on Ukrainian Christmas, I will go under the knife, or whatever it is they use these days.

I had to tell myself today, really just tell myself, look, you're not gonna die. This won't kill you, it will merely test you. Maybe more severely than I have ever been tested, in spite of near-fatal alcoholism and one mental breakdown after another over a lifetime. I actually got into such a deep slump spiritually that I was sure no one would care or even notice that I had died, that I had no legacy, that all I had done for my loved ones was for naught and they would just carry on as if I had never existed.

I couldn't go on that way, so as usual I needed some Dylan to boost me up, or at least get me walking again, in some direction. Any direction. Not sure what happened, but I have gained purchase a bit, and no longer am quite so sure I'll die on the table and that will be that, the end of everything.

It's weird how cliched things actually do happen, such as your life passing before your eyes, and all sorts of odd memories are popping up and replaying themselves, not all of them very good or bad, just neutral things. But the playlist of Dylan songs I am quite literally compiling for my memorial service (if I even have one) is not so neutral. I have taken this dress rehearsal for my own death as an alarming sign, and this has caused me to plunge around mentally like a deer in a forest fire, not knowing which way to run.

There is always something apocalyptic about Bob's most comforting songs. "Death is Not the End" is a nice little spiritual, with a women's chorus singing "Lawd, Lawd", but one verse proclaims:
"When the cities are on fire with the burning flesh of men

Just remember that death is not the end." 

Or should I listen to "My Own Version of You"? 
"All through the summers, into January

I've been visiting morgues and monasteries

Looking for the necessary body parts

Limbs and livers and brains and hearts."

Good old Bob! Aren't you pleased with the way he has mellowed? But perhaps this song is appropriate for someone whose literal guts are about to be compromised. Is that why I feel so violated? Or whatever this is. It's a good thing no one reads this, or so I tell myself, because it's about the least-festive thing you can read at this time of year. 

But it's been a weird Christmas, a weird end-of-year, and I keep trying to focus on walking the dock at Burnaby Lake, blackbirds eating out of my hand, wild geese exploding in formation right over my head at Blakeburn Lagoon, all the simple, blazingly lifeward things that feed me and keep me whole, if that's the right word. I won't be whole after this, in fact I will be literally gutted, but will it matter, is it like having your tonsils out, I wonder? Can I do without that part of me? I guess we'll see, but until then, keeping the lights turned on in my mind is the biggest task I have ever had to face.

My Own Version of You

All through the summers into January

I’ve been visiting morgues and monasteries
Looking for the necessary body parts
Limbs and livers and brains and hearts

I want to bring someone to life - is what I want to do
I want to create my own version of you

It must be the winter of my discontent
I wish you’d taken me with you wherever you went
They talk all night - they talk all day
Not for a second do I believe what they say

I want to bring someone to life - someone I’ve never seen
You know what I mean - you know exactly what I mean

I’ll take the Scarface Pacino and the Godfather Brando
Mix ‘em up in a tank and get a robot commando
If I do it up right and put the head on straight
I’ll be saved by the creature that I create

I get blood from a cactus - gunpowder from ice
I don’t gamble with cards and I don’t shoot no dice
Can you look in my face with your sightless eye
Can you cross your heart and hope to die

I’ll bring someone to life - someone for real
Someone who feels the way that I feel

I study Sanskrit and Arabic to improve my mind
I want to do things for the benefit of all mankind
I say to the willow tree - don’t weep for me
I’m saying the hell with all things that used to be

I get into trouble and I hit the wall
No place to turn - no place at all
I pick a number between one and two
And I ask myself what would Julius Caesar do

I’ll bring someone to life - in more ways than one
Don’t matter how long it takes - it’ll be done when it’s done

I’m gonna make you play the piano like Leon Russell
Like Liberace - like St. John the Apostle
Play every number that I can play
I’ll see you baby on Judgement Day

After midnight if you still want to meet
I’ll be at the Black Horse Tavern on Armageddon Street
Two doors down, not that far to walk
I’ll hear your footsteps - you won’t have to knock

I’ll bring someone to life - balance the scales
I’m not gonna get involved in any insignificant details

You can bring it to St. Peter - you can bring it to Jerome
You can move it on over - bring it all the way home
Bring it to the corner where the children play
You can bring it to me on a silver tray

I’ll bring someone to life - spare no expense
Do it with decency and common sense

Can you tell me what it means to be or not to be
You won’t get away with fooling me
Can you help me walk that moonlight mile
Can you give me the blessings of your smile

I want to bring someone to life - use all my powers
Do it in the dark in the wee small hours

I can see the history of the whole human race
It’s all right there - its carved into your face
Should I break it all down - should I fall on my knees
Is there light at the end of the tunnel - can you tell me please

Stand over there by the Cypress tree
Where the Trojan women and children were sold into slavery
Long ago before the First Crusade
Way back before England or America were made

Step right into the burning hell
Where some of the best known enemies of mankind dwell
Mister Freud with his dreams and Mister Marx with his axe
See the rawhide lash rip the skin off their backs

You got the right spirit - you can feel it you can hear it
You got what they call the immortal spirit
You can feel it all night you can feel it in the morn
Creeps into your body the day you are born

One strike of lightning is all that I need
And a blast of ‘lectricity that runs at top speed
Show me your ribs - I’ll stick in the knife
I’m gonna jump start my creation to life

I want to bring someone to life - turn back the years
Do it with laughter - do it with tears  

        

"A Complete Unknown"? But I've known him all my life! (Why I won't be watching the Bob Dylan biopic)

I don't plan on seeing the too-much-hyped Bob Dylan biopic, not because I don't appreciate Dylan, but because I do - he has been my touchstone and my inspiration for more than 50 years. And I've read at least a dozen Dylan bios, all highlighting different facets of this modern-day Picasso of music.

I watched a couple of the movie trailers, and to me this actor appears to be doing a parody or imitation of Dylan, the way a standup comic would do an impersonation of a famous actor. I guess you could enjoy it more if you were less emotionally-involved with the subject and the time period. My older brothers played guitar and sang during the folk boom of the '60s, so that particular time period really resonates with me. But I'd rather hear my brothers sing those dearly-familiar Dylan songs.

The first time I ever heard one, and I had no idea who actually wrote it, was when I was ten years old and my brother Walt sang "A Hard Rain's A-gonna Fall". Even though I was only a kid, those hypnotic lyrics and the way the song built and built to such a tremendous climax is forever recorded in my brain. It had echoes of the ancient call-and-response ballad, Lord Randall, but at the same time it was completely original and fire-new. The fact that he sang it on the back porch of our cottage on Lake of Bays, with the loons crying and the waves lapping, made it even more memorable.

And how I miss hearing my brother Arthur, who died a couple of months after John Lennon, sing "When the Ship Comes In". It went straight to my heart. But then, other singers and artists always knew the value of his songs and were eager to sing and record them. The songs are accessible in a way Dylan isn't. Wasn't then and isn't now, and that is what makes him so compelling.

The hype around the movie (and oh, how sick I am of hearing people insist "you'll love it!"), which is inspiring so many drooling accolades that I am immediately suspicious of it, has sent me right back to the source, including this amazing, gut-wrenching live performance of "Hard Rain", infinitely more passionate and raw than the studio version. Recorded in 1963, which is right around the time I heard Walt sing it. It's a kind of impassioned howl, halfway between lonesome mountain-man and a moon-crazed coyote.

Listen to it.

Thump on the Bible, and proclaim a creed!

I live on a street named after a Saint
Women in the churches wear powder and paint
Where the Jews and the Catholics and the Muslims all pray
I can tell a Proddie from a mile away
Goodbye Jimmy Reed - Jimmy Reed indeed
Give me that old time religion, it’s just what I need

For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory
Go tell it on the mountain, go tell the real story
Tell it in that straightforward puritanical tone
In the mystic hours when a person’s alone
Goodbye Jimmy Reed - Godspeed
Thump on the Bible and proclaim a creed

You won’t amount to much, the people all said
‘Cause I didn’t play guitar behind my head
Never pandered, never acted proud
Never took off my shoes and threw them into the crowd
Goodbye Jimmy Reed - goodbye and goodnight
Put a jewel in your crown and I’ll put out the light

They threw everything at me, everything in the book
Had nothing to fight with but a butcher’s hook
They have no pity - they don’t lend a hand
I can’t sing a song that I don’t understand
Goodbye Jimmy Reed - goodbye and good luck
I can’t play the record ‘cause my needle got stuck

Transparent woman in a transparent dress
Suits you well - I must confess
I’ll break open your grapes, I’ll suck out the juice
I need you like my head needs a noose
Goodbye Jimmy Reed, goodbye and so long
I thought I could resist her but I was so wrong

God be with you, brother dear
If you don’t mind me asking, what brings you here?
Oh, nothing much, I’m just looking for the man
I came to see where he’s lying in this lost land
Goodbye Jimmy Reed and everything within ya
Can’t you hear me calling from down in Virginia

I keep seeing bits and pieces of Dylan's Never-Ending Tour 2024, which just wound up LAST MONTH. This is why no  one can keep up with Dylan - no music critic, no biographer,  no song-ographer or whatever it's called. The "complete Dylan lyrics" book ended in 2012,  which is simply  laughable since all his best work was still ahead of him.

I have this germ of an idea which I may not have the energy to pursue - something that allows  me to put my feelings about  Dylan on paper where I can see them, but I don't want some hackneyed form. I've even thought of an imaginary conversation or a Q & A (though NOT an interview), and God knows I've  been talking to Dylan since I hit puberty at least. Though I was aware of him long before that. Hard Rain did it, and I was never the same after that. 

So, breaking it wide open, what form might it take? If I do pursue it, if I have the energy, it will have to take shape or form on its own and not  be burdensome or something I HAVE to work on. And imaginary conversations  have gotten me into deep waters before, particularly if someone else sees them. Anyway, in those YouTube snippets. Dylan is sitting down behind the piano for the whole thing, unable to stand no doubt, and it's even hard to see him. But he has always been that way. You have to come to him, and the weird thing is, people do. They still do. He looks incredibly old and grizzled, and one wonders what it would be like to actually talk to him, whether he'd magically "get" me as so  few people have (and most of those people  are dead by now). Probably not, would not even want to talk to someone outside his tight little circle. He's not friendly particularly, but why should he be? 

One does wonder why he can't seem to retire or even to slow down, but so long as the songs keep coming, he likely won't. "The songs know me, and they know that I can sing them" is the most enigmatic statement I have ever seen on songwriting, or anything else. They do just come to him, like Mozart taking dictation, like Gershwin spewing out bright balloons while playing piano at a party, and only capturing one or two of them and writing them down. But those geniuses didn't live past their 30s, so they had to write fast. It was always assumed Dylan would flame out early, and had he not had that bogus "motorcycle accident", he likely WOULD have died at 27, like most of them did. 

So for the curious, here is how he looks and sounds more-or-less now (2022). 

So is this my last Christmas?

        

Not to be too gloomy during this festive time of year, but on January 7 I go under the knife, or the laparoscope, or whatever it is called, for cancer surgery. Didn't quite come out of the blue either, as I have felt low-energy and unwell for a while now, and the 6 hours I spent in Emergency on November 8 is memorable for all the wrong reasons. 

But after that, things seemed to move at light speed. Suddenly those cavalier, detached medical technicians got all serious on me, and I knew there was trouble. I was fed into a giant tube with  dye  flowing through my veins, and the word "malignancy" showed up in the report. Soon it was confirmed by a GI guy, not a veteran but the other kind, and soon the jolly surgeon was drawing little diagrams for me. 

I had no idea whatsoever how much prep there is for surgery, and I guess this is considered major, because I'll actually be in the hospital for 2 - 5 days, unless I die on the table. This is about the only place I can express my feelings that I might die. I do notice the family is a lot more matter-of-fact about it all than they were about Bill's far-less-dangerous hernia operation in the fall. And he didn't have cancer, and I do, and I cannot wrap my head around it. Nobody even asked me how I was feeling on Christmas day. Nobody.

I bounce between reassuring myself that they caught it in time (the hope), and being sure this WAS my last Christmas. But how else am I going to feel? They're going to remove a big chunk of my colon, but apparently they have to paint some sort of bullseye on my abdomen, and they told me outright that this is done in case they have to take the entire colon out, gut me, leave me with shit pouring out of a hole in my side and a bag of disgusting whatever flapping around on my body, no doubt leaking all over the place so I have to wear Depends for the rest of my life, or other forms of disability. 

I've been dealing with chronic pain for many, many years and barely acknowledged it even to myself, and have had no pain relief whatsoever from doctors, only "take a Tylenol". When I tell them it makes no difference, they say, "Take a Tylenol" several more times, then if I don't give up in despair, they say, "Tylenol  is the standard of care." Case closed. The open sesame door has slammed shut, apparently, and now I am not even sure I will get pain meds after major surgery. 

It's all so bloody unknown, and except for bipolar I have had few serious health problems, except the arthritis, sciatica and hemorrhoid surgery aftermath which has made my life so miserable for years. But I don't have a heart condition (except arrythmia - hey wait, I DO have a heart condition!) or - what else? I tell myself all sorts of things, but now I realize this is a lifelong pattern and I have been snow-jobbing myself about many, many things for countless years, perhaps all my life. And believing it. 

I'm pretty certain no one follows this blog anymore, as if they did in the first place, except for individual posts that are somehow linked elsewhere (they must be!). The odd time, I get TONS of comments, but it's only for 3 or 4 posts out of literally thousands. (God, why do I DO this?) It's an interesting phenomenon, but the rest of it is - what? If no one reads this, why do I keep on feeding it? I haven't posted anything on YouTube for nearly two months, because my views had crashed and burned, so once again I wonder why I bother. 

What DOES happen to us when we die? Do we go to hell? Unfortunately, if you were raised in ANY sort of Christian faith, the spectre of going to hell hangs over you all the time. Step out of line, and you fry for all eternity. Us "proddies" (a term for Protestant that appeared, hilariously, in a Dylan song called False Prophet) don't even have a limbo, where you can limbo yourself out of hell if you can squeeze under that impossibly low bar. No, it's a surprise trap-door opening under your feet. Goodbye, proddie! 

This stuff does come back to haunt, and though I am very glad I bailed on organized religion fully 20 years ago, it leaves scars. I kind of miss the community, but it had all turned sour years before I left, and was likely causing more stress than it relieved. I suppose some people seek out religion because they feel they're going to get what they deserve sin-wise. I don't know how or why or in exactly what way I've sinned, and like most people I hate the term because it is so finger-wagging and judgemental. Repent, ye sinners! 

My "proddie" church kept saying God was all-loving and  forgiving, but in the next breath there'd be Jesus saying he was not coming to make peace, but with a sword. Brandishing this lethal weapon, gentle Jesus, meek and mild. I suppose he could have zapped the newly-healed leper and made the leprosy come back, which he seemed to have done to me when I had the biggest bipolar lapse of my life 20 years ago. Why else would he do that? Why did he heal me, as everyone in the church insisted he had, then unheal me because I had somehow stepped out of line - or else just for spite?

Isn't God all-powerful? Omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. That's the line I was  sold, and I guess I swallowed it, mainly because I heard  my mother say it more than once. My mother, who taught me how to pray: "Make me a good girl, for Jesus' sake, amen." This meant I WAS NOT a "good girl" and had to plead with God every single night of my small life for God to "MAKE" me a good girl. Because I wasn't. Now  I may be dying, and what has all this been for? 

Sometimes all I can do is go listen to Bob Dylan and his sardonic take on religion:

"I live on a street named after a saint

Where the women in the churches wear powder and paint

Where the Jews and the Catholics and the Muslims all pray 

I can tell a Proddie from  a mile away."

Somehow, that offers more comfort to me than all the "make me a good  girl" pleas of my childhood. Thank you, Bob. You've been a greater guide and a greater comfort and a greater inspiration to me for 60 years or so than all the Bible homilies I have ever had the misfortune to believe.

The two talking cats (YouTube classic from 2008!)

This one has more than 109 MILLION views. Still a classic.

Darkness at the break of noon (a meditation)

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The hand made blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece, the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying

Temptation's page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover that you'd just be one more
Person crying

So don't fear, if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It's Alright Ma, I'm only sighing

As some warn victory some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the President of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

And though the rules of the road have been lodged
It's only people's games that you gotta dodge
And It's Alright Ma, I can make it

Advertising signs that con
You into thinking your the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find yougot nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit
To satisfy ensure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing Ma, to live up to

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinys
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders thay can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in

But I mean no harm, nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But It's Alright Ma, if I can't please him

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't, talk it swears
Obscentity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes must get lonely

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed
Graveyards, false gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They's probably put my head in a guillotine
But It's Alright Ma, it's life and life only

 

Every Hallmark Christmas Movie

It's the SAME THING EVERY YEAR!