Channeling

I’ve been watching the documentary about Bob Dylan, which is excellent by the way. It reminded me of how I hung on his words, puzzling them out. Listening again with my daughter, I hear instead the hurtfulness. I cannot help but feel sorry for Mister Jones and the poor dear with the leopard skin pillbox hat. As he would no doubt say, I don’t know anything about him – take it or leave it. I do know he has created works of a strange, ungraspable genius that challenge, amaze and distress us. I just wish he were a nicer guy.

I admit I would have been a different person without his music, and I couldn’t have written anything like this. Maybe he could make use of the poem I offer to him here:

Ode to Bobby Z.

• You stand there wiping mud upon the windshield of your life
• Wondering why the people push their questions and their strife.
• No one passes muster in your eyes.
• You’ve never found a soul you think is wise,
• and you cannot keep from falling through the dreamtime you are calling with your steel guitar and bawling,
• And I wonder how you really treat your wife.

• The man says God has touched you not, but kicked you in the ass
• He says you’re channeling his words -- or just an echo of his gas.
• The hungry people stunned and fleeting
• They’re drawn to wounded words you’re bleating,
• and they cannot keep from falling through the dreamtime you are calling with your steel guitar and bawling,
• And I wonder why you smear the ones you pass.

9/28/2005 10:03 PM