A Great Witch

Witnessing Bob Dylan

There is nothing that can be said that is new about Bob Dylan. He is the shapeshifter, the Great Refuser, the Perverse Mirror, he’s not there, don’t expect some greatest hits bullshit, if you want to really understand America go to the Birmingham county fairgrounds and watch him play obscure Boz Scaggs b-sides, etc.

It’s one thing to know all those things. And it’s another to watch him walk onto the stage in what can only be described as a cloak, sit behind the piano on a mostly dark stage, and with his band run through 90 minutes of absolutely transcendent weirdness.

Last night Sarah and I went to see him play at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, which is arguably the greatest possible place to see a show. It was a perfect night, translucent weather. The stone benches were pleasurably oppositional to our butts, so we felt at attention, and truly even a bit ancient Greek. We sat next to two older ladies, a couple, who told us they came regularly to see all the shows, and that they especially appreciated Dylan’s reputed promptness: on at 8:30, off by 10pm. Unlike Streisand and Lady Gaga, they said, who made everyone wait. I pointed out that those two are, literally, divas, an assessment which they did not dispute.

John Doe opened the show. He was excellent. I think he was wearing a blue Nudie suit. Then Lucinda Williams. She had to be helped to the mic, after effects of her stroke. She stood the whole set, and sang almost like herself, though she could not quite get to the high notes (as my friend pointed out when I texted him after, neither can any of us). She sang many of my favorites, including Fruits of My Labor. She urged us to go to the No Kings protests, and pointed out that tonight, on Donald Trump’s birthday, we needed to keep speaking up, and that in the end you can’t keep the people down. But what happens before the end? She closed with Rocking in the Free World.

As we waited for Dylan, I got ready to feel very emotional. My dad had adored Dylan, and I had grown up inside his music, often playing on records in our house. I listened to him obsessively in college, and wrote my senior thesis on him and the Soviet actor and singer Vladimir Vysotsky (imagine a cross between Tom Waits and James Dean). He and the Beatles (and later Pavement, who I’m going to see in July here in Oakland) have been the musical constants of my life. I have more respect and love for Dylan than for any other living artist, and most dead ones.

I also knew that I was going to hear very few of his hits, if one can call them that. When you think about it, it’s absolutely extraordinary that Dylan did not do what any sensible person would have in his position: go out and play the songs people know in a relatively recognizable way, mixed with some new stuff and things he wants to do. Give the people what they want. Or what they think they want. That is the crucial distinction.

For years Dylan has toured constantly, and he has for decades refused to play a show the way you would expect if you were a fan, casual or otherwise. I have no idea whether this was a conscious plan with a long term objective, or innate rebelliousness, or something that he did because he wanted to. Probably some people know, he has probably talked about it, but from my perspective, it just seems like a fantastic mystery.

I won't go on and on. The show was transcendent. Mostly what I felt was relief. I wasn’t emotional, mostly, though at times hearing him sing reminded me that so many things in my life have happened, and now are gone, and his music was there all the time. This music was not about him. In a way, anyone could do what he did, which was to get up and not to depend in any way on his celebrity, his history, his Dylan-ness, but just to make a space where we could experience something singular. Anyone could do it, but very few can. And that is the difference.

His performance reminded me of what I believe constitutes artistic integrity: if I can ever create such a space (in performance or otherwise) with poems or music, I have not wasted my life.

He was in a cloak, and he cloaked us all in mystery and duende and mortality and timelessness. The only songs I recognized were All Along the Watchtower, Trying to Get to Heaven (a great song on Time Out of Mind), and the closer, Every Grain of Sand. The band was absolutely perfect: they play exactly the way I dream a band of mine will someday play, the sound I have heard in my head a million times. Bass locked down, two guitarists just holding it down with the absolutely perfect edge of breakup natural tones, playing only what is necessary, drummer also locked in, Bob on keys and singing. It was dark on the stage and there was no possibility of seeing his face. But he was there. When he played the harmonica I felt a great wonder in my soul. He is the only one who can play like that, and it sounds just like it did from the beginning.

Sarah and I both thought it felt like if you walked into your local bar and some band was playing, and you started listening, and realized that they were something really special. You didn’t know any of the songs, and it didn’t matter. The atmosphere was incredibly intimate, maybe even reverent, though without pompousness. It was the exact opposite of whatever monstrosities are going on in front of the White House, motorcycles doing flips, people punching each other in the face. The absolute worst of America on the east coast, and the very best on the other.

I said, he’s like a ghost. And Sarah said no, he is a witch. She was right. A Great Witch, or Which. He cast the greatest spell of all, which was to turn us into whatever is the opposite of being customers. We were there to be there, not to be pleased or entertained. It wasn’t what we thought we wanted, it was what we wanted. I don’t know if this is the last time I’ll see him, probably, but if you get a chance, I think you should go.