SHOT OF LOVE - Dylan piece
Jul. 17th, 2008 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wytchcroftShot of Love – Bob Dylan 1981:
Shot of Love:
At first the air is the colour of brandy and then the colour of mud. Somewhere out there in the storm, station RZBD deep valley radio sends psalms out – flicking its own electricity out into the current thundering night. Weather like this… stop a man from thinking. He wipes a hand over his brow. It’s damp. Warm moisture over everything. Squints through the murk. He is alone. Trying to visualise a way out past the rain and out of the city. Out of the valley. Moving through the apartment past the table with the broken typewriter, the ashtray, the empty bottle and a copy of Time magazine. Looking out through the rain smeared window he dreams the dust bowl photographs of his youth.
Heart of mine:
Fifteen miles from the nearest town and rusted down to a desert skeleton the wrecked triumph motorcycle lay on its side. When it was discovered, the migrants staring down with the air hanging off their sallow faces, they wondered whether the rider had just gone plain crazy like all the others and ridden out into his crazy death. They recognised him despite the coagulated blood and oil stains. He had been in love with that girl, the one Billy took off with him to the city - but it couldn’t have been that as done young Bobby here, no sir and no doubt. It was the goddamn dust. The fucking dust.
Property of Jesus:
The 30’s were a bitchin time for the religious – with the depression came the dust and the realisation that the dust had been there since the twenties, (only no-one had noticed) and that the dust came because of them, well that made a lotta folks figure that the hand of the lord was just nowhere fucking near. On the other hand, if you were stark plum crazy, and Bobby knew he was, there was fun to be had; Wandering around the few existing farm and mountain towns - calling down the curses of the Man that is God and the Holy Angels and the Dead Man that will rise when his time is right, calling down the curses on the woeful people. And God knew they were woeful enough.
At the age of seventeen Bobby was saved.
Was country music that did it.
Now I know I am truly evil, he would smile.
I am the property of Jesus.
Forty years later in NYC, during the summer heat wave, his god fearing and good-natured grandson Robert, who had thrown away his chance as a folk singer to run a small bible class for the tenement kids, was kicked to death by three uptown ex-marines home for the season and high on PCP. “It never really happens like this,” he gurgled - smiling as they spread him into the ambulance.
Lenny Bruce is Dead:
He shivers. Shivers despite the muggy and tobacco staled air. He has just seen a hearse drive past the corner of the block; lightning shining off the wet black bonnet of the slow sedan, lightning shining off the coffin. We all take a back seat in that taxi someday.
He pulls away from the window and stares for a moment back into the apartment confused. Where is he? Where is he now? The coffin makes him think of his brother – and for once he is glad. The movie screen of his mind brings the walls back to life.
Watered Down Love:
He remembered his brother Billy face down in the tub out back – the fact that there was hardly the water to wash in and Billy just had to go and drown in it. He remembered looking up at his mother but the sun was behind her and she already resembled an old photograph. He remembered that Billy had asked mother one time where God was and mother had said, looking out over the blasted plains around them, “Well Billy, God is where the water is.” So he guessed Billy had been looking for God. Billy Loved God. Everyone knew that.
A little whiles later Back-yard Lucy came around. She wore her little pink dress and carried a dry flower. She put it in her hair, blonde strands blown by the arid breeze.
He did not go out to see her. He could hear the soft sad tones of his mother murmuring to her reassuringly and was startled by the brightness of Lucy’s reply. “Don’t worry, he’ll be back,” she asserted. Bobby hoped not.
Dead Man, Dead Man:
There were always rumours of a tomb down by the old mines. An Indian tomb and haunted of course. Since his father (a no good medicine show white nigger sonofabitch) had fucked off, his old rival the doctor had taken it on himself to dispense advice to the children. He would spit on his hand and raising a bottle of tonic, wave it in the general direction of the looming mountain. “You kids n know better than t’go sneaking and peaking down there I’m sure. Old Talking Bones… he don’t take kindly to strangers. No sir. The only ghost worth knowing is the Holy Ghost. You go on now.” Bobby felt cold as he squinted through the wind blown dust and the shadow from the mountain. He knew with a certainty as how one day that Indian and all the others was gonna rise up - dusty tongues tell the bible truth - and they would rise up and kill the shit out of just everyone. And they would do it a damn site quicker n Jesus too.
He felt the air hum like a storm coming and he looked off east to the first scraggy line of out of town scrub growth. Couldn’t exactly call it a bush but he would try anyway. As he felt the air tension increase he concentrated silently on making the fucker burn.
White sun over focused through the camera lense. The camera flares into the white. White exploding off the white of her cotton shift, exploding off the calm surface of the lake, off the water, exploding fragments of sun jagged and white against the shadowed willow trees.
All of this caught by him years later in a few bars of harmonica music.
The boat moves in a slow circle. She laughs as two dragon flies copulate and dance before her clapping her hands ecstatic, and the sun flares white off her smile, white off her eyes. Sitting at the side of the boat feeling the heat rising, ripples and insects, he squints as if in pain. Jesus looks down and sees that he has caught his hand on a nail sticking up from the damp wood. The centre of his palm carries an ugly wound. He looks at it for a moment then folds his arms. The sun flares from the white of his sleeve. The blood pours black down the white of his sleeve, begins to pool at his feet. Can’t stop the black blood bleeding. The disciples looking hopefully into their nets have not seen this. With a sudden cry Jesus pitches face first into the boat and is still. The disciples turn at the sound and bend down with expressions of alarm and concern. Jesus is dead. Boy is there gonna be trouble now.
Trouble:
Pulled back to himself he reaches into his pocket and feels the silver crucifix an anonymous fan threw onto the stage while he was performing. He feels it stir in his hand the metal giving off a coldness that soothes his humid palm. He can no longer see through the window - the rain has made it turn a greasy grey which flashes with the lightning, or else simply reflects back the grainy crazed pictures from the TV in the corner. The sound is turned down. But he can guess what the voices would be saying. His hand still on the crucifix he turns and picks a record to put on the stereo – Mahlia Jackson - but he fumbles the switch and the psalm playing radio station erupts into the quiet apartment.
Every Grain of Sand:
Though no/one knew it - he had always meant to retire to
They respect old poets there.
But in the end he had headed down to the familiar hacienda. She was waiting there alright. Or maybe it was her daughter now. He was too old to tell. And he didn’t mind pretending to himself. It felt good just to wash the dust and the sand from his bones after the long journey - and as he watched the narrow shards of sunlight slide down the walls like the water from his skin, he felt almost nostalgic.
He was shown to his room. Everything was association to him now. As he lay himself down. The walls could be a movie set he thought. A biblical film. I am in
But the scents on the wind promised more. As his eyes closed, he felt the world open wide to him. Like a ripe fruit. He tasted the juice, fragrant with the spices of
Distant lands. Yes… distant lands.
He slept well in the comfortable and sturdy bed, drawing the rugs over him and he was not visited by dreams or memories. He had smiled as he lay himself down clean from the bath. Such an ancient ritual he thought. It was a basic truism. Everything he had been seemed washed away.
He felt no desire to rise the next morning.
