Blowin' in the Wind

We are headed to the AMC multi-plex at the Monmouth Mall. Though there is no mall anymore. The ubiquitous shopping mall that put an end to the Main Streets of thousands of small and not so small towns across America is going the way of the dinosaurs. The movie theater, and a relatively new Barnes and Noble (They seem to be popping up at lots of abandoned spaces of late) are the only businesses in operation.

Ownership of the entire property and gigantic tax concessions from the municipality and the county have been ceded to the Kushner Companies – yes, that Kushner – pardoned by Trump, because his daughter married into tremendous wealth, and that’s how it works in America. The million and a half square feet will now be known as Monmouth Square with a thousand units of housing, shops, etc. I’m sure it will have all the charm of Kushner’s “Pier Village” in Long Branch, which is to say, none. No charm. No character. If not for the ocean the view could be any homogenous commercial strip in the U.S.A.

It's an early weekday afternoon. We are headed to a 1 p.m. show. Only retirees and children off from school go to the movies at 1p.m. on a weekday, but I push that thought from my head. I have purchased tickets in advance. This is how one goes to the movies now. Buy tickets and select seats from home, and there were not a lot of seats to choose from. There’s a senior discount and a matinee discount, but also a hefty service charge, and two tickets still wind up costing $25 or $26 dollars. But that turns out to be a bargain compared to the $25 for two popcorns and a bottle of water. I do like the comfy recliners you can play with like an eight-year-old and make them go back and forth and up and down. I don’t go out to the movies much anymore. This is a bit of an adventure.

The theater is almost completely full, and not a single person in the audience is under the age of 60, most a bit older. I don’t recall having to show my Medicare card when I walked in, but I could be misremembering. We’ve come to see A Complete Unknown, the biopic about Bob Dylan. Perhaps the young fans of Timothee Chalamet are not yet awake. I can say without exaggeration that virtually every one of my friends and acquaintances has gone to see this movie in the couple of weeks it has been open. We are time travelers. We are nostalgic.

This is not really a movie about Bob Dylan, or Joan Baez, the Newport Folk Festival, Pete Seeger or anything that might or might not have happened more than half a century ago. It’s about us. More specifically, it’s about me. That is, seven decades have taught me the obvious. I can only experience the world through my perspective of it. Shared reality is simply one possibility. And Dylan’s created a persona who a cypher, a tough act for someone almost continuously in the public eye. But whether out of shyness or calculated, whoever Bob Dylan might be is kept far from view. So we make him up.

Baron Wormser in his Substack essay, Bob, from his series, The Exciting Nightmare, meditates on Dylan and the imagination. Indeed, Wormser has written a terrific novel, Songs from a Voice: Being the Recollections, Stanzas, and Observations of Abe Runyan, Song Writer and Performer, based on an imagined version of an imagined Bob Dylan like character. In paying homage to Dylan and his imagination, Wormser has created a character out of pure imagination. A bigger leap than a movie. Pretty spectacular.

Bob Dylan’s music probably entered my consciousness at Camp Willoway, a YM-YWHA summer camp. We learned a lot of folk songs. I still have a fondness for them. I found his voice annoying, still do. When he talks in the documentary Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound about Joan Baez’s voice, how wonderfully she performed his songs. I agreed. The human voice is a miraculous instrument. Some of us can sing, not I, some of us can’t.

I’m not suggesting his voice gets in the way of the lyrics. It doesn’t. And his lyrics are often amazing, seemingly effortless. Think about titling a poem/song, “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” The nouns work as adjectives and vice versa. The word “homesick,” huddling in the middle. So deceptively simple, and we haven’t even gotten to the actual song lyrics yet. Read through them on the page. Amazing.

I didn’t see Dylan in person until The Rolling Thunder Revue at Brandeis in 1975. Brandeis, a Jewish diasporic melting pot, is the ideal venue for an on again off again Jewish, folk/electric singer songwriter from Hibbing Minnesota. Less for the mostly Jewish audience to unpack.

Dylan in face paint, masking himself, hiding from the audience, performing barely recognizable versions of his songs. Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn and the only time I saw Allen Ginsberg live. The concert seemed, both at the time and in memory, more an event than a performance. The tour was, in part, a benefit for Ruben “Hurricane” Carter, wrongly convicted of murder in Paterson, New Jersey, as the song says. Years later, I would wind up working in the City of Paterson Law Department developing expertise in various aspects of municipal law. And so it goes.

I’ve only seen Dylan live twice since though has spent most of the last few decades on tour. The last concern was shortly after the release of his most recent album and his 80^th birthday. My 30 something son wanted to see Dylan while he was sure he still had the chance. We “Boomers,” and those a bit older, are all wondering what we are going to be able to do while we still have the chance. As always, the musicians were superb, and I have gotten used to Dylan varying his performance from the way the songs appear on the albums. It adds a kind of interest.

I did like the movie a lot. I thought Ed Norton as Pete Seeger was particularly terrific, but I don’t need to talk about the details of the movie. Pretty much everyone who has gone to see it has written about it if my social media feeds are any indication, and I am no exception. Go see for yourself. Elle Fanning is charming and believeable.

But I can’t leave Dylan and the 1960’s and 1970’s and today without talking about gender. In my imagination, Dylan represents the man I call, “that guy:” talented, smart, tall, almost always white, mostly Jewish, dark haired, a man comfortably at home in his privilege. Think Leonard Cohen, for example, or the Chicago 7. For them, women are after thoughts. Women don’t fit in. It’s okay to treat women poorly, even Joan Baez, without noticing the poor treatment, because women don’t count. It’s like the adage about Ginger Rogers. She’s the one who had to dance backwards and in high heels, not Fred Astaire. Not okay. Not okay. Not okay, and this perhaps unconscious behavior forms a part of too much of my lived experience not to color my perceptions irrevocably.

And in answer to the final question, I don’t know how payment works since Dylan sold his entire back catalogue for $150 million to $200 million dollars to Sony Music. What does the movie mean for him financially? Does it matter? He won the Nobel Prize. He is astronomically wealthy, and I’m not privy to the contract.

Next summer there will be a movie about Bruce Springsteen. Although my office windows literally look out on Cookman Avenue in Asbury Park, New Jersey, I have had no Springsteen sitings, nor have I seen Jeremy Allen White who plays Springsteen in the movie, but I shall keep you posted, and I will probably spring for popcorn.

Happy Secular New Year to one and all.