Introduction / Double self-portrait

INTRODUCTION

In December of 1966, I met R on the beach at Half Moon Bay, California. We had both just turned 17 years old, and we discovered that we had been born within 24 hours of each other. We both liked Bob Dylan's music. R loaned me his copy of the lyrics from the album "Blonde on Blonde," which had been released in the spring of 1966 ...

In January of 1970, he left for Vietnam, convinced that he could not obtain conscientious objector status and not wanting to go to prison or to Canada. We made a commitment to write a letter to each other every day and kept that commitment. He arrived home on December 8, 1970, in the early hours of the morning, but in some ways he never returned from Vietnam. We lived together for five turbulent and bewildering months and then separated, remaining friends. He asked to see me before he died in a VA hospital in April of 2008. It was 38 years after he had returned from Vietnam, 42 years after we first had walked together at Half Moon Bay. All of the following art work and poetry is, in one way or another, the result of R's presence and absence in my life.

(from page 10)





1966










1965










1965





Oboe next to laptop this morning:

Table of Contents: Pages 52 through 70

Beloved Person In Bird Costume, page 52.





1964






Blooming in late November:

Table of Contents: Pages 30 through 51

Woman Trying To Remember What She Is Trying To Forget, page 34.





1964






Rainy day window:

Table of Contents: Pages 10 through 29

Mona Lisa and the Clown And The Cool Rain Of The Law, page 28.





1963






Late afternoon on the day after Thanksgiving:

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Dedicated to / Thanksgiving 2009

Sending love to family and friends and sending love to all those who are spending Thanksgiving in Iraq and Afghanistan this year and their families and friends.

















Instead of posting links to songs by Bob Dylan, as I did in the two previous posts, I'm going to post his album / CD covers, beginning in 1962 and going through 2009, as an accompaniment to my limited edition art and poetry retrospective of the years 1966 to 2008.





1962






Looking east before sunrise on the day before Thanksgiving:


















Something I think about each year:

Declining an invitation to a Thanksgiving meal, Bob Dylan sat down and wrote "Just Like a Woman" on Thanksgiving Day 1965, while in Kansas City on tour.

opening a book of changes

Listen.

Richard and I heard Bob Dylan singing "Chimes of Freedom" when we were 15 years old.

Oboe's vantage point this early morning:

"OH THE TIME WILL COME UP/ WHEN THE WINDS WILL STOP"

Beginning today, there are 38 days left in 2009. Early this morning I made the decision to post images from my limited first edition book of artwork and poetry, starting with the front cover, proceeding with two facing pages at a time, and finishing on December 31 with the back cover. I'm pleased to say that Village Books has sold two of the three copies that they took on consignment a few weeks ago.

Along with the book images, I'll be posting links to Bob Dylan songs that I would have been listening to before I met Richard, in the decades that followed, and after Richard's death in April of 2008.

In my book, the poetry is purely chronological, while the artwork is generally chronological. Through those 40+ years, while I was drawing, painting, writing poetry and thinking about Richard, Bob Dylan's music was never far from my mind, beginning with the first time I listened to him with close attention in 1963, when I was almost 14 years old. I saw the 22-year-old Bob Dylan on television, singing "When the Ship Comes In" with Joan Baez and then singing "Only a Pawn in Their Game," as part of the Civil Rights March in Washington, D.C. The only song I ever heard Richard sing, accompanying himself on guitar, was "When the Ship Comes In," and that was before he went to Vietnam in January of 1970.

Listen.

Looking east today:

OBOE BEFORE DAWN

Listen.

Lyrics.

I'm trying to love my neighbor and do good unto others
But oh, mother, things ain't going well

(Bob Dylan, lyrics from "Ain't Talkin'")

OBOE LOOKING OUTSIDE AT THE TRAIL

solvitur ambulando (it is solved by walking)

-- St. Augustine

AS THE CRESCENT MOON WAXES / NASRUDDIN MEETS THE CHRISTMAS IN THE HEART SUTRA , TALES OF THE HASIDIM, KEN KESEY, AND BOB DYLAN PLAYING GEORGE BURNS

I keep thinking about the anonymous young man who jumps out the window and runs off into the night at the end of Bob Dylan's "Must Be Santa" video, directed by Nash Edgerton.

If you've not seen Bob Dylan's horrifying "Beyond Here Lies Nothing" video, also directed by Nash Edgerton, I don't recommend it. I repeat. I don't recommend it.

However, it did give me a terrifying and sobering and ultimately cathartic and healing glimpse into a scene that could have been from my life in 1971 after Richard returned from Vietnam. What was so distressing to me in the first moments of the "Beyond Here Lies Nothing" video was that I had loved the song "Beyond Here Lies Nothing" until then. Hearing what I thought of as a sweet love song as the soundtrack to scenes of domestic violence broke my broken heart but also freed me from years of denial of what had happened to me and to Richard.

It is in that discordant light that I see and hear and feel "Must Be Santa."

When I woke up this morning, it occured to me that "Must Be Santa" could have had Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" for its soundtrack:

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

What starts out as a silly joking video is shattered for me by the fleeting image of an anonymous man lying outside on the steps of the large white house and then the image of another anonymous young man being chased down the stairs, throwing glasses, keeping people at a distance with a fireplace tool, swinging from the chandelier and jumping out the window. The man jumping through the window and running made me think of the final scene in the movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

Bob Dylan may be playing Santa Claus and George Burns in "Must Be Santa," but I wonder if the young man who dives out into the night is playing the role of Bob Dylan.

"Human beings are alone with their secrets. Masked and Anonymous. No one truly knows them."

(from the words of Val Kilmer's character in Bob Dylan's film "Masked and Anonymous")

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SNOW IN THE FOOTHILLS / MEDITATION

From:

the "Who laughs this way: Ho Ho Ho" koan on:

Must Be Santa

to the "O Little Town of Bethlehem" koan:

How silently, oh how silently,
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him, still
The dear Christ enters in.

(Bob sings "Amen" after this, the last song on the CD)

It's all there on "Christmas in the Heart."

"The mind creates the abyss, and the heart crosses it."
(Sri Nisargadatta)

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UNIVERSE AT PLAY INSIDE YOUR DNA / YOU'RE A BILLION YEARS OLD TODAY

Listen.

Red duck
luck
where's my paint

AFTER THE THUNDERSTORM

“Our religion keeps reminding us that we aren't just will and thoughts. We're also sand and wind and thunder. Rain. The seasons. All those things. You learn to respect everything because you are everything. If you respect yourself, you respect all things.”

(William Least Heat Moon)

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MORNING WALK / SOUTH BAY TRAIL

Listen.

VETERANS DAY 2009

May all veterans of war find peace today and always.

THAT LUCKY OLD SUN

Listen.

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