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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