Written for Nina Simone

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood was written for Nina Simone.

Until just now, I thought Eric Burdon wrote it, and that Bob Dylan was thinking of Eric Burdon singing that song and was being both playful and ornery with his remark. What do I know?

"We have to learn what we can, but remain mindful that our knowledge not close the circle, closing out the void, so that we forget that WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW remains boundless, without limit or bottom, and that what WE KNOW may have to share the quality of being known with what denies it. What is seen with one eye has no depth ..."

(Quote from Always Coming Home, by Ursula Le Guin, but the capitalization is my mother's. She typed that out for me on a little piece of notepaper with a drawing of Rattlesnake Grass from California's North Coast and enclosed it in a letter she wrote to me during the 1980s)

"A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding."
(Bob Dylan)