Back Pages - Brown Notebook - Mid-June 1967

     a tongue can accuse and carry bad news

     and one man's joy is another man's pain

     so better lock your door

     and just try me plain

    'cause you ain't going nowhere 

 

     not today, nor tomorrow, not again

Caravan (10) Mid-June 1967

    From the basement comes a light somewhere between marine blue and ochre. I stop and take it in for a moment from the top of the stairs. They´ve finished with Belshazzar and are deciding on the next song. Robbie mentions a couple of Sun Record titles and Rick jokes about one of them, whilst Dylan´s acoustic guitar pushes its way out through the laughter: a simple progression of chords and a jubilant humming into which the rest of voices and instruments are gradually assembling.

      What I´m listening to as I tiptoe down the stairs, one step at a time, is kind of a outlaw´s melody, rocking in a perfect rhythm, held in a semicircle by a band of fellows who play to the beat of a common pulse. Wrapped up in the hypnotic quality of the melody, they don’t seem to notice that I´ve sat in a corner and am listening from the floor, with bated breath and eyes open wide (as if underwater, I remark to myself in surprise). And then, as the song is slowly brought to a close, Dylan turns around and fixes me in his stare.

      - So you are Nar.

     - Yes, hello everyone –I say standing up-. Thanks for inviting me down here...

      - Well, seems like you didn´t need an invitation to make yourself at home outside … And that shiny caravan of yours, well, it´s practically part of the landscape now, isn´t it?

      - I hope not to bother anyone ...

     - Do you mean outside or down here? We´ll see. For now, stay on the floor or grab a chair, as you like. Garth, ready to record the next one? – he asks Hudson as he turns his back on me again.

      - All ready -answers Garth-. But what´s up with Richard? Shall I go up and get him?

      - Let him sleep, don´t need piano or drums for now. Let´s go with some of the songs you mentioned before, guys ... How about beginning with I forgot? Let´s make it more Cash than Elvis, ok?

      Garth connects the tape recorder and Robbie starts up with a brief electric intro, followed by the bass, the organ and the acoustic guitar ahead of that longest of long first syllables which Dylan drags out as if resigning himself to the persistence of memory:

I forgot to remember to forget her
I can't seem to get her off my mind
I thought I'd never miss her
But I found out somehow
I think about her almost all the time

The day she went away
I made myself a promise

That I'd soon forget we ever met

                                                                ...

      And here I am to listen to it, leaning back against the wall, smiling … And promising myself quite the opposite. 

 

Back Pages - Brown Notebook - Summer Solstice 1967

All these songs are connected

Nothing out of the ordinary,  just something natural

                                                                               - kind of extending the walked line

                         W  e     a  r  e     a  l  l     j  u  s  t     s  t  e  p  s

          

L a s t    w e e k

 in China

                                               a surprising sun

                                                   r o s e

                                                    igneous

                                                 over the desert

Caravan (9) Mid-June 1967

 . . . No one around could understand

what was written by the mystic hand . . .

                     An X-ray photograph of the voice of Cash

                                                                                Belshazzar a skeleton

                                                                         Two guitars, a bass and an organ

 

                                                                                                                                Otherworldly

               I conceal my fright quoting Daniel and move toward the basement stairs

Present (VI)

     My prediction was correct: the song I heard when I first entered the basement summed up the joy of a shared comradeship, magnifying both.

    All these years I´ve spent searching for it -in my memory, in my dreams, in collections appearing since 69 under the symbols of the miracle or the tree with roots, on labels of the genuine or, recently, the complete... but the song just doesn´t come up. It´s just not there.

        Perhaps it was never recorded, perhaps it´ll show up  tomorrow in a lost tape.

        The song is not recorded because it possibly doesn't exist.

        It might be the one I´m trying write,

        now,

        here,

        as if we sang it.

Caravan (8) Mid-June 1967

     I´m spending the first few hours of the afternoon looking over some material I´ve been collecting for my literary biography project. By chance, I come across a 1962 interview, one of the first Dylan gave on New York´s WBAI Radio where he talks about the performances he used to give in Greenwich Village, at the Gaslight and Café Wha? :

     “I sang down there during the afternoons, played my harmonica for this guy there . . . he used to give me a dollar . . . play with him every day from two o'clock in the afternoon. Play till 8:30 at night. . . . He gave me a dollar, plus a cheeseburger."

   

     Things must feel pretty different now, to be playing with friends, no timetables, no wage. The sessions in the basement are not usually as long as those in the Village, though sometimes they do go on into the early hours. I´ve got to wait till seven today to go down – Robbie´s tone left me no doubt. I´m finding it hard to contain myself. Luckily, at about four a smiley face looks in through the front windscreen of the caravan.

     “Come in, Rick.”

     “No interrupting anything, am I?”

    “No, not at all, I was just making some notes, just whiling away the hours till it´s time to come down to the basement to listen to you.”

     “Yeah, Robbie told us this morning…. Richard and I kind of like the idea of having you as our audience, even if it´s just for a while….”

     “Well, we´ll see how long either of us can take it! Already know what you´re playing today?”

    “No fucking idea. That´s always decided- I think- when Dylan comes down the basement stairs, depending on what he´s got or not in his hand, could be a text, some chords, a newspaper, the harmonica, even just the face he´s got on him, or both. From below, we watch him come down those steps, sometimes it´s slowly, sometimes it´s two by two. We just set to tuning up wearing our Poker face, or light up a cigarette waiting to see what he says…. Sometimes it feels like when you toss a coin up into the air and it takes hours to come down.”

     I´m finding it hard to accept that I´m going to miss that moment- Orpheus, katabasis, a hundred thousand discordant associations around the pleasure of descent-, to accept that this evening I won´t see Dylan coming down the stairs to meet his pals. By the time I get to the basement it´ll be half past seven and the five will have been playing already for a while, will be absorbed in their instruments and in their mutual understanding, so they will not notice how I sit in a corner, looking at them from the floor, hands together, fertile ears and eyes gaping open.

     Today I will not see Dylan descend, but whatever song they´re singing when I sit down to listen to them on the concrete floor of the basement will be as rapturous as the image of the five of them gathered around that shared joy: the perfect soundtrack to a secret, intimate and anarchic glory.

Caravan (7) Mid-June 1967

     Like Rick, I enjoy watching the sun as it shines behind the house at this time of day.

      I started painting the house on a horizontal canvas, 70 x 50, three thousand five hundred centimetres in area and two hundred and forty in perimeter striving to contain the wrapping of a universe, spherical, enormous and pink. Other colours sprout from the music which most afternoons escapes out of the open windows. Though far from being my masterpiece, the image is developing, smooth like a rhapsody. 

 

      - Ready for the basement, Nar?

     The question rings out behind me, breaking off my futuristic wanderings.

      - Hi, Robbie. You startled me ...

    - I didn´t mean to. I only came to tell you that you can come down and listen in this evening, if you like. Dylan said he wants to meet you.

     The brush falls out of my hand, oil paint staining the grass blue. Robbie stares at it for a moment, pulling a face that turns into half a smile. Then, turning on his heel, he walks back to the house and calls back:

     - Don´t come before seven!

 

     Seven

     Seven, minus two  =  five    :-:

     Five words  ~  the key to the treasure    :-:

                                    DYLAN  WANTS  TO  MEET  ME  *