Bob Dylan's Instagram Posts Part 5

The Evil and the Good Living Side by Side

Bob Dylan has published six posts on Instagram since my last piece, and things are getting weird. Two of these are quite long audio clips. If you’ve been with me so far, you know my story: all of his previous posts mirror ideas I’ve presented in my book-in-process, “I Don’t Love Nobody”: Hidden Stories from Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways.

My story relies on the facts, but as any pirate knows, you’ve got to dig for the best treasure. I’ve shown how each of the Instagram clips connect, through pun and lyric and allusion to folk song, to very specific excerpts of my writing about the spiritual power of song, as heard on Rough and Rowdy Ways, and as transfigured from my memoir, The Golden Bird, into “Key West (Philosopher Pirate).” I’ve shown how even the timing of Dylan’s posts line up with the release of my chapters and pieces on the Instagram clips.

Read all my chapters for the big picture. It still freaks me out every single day.

Now, however, with two of the new posts, things have changed. I see clear connections between three of the new clips and my story, and some connections with a fourth, but two have nothing directly to do with my writing.

What the heck? It’s not all about me!?

Does Bob Dylan maybe have some other things on his mind? I guess so. Instagram, it appears, has become his current tool of choice for releasing mirrors and allusions of all kinds into the world.

In my next post, I’ll write about how four of the new clips reflect ideas in “I Don’t Love Nobody.” Here, I’m going to briefly discuss the other two: the audio segments with actors reading the words of Andrew Jackson and the imagined words of Frank James. Here, I can’t offer a “hidden story.” Just some critical thinking. In the future, however, if Bob keeps posting thirty minute clips of presidential speeches, I’ll be listening and trying to figure out why, but I probably won’t be writing about it. My project is the poetics of Rough and Rowdy Ways, not opinions on all things Dylan.

But these clips are fascinating. First, Andrew Jackson, our 7th President. What an eloquent speech! What a killer! Much of the commentary on the post is concerned with the latter: Jackson’s major role in the removal of Native Americans from their ancestral lands, and the suffering that followed. Some folks question why Dylan is highlighting the words of such a man. But if you’ve read the chapter on John Trudell in The Philosophy of Modern Song (as cited in one of the other recent Instagram posts), or Dylan’s interviews through the years, you know what he thinks about the murder and displacement of Native Americans. It’s ridiculous to read this post as boosting Jackson’s genocidal policies. I’m guessing the artist hopes his audience is capable of more nuanced thought.

Dylan has shown in his writing, particularly in Chronicles, that he looks at history like he looks at a folk song, and as we know, these contain everything: good and evil, heroes, fools, situations that defy time and rationality. To my ears, Jackson’s speech contains …. dare I say it …. multitudes. Jackson speaks some truth and expresses some noble thoughts. He is quite inspiring in moments, as the best politicians can be. But he also offers machismo bluster and self-justifying rationales for evil.

Is it a coincidence that this clip was released on the day of a presidential speech in 2025? Is it a coincidence that our current wannabe dictator has cited Jackson as his favorite president? Probably not. So is Dylan equating the two Presidents? I don’t think so. For one, Jackson actually makes sense about quite a few things, mostly things that we can apply to the other guy, who never makes sense. For example, he is eloquent in his defense of democracy. No kings! Men need to stand up for liberty! No tyrants! No rich elites calling the shots! And who does the financier Biddle remind us of? A couple of billionaires, perhaps?

But what are the results of Jackson’s elegant words? In defense of Native American displacement, he simply restates manifest destiny. And his idea of honor has, shall we say, a few blind spots? Early in the speech, Jackson defends shooting a man for insulting his wife and later, he rationalizes betraying Indians who fought beside him in the War of 1812. His wife’s good name is sacred while an entire culture is expendable. On slavery, he defends the horrific soul-destroying, generation-destroying practice by saying factory owners in the North abuse children. Did his mama never teach him that two wrongs don’t make a right? And who is the oppressor in both slavery and rapacious capitalism? The owners. He claims to defend common men against the financiers but apparently Black people don’t count.

Perhaps Dylan is suggesting, with this clip of Andrew Jackson’s speech, that when the powerful speak, a citizen might attempt to separate truth from lies. A citizen might look at a leader’s words and actions for the results: who prospers and who suffers.

As I’ve shown all through “I Don’t Love Nobody,” in Dylan’s songs only one person in history has set an example we can follow in each and every circumstance, and against whose life we should measure our own. All other characters, including the narrator and his listeners, are in various ways broken and subject to their worst tendencies along with their best. Some, of course, tilt more heavily toward evil than most.

How about The Last Testament of Frank James? Here’s another example of a man on the wrong side of history—a Confederate soldier who massacred women and children for his regressive and oppressive cause. Then he became a bank robber. But in the land of folklore, the land Bob Dylan rides and roams, the James brothers were outlaw heroes. In this “testament,” James, like Andrew Jackson, espouses noble thoughts, and he expresses love for those closest to him. And like Jackson, he was a killer and villain. People are complicated. People are victims of their times and circumstances. People are sinners. Folk song and stories hold it all.

As I said at the outset, I don’t believe Dylan intends either of these clips to mirror anything specific in “I Don’t Love Nobody.” But they put me in mind of his allusion to Stephen Mallory in “Key West (Philosopher Pirate).” Mallory was a fascinating, brilliant man who gave a large part of his life to an unjust cause as Confederate Naval General. In Chapter One, I showed that Mallory, as he languished in prison after the war, wrote to his son, urging him to never abandon the “mysteries” of faith. I demonstrated that his letter is one of the sources of Dylan’s “Mystery Street.” Elsewhere I have written much about Dylan’s “gumbo limbo spirituals.” In those songs we are all suffering—outlaw and law abider, Confederate soldier and Union soldier, Democrat and Republican—because we are separated from God. By walking “Mystery Street,” a place of songs both secular and sacred, and by having faith, we might come to “Key West.” Only then might the separation end.

Dylan released the Frank James segment on Johnny Cash’s birthday. Cash was Dylan’s good friend and was in the band the Highwaymen with his other pal, Willie Nelson, along with Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings. It was a band of “outlaws.” Cash and Dylan’s other close friend, Levon Helm, played together on a concept album, The Legend of Jesse James, and Cash starred as Frank James in the 1986 made-for-TV movie, The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James. My guess is Dylan posted this beautiful piece of writing, source unknown, as a tribute to his old buddy Johnny, and as something else for us to consider about the vast world of folk story. In that world, as in “Scarlet Town”:

The evil and the good living side by side
All human forms seem glorified

I’ll be back soon to write about Dylan’s other latest Instagram clips. I can show you how they mirror my book, “I Don’t Love Nobody”: Hidden Stories from Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways. Yes, even the one with MGK. See you then.