Chapter 1
[Author’s Note: Welcome. This Substack is a serialized release of my book, I Don’t Love Nobody: Bob Dylan at the End of Time. If this is your first visit, you might want to begin with the preface, which includes a Table of Contents, followed by the Introduction. Everything might make more sense. Maybe.]
Part One: Follow the Highway Sign
Chapter 1
The Golden Bird (1)
In my late forties, about fifteen years ago, I was working as a librarian in the Seattle Public Schools. My elementary, Olympic Hills, served mostly immigrant kids who lived in apartments in the surrounding low-rent neighborhood. I loved my job, teaching the children about using libraries, reading stories to the little ones, helping the bigger kids find books, and sharing lessons about literature. I had always liked to write myself — mostly poetry — but I had three children and a job, and I found little time to practice.
When my mother died in 2001 at seventy-four, and again when my father died in 2009 at eighty-five, I inherited a small amount of money. My parents were products of London’s lower classes in the war years. On my dad’s engineering skills, they had emigrated to Ontario in 1947, and then to Minnesota in the late fifties. James Arthur spent his life in the service of the 3M Company (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing), makers of sandpaper, Scotch tape, and thousands of other building, medical, and household products. My father wasn’t a great dad. But he provided for me well, and after his death he gave me the freedom to pursue a long-held goal.
I asked to cut my hours in the library so that I could begin a writing project I’d had in mind for ages. I wanted to put down the story of my troubled late teens and twenties, when I’d had some crazy adventures, including a year-long stint living on the American highways in a millennialist Christian cult, and a near-death experience. I read lots of books on writing, I enrolled in a memoir-writing class through the extension program at the University of Washington, and I set to work. I began my book in 2007, and I finished in 2011.
I called it The Golden Bird, after a Grimm’s fairy tale. That story uses a common folk story motif in which the youngest sibling, due to his naiveté, vulnerability, and open heart, is able to accomplish a quest where his older brothers have failed. The young man searches for a golden bird whose every feather is worth an entire kingdom. It’s a story of spiritual symbols and archetypes, similar to the grail stories written by French poets of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. A man goes in search of his calling and his fate. He is foolish and makes mistakes, but because he is willing to accept advice from another world, from a magical helper (a bewitched prince in the form of a fox), he eventually finds the bird, and other treasures. I adopted the title of the tale for my memoir and used the image of the bird as my daemon — a shadow aspect of my own soul. She is an elemental force within me, a gift of my psyche, both creative and destructive. In my version of The Golden Bird, the magical creature appears rarely, but always at moments of danger and turmoil. She acts as a chorus, reflecting my struggles and stopping time. She torments me with an unrelenting demand that I be true to myself.
A second character in the narrative also inspires with messages from another world: Bob Dylan. As I said in the Introduction, the musician lives in my memoir in the way that he appeared in my life: in concert, on the turntable, and on my headphones. My book does not explore Dylan’s personal life or theorize much about the sources or meanings of the songs, except as they relate directly to my own experiences. I quote fourteen sets of lyrics, but the man himself occupies very few pages; like the bird, he lives in the shadows.
After finishing The Golden Bird, I tried to find an agent to sell it to a publisher, but I had no luck. Several friends read the book and said they loved it, but they were friends. I didn’t know if it was any good, really. I was vaguely embarrassed by its intimacy. But I had done my best, and I wanted to see it in print. I investigated a few options for self-publishing and settled on a local print-on-demand service here in Seattle. My wife created a lovely cover, a paper collage of a bird’s wing, and the owner of the publishing service designed the remainder of the book. It turned out beautifully. I purchased a box of fifty, distributed copies to a few more friends, and stowed the rest away. I was satisfied that I had achieved the goal of telling my story and disappointed that I had not found a traditional publisher. I had hoped for a wider audience. But I hate marketing and I was unwilling to hawk the book without support. So that was that. I stashed about forty copies on the shelf.
Except, first, I mailed one to an office address in New York City. When preparing the manuscript, I had sought rights permissions for song and literary quotes included in my text. I paid T.S. Eliot’s publishing company to reprint several lines from Four Quartets, and I was granted permission, for a high price, to quote a single Beatles song (“Across the Universe”) in a limited quantity of books. The estate of E. E. Cummings signed off on a few lines from one of his poems. I was denied permission to use a lyric from “Loving Cup” by the Rolling Stones.
I had quoted fourteen Dylan songs. I wrote a letter to the Special Rider music office in New York City, listing the exact verses and phrases. I asked if I could reprint them, what it might cost, and I included this synopsis of my book:
THE GOLDEN BIRD is a love story and a quest: the narrator’s true adventures at metaphysical extremes, including, at the core, a ten-month odyssey within a millennial group called the Christ Family. When Steven, an eighteen-year old Minnesota boy, travels to late-seventies England and attends a rock festival featuring his local hero Bob Dylan, he tumbles into a hole in the earth and cracks his head open. Marie, a married older woman, rescues him, and the two begin an affair that leads to spiritual treasure — represented by the fairy-tale archetype of The Golden Bird — as well as moral and psychological chaos. The inevitable dissolution of their love inspires Steven to seek a life outside of time within an end-of-the-world cult led by Lightning Amen, a man he zealously believes is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Steven discards his belongings, including shoes and socks, pulls on a white robe, and for nearly a year walks the highways of America with the brothers and sisters of the Christ Family, sharing ‘the keys to heaven’ with anyone who will listen. After an encounter with his distraught mother, a near-death experience at the hands of escaped mental patients, and an astral violation of the cult’s rule against sex, Steven is catapulted back into society. Over the next several years, in the great woods and farm pastures of the Pacific Northwest, he reconnects to a life in the world, with the help of a young romance, a profligately pot-smoking radical friend, and a Native American professor. The story culminates in the high, thin air of Colorado, where wild nature, unbound sexual energy, and apparitions from Steven’s past collide in a final reckoning. Only after this storm passes is he able to glimpse true faith and understand the lasting gift of The Golden Bird.
Who knows what they made of that? But a representative soon replied, saying I could reprint all the songs for free so long as I attributed them correctly. I was grateful for this generous and simple answer.
With a paperback copy of The Golden Bird in hand, I inscribed one for Dylan and sent it off to the business office. I can’t remember what I wrote, probably something like Thanks for all the music, Bob! Hope you like my story! I thought chances were slim to nonexistent that he would ever receive it. I didn’t think about it much again, really, or about my memoir. I moved on to my other pursuits: my library work, my children, a few poems, and a zeal for gardening. Over the next ten years I also attended Bob Dylan concerts, when he was within reach, and sometimes I wrote about them on a blog. By late 2011, I considered The Golden Bird — the story of my young adulthood — history.
As it turns out, I couldn’t leave it behind. In 2020, a few scenes from my strange youth came back to me. My edge-of-life experiences in the Florida flatlands, where I lived for a few months as a wandering ascetic, crazy for Jesus, became lines in an edge-of-life song by Bob Dylan.
In Chapter 5, titled The Soul’s Code, I offer more information about how and why Dylan’s music appears in my memoir, and in Chapter 13, I show how Dylan has adapted images from The Golden Bird into “Key West (Philosopher Pirate).” But now, here at the beginning of my story, I’d like offer a little preview — set the scene, let’s say, for what’s to come, and also give you a taste of The Golden Bird. Here I’d like to introduce an idea that is central to Dylan’s mirroring of my passages.
Only one verse repeats in Bob’s song, with a single line altered, from the third stanza to the last:
Key West is the place to be
If you’re lookin’ for immortality
Stay on the road – follow the highway sign
Key West is fine and fair
If you lost your mind, you’ll find it there
Key West is on the horizon line
and
Key West is the place to be
If you’re lookin’ for immortality
Key West is paradise divine
Key West is fine and fair
If you lost your mind you’ll find it there
Key West is on the horizon line
As I mentioned in the Introduction, the expression “lost mind” also appears twice in The Golden Bird. The phrase occurs first as “lost his mind,” in reference to Dylan during his “gospel period,” and forty pages later as “lost my mind” in reference to my own character in the same era. Why do I describe myself this way? Because, between these two quotes, I paint a fresco of my anti-societal adventures in millennialist Christianity, preaching the Word of Jesus while wearing a white robe, in my bare feet, on the streets of America, from Oregon to Florida, for almost a year. Nearly all of Dylan’s “thefts” come from this section. From between these two “lost mind” passages, Bob Dylan lifts several more of my images and transforms them into the tropical dreamscape of “Key West (Philosopher Pirate).” In Chapter 13 I go through these from top to bottom, and in Chapter 15, titled “The Gospel of Key West,” I share the “lost mind” excerpts, as part of a larger discussion of Dylan’s preacher days, and my own.
For now, here’s a small sample of The Golden Bird, with a hint of the coming craziness. Perhaps it will give you a sense of why Dylan would crack open my book and keep reading. My story begins on a day that was auspicious for me as a young fan, and celebrated for him, as the biggest rock star of the era.
We join my character, three days away from his childhood home in St. Paul, Minnesota, on his way to a music festival in southern England. From page 6:
On the fifteenth of July, 1978, a warm and clear morning that tasted of full summer, of cut grass and hot tar, my friends and I began a journey — from my aunt’s home in the London suburb of Leigh-on-Sea to a concert site on the southern downs of Surrey. As we came up from the Tube into Waterloo, I hummed a few bars of an old Kinks’ hit, “Waterloo Sunset.” I vaguely knew that some old battle had given the station its name, but in my eighteen-year-old mind, rock and roll had made it famous.
On the platforms, a motley assortment of youth waited on trains to Blackbushe. Dapper hippies in paisley waistcoats mingled with shiny rockers in silver boots. Kids with orange Mohawks, clad in torn clothing, safety pins, and zippers, stood in clumps and jeered. The Sex Pistols had assaulted London the previous year with a hit single called “God Save the Queen.” I had read about them in Rolling Stone, but I didn’t really understand the punks. In the suburbs of St. Paul, Minnesota, hard rock still meant Led Zeppelin, Foghat, and the Blue Oyster Cult.
An hour later, in the village of Camberley, signs at the station directed us to the concert grounds two miles down the lane at the Blackbushe aerodrome. We walked like an army of sleepers through a dream of pastoral England …
… Around a curve in the road, we came to the festival gates. Once through, my eyes widened to accept the view. Tens and tens of thousands spread over an endless plain. The stage was barely visible — a dot on the far horizon. All these people had come to see Dylan, a young man raised in my own North Country.
Banners had been raised all through the fields, decorated with dragons, or mysterious symbols I would only come to understand later — Yin Yangs, the Om sign — or strange group names like Welsh Bastards for Free Love. It was difficult to move among the legions so we found an open place on the scabby grass and sat. We scalded in the sun. We bathed in the murmur of a hundred thousand conversations.
In the first hours, the music was only an ambient buzz over a human swarm. Large speaker columns, scattered through the grounds, blasted strong sound but I couldn’t see the musicians. A band called Lake opened with psychedelic metal. In the intense heat, my friends and I sprawled drowsily across our few feet of brown turf. Graham Parker and the Rumor came on next, playing a set of rough white soul.
I barely moved all afternoon. The crowd humbled me and I was afraid of getting lost or crushed. Surges of anxiety passed through me, a sort of claustrophobia, as if I was trapped in a vast pen of swine. Eventually, I went in search of a toilet and returned with a concert t-shirt showing an old red bi-plane skywriting “The Picnic at Blackbushe” in smoky billows of cursive. My friends wandered away and my nervousness returned. I watched the Asian couple next to me make out.
The scent of marijuana drifted by and I wished I had some. A young British folksinger, Joan Armatrading, came on stage. Her clear strong voice chimed across the fields, soothing my jitters. I was away from home for the first time. Despite the company of two boys from my high school, and despite the company of hundreds of thousands of young Britons, I felt alone.
Of course, Dylan would be on stage soon. Two weeks earlier, he had danced through the air in my Midwestern cellar, and whispered in the dark about things no provincial teenager could understand. “Isis, oh Isis, you’re a mystical child, what drives me to you is what drives me insane!” What? What drove him? And why did “insane” sound so good?
This idea that the road to truth and beauty runs adjacent to a verge of madness is essential late seventies Dylan.
From a couple pages later, while the artist is performing:
His large band, with horns, a violin, and several guitars, also played cuts from a dense and difficult new record, Street-Legal. Three black women sang harmony and response, adding a bizarre religiosity to Dylan’s personal tales. The artist projected strength and confidence, but the music and words suggested a crack-up. Something dangerous was happening. These new songs passed an urgent message in a language I spoke but in a dialect I couldn’t quite make out. Maybe Isis — whoever she was — had really driven Dylan insane and insanity wasn’t so great after all. The crowd too had grown crazier throughout the long day, first with heat and then with drink. Dylan’s voice, fierce and triumphant, rode high on the barely contained cacophony of his band and the drunken shouting of the mob.
“Boooaaaoooobb!!! Booooaaaaaaoooob! Aaaaaaargh!”
Sometimes, now, listening to a bootleg cassette of Blackbushe, I hear that sound — a blurry, distant majesty, thick with promise and dread.
I don’t claim that Dylan took anything directly from these passages for his song. His borrowings will be explored later and I know that I haven’t proven much of anything yet. But as I acquaint you with The Golden Bird, here’s something funny to consider — Did you read the recent Dylan interview, published in the Wall Street Journal and on his website? Check out this sequence (my bold):
I’m a fan of Royal Blood, Celeste, Rag and Bone Man, Wu-Tang, Eminem, Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, anybody with a feeling for words and language, anybody whose vision parallels mine.
Waterloo Sunset is on my playlist and that was recorded in the 60s. “Stealer,” The Free song, that’s been there a while too, along with Leadbelly and the Carter Family.
Where did “Waterloo Sunset” come from in this list? Yes, it’s great song, but so is “Sunny Afternoon.” How about “Lola?” Why “Waterloo Sunset?” And look what he follows it with: “Stealer,” by “Free.” Have a listen to that one, if you’re not familiar. (It’s actually “The Stealer.”) I don’t think it’s here for its musical qualities. Sure, it’s a decent rocker, but does it truly rank in the Dylan pantheon next to Leadbelly and the Carter Family? “Stealer?” By “Free?” Here’s the last couple stanzas:
I gotta steal your love away
Steal your love, steal your love
steal your love
I gotta steal your love
I gotta steal your love
Steal your love, steal your love
steal your love
I gotta steal your love
“A feeling for words and language, anybody whose vision parallels mine.” Well, it ain’t exactly “Mr Tambourine Man,” is it? But it does parallel Bob Dylan’s vision, in a very particular way. Shall I elucidate?
In his interview, the artist places “Stealer” by “Free,” next to a song I quote, “Waterloo Sunset” — on my way to Blackbushe — at the opening of the book that I say he borrowed from, several times over. Dylan, who, according to the historical record, also took a train from Waterloo to Blackbushe, and back again — a private carriage. Parallel visions? Drawing no firm conclusions here, but it’s enough to make a guy a bit loopy, if he wasn’t already. And yes, I know: “hearing messages from Bob Dylan in interviews.” Check! Trust me, I know. Call me crazy (I know some will) but I think it’s time to talk Pirate Philosophy. That’s what we do in the next chapter. It’s what makes this whole “lost mind” story plausible.
Here’s one possible definition, to get us started. “Pirate Philosophy”: the art of stealing love.
But isn’t love “free?” Certain Welsh Bastards think so!
[Author’s Note to this Substack Edition of I Don’t Love Nobody: Bob Dylan at the End of Time: If you’re curious, The Golden Bird is not currently available for purchase on the Web. I still have a box of copies, a second printing, but I have no more sales savvy now than I ever had, and for the moment, my couple of brief attempts to hawk them have been withdrawn. If I Don’t Love Nobody creates any interest in my memoir, I will try again. Please let me know if you want one. Most people who have read it have said they enjoyed it. For now, The Golden Bird exists only in 50 or so libraries around the world, including, I believe, one in Malibu.]
Love this.