"I Don't Love Nobody"
Hidden Stories from Rough and Rowdy Ways and Assorted Scenes from a Lifetime of Listening to Bob
Hello! After a break and lots of revision, I’m reposting my Bob Dylan book here on SubStack, again in installments that will appear irregularly over the next several months. This will be followed by the publication of a paper edition. At that point I’ll take down the online version for good, so get it while you can! It’s free!
Why publish again? As any writer knows, revision is everything. The book now leads with a condensed chapter exploring the central hidden story of Rough and Rowdy Ways: my contention that Dylan borrowed imagery from my 2011 self-published memoir, The Golden Bird, in composing his 2020 song “Key West (Philosopher Pirate).” My inspiration for completing one more draft was to tell this part of the story as clearly as possible. I’ve restructured all the supporting evidence and moved the chapter from the middle of the book to the front. After four years of contemplation, Chapter One stands as my definitive take on Dylan’s borrowing. My hope is that one day, additional material confirming my thesis will appear in the musician’s archives.
This is my final push on a long project and I’m ready to wrap it up. I love the creative meditation of writing about Dylan, but it’s hard work. I’ve been living with this crazy story for a long time now. Sometimes, thinking about more revision, I’ve needed to ask myself, why bother? God knows I’ve got plenty of other things to do. And it’s not always fun putting yourself out in public with a tale many folks quickly dismiss as nuts.
I need to finish because this story was handed to me, in a cosmic gift, by our greatest American artist. I’ve never had a choice but to explore what happened and then lay it out, to the best of my (limited) ability. As I describe in The Golden Bird and in the chapters that follow, my relationship with the art of Bob Dylan has long been governed by providence. I’m a believer, and I believe all we can do is follow our calling. As the man sings in the eleventh verse of the song in question, in reference to his life-long proximity to the “convent home”:
I do what I think is right - what I think is best
Nobody else is going to tell this tale. I guess it’s up to me. Additionally, my research on Rough and Rowdy Ways has uncovered many allusions beyond my memoir, connections I haven’t seen documented anywhere else. Finally, I’m doing this because the album is all about the inspiration of music, and in Part Two of “I Don’t Love Nobody” I include the best of my collected Dylan writings—one fan’s life experience of his songs and concerts.
What else has changed in the new edition? I’ve deleted overwritten and superfluous prose. (My worst tendency! For example, did I really need to use both “overwritten” and “superfluous” in that sentence?). I have removed the previous introductory chapters and integrated their best bits into the new opening. I have made significant revisions to what is now Chapter Two, “More Thoughts on Pirate Philosophy.” Most other chapters have been edited again and trimmed, but are similar to previous drafts.
I’ve changed the title and subtitle to reflect the book’s intention more accurately. I encapsulate “I Don’t Love Nobody” in quotes in homage to Dylan’s use of quotes for the title of the album “Love and Theft.” Most readers probably know that the artist apparently did so to acknowledge a reference to Eric Lott’s academic study of blackface minstrelsy. My quotes recognize Dylan’s use of the minstrel Lew Sully’s song title in “Key West (Philosopher Pirate)” and two other allusions contained in the phrase. Dylan’s “I Don’t Love Nobody” refers not only to Sully’s racist song, but its influential and redemptive cover by the great folk artist Elizabeth Cotten, and a culminating scene in The Golden Bird. In the words of the video artist Kirby Ferguson (but are they?), Everything is a Remix.
Finally, I publish again in hope of directing more readers to The Golden Bird. I believe Bob Dylan enjoyed my memoir enough to put it into song and I can’t imagine a more powerful “blurb.” I admit, it’s the world’s most hidden blurb, but that doesn’t change the truth. As I show in Chapter One, Dylan’s allusions are nearly all to a forty page section about my year-long involvement with a Christian cult. But the book covers a ten-year period of my youth and includes many other adventures. You might find it worth reading even without its relationship to “Key West (Philosopher Pirate).”
I’m terrible at selling things but I’ve decided to make another effort to sell The Golden Bird. I’m putting it back up on Amazon and my next post, Chapter One of “I Don’t Love Nobody,” will include a link. Only several dozen humans on the planet have read my memoir but most of them have offered kind words of praise. If you are among these readers, I invite you to leave a comment, sharing your impressions—not of my argument that Dylan used my text for “Key West (Philosopher Pirate),” but of your reactions to The Golden Bird.
Here’s the synopsis from the back cover:
The Golden Bird tells of a young man’s coming-of-age in the 1970s and 1980s. It’s the story of the author’s love affair with an island witch and his year in a barefoot cult. The Golden Bird is about organic farming in the Pacific Northwest and lyric poetry in the Rocky Mountains. It’s a tale of magic, sex, God, and fate.
The Golden Bird shows how the author survived strange days in the late 20th Century, with the help of a creature out of fairy tales and the songs of Bob Dylan.
Here is the first epigraph on the first page:
Earth, isn’t this what you want, to arise within us, invisible?
Rainier Maria Rilke, The Duino Eligies: the Ninth Elegy
And the second epigraph:
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal
Bob Dylan, “Like a Rolling Stone”
See you soon.
I'm looking forward to reading the revised work!
Thanks Patrick! Hope all’s well with you!