Proclaim the Creed: Bob Dylan's Instagram Posts Part 16

The Hidden Story

On January 25, two days after I’d published my last article, Bob Dylan put up three new posts on Instagram, including his strangest yet: a set of seven statements and dialogues, with the title, The Articles of Faith, and a subtitle (Excerpts from Chapter 5 — How Does it Look?). Today, I’m just going to write about this post, leaving the other two for later.

Most fans and followers will find themselves bewildered by The Articles of Faith. No music, no movies, no obvious figures from history. The numbered pieces of text beneath the title are bizarre. Featuring four characters and a narrator, they read like excerpts from an absurdist script. Some phrases sound like aphorisms—“grievance without structure is noise” and “resentment needs proper grammar” are two examples—and in the comments, a few folks seize on these as evidence of profundity. I don’t think so.

At the risk of being repetitive, here’s a reminder. This Instagram post is a reply. As unbelievable as it seems, even to me, especially to me, over sixteen previous articles in this series Dylan and I have engaged in a dialogue about his art and, well, mine too. I’ve shown how he uses an allusive language of song, film title, and wordplay to reflect ideas presented in this book, I Don’t Love Nobody: Hidden Stories from Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways. Why? Because in 2020 he mirrored episodes from my memoir, The Golden Bird, into a dream-like musical meditation on the spiritual power of song: “Key West (Philosopher Pirate).” I believe that Dylan is using this exchange, and me as a foil, to delve deeply into the allusions of Rough and Rowdy Ways. On this path, I’m just walking behind the Master.

If you’ve been with me up until now, if you accept, for example, that Bob’s post of Bill Starbuck describing how he will summon a rainstorm with “cuss words” and a “pretty little tune” reflects an episode from my memoir, as well as my description of that episode in Chapter 6, “Hindu Rituals and Gumbo Limbo Spirituals,” then you will be not be so surprised by my ideas about The Articles of Faith. If, on the other hand, you think such a thing can not be possible, and that Bob Dylan would never correspond through image with an unknown fan, well, you’re in the wrong place, my friend. You had better leave.

In this post, The Articles of Faith, amusingly subtitled “(Excerpts from Chapter 5 — How Does it Look?),” Dylan is once again communicating in the manner I described in Chapter 7, “Bob Dylan, Underground Artist.” Recall how Joyce Johnson observed, in Minor Characters, that the artists she knew in 1950s New York City, including the Beats, were “nourished by each other more than by fame or by the public.” In Chapter 7, I also quoted Kerouac from the Black Mountain Review, as cited by Johnson. His words describe Dylan’s technique in this Instagram post:

Time being of the essence in the purity of speech, sketching language is undisturbed flow from the mind of personal secret idea-words blowing (as per jazz musician) on subject of image.

I also shared Johnson’s observation that the essential question the Beats asked each other is “Did you understand?” I recalled a statement by Dylan about “the folk movement”:

You felt like you were part of a different community, a more secretive one … Some people say it’s still there. I hope it is … I hope it is. I know, in my mind, I’m still a member of a secret community.

I concluded my chapter with a question, directed at my readers: “Did you understand?”

Dylan’s subtitle in The Articles of Faith, “How does it look?,” is a riposte. With these questions, we continue to exchange “personal secret idea-words blowing (as per jazz musician) on the subject of image.” We continue to participate in “secret community.”

How does it look?

It looks like this Instagram post is about prophets, true and false.

Let’s start with the title, written in large print, against a red background. The Articles of Faith is the only allusion in this post in which Google can help: thirteen statements of belief written, as it says on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints website, by “the prophet Joseph Smith in 1842.” As it also says, they “explain the basic doctrines and practices” of the Mormon faith.

Has Dylan become a Mormon? That’s unlikely. As a Christian, however, he very likely shares many of the beliefs laid out in The Articles of Faith. Me too. I attend an Episcopal church and the only item I don’t agree with on this list is that the Book of Mormon, like the Bible, is the book of God. For me, that’s a stretch. All the rest, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I’m right there, and if we are to believe the songs, so is Bob Dylan. Here’s the second verse of “Goodbye Jimmy Reed”:

For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory

Go tell it on the Mountain, go tell the real story

Tell it in that straight forward puritanical tone

In the mystic hours when a person’s alone

Goodbye Jimmy Reed - Godspeed

Thump on the Bible - proclaim the creed

I was surprised by my agreement with Smith’s Articles of Faith. Generally, I’ve tended to think of Mormonism as a cult, as a version of Christianity to be dismissed, because of its relatively recent vintage and the strange tenets of some of its sects, like polygamy. Nothing in The Articles of Faith, however, talks about sister-wives or abstaining from caffeine.

Dylan’s citation of The Articles of Faith is a statement of Christian belief. It thumps on the Bible and proclaims the creed.

That’s how it looks.

But why Joseph Smith? The answer is in the subtitle: “(excerpts from Chapter 5)”?

Dylan is pointing toward the allusions in his song “False Prophet,” which I explore in my Chapter 5, called “Prophets, True and False: Bob Dylan’s Search for The Holy Grail.”

At Bob’s suggestion, here’s an (excerpt from Chapter 5):

… in this discussion of prophets and betrayal, I’d like to return briefly to the idea that inspired this book, and the way my own path long ago became entangled with a prophet whom most would consider to be “false.” As I’ve described, I believe Dylan transposed elements from my memoir—particularly a forty-page section titled “Lightning Amen”—to his song. My exceedingly obscure book shows, among many other adventures, my activities in 1980, a year I spent wandering the highways of America with a messianic Christian cult, who were led by a “prophet” who claimed to be Christ returned. I never met the fellow, so I can’t say that I ever believed in him, exactly. But I did have a vision of Jesus, of a living breathing God, that filled me from top to bottom and inside-out.

In 1980, Bob Dylan was also proclaiming the creed:

Now there’s spiritual warfare and flesh and blood breaking down

Ya either got faith or ya got unbelief and there ain’t no neutral ground

— “Precious Angel”

The Articles of Faith lists the beliefs of a cult leader. Read them for yourself and decide if Smith was a false prophet, or a true one. But one thing is sure. He did not stand on neutral ground.

Here’s another “(excerpt from Chapter 5)”:

And what about cults? The word is a very fashionable negative right now, a term tossed around with abandon, to describe any group affiliation with a restricted way of thinking and acting. But cult is just another word for religion. Here’s what Bob has to say:

Corporations are religions. It depends what you talk about with a religion … Anything is a religion.

It depends what you talk about. There are cults and there are cults. There is Jim Jones, there is Trumpism, there are Methodists, there are Quakers. There are corporations. There is atheism. In 1978, just before his own conversion, Dylan himself seemed concerned with the belief systems that people become attached to, and entrapped by:

Socialism, hypnotism, patriotism, materialism

— “No Time to Think”

My cult was like none of these. Whatever it was to others, for me it was an authentic experience of spiritual mysticism.

Read Chapter 5 for the full story. Encouraged by Bob, however, here’s another “excerpt,” one that connects the idea of “false prophets” back to the music:

What are the meanings of true and false on Rough and Rowdy Ways? What is a false prophet? In playing a trickster, one who uses other artists’ words or chord progressions—F. Scott Fitzgerald or Billy Emerson or take your pick—to express feelings of heart and soul, yours and mine, Dylan complicates our picture of true and false. The imitator might be as authentic as the originator, or at least reach more ears. If I swing to Elvis Presley channeling Billy Emerson’s “When it Rains, It Pours,” am I denying Emerson’s genius or worshiping it? Have I been led astray, off the one true path, or am I coming closer to the Spirit of the Blues? If I scream along to John Lennon inhabiting Little Richard, am I a heretic or simply a disciple in the Church of Rock?

I also write about a musician who appears obliquely in “Key West (Philosopher Pirate), the man who recorded Elizabeth Cotten’s “I Don’t Love Nobody”:

In Chronicles, Volume 1, Dylan rhapsodizes about the effect Mike Seeger had on him in his early days in New York. He recalls seeing him perform in Alan Lomax’s loft:

… it dawned on me that I might have to change my inner thought patterns … that I would have to start believing in possibilities that I wouldn’t have allowed before …

I can’t give a better description of a prophet than Bob offers here. Mike Seeger led Dylan to the top of a hill and pointed to the horizon line.

And finally, I quote Dylan from Chronicles, about how he viewed Seeger’s band, The New Lost City Ramblers, in relation to the early 20th Century musicians whose songs they copied:

All their songs vibrated with some dizzy, portentous truth. I’d stay with the Ramblers for days. At the time, I didn’t know they were replicating everything they did off of old 78 records, but what would it have mattered anyway? It wouldn’t have mattered at all. For me, they had originality in spades, were men of mystery on all counts.

One hundred years have passed since the Carter Family and Charlie Poole recorded their songs. Sixty years have passed since the Ramblers recorded their versions. From the vantage point of 2026, they all look like musical prophets. They all spoke truth.

Here’s the first verse of “Goodbye Jimmy Reed”:

I live on a street named after a Saint

Women in the churches wear powder and paint

Where the Jews and the Catholics and the Muslims all pray

I can tell a Proddy from a mile away

Goodbye Jimmy Reed - Jimmy Reed indeed

Give me that old time religion, it’s just what I need

You might be a Jew, you might be a Catholic, you might be a Mormon, you might be a Protestant … you know the rest. In Chapter 5, I also show how Dylan includes an allusion to a basic tenet of Hinduism in “False Prophet.” It’s not so much about which cult you belong to. It’s about faith versus unbelief.

From 2022:

I’m a religious person. I read the scriptures a lot, meditate and pray, light candles in church. I believe in damnation and salvation, as well as predestination. The Five Books of Moses, Pauline Epistles, Invocation of the Saints, all of it.

How about those “articles” in Dylan’s post, the numbered dialogues and statements below the title and subtitle, involving four characters: Stafford Monk, Captain Carlsen, Wilkins, Doctor Farrell, and the Narrator? How do they fit into this discussion of prophets, true and false?

How does it look?

With the exception of a single “article,” it looks like nonsense. It looks like dialogue from the asylum. As Monk asks Carlsen about grievance and structure, noise and ritual, Carlsen just grins. Like a sycophant. But now Stafford Monk says something that sounds kinda deep: “You don’t silence people, you outgrow them.” Well, I guess. Next, he tells Wilkins to speak only in “absolutes,” because they simplify loyalty and clarify enemies. He’s raving like a demagogue. Wilkins meekly agrees. The narrator bursts in to tell us about Monk’s charisma. “He was a natural-born leader.” But wait. Next thing we know, Doctor Farrell is telling Monk he’s “clumsy fool” and a “follower, a silly babbler … a hybrid … only half a man.” The inmates are rioting.

Who are these people? Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee? Trump’s cabinet?

Speaking of the latter, in Article 6, the Narrator gives us the only statement in this series that makes objective sense. For those who despair that Dylan is not commenting on the current culture, the current politics of our nation, well, here it is. The narrator steps outside the small world of these mindless players:

By the time the danger became obvious to everyone, it was no longer something you could step away from. It had become the air inside the room.

This one hits hard. It speaks directly to our moment. Article 7 tells us more about the source of the danger:

Hear me, Wilkins! You’ve got no beliefs!

And what does Monk himself believe?

Resentment needs proper grammar.

Please, don’t quote this sentence as something profound from the mouth of Bob Dylan. It’s a joke.

These characters are silly babblers. They have no belief. They have no Articles of Faith. Dylan includes them as a contrast, as a negative reflection of Joseph Smith’s principles and the deeply held faith we hear in the songs of Rough and Rowdy Ways, as described in my Chapter 5. Monk makes statements that sound strong but his words are hollow. Monk is surrounded by yes-men, except for his doctor, who diagnoses him as less than a man, and an idiot. Monk is a false prophet.

Remind you of anyone?

The babblers do not understand what Joseph Smith wrote in Article 13:

We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.

Could any statement be more clear? Less full of babble?

The liars and dissemblers and propagandists have made this moment in time perilous. We are choking on the air inside the room. Many of the worst speak with Bibles in their hands. They are Pharisees and false prophets. They believe in nothing and they have no creed to proclaim. Truly, they have no Articles of Faith. They serve the devil.

That’s how it looks.