Chronicles - Bob Dylan [15]
There were art books, too, on the shelves, books of Motherwell and early Jasper Johns, German impressionist pamphlets, Grunwald, Adolf von Menzel stuff. “How-to” books, how to repair a man’s knee that’s been bent backwards…how to deliver a baby, how to perform an appendectomy in the bedroom. The stuff could give you real hot dreams. There were other things laying around that would catch your eye — chalk sketches of Ferraris and Ducatis, books about Amazon women, Pharaonic Egypt, photo books of circus acrobats, lovers, graveyards. There weren’t any big bookstores around, so it would have been hard to find these books in any one place. I liked the biographies a lot and read part of one about Frederick the Great, who, besides being King of Prussia, I was surprised to find out was also a composer. I also looked through Vom Kriege, the Clausewitz book. They called Clausewitz the premier philosopher of war. By the sound of his name you’d think he looked like Von Hindenburg, but he doesn’t. In the book’s portrait of him, he looks like Robert Burns, the poet, or Montgomery Clift, the actor. The book was published in 1832 and Clausewitz had been in the military since he’d been twelve. His armies were highly trained professionals, not young men who served only for a few years or more. His men were hard to replace and he talks a lot about how to maneuver into position where the other side can see there’s no fighting chance and basically lay down their arms. In his time there was little to gain and much to lose by any serious fighting. For Clausewitz, flinging stones was not war — not idealized war, anyway. He talks a lot about psychological and accidental factors on the battlefield — the weather, air currents — playing a big part.
I had a morbid fascination with this stuff. Years earlier, before I knew I was going to be a singer and my mind was in full swing, I had even wanted to go to West Point. I’d always pictured myself dying in some heroic battle rather than in bed. I wanted to be a general with my own battalion and wondered how to get the key to open this wonderland. I asked my father how to get into West Point and he seemed shocked, said that my name didn’t begin with a “De” or a “Von” and that you needed connections and proper credentials to get in there. His advice was that we should concentrate on how to acquire them. My uncle was even less forthcoming. He said to me, “You don’t want to have to work for the government. A soldier is a housewife, a guinea pig. Go to work in the mines.”
Mines or no mines, it was the connections and credentials thing that rattled me. I didn’t like the sound of it, made me feel deprived of something. It wasn’t long before I discovered what they were and how these things can sometimes interfere with your plans. When I put together my early bands, usually some other singer who was short of one would take it away. It seemed like this happened every time one of my bands was fully formed. I couldn’t understand how this was possible seeing that these guys weren’t any better at singing or playing than I was. What they did have was an open door to gigs where there was real money. Anybody who had a band could play at park pavilions, talent shows, county fairgrounds, auctions and store openings, but those gigs didn’t pay except maybe for expenses and sometimes not even for that. These other crooners could perform at small conventions, private wedding parties, golden anniversaries in hotel ballrooms, Knights of Columbus functions, things like that — and there was cash involved. It was always the promise of money that lured my band away. I would always be moaning to my grandmother who lived with us, my one and only confidante, and she’d tell me not to take it personal. She’d say stuff like, “There are some people you’ll never be able to win over. Just let it go — let it wear itself out.” Sure, that’s easy to say, but it didn’t make me feel any less bad.