Chronicles - Bob Dylan [16]
It went to the very root of things, gave unfair advantage to some and left others squeezed out. How could somebody ever reach the world this way? It seemed like it was the law of life, but even if it was, I wasn’t going to sulk about it or, like my grandma said, take it personal. Family connections were legitimate. You couldn’t blame anyone for having them. It got so that I almost always expected to lose my band and it didn’t even shock me anymore if it happened. I kept forming them, though, because I was determined to play. There was a lot of halting and waiting, little acknowledgment, little affirmation, but sometimes all it takes is a wink or a nod from some unexpected place to vary the tedium of a baffling existence.
That happened to me when Gorgeous George the great wrestler came to my hometown. In the mid-’50s I was performing in the lobby of the National Guard Armory, the Veterans Memorial Building, the site where all the big shows happened — the livestock shows and hockey games, circuses and boxing shows, traveling preacher revivals, country-and-western jamborees. I’d seen Slim Whitman, Hank Snow, Webb Pierce and a lot of others there. Once a year or so, Gorgeous George would bring his whole troupe of performers to town: Goliath, The Vampire, The Twister, The Strangler, The Bone Crusher, The Holy Terror, midget wrestlers, a couple of lady wrestlers, and a whole lot more. I was playing on a makeshift platform in the lobby of the building with the usual wild activity of people milling about, and no one was paying much attention. Suddenly, the doors burst open and in came Gorgeous George himself. He roared in like the storm, didn’t go through the backstage area, he came right through the lobby of the building and he seemed like forty men. It was Gorgeous George, in all his magnificent glory with all the lightning and vitality you’d expect. He had valets and was surrounded by women carrying roses, wore a majestic fur-lined gold cape and his long blond curls were flowing. He brushed by the makeshift stage and glanced towards the sound of the music. He didn’t break stride, but he looked at me, eyes flashing with moonshine. He winked and seemed to mouth the phrase “You’re making it come alive.”
Whether he really said it or not, it didn’t matter. It’s what I thought I heard him say that mattered, and I never forgot it. It was all the recognition and encouragement I would need for years to come. Sometimes that’s all it takes, the kind of recognition that comes when you’re doing the thing for the thing’s sake and you’re on to something — it’s just that nobody recognizes it yet. Gorgeous George. A mighty spirit. People said that he was as great as his race. Maybe he was. Inevitably, I would soon lose the band that was playing with me in the lobby of the Veterans building. Someone else had seen them and took them. I’d have to work on my connections. It was beginning to dawn on me that I would have to learn how to play and sing by myself and not depend on a band until the time I could afford to pay and keep one. Connections and credentials would have to become an irrelevancy, but I did feel good for a moment. Crossing paths with Gorgeous George was really something.
Clausewitz’s book seemed outdated, but there’s a lot in it that’s real, and you can understand a lot about conventional life and the pressures of environment by reading it. When he claims that politics has taken the place of morality and politics is brute force, he’s not playing. You have to believe it. You do exactly as you’re told, whoever you are. Knuckle under or you’re dead. Don’t give me any of that jazz about hope or nonsense about righteousness. Don’t give me that dance that God is with us, or that God supports us. Let’s get down to brass