Chronicles - Bob Dylan [17]
I read The White Goddess by Robert Graves, too. Invoking the poetic muse was something I didn’t know about yet. Didn’t know enough to start trouble with it, anyway. In a few years’ time I would meet Robert Graves himself in London. We went out for a brisk walk around Paddington Square. I wanted to ask him about some of the things in his book, but I couldn’t remember much about it. I liked the French writer Balzac a lot, read Luck and Leather, and Le Cousin Pons. Balzac was pretty funny. His philosophy is plain and simple, says basically that pure materialism is a recipe for madness. The only true knowledge for Balzac seems to be in superstition. Everything is subject to analysis. Horde your energy. That’s the secret of life. You can learn a lot from Mr. B. It’s funny to have him as a companion. He wears a monk’s robe and drinks endless cups of coffee. Too much sleep clogs up his mind. One of his teeth falls out, and he says, “What does this mean?” He questions everything. His clothes catch fire on a candle. He wonders if fire is a good sign. Balzac is hilarious.
There was nothing upscale about the Gaslight, no ringside tables or anything, but it was always packed from start to finish — some people sitting at tables, some standing and crowded up along the walls — bare brick walls, low level lighting and pipes exposed. Even on cold winter nights there was a line to get in, clusters of people huddled in the doorway, twin entrances downstairs. There were always so many people inside, it was hard to breathe. I don’t know how many it could hold, but it always seemed like ten thousand or more. The fire marshals would always be coming in and out, always a lot of anticipation, apprehension in the air, a lot of audacity. You got the feeling that something, someone, was always coming to blow away the fog.
I played twenty minute sets. Played the folk songs that I possessed and paid attention to what was going on in the moment. It was hot in there and too claustrophobic to hang around after playing, so performers would often hang out upstairs in one of the back rooms, which you got to by going out back through the kitchen, into the small courtyard and up the icy fire escape. There’d always be a card game going on. Van Ronk, Stookey, Romney, Hal Waters, Paul Clayton, Luke Faust, Len Chandler and some others would play poker continuously through the night. You could come and go as you pleased. A small radio speaker in the room let you know who was performing downstairs so you knew when it was your turn to go back. Bets were usually nickels and dimes and quarters, although sometimes the pot could get up as high as twenty dollars. I usually folded my cards if I didn’t have a pair by the second or third draw. Chandler told me once, “You gotta learn how to bluff. You’ll never make it in this game if you don’t. Sometimes you even have to get caught bluffing. It helps later if you got a winning hand and want some other players to think you might be bluffing.”
I didn’t spend too much time downstairs because it was too crowded and stifling. I’d either be up in the card room or at the Kettle of Fish Tavern next door. That place was usually packed, too, on any given night of the week. A frantic atmosphere — all kinds of characters talking fast, moving fast — some debonair, some rakish. Literary types with black beards, grim-faced intellectuals — eclectic girls, non-homemaker types. The kind of people who come from out of nowhere and