Chronicles - Bob Dylan [51]
Rolling through the bright autumn day, the scenery had become a pale blur. For a minute I’d felt like I’d been moving around in circles. After a while, I cruised into Massachusetts and arrived again at Archie’s. Same thing as before — I was escorted in across the wooden bridge — up the path — in the distance a long dead tree, branches shooting off from the main trunk — all very serene, very picturesque. I crossed over the eroded gully full of rotting leaves with distilled beams of light coming off of rock fragments, walked up the dry, rocky ridge that led to his door. I went past a sign leaning up against the building, a wooden Masonite board with a base coat of outdoor paint and auto enamel and plastic letters. Once again I waited and looked back out the window to a cool ravine and clear running brook and wildflowers. A lot of flowers were still arranged in the room — flowers of deep purple, fernlike flowers rough to the touch, blue flowers with white centers — buds coiled at the tip and looking like a fiddle…Archie walked into the room and greeted me warmly — it was like seeing an old friend, and I wondered if he was going to touch on serious topics again, but he didn’t want to make chitchat.
He wondered why the songs weren’t darker than they were, and he made suggestions…he revisited and explained certain characters, said the main character was, among other things, envious, slanderous and baiting and that should be brought out more. I felt myself sitting there and degenerating into boorishness, felt like two parts of my self were beginning to battle. MacLeish wanted clear answers. He looked at me with his wise eyes. He possessed more knowledge of mankind and its vagaries than most men acquire in a lifetime. I wanted to tell him things were muddled, that a mob had been surrounding our house with bullhorns and calling on me to come out into the streets and lead a march on city hall, on Wall Street, on the Capitol…that mythological figures of the fates have been weaving and now cutting my thread of life…that there were a hundred thousand demonstrators in Washington and the police have surrounded the White House with transport busses bumper to bumper to protect the executive mansion. The president was inside watching a football game. People I’ve never heard of were calling for me to be there and take command. It was all making me want to throw up. In my dreams crowds were chanting, challenging me, shouting, “Follow us and fit in.” I wanted to tell him that life itself has turned into a prowling lion. I wanted to tell him that that I needed to escape the blaze of bullshit. I glanced around the room. The bookshelves were full of books and I noticed the novel Ulysses. Goddard Lieberson, president of Columbia Records, had given me this as a gift, a first-edition copy of the book and I couldn’t make hide nor hair of it. James Joyce seemed like the most arrogant man who ever lived, had both his eyes wide open and great faculty of speech, but what he say, I knew not what. I wanted to ask MacLeish to explain James Joyce to me, to make sense of something that seemed so out of control, and I knew that he would have, but I didn’t. Deep down, I knew that I couldn’t have anything to add to the message of his play. He didn’t need my help anyway. He wanted only to talk about the songs for his play and that’s why I was here, but there was no hope and there