bike trip update

all the bike trip posts have been reposted on the new bike trip site.

I have written a new chapter and it will be typed up most soonly, and you can expect semi-regular updates for the next few weeks until the whole story is done.

by the way, I'm finally working. I babysitted Garth's brothers. I made 30 euros. And I did flyering for one of her mother's friends art class.

Hypnotist Collectors

Perhaps we can all stop looking for answers now. Not because Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home offers any, but because if they’re not to be found in a four-hour documentary they simply don’t exist.

Dylan is. He’s Dylan. Beyond that there are no explanations.

In the past year, I’ve read volume one of his autobiography, viewed the four-hour documentary and listened more than ever, to old albums I took off the shelf and heard with new ears and new perspective, and to newly released recordings from more than 40 years ago. In the past year I’ve heard stories about the man, from a guy who knows, listened intently to actions and descriptions.

I know a ton more about Dylan than before; but I have no answers.

Dylan remains the inscrutable one, the mystique, the chameleon. To hear him give even a bit of his story in his own words is a fascinating treasure. But it doesn’t tell me how he did it. It doesn’t answer how he wrote those songs, or why. It doesn’t answer how he gathered up his rock ‘n’ roll ambition and Woody Guthrie’s story-telling persona, threw in a heavy measure of deep folk tradition and a strange, kinly love of Beat poetry and spit out Hard Rain.

Bob Dylan might be one of the best arguments for a god. How else do you explain talent and vision and prophesy and wisdom, all rolled together like that in a storm cloud?

Dylan couldn’t have existed as he did apart from the time, he couldn’t have soaked up all he did outside of New York in the early 1960s, he couldn’t have written the best of his early songs without observing the world around him. But at the same time he’s ancient and timeless, a singer-poet-prophet hero out of Homer or Shakespeare.

His folk tradition wasn’t just Woody and the Greenwitch Village scene. Dylan’s folk tradition was the old Irish hills and the hot Mississippi Delta. It was the Round Table and the lonesome bride, staring to the sea for a love more in her head than her heart.

He could imagine; that’s for sure.

No Direction Home credits someone as a “Hypnotist Collector.” I missed if the name and perhaps other hidden gems in the scrolling of names.

If we’re all hypnotist collectors, is Dylan the walking antique?

Do any of his individual lyrics, even the most autobiographical ones, really tell us anything about him?

His book didn’t shed any great light, neither did the movie or all these newly unearthed recordings. But they’re all rich, wonderful, captivating.

What light are we looking for? What answers do we demand about Dylan?

I wasn’t around (sadly) for much of Dylan’s career. I didn’t get to hear him when he was new, didn’t get to learn and listen along with the times. Much of his story had been written already before I’d ever heard the name. It’s unfortunate in a sense to have missed out on the first-hand experience of so much of that, but you can’t help when you’re born. (Hell, if you could, I’d guess Dylan would’ve chosen a different time all together, and where would any of us be then?)

I was in college before my lifetime even saw the release of a really good Dylan album.

But I’ve seen him play live seven times, collected a handful of friends for no other reason than we were mutual fans, devoured albums and grounded all manner of meaningful moments in his songs.

I think I’m ready finally to take the story, take the songs, take the experience and take the performer himself and stop looking for the greater answers.

Face spotting

I swear that's Eats With Face on the left:

Catfish at the football stadium

All through college, I made it to two football games, and that was in my fifth year. I just never cared about the football team. I still didn’t when I went, but I figured what the hell.

The first game was a triple-overtime victory. Afterwards, the fans rushed the field. There we were, Face and I, jumping up and down, slapping players on their shoulder pads, two quasi hippies in the mix of jocks and greeks. It was hella fun.

I made it back to the stadium last night for the first time in four years, far more interested in the general carnival atmosphere of the whole thing than whatever was going on down on the field. I met up with the crew at a packed bar before game time, marveling at how amped up everybody was.

Unlike Chair, I love sports – I’m just not crazy about football. But his sentiments about the experience are dead on. So often it’s simply about being there. Looking around, taking it all in. Sports stadiums are indeed like churches. There’s a reverence in each. Sports fans may be a bit rowdier than your average church crowd, but I’d bet the die hard football fans value their team as much or more than church-going folks value their god.

Tucson is far from the greatest sports town out there. Deep passion is reserved only for Wildcat basketball (with good reason, as it’s without a doubt the single greatest program in the country). There’re too many transplants, too many Californians and Midwesterners, to have a long-time, father-to-son type fandom. But the football team more or less sucks, and there was a sell-out crowd of 56,400 there, so who knows?

It was great fun. I found myself screaming “hit him!” when the Purdue quarterback got out of the pocket, leaping for double high-fives when our tight end caught a pass across the middle and rumbled for a touchdown, grumbling at the stupid mistakes when our linemen got penalty after penalty. And I actually found myself caring about the score and the outcome of the game.

Of course, my true roots were showing when I left near the end of the third quarter to catch an indie-rock show.

Ditat Deus

Thanks to Face and Catfish for hosting my wonderful time spent out west. It was a really interesting trip. The music, the greyhound, the mexican food, the mountain, etc., etc. I hope to see you and all the rest of you on my side of the pond one day.

now i am at the coffee plantation on mill in tempe.

i got off the greyhound at 1.30am. no taxis available. i was supposed to meet former coworkers of my brother's at Casey Moore's. I walked from the Greyhound station to Sky Harbor. A cop interceded and asked what I was doing drifting on airport ground at night (with two bags, a Rock Out With Your Cock Out hat, and an America: United We Stand t-shirt). I guess he thought I wasn't a terrorist. He told me to get on the sidewalk. I could get killed in the street. A woman picked me up in an employee shuttle bus. She speaks with a thick mexican accent. I have to strain to assemble her sounds. Also the engine is loud. I told her I needed a taxi. She took me to Terminal 4. She likes working at night. It's quiet at the airport. During the day, she studies at community college. Wants to learn how to make prosthetic limbs. Says it's important to know many trades.

I get dropped off at Terminal 4. I approach a woman in a booth and ask for a taxi. She says there are none. Go ask inside. I enter the terminal. There's no one there. Outside, a kid is reading philosophy at a stand that advertises taxis and limos. He puts down his book. I ask him for a taxi. He calls up and says there is none.

I go inside and call my girlfriend in France to complain. The connection busts up. I go outside. A taxi is coming. An arabic man takes me to Tempe. It is 2.45, Casey Moore's is closed. My brother's friends were supposed to recognize me by my Rock Out With Yer Cock Out hat. No one's there. I don't have a phone number to call. I try walking up Mill, to see if they'll spot me by luck. No such luck. I thought about jumping my way into a Saturday night party with the drunken revelers driving by, but a drunken driving accident among strangers is not how I want to perish, I decide. I go back to Circle K. I get an apple and Chex Mix. I sit outside circle for an hour or so. The young guy behind the counter comes out to smoke a cigarette and tells me that he's cool with me staying there, but if his boss comes, he'll make me leave. An hour or so later, I try the handle of the adjacent laundromat. It's open. To my surprise, a very comfortable couch is available. I put down my bags and watch the CNN coverage of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath. I fall asleep.

The boss pulls up in an old junk heap. He sees me at a moment when I had just woken up and was jumping up to press the ceiling, to press a light fixture that was making an insupportable buzzing sound. He scowls at me. He marches through the Circle K and unlocks the door to the laundromat.

"What are you doing here? Who let you in?"

"The door was open."

"Get out of here."

I pick up my bags and think of something snappy to say.

I say, "Thank you, kind citizen. The community thanks you for putting me back on the street."

I go back to sitting in front of the Circle K. David comes by an offers me a cigarette. I've been trying to quit and it's actually been a whole day, but for this offer, I accept. He calls me "my friend." He's here for when the 6am first beer. It's 5.58 and he's got two minutes to kill. He asks how I ended up in front of Circle K this fine morning. I tell him. When I tell him I'm here on my grandmother's frequent flyer miles, he says, "I'm sorry if your grandmother has passed."

"No," I say, "but she's 87 and she's not gonna fly any more."

David's a good guy. He said some other friendly things. He offered a cigarette to two other people loitering around. Finally 6am rolls around and he picks up his beer. "Have a good day, my friend."

I sit and read a story in a magazine. Three or four more early risers come in for the 6am alcohol offerings. Two dudes pull up in a truck with a ladder on top. Another dude pulls up in another truck. The third dude says, "You painters?" They say, "Yep." The dude says, "You fellas need some help. I'm tired of turning screws." They make arragements for some work together.

Around 6.45, the boss comes out. He sees me. In a friendlier tone of voice, he speaks to me. "Sorry to have to mess up your day, but I really can't have you out here." I'd been ready to tell him to speak to me with respect if he speaks to me again like he did before. But he did come out with more respect, so I obliged. No problem. I'll be off. Something should be open on Mill by now.

I turn the corner onto University. I am stunned by the far eastern sky where a billowing cloud is outlined in impossible light. So much light, I can't see anything at the borders of the cloud. It is dazzling. I begin to smile. In a moment, an arc of the sun itself rises above the outline of the cloud. The face of the sun is radiating blue and red and yellow. I can't make sense of what I see except I know it's beautiful. I'm seven years old again when I fell in love with the sun and the desert and the exotic beauties here. I'm smiling automatically. What a sun. It rises and the whole eastern sky glows as a trumpet announcing triumphant day. What a sun. This isn't anywhere, man. This is Arizona. And this is my last day in Arizona until God knows when.

Director's Chair

Watched two movies last night.

I hate biopics (which Face pronounced like "myopic" until recently), but Kinsey was pretty damn good. The movie could have been made very poorly and one dimensionally, but Liam Neeson gave a masterful performance as part deviant and part hero of the sexual revolution. The script walked a fine line between celebrating Kinsey's unflinching attacks on repression and the cruelty it spawns, and acknowledging that his obsession with sexual appetites went far outside the bounds of science. It sort of reminded me of that Larry Flynt movie, in that it did a hell of a job in profiling an unlikely hero, and how so often those who do great things for society do so with conflicted motives. The movie was also relentless in making sure it was just as provocative and unsettling as Kinsey's research was in the 1950s. The director clearly wanted to challenge the viewer's sexual constructs as much as Kinsey did. Ultimately, the tough questions about sex and love and moral judgment are never answered, but Kinsey makes the strong point that they must be asked regardless. This movie also has a killer supporting cast, with Peter Sarsgaard stealing all of his scenes, William Sadler making skin crawl, Timothy Hutton, Laura Linney, John Lithgow, Tim Curry, Oliver Platt, Chris O'Donnell. Rent it, even though it has the mandatory boring third act that every biopic suffers.

On paper, The Upside of Anger is not a movie for me. The nutshell is a middle-aged mother and her four daughters coping with their father's desertion, and the romances that follow. Such a film would normally never make it from the shelf to my hands, but I remembered hearing that Mike Binder (his writer/director debut) had made a funny and powerful movie. Binder had a short-lived comedy on HBO called "The Mind of the Married Man," which was brutally honest to the point of misogyny. It was unsettling and too-harshly funny, but Binder was clearly on to something. Anger follows the creative template of the HBO show, portraying relationships as humorous and sweet, but also laced with a quiet pain and cruelty that leaves you wanting to love the characters despite their constant failings. Joan Allen nails the tone of a woman teetering on the brink of a destroyed life, a role that has bombed miserably when attempted by lesser actresses (Tea Leoni tries way too hard in Spanglish. In Something's Gotta Give, Diane Keaton gives a nauseatingly over the top performance and banishes any doubt that she's lost her mind.) Most impressive is Binder's orchestration of nearly a dozen complex, radically different characters. It's an untidy movie, reflecting untidy emotions. And Kevin Costner proves that he's a stellar actor, but only when he plays athletes for some reason. This is not a romantic comedy, as it was marketed. Binder is well on the way to being the next Jim Brooks, but without the sugary coating. Top notch acting and mature themes with no apology make for a movie about love that actually didn't make my penis hurt to watch.

And that's why my movie reviews rule, because Peter Travers would never praise a movie by saying it did not hurt his penis.