It’s all been about mama.
And rightly so.
Between Mother’s Day, my heart affections, and my mother’s current afflictions . . . my whole world has been my mother.
But today . . . I’m going to COME OUT about my dada.
Now . . . I have a step-father in the hospital and a supposed natal father who has been in the hospital for weeks with a serious mysterious illness brought on by a dose of AMOXICILLIN >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
More on that later . . . for AMOXICILLIN is ENEMY NO. 1 in this household!!!
But today . . . while my mama is too drugged up from surgery to read this . . . today, his birthday . . . I am going to come out about my real dada.
You see . . . today is Bob Dylan’s birthday . . . and it doesn’t take a genius to realize that no . . . I am not the creation of my mother and the milkman, as I was so often told, but rather, I am the conception of my mother and the “Voice of A Generation.”
A TROUBADOUR!!!!
DUH!!!
Look at what I do?!?!
And then . . . there is the hair, the mussed Jewfro , the eye shape, the lips . . .
All a dead giveaway.
(And here, I must give thanks to two former girlfriends and TPIWSNS for their genetic analysis).
MY MOTHER ENGAGED IN SOME SERIOUS HANKY PANKY A COUPLE OF WINTERS AFTER THE SUMMER OF LOVE!!!!!!!
Oh, If I had been less resistant over the years, if I had really listened to my mother’s pronouncements . . . I would have known much earlier about my lineage.
I would have understood myself so much better . . . self-actualized with accuracy and not meandered despondent for a decade.
My refusal to go to Law School and head up the ACLU . . . or teach Abnormal Psych at Harvard . . . or marry that nice Jewish guy I never did meet at The University of Michigan . . .
No . . . instead I followed my muse . . . and went through a name change (thank you mama) . . . I followed the words, the poems, the songs, the guitar strings >>>
Picking away . . . musing away my days in reverie of change and human consciousness and esoteric philosophies . . .
Doing things “my way” . . .
And introducing foreign instruments into dogmatic song formats . . . and getting in trouble for it.
(and delighting in it!)
My mother made it perfectly clear.
I just wasn’t listening.
BOB DYLAN IS MY DADA.
I cannot remember a time when my mom, upon hearing the name “Bob Dylan,” didn’t spout off with a vehement: “He’s no poet of my generation!” . . . . .
Which would devolve into my dada’s lack of merit . . . and navigate into his debut at some San Fran joint like the hungry i when my mom was a student at Berkeley . . . and he was a poor excuse for a folksinger. Oh . . . she had heard the whispers of hype . . . and having grown up at the knee of Pete Seeger . . . she went to check out the wee Jewish boy singing his blues . . .
AND SHE WAS NOT BLOWN AWAY.
Mr. Zimmerman did not do it for her.
Bob Dylan was no genius.
He was a bore . . . with a bad voice and cheap lyrics.
He was no Cavafy.
So . . . mama blew him off.
( I don’t believe the above is a double entendre).
And then . . . about 20 years later . . . there I was playing my guitar, thinking about humanity, plugging in . . . making black ink scratches on linen paper . . . channeling songs . . .
Feet planted firmly in the musical camp of songwriter BECK . . .
The wee boy suddenly hailed as “the new Dylan” . . .
Was that a coincidence . . . ?
I think not.
And there I was living in the apartment that spawned Beck’s first hit “Loser,” . . . making songs for old A & R guys who worked with Dylan back in the day . . .
Gazing off into space with my mussed Jewfro and Dylan-shaped blue eyes . . .
And I still didn’t get it.
I didn’t get it when a famous photographer wanted to do a “faux Dylan shoot” of me for my band – or when my girlfriend took pictures of me in Berkeley, guitar in hand, and said excitedly :
You Look Just Like Young Bob Dylan!
I didn’t get it when Sally Kirkland seemed to have an unnatural attraction to me . . . and had me play music at her art openings . . .
And I didn’t get it when TPIWSNS – who has quite an eye for detail – showed me pictures of my dada and me side by side and explained the geometrics of our eyes, our lips, . . . >>>>>>>>>>
I WAS STILL IN DADDY DENIAL.
STILL IN DYLAN DENIAL.
Until TPIWSNS made me see a documentary on Bob Dylan and I heard him saying the same things I’ve been saying for years about art and expression!
TALK ABOUT FATHER ISSUES!
I’VE BEEN DENYING MY DADDY! MY HEREDITY!
I raced out and bought Dylan’s autobiography . . . I let go of my resistance and youthful rebellion . . .
I calculated the time line.
Placed my sexy Scorpio mama & Dada Dylan in several locations at the same time during the early and late 60’s . . . pieced the story together:
How my mother was told she could never get pregnant again until . . . . . . .
TA-DAH!
She became pregnant with me!!!
I realized why I was always told that the milkman was my father – to hide the true story!
I understood why my supposed natal father “doesn’t deal with me.”
And most importantly, I finally understood my mother’s obvious:
“She doth protest too muchnesses!”
Mama had a love affair with Dylan!
What I won’t know until mama is off narcotics , up and running again, and able to tell her story . . . is whether her doth protests were due to a falling out with dada Dylan (which I suspect . . . mama doesn’t do well with Geminis . . . ) or due to actual disdain for the man.
But today, my dada’s birthday, Bob Dylan’s Birthday . . .
None of this matters.
I am found.
Actualized.
I belong.
And I want to wish Dada Dylan a very very Happy Birthday!!!
AMADAES 