For Bob Dylan’s Disk Jockey on ‘Poisoning the Well’:

a Tumult of Strange Names

Does Michael ever wonder just what Shelleyan sensitivity pre-“Love And
Theft” cut-and-paste requires? He thinks Bob’s disk jockey is just an errand
boy to satisfy his wandering desires. Quote, from the road full of mud, MG’s
blog; bolom is indeed the hope tormented:

I've followed with keen interest the indefatigable research by Scott Warmuth and Ed
Cook, tracing what 21st Century work by Bob Dylan is, er, not necessarily by Bob
Dylan.

A tumult of strange names: theme-time jockeying; blood on your saddle. The

late John Bauldie once wrote in his TELEGRAPH (highbrow albeit kinda lazy)
fanzine: ‘He wears his influences lightly … ’, whereupon, lemme tell ya,
followed a tumult of strange names – which included Shelley.

From Scott Warmuth’s 16 April 2010 post at Goon Talk:

The cowboy and the cowpuncher, the dandy and the Pied Piper; yet another instance
of Dylan at play. It should also stand as a clear example of why one should never
underestimate Dylan or take him at his word. The scope of his schemes is so vast
that it is going to take years to unravel them, especially when writers like Wilentz
insist on poisoning the well and selling their subject short.

(Wilentz and Raeben? Ne’er the Yiddiotic Twain shall meet.) Michael could be
at play: unravelin’. With Blind Willie’s travelin’ shoes. But I’ll be travellin’ on.
Emotionally. Nothing moves, in any sense (S&D Man III, p 572). For Bob’s
jockey – underneath the sun:

Precious jockey, under the sun

How was I to know you’d be the one
To show me I was blinded, to show me I was gone
How week was the foundation I was standing upon?

Now there’s spiritual warfare, flesh and blood breaking down

Ya either got faith or ya got unbelief and there ain’t no Zen neutral ground
The enemy is subtle, howbeit Michael is (clumpily) deceived
When he looks up King James English in the dictionary and he still don’t believe?

Shine your light, shine your light on me

Shine your light, shine your light on me
Shine your light, shine your light on me
Ya know I just couldn’t make it by myself
I’m a little too blind to see

Your so-called fiends have fallen under a voodoo spell

They look your blog squarely in the eye and don’t see all is (in the) well
Can they imagine the darkness that will fall from on high
When New Orleans will beg Pat Robertson in a Haitian frenzy to kill them and they
won’t be able to die?
Blogger, lemme tell you about a vision that I saw
You were drawing mind-polluting water for the is-it-Rollins Bobcats, you were
suffering under the Henry bore
You were telling ‘em about Timrod, you were telling ‘em about Ovid
in the same death
But you criminally omitted to mention one time the woman who came and provided
all Dylan’s 70s and 80s cut-and-paste in one Zen breath

Shine your light, shine your light on me

Shine your light, shine your light on me
Shine your light, shine your light on me
Ya know I just couldn’t make it by myself
I’m a little too blind to see

Precious jockey, you believe me when I say

What Michael Stipe has given to us no man can take away
We are covered in mudcake creatures, boy, you know our forefathers were Beats
Let us hope they’ve found mercy in their bone-filled Keats

You’re the king of the muddy road, boy, you’re my jockey, you’re my delight
You’re the lamp of my soul, boy, and you torch up the shite
But there’s vacuum in the Bobcats’ eyes, boy, so let us not be enticed
On the way out of Kirkbymoorside, through the south of France, to the judgment hall
of Dylan-Christ

Shine your light, shine your light on me

Shine your light, shine your light on me
Shine your light, shine your light on me
Ya know I just couldn’t make it by myself
I’m a little too blind to see

Copy write © 1979 by Special Rider Music

P B Shelley in ‘The Revolt of Islam’:

XXX

Thus they with trembling limbs and pallid lips

Worshipped their own hearts' image, dim and vast,
Scared by the shade wherewith they would eclipse
The light of other minds ; troubled they passed
From the great Temple ;-fiercely still and fast
The arrows of the plague among them fell,
And they on one another gazed aghast,
And through the hosts contention wild befell,
As each of his own god the wondrous works did tell.
XXXI

And Oromaze, Joshua, and Mahomet,

Moses and Buddh, Zerdusht, and Brahm, and Foh,
A tumult of strange names, which never met
Before, as watchwords of a single woe,
Arose ; each raging votary 'gan to throw
Aloft his armèd hands, and each did howl
'Our God alone is God!’--and slaughter now
Would have gone forth, when from beneath a cowl
A voice came forth, which pierced like ice through every soul.

A tumult of strange names: Timrod, Ovid, Jack London. What were the others
again? Tell me again, I forgot. Is it rollins, Scott?

Sara Dylan drawing pseudo-Jewish shamanic Christ-snubbing water – from a

poison well of esoteric Buddhism. For Dylan-Christ to drink in John 4. Shine
your light, Mary Alice Artes – against Sara’s (and Michael’s) ‘hip’ Zen.

Sister, lemme tell you about a vision I saw

You were drawing water for your husband, you were suffering under the law
You were telling him about Buddha, you were telling him about Mohammed
in the same breath
You never mentioned one time the Man who came and died a criminal’s death

(What Lyrics or bobdylan.com render ‘him’, could in fact, as Dylan sings it, be
‘‘em’. John 4, NIV:

13 Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but
whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will
become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." 15 The woman said to
him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here
to draw water." 16 He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back." 17 "I have
no husband," she replied. Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have
no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now
have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."
‘Don’t wanna marry nobody, if they’re already married’: to Hans Lownds (not
Victor Lownes [Playboy and playboy], Lownds or Lowndes, Al Aronowitz; DO
RIGHT TO ME BABY: DO UNTO OTHERS; ‘code in the lyrics’.)

Ken Brooks shines, in a twisting-around kind of way, his, light not water, in
Bob Dylan: the Man in Him (1999):

The truth is in our heart, Bob’s vision. Sister Mary Alice Artes, Bob’s advisor, was
explaining Buddha and Mohammed but not Jesus. To understand and be sure then
the seeker must learn of other religions.
The NME is subtle? Perhaps Ken, whoever he was working for, is working as
a spiritual advisor to the Vineyard these days? 2 Kings 17, King James
Version. (If you find Michael’s favourite KJVese of poesy very boring, skip to
verse 26 but don’t blame me if you don’t get the context).

1In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in
Samaria over Israel nine years.

2And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, but not as the kings of
Israel that were before him.

3Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his
servant, and gave him presents.

4And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea: for he had sent messengers to
So king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king of Assyria, as he had done year
by year: therefore the king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison.

5Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria,
and besieged it three years.

6In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel
away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and
in the cities of the Medes.

7For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God,
which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh
king of Egypt, and had feared other gods,

8And walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out from before
the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made.

9And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the
LORD their God, and they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of
the watchmen to the fenced city.

10And they set them up images and groves in every high hill, and under every green
tree:

11And there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the
LORD carried away before them; and wrought wicked things to provoke the LORD to
anger:

12For they served idols, whereof the LORD had said unto them, Ye shall not do this
thing.

13Yet the LORD testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and
by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments
and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which
I sent to you by my servants the prophets.

14Notwithstanding they would not hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of
their fathers, that did not believe in the LORD their God.
 15And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers,
and his testimonies which he testified against them; and they followed vanity, and
became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning
whom the LORD had charged them, that they should not do like them.

16And they left all the commandments of the LORD their God, and made them
molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of
heaven, and served Baal.

17And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used
divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the
LORD, to provoke him to anger.

18Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his
sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only.

19Also Judah kept not the commandments of the LORD their God, but walked in the
statutes of Israel which they made.

20And the LORD rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted them, and delivered
them into the hand of spoilers, until he had cast them out of his sight.

21For he rent Israel from the house of David; and they made Jeroboam the son of
Nebat king: and Jeroboam drave Israel from following the LORD, and made them sin
a great sin.

22For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they
departed not from them;

23Until the LORD removed Israel out of his sight, as he had said by all his servants
the prophets. So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this
day.

24And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from
Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of
Samaria instead of the children of Israel: and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in
the cities thereof.

25And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the
LORD: therefore the LORD sent lions among them, which slew some of them.

Verse 26:

26Wherefore they spake to the king of Assyria, saying, The nations which thou hast
removed, and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the God of
the land: therefore he hath sent lions among them, and, behold, they slay them,
because they know not the manner of the God of the land.

For a telling Dylanological comparison, although hardly required reading, the

NIV (for example):
26
It was reported to the king of Assyria: The people you deported and resettled in the
towns of Samaria do not know what the god of that country requires. He has sent
lions among them, which are killing them off, because the people do not know what
he requires.

WHEN YOU GONNA WAKE UP? From Slow Train Coming ( 1979):

Do you ever wonder just what God requires?

You think He’s just an errand boy to satisfy your wandering desires

MG in S&D Man III (2000) p 404 fn 7:

[Romans 8:18’s beautiful Zen-like KJV English] argues, despite Cartwright’s

suggestion to the contrary, that Dylan’s overwhelming preference – shared, you
might presume, by anyone with a real feeling for language – is for the Authorized
Version.

(No more of this! Luke 22:51; NIV et al. BORN IN TIME left Michael ‘reeling
with this feeling’: S&D Man III, p 672. ‘Suffer ye thus far’ with his unauthorized
complacency.)

God! Michael is sensitive. As a plant (on the ‘muddiest superhighway in the

universe’, p 566 fn). Michael on Shelley, p 59: ‘Look at me: God! I’m
sensitive!’ But, unlike Shelley’s, Michael’s sensitivity doesn’t draw attention to
itself – the (Zen) well of majestic inspiration. And that, see p 571 on ‘anyone
alert to language’, is one of the reel strengths of Michael’s writing: in time.
Precious Michael:

The enemy is subtle, how be it we are so deceived

When the truth’s in our hearts and we still don’t believe?

KJV continued:

27Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying, Carry thither one of the priests
whom ye brought from thence; and let them go and dwell there, and let him teach
them the manner of the God of the land.

28Then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and
dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the LORD.

29Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of
the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein
they dwelt.

30And the men of Babylon made Succothbenoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal,
and the men of Hamath made Ashima,

31And the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burnt their children
in fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim.

32So they feared the LORD, and made unto themselves of the lowest of them
priests of the high places, which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places.
 33They feared the LORD, and served their own gods, after the manner of the
nations whom they carried away from thence.

34Unto this day they do after the former manners: they fear not the LORD, neither
do they after their statutes, or after their ordinances, or after the law and
commandment which the LORD commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named
Israel;

35With whom the LORD had made a covenant, and charged them, saying, Ye shall
not fear other gods, nor bow yourselves to them, nor serve them, nor sacrifice to
them:

36But the LORD, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt with great power and
a stretched out arm, him shall ye fear, and him shall ye worship, and to him shall ye
do sacrifice.

37And the statutes, and the ordinances, and the law, and the commandment, which
he wrote for you, ye shall observe to do for evermore; and ye shall not fear other
gods.

38And the covenant that I have made with you ye shall not forget; neither shall ye
fear other gods.

39But the LORD your God ye shall fear; and he shall deliver you out of the hand of
all your enemies.

40Howbeit they did not hearken, but they did after their former manner.

41So these nations feared the LORD, and served their graven images, both
their children, and their children's children: as did their fathers, so do they unto this
day.

2 Kings 17; John 4: fearful (a)symmetry. Of s(n)orts. At the well:

21 Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the
Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what
you do not know; … ”

The religion of Zen Sara Dylan in a nutshell; everyone says or assumes ‘by all
accounts she’s Jewish’ when the only (relevant) ‘accounts’ are the early
biographies, Scaduto and Spitz, which say no such thing. Howbeit: hardly a
Zen-like mantra throughout the KJV, ‘be it’ three words or one. Michael.
Perhaps its familiarity breeds Zen-like indifference? S&D Man III p 238,
footnote, wiggling over the word howbeit:

A recent dictionary (Collins, 1994) says of this only that it is ‘archaic’ before mis-
defining it as meaning either ‘however’ or ‘although’. In fact, of course, it means
exactly what it says, ellipsed from the longer ‘How does it come to be that?’ What we
shorten to ‘How come?’, the King James Bible shortened to ‘Howbeit?’ It is archaic,
meaning that it is language characteristic of an earlier period and not in common use.
Yet its clarity and simplicity make it a model of effective rhetoric, and Dylan’s use of it
here – in exact accord with its use in the scriptures – sounds to have arisen naturally
from his inevitably meeting the word within the Word. That’s howbeit he’s in tune with
it.
(He’s not.) Unlike Shelley. How be it, however, Michael is so deceived? Let’s
try Michael’s ‘theory’:

29[How does it come to be that] every nation made gods of their own, and put
them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation
in their cities wherein they dwelt.

40[How does it come to be that] they did not hearken, but they did after their
former manner.

No question about it. But what do you care. Then there’s the OXFORD
DICTIONARY:

adv. and conj. [Originally three words how be it, with pa. t. how were it (= however it
were): see HOW adv. 13.]

A. adv. However it may be; be that as it may; nevertheless; however such …

Does Michael ever wonder just what lexicography requires – beyond sitting in
a garden with a glass of red, feelin’ kinda lazy? Nice shot at twisting the
dictionary around, though, to make it parrot Bob in place of Bob ‘parroting
scripture’.

Nevertheless, be that as it May, Sara Beatty Zimmerman lives obliviously by

the sea, and prays for each feminist yakuza the same as you or me.WIGGLE
WIGGLE went down like a lead balloon with Oxford-(Opie)blue Michael.
Someone asked him during the intermission to one of his ‘gigs’ in 2003 what
he thought of the song. ‘Rubbish!’ Wiggle like a big fat snake. Subtle (p 232 fn
24). Do you ever wonder just what howbeit requires? Dylan said Norman
Raeben his art teacher:

Taught me how to see. He put my mind and my hand and my eye together in a way
that allowed me to do consciously what I unconsciously felt. And I didn’t know how to
pull it off. I wasn’t sure it could be done in songs because I’d never written a song like
that. But when I started doing it, the first album I made was Blood on the Tracks.
Everybody agrees that that was pretty different, and what’s different about it is there’s
a code in the lyrics and also there’s no sense of time. [To Jonathan Cott for Rolling
Stone, November 1978]
How be it Michael did not hearken to Slow Train Coming’s ‘code in the lyrics’,
such as its wilderness was, howbeit he heard them? Because he did not know
what Bob, Oxford-blue Bob (under the red sky), requires: the scope of his
schemes; his subtlety: both cunning and serpentine. When Michael gonna
wake up? Bob is no KJV errand boy.

MG knows not the manner of the code in the lyrics – in the Samaritan aspect
of the Slow Train Coming landscape at any rate. Why? Because Sarah draws
his (Zen) water by the sea – obliviously knowing too much to argue or to
judge.

40Howbeit Michael did not hearken, but did after his former manor.
Question mark? You hide in your mansion of young Bobcat’s mud, as it flows
out of the ‘muddiest superhighway in the universe’ being miraculously
transmogrified from ‘oceans of specious amateurish commentary’ into
(breadcrumb-sin) KJV ‘scripture’. For Bobcats to ‘parrot’.

MG stood ankle-deep in mud and of his morning-Time magazine chewed the

cud. Intertextually. Intertextual par for the (intellectual) intercoarse. CAT’S IN
THE WELL (1990):

The cat’s in the well, and Papa is reading the news

His hair’s falling out and all of his daughters need shoes

‘If it’s not in the media’, or even on the muddiest superhighway in the
universe, ‘it’s not happening’: as Dylan said to Scott Cohen in 1985. And I say
to Scott: the thread in the labyrinth leads you.

A tumult of strange names – poisoning the well. In death collect the google
that I (don’t) collect in bugle. Strengthen the Dylanology that remains. Don’t
poison the Dylan-Christ well of John 4 with God-I’m-sensitive self-
congratulatory Zen. How(beit) weak was the foundation. Biographer Anthony
Scaduto:

"Bob needed Sarah very desperately," a close friend from that period says. "His
head was all screwed around from the pressures, the fame, that whole insane thing
that was happening to him, and Sarah represented some solid ground. She was
mystical, into Zen and all, and seemed to have found her own head and maybe
seemed to have some answers from Zen, and Dylan needed that, Also, she was
sort of Zen-egoless, She didn't try to get into Bob's head the way people always
do, because that's not where it was at for her. And Bob needed that kind of
unthreatening woman. She seemed to be able to give herself over to him and his
special needs. Besides which, she is very beautiful and very tender ."

The late Al Aronowitz, ‘My Dylan Papers’:

From the start, Sara parried Bob's tyranny with graciousness. Bob ran hot and cold
and he was a succession of either Jekylls and Hydes or heckles and jives, but I've
never seen him treat another human as civilly, as respectfully, as lovingly and as
humanly as he treated Sara. In the years following his motorcycle accident, Bob
acted like a romantic cornball when he was with her. More and more, he depended
on her advice as if she were his astrologer, his oracle, his seer, his psychic
guide. He would rely on her to tell him the best hour and the best day to travel. For
me, they were the ideal loving couple. They flirted with each other constantly. Their
kitchen-talk, table-talk, parlor-talk and general dialogue impressed me as certainly
hipper than any I've ever heard in any soap opera or sitcom.

Call me for dinner, honey, I’ll be there (but Victor Low(d)n(e)s won’t); Sister
lemme tell ya. From one of Dylan’s gospel raps: Montreal 22 April 1980, I
think:

Thank you. I'm leaning on that solid rock, and you need that solid rock. There's a
form of medium called Zen. They got a way of twisting things all around, make
what's good seem bad and what's bad seem good. I was talking to a girl the other
day who just lives from orgasm to orgasm. I know that's a strange thing, but that's
what she's said to do because of these so-called modern times. But she's not
satisfied.

What’s good is bad; what’s bad is good. How weak was the foundation.
‘Someone with the time’, for drainpipe sniffing movie quotes (p 559), like ‘most
of the Nineties’, could count all the times Michael uses the term Zen (with
hypnotic Zen-like repetitive majesty; p 238 fn) throughout S&D Man III. In
addition to what I have annotated myself: pp 218, 238, 432. How be it
Michael’s hip(s)-’66 Zen infatuation blinded him to Slow Train Coming’s
(strong) foundational ‘code in the lyrics’? (Because there’s a Precious Blakean
Medium called ‘no neutral ground’ – which twists things around; MG p 246.
Urizen; your reason.)

Written in My Soul interview, 1985:

BILL FLANAGAN: Have you ever put something in a song that was too personal?
Ever had it come out and then said, "Hmm, gave away too much of myself there"?

BOB DYLAN: I came pretty close with that song "Idiot Wind."

Rolling Stone interview with Jakob Dylan:

In late 1974, as the marriage began to unravel, Bob Dylan made his "divorce album,"
Blood On the Tracks. Released in early 1975, it stands as one of Dylan's most
brilliant records, a piece of majestic torment. Writer Greil Marcus described it as "the
tale of an adventurer's war with a woman and with himself, and a shattering attempt
to force memory, fantasy and the terrors of love and death to serve an artistic
impulse."
It made great art, but there were five children caught in the emotional flood - one
daughter and three sons the Dylans had together, and a daughter from Sara's earlier
marriage. Mercifully, the court records were sealed, but for Jakob there are other
documents that echo those times. "If I hear [an upbeat song like] 'Tombstone Blues,'
I'm having a good time with everybody else," Jakob says. "Those other songs on
Nashville Skyline and Blood On the Tracks... those are my parents talking."

Any opportunity to ‘knock Sara’. Or never mention her one time. Sara Dylan
lives obliviously by the sea, and prays for each yakuza the same as you or
me.

And my annotated (second-hand) copy of S&D Man III, covered in pen

markings and corrections, including relevant cross-references to the work
Confessions of a Stonewaller, is available for auction. On the muddiest
superhighway in the universe, of coarse.

For further exploration of Sister Sara Dylan at the well in John 4, drawing
twisted Zen poison, see my piece (only four pages from hundreds
unreleased):

Sara Dylan: White Gypsy of the Lowlands Exposed

Sara Dylan: the woman who came and provided all Dylan’s Seventies cut-
and-paste, and more, in one Zen guru-guided breath. On the web, the
muddiest superhighway in the universe, there’s no editor to demand every
step you take has got to be approved.

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, all dressed in Oxford green.

‘Building a richer house’: Scott Warmuth cutting and pasting from Greil
Marcus.

‘Poisoning the well by selling [his] subject short’: Warmuth on Sean Wilentz.

‘This is a confused and confusing book’: Greil Marcus, in his latest offering, on
Wilfrid Mellers.

‘Oceans of specious amateurish commentary on the muddiest superhighway

in the universe’: MG on, er, ‘oceans of specious amateurish commentary on
the muddiest superhighway in the universe’. (The Zen repetition is majestic.)

What a happy family we are!

Wilentz, Marcus, Michael, et al: a tumult of familiar names; watchwords of a

single woe? Shelley, lemme tell ya:

As each of his own god the wondrous works did tell.

XXXI

And Oromaze, Joshua, and Mahomet,

Moses and Buddh, Zerdusht, and Brahm, and Foh,
A tumult of strange names, which never met
Before, as watchwords of a single woe,
Arose ; each raging votary 'gan to throw
Aloft his armèd hands, and each did howl
'Our God alone is God!’--and slaughter now
Would have gone forth, when from beneath a cowl
A voice came forth, which pierced like ice through every soul.

Our Bob alone is Bob! (See recent Mick Brown 70th-Birthday rehash of Madrid
’84.) Oh, sister! Things ain’t goin’ well.

Mellers in A darker shade of pale: A backdrop to Bob Dylan (1984), p 220, on

OH, SISTER:
… shedding its evangelical tinge, emerges as a Tex-Mex number acrid in sonority
and remorseless in tangoed rhythm, with gibbering and wailing voices off. The effect
is sinister, perhaps because the song seems to have become a conflict between
Dylan’s Christian Father and his sad-eyed lady earth goddess. Some such tension is
latent in many of the gospel songs; indeed the fundamental ambiguity which makes
Dylan’s work so rewarding is precisely this matriarchal-patriarchal synthesis or
reconciliation.

Or lack of it. Mellers lemme tell ya. Oh, Greil. Where do you pitch your tent?

‘Leaping around’: the editor of a Dylan magazine still petrified,

anachronistically, in the most screamingly hilarious passé manner, in the
Desire/Rolling Thunder period, on some throwaway titbits I tossed that way a
few years ago.

I wonder why?

Sara Dylan? A paler shade of white-Rom gypsy (in a Portugal bar), whose
ethnic maternal ancestry Howard Sounes, the Mr Jones of Sara’s ethno-
religious origins, yet self-appointed guardian of Jakob’s and Jesse’s Jewish
roots (circumventing Bob, who was merely ‘playing a role’), never mentioned
one time. A criminal (tabloid) omission.

I’m off to do my Zen chanting: howbeit, howbeit, howbeit, howbeit, howbeit –

like a dripping tap. What’s good is bad; what’s bad is good. And the dictionary
is wrong. How be it? How come?

There's a form of medium called Zen. They got a way of twisting things all around,
make what's good seem bad and what's bad seem good.

Building a richer house by poisoning the well, and poisoning the well by
building a richer house (without Greil Marcus); nice Zen paradox – to meditate
on. You’ll find out when you reach the top.

Isaiah 5 (NIV):
20
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter.
21
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes
and clever in their own sight.

What can I do for you. Howbeit I didn’t think this piece was very good.
Howbeit you might. How be it what’s good is bad and what’s bad is good?
You’ll find out when you reach for the dictionary.

Now everything's a little upside down, as a matter of fact the wheels have stopped,
What's good is bad, what's bad is good, you'll find out when you reach the top
You're on the bottom.

I feel like an idiot. Babes. God! I’m sensitive.

Copyright 2011 Paul Kirkman, Dylanologist of Messianic motifs