The Colonel

Martin Luther was a man who had one of his most profound religious revelations of his entire life while in the middle of a painful bowel movement. And he found this fact, in retrospect, to be so extraordinary, and so hilarious, that he never hesitated to tell this little tale to almost anyone who would listen when the mood struck him; and he especially enjoyed telling the tale in mixed company. He especially told the tale after putting a bunch of ale into himself. He was a man who enjoyed copious quantities of beer like most in his day. His sense of humor was so ribald, wild and infectious that he sometimes kept the folks around him in stitches for an entire evening. Then again, back then there was no television. And yet, we can still see that Martin Luther’s powers of humor were extraordinary and subversive. Just like Lenny Bruce.

Back then, messing around with THE LAW, which meant the Catholic Church, was not just something that could get you excommunicated, or even just exiled from the community. Dante, when he was banished from his hometown, was told: if we ever see your face around here again, mister, we will jump you and burn you alive publicly at the stake. It was a good enough reason for Dante to never see Florence, which he deeply loved, again. Back then, messing around with the law, i.e. The Church, meant that you might have your arms and legs cut off while you still lived. Then for good measure they would take your intestines out of your body and show them to you in case you were wondering what they looked like. And only then would they chop your head off and place it on a pike so they could put it on the corner to warn other ne’er-do-wells such as yourself. Martin Luther faced down the Catholic Church and condemned them in fiery and public terms for being a corrupt institution that cared nothing for anything at all except money, money, money. The way to win your eternal forgiveness back then was to make a little donation to the Catholic Church, who would then contact God on your behalf and make sure you were okay now with The Big Guy. They had forgotten what their great hero, Jesus, said about a rich man, heaven, a camel, and the eye of a needle. Luther spent an awful lot of time in hiding, and he escaped torture and execution because his wily nature and the truth of his position won out in the end.

In 2018 or ’19, Elina, Mary Ellen, and I saw Bob Dylan live on the campus of the University of Illinois Chicago at the small stadium there which was right across from the building where I had my office at the school for fifteen years. We were in the third row and the only thing we ever actually saw of Dylan himself was his wild and messy hair bobbing around above his electric piano, because of where we were in the crowd, because of how his piano was set up to block him, and because he hid behind his instrument the entire time with his head mostly bent down low and never once directly addressed the crowd, at all, except in song.

When he began to sing his song “Lenny Bruce,” from his 1981 Christian album Shot of Love, a sudden hush went over the entire audience, and it was obvious that more than just me in the crowd knew that this was a special and unusual moment. “Lenny Bruce” is one of Dylan’s least-known, truly great songs. The surprise performance he gave of it that night was almost heavenly, or at least as heavenly as it gets on this side of the Great Divide. Anyone who thinks Bob Dylan can’t sing was not there that evening, or is mentally sleeping.

“They said that he was sick / ’cause he didn’t play by the rules / He just showed the wise men of his day / to be nothing more than fools / They stamped him, and they labeled him / like they do with pants and shirts / He fought a war on a battlefield / where every victory hurts / Lenny Bruce was bad / He was the brother you never had.”

Dale Williams Barrigar (All images by DWB)