“I is another.” – Rimbaud

“Say one more stupid thing to me before the last nail is driven in.”

– Bob Dylan

“Your best friends are my worst enemies – Angelina.” – Bob Dylan

Happy Birthday, Bob!

May you live as long as Willie Nelson is now and on and beyond (and same to you too, Willie; you two are kindred spirits).

But when Bob Dylan ever does pass on (not die), I will instantaneously think of what Bob himself said about himself after Elvis moved on: “After Elvis died, I didn’t talk for a week.”

I will not (probably) be silent that long, but my heart will break (in a certain way). And I will know (deep down) that times have changed.

I’ve seen Bob play live an uncountable number of times across five decades: in the ’80s, the ’90s, the ‘00s, the ’10s, the ‘20s.

I’ve seen him drunk (I mean me, although it was obvious that he was too at least a few times), I’ve seen him sober, I’ve seen him on drugs, I’ve seen him not on drugs, and I’ve seen him with my (now ex-) wife when she was preggo with the twins.

After the show she said: “It looked like you were studying him the whole time.”

That’s because I was studying him the whole time.

I’ve been studying the man (on and off) since I was thirteen years old.

I’ve seen him in Iowa, I’ve seen him in Missouri, I’ve seen him in Wisconsin, I’ve seen him in Kansas, and I’ve seen him in Illinois, many times, both in Chicago and at other locations.

(Side note: many folks don’t know that Iowa is our (the USA’s) Number One Agricultural State, which is true; it isn’t California. Reminder: Robert Zimmerman was born and bred in Minnesota.)

I’ve seen him with Tom Petty, I’ve seen him with the Grateful Dead, I’ve seen him with his own bands, I’ve seen him at the first Farm Aid in 1985, and I’ve seen him (and heard him) in my mind all the time, especially when all you beautiful ladies said goodbye.

(I never say “hi” and I never say “bye” to the beautiful ladies. They say hi and they say bye when the time comes: I’m still here; just don’t get too close any more; I don’t know why!)

(True beauty emanates from the inside outward and resides mostly in the eyes. Plastic beauty can be beautiful on the outside, but when you peer into the dead or predatory eyes, it chills the effect more than a little.)

The last time I saw Bob live he was with Willie and Mellencamp on the Outlaw tour, here in Illinois, two years ago.

He hid behind his piano wearing a hoodie the whole time and really pissed off a lot of the audience because he’d turned all his well-known songs into some sort of seemingly incoherent (but only seemingly) jazz.

Boos even started to go up here and there in the crowd.

I almost went over and told one guy to shut his fucking mouth.

I was ready to tear his head off if he didn’t listen to me.

But I restrained myself.

It was like some puny little fool in a football jersey standing there hurling rotten eggs at Mount Rushmore (even tho’ the dude was six feet three).

Because that’s what Dylan is: he’s as big as Mount Rushmore.

And maybe bigger. (Even tho’ he’s only five feet seven – or less.)

They say that when Dylan and Cash used to hang out together, they didn’t even talk.

As the great American fiction writer Barry Hannah (RIP Barry; your two greatest works are the short story “Water Liars” and the short novel Ray) once said: “I don’t need to meet Bob Dyan. He’s already shaken my hand.”

END NOTE:

For an answer to a full-scale nuclear war (which is becoming more likely by the hour, however unlikely that sounds), listen to “Let Me Die in My Footsteps” by Dylan, 1962. (And read the Bible and the Tao Te Ching.)

(Faulkner rightly said: “All it can do is kill us.”)

ONGOING NOTE: For a great song about public heroes dying, see and hear Waylon and Willie’s song “Heroes” (2:46) off their 1982 album WWII. Not to be confused with “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys” – which is also true.

(All images provided–brilliantly–by DWB)

(Images by The Drifter)

“But don’t you place the blame on me / As you pour yourself another drink, yeah.”

– Eminem

I heart Ems because he talks about, explores, and explains what it’s like to be from Michigan, which means, of course, what it’s like to be from the American Midwest: “flyover country.”

It’s kind of like America’s greatest rock critic (by far), Lester Bangs, who always loved to wear his “Detroit Sucks” T-shirt while living in, and loving living in, the Detroit area, which is known as both Motown and Rock City among other monikers. I can’t believe he was only three miles down the road co-creating Creem Magazine while I was living there as a rebellious little kid. And yet, such is (weirdly for me as a person) true.

There is a simple four-part formula for understanding the essence of Eminem as an American artist, I say!

I speak here of his best, most mature, and most fully developed work, not every single thing he’s ever done. He is a very profuse, honest, sometimes dark, and prolific artist, and if I wanted to slam him, I could choose lots of things to slam. He’s also a very self-aware and self-critical artist – anything anyone can say about him, he’s already said about himself a million times before (much like the poet Charles Bukowski).

The four-part formula goes like this.

One: What it’s like to be from the state of Michigan.

Two: What it’s like to be from the American Midwest (“flyover country”).

Three: What it’s like to be an OUTSIDER.

Four: How the figure of The Outsider, in his work, becomes a symbol of the modern Human in general, plain and simple, and also not simple at all.

Someone once asked him if he believes in God; he said, “I don’t go to church, but I do pray.”

Such an answer shows how he is a kind of modern-day Everyman who modern-day Everywomen can also relate to.

Every place in America, and I mean every place in America, has great heroes and heroines who lived there in the past or are living there right now. By “heroine” and “hero,” I simply mean someone who can be looked up to in some kind of way; someone who proves that humans are, somehow, worth it; and can act as a representative figure somehow (which is also much more of a burden than it might sound like at first blush).

Because if we don’t question the fact of human nobility sometimes, we are blind and mad. And if we don’t ultimately believe that humans have that noble strain within them, we become someone like the current president of the USA, who believes that everything, and that means everything, comes down to nothing more than a monetary transaction, one way or another. Think well of other people – without being blind – and eventually you start to think well of yourself, too.

Eminem’s gated KMart mansion is fifteen miles away from where I lived for the first ten years of my life.

My parents were young and our neighborhood was modest and I often find myself back there in my dreams or in the smell of rain or snow or grass or in the warmth of the sunshine, all of which I learned there first.

We lived in the area where Eminem’s film 8 Mile is set.

Five of Eminem’s greatest songs are from his 2013 album The Marshall Mathers LP 2.

When this album came out, I was separated from my wife and broken up with my truly-beloved, soul-mate girlfriend (who I took up with only after my wife kicked me out and I also kicked myself out even more, which she tended to forget (about the girlfriend) a little too often, since we never lost regular contact while taking care of the kids, in front of whom we always retained a friendly family demeanor in between the poison barbs we regularly aimed at each other; see the quote from Eminem himself at the top of this essay for an example). Two people I deeply love were battling cancer (they got over it, but I didn’t know if they would, at the time; and one of them was her). And my mother had recently passed on. And I was losing my job, a process that took, on and off, two years. Unlike the cancer/s, I knew how this one would pan out from the start, but I never stopped fighting (even though lost in a fog-of-war confusion most of the time, at the time) until it was over (when I immediately plunged into a periodic three-year depression that almost killed me lots of different and exciting ways).

The Marshall Mathers LP 2, and especially the five songs I’m about to list, provided me with great, deep consolation, comfort, and inspiration at the time. For some reason, the album cover has one of my favorite numbers hidden in plain sight upon it: 946.

My two kids, who are forty years younger than me almost to the day, also love/d these songs, then and now, as do most of their friends.

This album was/is one of the rare times when great art and the American mainstream actually come together these days. Lana Del Rey, at her best, is another example of this; as is Taylor Swift (at her best); as is Lady Gaga – at her best.

“The Monster” (co-vocals by Rihanna). ALSO SEE THE MUSIC VIDEO WHERE RIHANNA WEARS BLACK LIPSTICK AND EXTRA-LONG FINGERNAILS!

“Legacy” (co-vocals by Polina).

“Headlights” (co-vocals by Nate Ruess).

“Stronger Than I Was.”

“Bad Guy” (the sequel to Ems’ great song “Stan”).

Remember the spirit of the 1960s (even if you weren’t alive at the time) and play it loud!

These songs are not really rap or hip hop per se; they are more like rap rock, like when he sampled Black Sabbath or Nick Cave on earlier songs; and even more like something one-of-a-kind in a genre of their own, a genre of Eminem’s own invention. Like all great art (including all great essays), these songs don’t really fit into any pre-conceived categories: at all.

But these five songs are so great, they can, very rightly, be compared to the best of The Beatles; Bob Dylan; Nina Simone; The Clash (London Calling); Nirvana. Yes, it’s true: Eminem, at his best, is that good.

Another thing many folks don’t know about Eminem: he took better care of his little brother than their parents did; and he took better care of his three daughters than their mother/s did (two are adopted, from his ex-wife with another man and from his ex-sister-in-law).

Unlike everyone else, he stuck around.

Exciting End Note/s:

I can also recommend Eminem’s powerful 2010 album RECOVERY.

Especially these songs: “Cold Wind Blows,” “Love the Way You Lie,” “Not Afraid,” “Going Through Changes” (one of the songs where he samples Black Sabbath, brilliantly), “Space Bound.”

This essay was written in a single burst while sitting in the car outside Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio in Oak Park, Illinois, USA, on May 12, 2026, which is right around the corner from Ernest Hemingway’s boyhood home. I do not use, and have never used, and will never use either grammar or spell check, believing my brain should be the one to do the work instead of any sort of a computer for a multitude of reasons some of which I can’t even explain. I believe that any typos or mistakes (if there are any) are deliberately made by something else. Therefore I let them stand if I catch them after a certain point (after my brain says “Finished”).

SEE THE QUILLEMENDER OF MY CO-EDITOR LEILA ALLISON!

(Borges rightly says that the real writer is never afraid to write a bad page.)

I saw seven GIGANTIC wild rabbits in Wright’s yard while writing this!

They were running around chasing each other because they know that it’s SPRING.

(All images by The Drifter)

“So you may say, / Greek flower; Greek ecstasy / reclaims forever /

one who died / following intricate song’s / lost measure.” – H.D.

Today’s discussion of medical issues is from a layman’s point of view since I am a Doctor of Philosophy and not a medical doctor. But the medical facts have been garnered and gathered from folks who are medical doctors – in person, not just through reading. So this column offers the best of both worlds: the medical facts filtered through a philosophical perspective, with a touch of Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka, except that THIS IS REALITY.

…

The “Mad” Woman

You walk back into your tiny apartment after another trip around the block. The second you enter your one main room, you realize that something is amiss. Someone has been in here again during your 30-minute absence. Not only have they been in here again, they have rearranged some of your items. The difference in placement is very subtle. A hair brush you thought had been over here is now over there. Your coffee cup has been moved three inches away from the place you left it. And the television remote control device is now sitting on the opposite end of the end table from the one you left it upon when you left your apartment thirty minutes ago. Because the people, or beings, who enter your apartment and rearrange your stuff when you are gone are very subtle, very secretive, and very sly. You do not know why they are targeting you and rearranging your stuff; but “they” have been doing this for years. You slowly move around the apartment putting everything back in its right place. Then you notice that the dart board on your wall has also been rearranged. It has been moved exactly three inches to the left. You suddenly realize that the dart board is not a dart board: it is an eye. It is a GIGANTIC EYE through which THEY are watching you. THEY also follow you around on the streets sometimes. You have been incarcerated more than once for accosting these spies on the street. You approach them unannounced and unawares, demanding to know why they are following you, whose orders they are following, and why they don’t feel guilty about being spies. The authorities sometimes show up when you take these interrogation tactics too far. Sometimes that’s when the straight jackets come out and the incarceration thing happens again. You are aware that all of this seems “crazy” to them. But you are being followed, tracked, and surveilled within your apartment. Not just the dartboard but also the bathroom mirror is an EYE watching you. Watching you and reporting your activities to THEM. That’s why sometimes you don’t move for hours. You just sit there alone in your chair in your apartment utterly unmoving, not even daring to get up and go to the bathroom. Some day you will figure out who is doing all of this, why they are doing it, and what the universal ramifications are. You’re pretty sure that most of the spies are human. Others are definitely demons who look like humans. A few are humans you’ve been long familiar with, like your sneaky and wily landlord. That landlord of yours who always acts so friendly on the surface then turns around when you’re not looking and reports all of your activities to the authorities. The ultimate authorities are not human. They are not God, either. Rather they are some kind of currently unknown (to humans) creatures who live on a Planet called the North Star that is not in our galaxy and not even in our universe. One day you will know the reason for all of this, and it will elevate you. In the meantime, you can’t get a job because your life is constantly taken up with dealing with them, fleeing from them, thinking about them, analyzing them, dreaming about them, hiding under the covers from them in the tiny bedroom. (Under the covers is the only place they can’t see you, although they can still sometimes say things to you, like, “You stupid fucking bitch” over and over again.) Maybe some of them are friendly though (you are hoping this is true). Maybe everyone and everything in the world is not your enemy. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe! If you weren’t on medication, things would really start to get bad. You remember that you haven’t taken your medication in a few days, not since the last time you saw your therapist. You go to the medicine cabinet. To retrieve your medication. It should come as no surprise that your medication has disappeared because THEY have stolen it. Later you will locate the medication bottles in a different area of your apartment and realize that the jerks who are following you around and messing with you have moved your medication again. You dump all the many multicolored pills all over the floor and slowly and methodically begin to count them again, over and over and over again…counting the pills in this way also keeps the voices in your head quiet as night comes on, at least for the most part…

…

Welcome to the wonderful world of full-blown schizophrenia. The low moods and crazy highs of bipolar disorder look like a cake walk compared to this. Bipolar disorder is an episodic disorder where the patient is rarely, if ever, psychotic, i.e. totally out of touch with reality. There are a few medications that work really well in helping to control the occasional, extreme moods of bipolar disorder along with all of its daily intensities, mini-nervous-breakdowns, hilariously dangerous outbreaks, and sometimes-constant hyper-irritability. There are no medications that are great, or even very, very good, at controlling schizophrenia, although some med’s can help control the delusions and hallucinations a little. There is not much chance that any of this will change, at least not in the next couple of centuries…

…

The Native Americans, like the ancient Greeks, believed that “crazy” people were in touch with the gods in a special way that made them special people. They weren’t just sad, pointless cases with no reason, no goals, no ambitions, no purpose. Instead, their unusual condition was seen as a thing that was bringing messages to the rest of us. Not clear messages, ambiguous messages. But messages nevertheless. In the modern, secular, capitalistic, warlike, atheistic (or fundamentalist religionist), consumerist, commercialized, monetized, advertised, atomized, and alienated world, your value is the price tag on your head. Special people are not special, they are worthless, pointless junk to be discarded if possible. The medical professionals who do more than anyone else to try and help these people also often do more than anyone else to stigmatize, traumatize, and stereotype these people. There are literally millions of severely mentally ill people in the USA alone, and that doesn’t count the rest of the world. It’s a known fact that schizophrenics in the USA and UK, for instance, usually hear voices that are harshly criticizing them; while schizophrenics in places like Africa or India usually report (instead) hearing the voice of God.

These people really are messengers. It’s us who are not listening.

The next time you see someone standing on the street corner yelling at and kicking a telephone pole as if it were alive, or staring into the sky with a terrified look on their face as if an angry Martian were gazing down at them and scolding them, see if you can get inside their head before you pass on.

The Drifter

(All Images by The Drifter)

“It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.”

– William Carlos Williams

“Look at / what passes for the new. / You will not find it there but in /

despised poems.” – William Carlos Williams

The above lines appear so simple that any literate child could have written them in her or his off moments.

At the same time, it took me twenty years of periodically re-reading and returning to these lines before I was able to understand them in their deeper levels, or in what Ralph Ellison called “the higher frequencies.”

I always knew there was something there, but just what it was always seemed to elude me.

It was this mystery, this enigma, this most simple yet deepest of riddles, which kept me returning to these lines, as with so many other great lines of poetry.

When you know what it is but also know you don’t really know what it is (and Socrates said the most important thing to know is what you don’t know), the mind-heart-body-spirit must engage with the work in a way that is beyond mere mental exercise, but also is mental exercise of the highest kind.

By the word “high,” I mean that it makes you feel high.

The word “kind” in another guise is another thing poetry is, even when it’s savagely satirical.

The honest and plain truth is that poetry says what nothing else can say, whether that something else be politics, science, philosophy, or even religion, which is why poetry is a religion to many.

It is a religion to an uncountable, indefinable, and scattered multitude, now and always.

It is what made us human (“in the beginning was the Word”) and it will be the last thing to go when and if we ever become no longer human.

There is nothing to believe; but somehow poetry makes you believe it anyway.

Key Notation: A novel like MOBY DICK or JANE EYRE or a Nathaniel Hawthorne or Carson McCullers short story are also, very much so, “poetry.” Wallace Stevens said that we should go around collecting poetry from the epiphanic moments in our lives and put those moments into words only afterwards; and so on one level, there is no greater argument for the holiness of poetry in and of itself than this.

The Drifter