“They sat together in the park / As the evening sky grew dark…”

– Bob Dylan

…When they met for the first time in a bar in Chicago she pulled out a switchblade knife, flicked it open, and rammed the tip of the blade down into the wooden table between them, right down between his fingers that were resting on the table, just like they do in the movies.

He stared into her eyes and she stared into his eyes and he realized at that moment that she hadn’t completely missed with the knife as he looked down and saw the bright red blood puddling on the wood before he felt the liquid warmth oozing around his drunk fingers.

But that was okay, he was just recently turned thirty years old and she was twenty-three, and such things would never have stopped either of them back in those days. Stopped them from drinking and staying out all night, that is. He grabbed a bunch of tissue from the bathroom and wrapped it around the nicked finger and they kept on drinking and talking in the bars until the bars shut down and then they went to the lakeshore where they huddled in their coats under a tree on a bench sharing a pint of Jack and another pack of cigarettes and watching the sun come up over the gigantic, steaming water. I didn’t know (and I also knew) I was looking for her and now I’ve gone and found my soul mate, he thought. Things will never be the same.

She looked like Morticia Addams (from the television show) at twenty-three. Her long, black, dark, smooth, silky, wavy, beautiful, gorgeous, stunning, amazing, curling, sweet-smelling, living, breathing, shining, flowing, glowing hair fell well below her shoulders and down her back and her big, bright, wild, long-lashed, unusual green eyes were so big and green they almost looked unnatural somehow, like some ancient visionary witch who could see through walls and around corners and into the innards of the workings of trees and people and so forth. Her green eyes made him feel like life itself is simply supernatural. She was a goth girl in 1999, pierced and tattooed (and shaved, he would later find out) in all the right places but not too much, either. Not too much, and not too little.

She spent most of that first night telling him about all the crimes she’d been involved in. Date rapes and gang rapes (most of those had happened to her, but not all), thefts, drug deals, assaults on authority, insults to authority, pranks and law-breaking practical jokes of all sorts. Whether she was displaying herself as the victim or showing herself to be the creator of victims (who deserved it, she said), the tales she told him about herself that first night were both totally outlandish and utterly convincing. He knew instinctively that there was something fishy going on with all of this but it was only a few months later that he would suddenly realize that 99% of this stuff was what Hemingway called “total bullshit.” She knew that he was more than a bit of a criminal at heart himself and she knew that he’d feel sorry for her about the gang rapes and the date rapes, so it never occurred to her that she should stop herself and confine herself to the straight facts, he later realized. She was busy creating a character for him, that first night; she might as well have been on stage (but a very intimate stage, like the most intense closet drama ever invented, where much of the talking was done in inimitable whispers in the hidden corners of dark bars, just the two of us), and just like an audience member is highly unlikely to jump up onto the stage and interrupt the performance of an actress, no matter how convincing or unconvincing her performance is, he was unlikely to call any of her wild tales into question that first night. Although he did say things like, “No shit?” and “You’re kidding me,” and “That is hard to believe” over and over again.

When he showed a little bit of doubt, all it did was spur her on to fresh versions of new crazy tales meant to convince him that she was not the person she really was, or rather that she was a person who enjoyed breaking the rules much more than she had ever actually enjoyed breaking the rules or would in the future.

And so they fell in love and spent every single minute together (almost, or it felt like it) for about three weeks in between Thanksgiving and Christmas, 1999.

The end came, or rather the end of the first stage in their relationship came, one night a few days before Christmas when they were in an Irish Bar in Lincoln Park right across from the park and the lake. Snow was falling outside and when he came back from the bathroom she was sitting right next to (too close to, much too close to) a gigantic goon who she’d earlier told him was a former boyfriend. The guy was probably twenty-five years old, built like a heavyweight boxer and with a very mean look in his eye whenever anyone else got near her. The alcohol took over for everyone and the three of them started drinking together, knocking back shots of Jack one after another as if it were some sort of contest, and even though she was much smaller physically than both of the men, she kept up with them for a while until she suddenly disappeared, into the bathroom it turned out. When she returned, she was pale, very pale, even paler than usual, as in ghostly white, and even deathly white, and she had a small, apologetic smile on her lips (and almost like she already knew what was going to happen soon). Then it was his turn to disappear into the bathroom although he wasn’t throwing up because he almost never did no matter how much he drank. When he turned around, there was a guy he’d never seen before standing there holding her switchblade knife out at him, the exact same knife or at least the same kind of knife with the blade pointed right at his lower stomach about three or four feet away from him.

This stranger then informed him that she was with the other guy again now, that they had gotten back together now and the best thing for him (the main character in this story) to do now would be to get the hell out of here as fast as he could before six or seven of them ganged up on him, dragged him into the back alley, and all used their switchblades on him at once.

The main character of this story went back out into the bar looking for her but she was gone and he soon realized that the guy with the knife in the bathroom hadn’t been joking, or not much. There were at least three or four other gang members ranged around the bar and they were all quietly drinking and waiting for the signal to do the deed, and the deed was this: drag him into the alley and go to work on him with their knives, four or five against one, just like he’d been warned was the case. He could tell, he could very much feel, by their presence who these people were and that none of this was a joke, at all; they were gang members in a gang town that had been a gang town since day one and still was. (See the End Note at the end of this very true story.) If he didn’t leave, and leave now, he would get himself killed or at the very least sent straight to the hospital, left for dead or half-dead in a Lincoln Park alley near the dumpsters behind a dive bar.

Later that night, or earlier that day, anyway it was around six in the morning, as he was lying in his tiny apartment on the futon finally about to drift off to sleep after a very tormented and drunken few hours lying there thinking about her, his telephone rang. It was in the days of the fabled answering machine. He refused to answer the phone; but he did listen to what she said into the answering machine.

She accused him of abandoning her and she informed him that she had become the victim of an unwanted act of sodomy which had been perpetrated upon her in her apartment by the ex-boyfriend who she’d disappeared with and taken back to her apartment. There was something about the way she said it all that told him that this time she wasn’t lying about any of it. And she told him it was his fault and he realized that she was right, as absurd as it all sounded, she was definitely correct: it was his fault. It was his fault! It was all his fault. And this was like The Wall of Pink Floyd.

She said, “It’s all your fault because…because…because you disappointed me.”

End Note: Of Chicago’s 200-plus neighborhoods, 100 of them (or more) are run by gangs; the rest are run gang-style by people who wear conventional business suits and parade around as if they aren’t in a gang. Because there are many ways to stab someone in the back, and not all of them involve knives. Someone is doing it to you this very second, you can be sure (if you are good) (one way or another).

The Drifter and All Images by The Drifter

And…

Hail to the Drifter

Last year, during the run of normal conversation about the upcoming opening of this site, it was decided that the Drifter should hold court every Sunday. He has quickly become a tradition to the degree that I was gobsmacked catatonic to learn that he has been shaking the dust off his boots for an entire year. 

In the world of writing, getting creative things done in an orderly manner is as likely as the Wildebeest outwitting the Lionesses. Some things cannot happen because they run contrary to the governing Will of the universe. In the U.S.A. this was compared to the likelihood of the Chicago Cubs winning a World Series, but when that happened ten years ago, those who turned to St. Jude for succor gained an extra kick in their steps and shone less sadness in their smiles. But since it has been ten years, some of the old lachrymose expressions have slowly returned to faces that look more natural that way. But such a fate will never befall the Drifter (said to be of or near Chicago), who, frankly, tells it like it is and does not need a well pitched game or left handed hitting to get himself across.

Hail to the Drifter, may he find solace on the long and dusty road as another year begins.

Leila 

“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.