I don’t write in a journal everyday, but I have accumulated many entries over the past 50+ years beginning in 1966. Some items evolved into longer works. Among the leftovers little pieces survived. I thought a collection of these with a piece culled from the same date in a past year would make an interesting yearbook. The consistencies and inconsistencies of mind, skipping back and forth across time, provide varied perspectives. It is difficult to remember the context of the past we’ve lived; we also make suppositions about times that predate ourselves.

The few alterations from original drafts were to improve clarity. The worst of my work is not included. There remains enough mediocrity and immaturity to make me feel humble and you feel smart. There are also moments of accidental insight and incidental humor.

Author Stephen Crane referred to his little pieces as pills…apparently they were small and somewhat hard to swallow, but good for you.


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Monday, June 18, 2018

Dylan is as Dylan does


from this week in June, 1978 (I was 33)

                                    Dylan is as Dylan does
            Bob Dylan just finished touring Japan and Australia.  From what
I’ve read, he was well received, particularly in Australia where he
featured new arrangements of old works.  Rolling Stone reports he
has three albums ready for summer release (two in Japan) and will be
launching a European tour after completing a seven night warm up in
Los Angeles.  New music is to be introduced on the tour.
            I find all this entirely appropriate.  As much as I’d like to hear
that he had pulled up his Winnebago next to the little bar in Sunol, and
that his crew was unloading equipment, and this guy had been sent by
Dylan himself to tell me to come down the hill for the little show, I think
it good that he has chosen to assert his international stature instead.
People are going to listen to Dylan a hundred years from now, so there’s
no reason they shouldn’t listen to him now.
            I have not heard, however, that he has planned to join the Bill
Graham tour of the Soviet Union.  It is obviously important that he play
there.  Certainly ambassador William G. has thought to annex Robert Z.
for the Moscow connection.  After all, we already know how well Jimmy C.
likes him.

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