I am not, nor may I ever be, succinct.
I can't say things in a minimal way. I have words to spare.
And my mind meanders.
I was just responding to a post by Bulletholes, ( Fan Letter to Bob Dylan), in which he describes how he once stretched out a hand of friendship to the truculent troubadour, and was rudely rebuffed.
I ended up laughing at his story, and then at myself (because the Red Dirt Girl keeps telling me I should stop worrying about not being able to think of new blog posts, and just make a blog of comments).
Here's one such comment, then, demonstrating how easily my mind gets derailed.
(comment)
"I've liked mister Dylan's music greatly over the years, and read and heard a lot about him.
Waaaay
back in, I think, 1972? someone lent me a copy of Anthony Scaduto's
biography of Dylan, which I read, cover to cover, because in those days I had some stupid
internal rule that said I had to read any book that was presented to me.
Now this idea fell by the wayside, when I incautiously, nay, stupidly,
mentioned it, in confidence to a work-mate.
Oh foolish me. In about
five minutes I was besieged by people proferring worthy tomes with
titles like "The Population Ecology of the Water Vole", and " Old
English Deverbal Substantives, Derived by Means of a Zero Morpheme", I
kid you not. Dieter Kastovsky. I read it end to end, despite the fact
that it was a book bigger than a refrigerator.
Tubingen. University
of, I think it was his doctoral thesis. After that I was offered "A
Brief Introduction To Stress-Concentrations Within the Core of the A1
Nuclear Reactor."
I gradually realised, probably half way through
an exciting tome on the subject of slippage along shear planes in
pacific abyssal ooze, that my friendly colleagues were betting on where I
would break in my ongoing struggle to keep true to a foolish vow. Also,
at the time, I was working at the National Lending Library for Science
and Technology, so my tormentors had an endless supply of turgid texts.
It was something of a relief to be handed a doorstep-sized volume on Soviet Steam Locomotive Construction, in Russian.
It
was clearly beyond me, as I have no grasp whatsoever, of Russian. I
don't even know the cyrillic alphabet, so I had to content myself with
looking at the engineering diagrams and the black and white photo-plates
of triumphant sons and daughters of the revolution cheering brave
locomotive crews as the sons of Genghis hurried thousands of tons of
potatoes amidst thunder across the steppes.
Where was I? Oh.. I was replying to Bulletholes' post about Bob Dylan? Oh.
Yes,
well. Scaduto. Biography... Oh yes. Well, I was amazed that there was a
biography, after all, this was 1972, and Dylan had barely started. The
thing I learned, and that none of the intervening decades has disproved
is that the man's a great poetsingersongwriter, but an absolute arrogant
asshole."
I am the grit in the gears, the missing bolt, I am the poker of sticks into spokes. I like to know how things work, but sometimes when I take them apart and rebuild them, I have a few pieces left over. I am a man, so I tend to leave reading the instructions until after it goes wrong. And like all men I have a comprehensive mental map of the world and never need to ask directions. I never get lost, only sometimes I'm late, or end up in the wrong place entirely. It's what we do.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I love your comments buddy!
ReplyDelete