When I was a little kid, it came to me somehow that I wanted to be a hobo. The notion of being free of everything was one point to it; but the other was to find, through wandering, heaven. Years later I tested that theory by hitching around North America (the account is, of course, in Dream Weaver) and I did not find heaven. Instead I found cold and lack of sleep and hunger and hostility from authorities. I did also find people with unusual ideas and people with an unusual willingness to help, and, in retrospect, it made it all worth while. But rather than heaven, loneliness and physical suffering were the general results.
That comes as no surprise to me now, and I will go further into the meaning of this in a new essay to be written this week. The notion to write on this subject now comes to me from two movies that I've seen in the past 8 days - one already mentioned - On the Road - and the other a new one, Inside Llewyn Davis. In both there is loneliness and travel, one for knowledge and the other to gain fame, but both come together in the gestalt of that era, the early post-war era that spawned my vast generation. But it did not start or end there - and continues as a Western cultural theme today - and takes in many other cultures as well. It is the story of the wanderer, the truth seeker. I have mentioned it before in the context of the pilgrimage, of our religious leaders - including Jesus, Peter, John the Baptist, Gautama Buddha and Lao Tsu - heading out on the lonesome path for inner enlightenment.
But the tale of the folk singer (Llewyn Davis), of the writer (Kerouac), and of the wanderer is different today. Final enlightenment is not expected, nor is a particular creed followed. Instead, our wanderers live on fate, on the eternally unknown, and get what the unknown will give - loneliness, poverty and death. The wanderer today is not Christ or John, but rather the tragic figure, a part of ourselves escaped into a freedom that eventually ends in a cold box car or a greasy alley. To be a wandering holy man is tough, but to be a hobo is tragic.
Enter Bob Dylan
It always mystified me how Bob Dylan got to be one of the classic musical figures of our time. His voice is not good. His musicianship is mediocre. His lyrics are often incoherent when taken as a whole. Yet his music still has presence, which I have to admit to feeling - and liking. But of course, someone who hitched America in search of something would like it, as would anyone with an American soul. Yes, there are fragments or whole stanzas of the Civil Rights movement thrown in to some of his songs, but more often than not we have tales of wanderers equated loosely with biblical stories. Where are you going my blue- eyed son? The wanderer as grown child finding his new path, unknown to even him, a lost prophet in the desert. Highway 61 - God said to Abraham...another tale of a man on the run, but hidden within is a message, a quest - the quest of Abraham following the command of his god (or, like Jonah, running from it). And on and on - in a whiny, hopeless voice on a simple guitar and ridiculous harmonica, Dylan is our hobo, our free man singing our inner desire for freedom from work, from mortgages, from complications, to find - to find Meaning. Even as the path takes us through suffering and deprivation, even as the meaning points towards the abyss. He, Dylan, identified the American soul better than many others, and he profited, as pop-prophets often do in America, but that is besides the point. There is the longing there, what I picked up in near-infancy - the longing made possible through freedom of movement through a vast continent-sized nation. We can do it. Everything, even heaven, might be out there. And I wonder if God knows that we are waiting and ready, waiting as a nation, for a Moses to lead us out of the desert to the land of our longing.
That comes as no surprise to me now, and I will go further into the meaning of this in a new essay to be written this week. The notion to write on this subject now comes to me from two movies that I've seen in the past 8 days - one already mentioned - On the Road - and the other a new one, Inside Llewyn Davis. In both there is loneliness and travel, one for knowledge and the other to gain fame, but both come together in the gestalt of that era, the early post-war era that spawned my vast generation. But it did not start or end there - and continues as a Western cultural theme today - and takes in many other cultures as well. It is the story of the wanderer, the truth seeker. I have mentioned it before in the context of the pilgrimage, of our religious leaders - including Jesus, Peter, John the Baptist, Gautama Buddha and Lao Tsu - heading out on the lonesome path for inner enlightenment.
But the tale of the folk singer (Llewyn Davis), of the writer (Kerouac), and of the wanderer is different today. Final enlightenment is not expected, nor is a particular creed followed. Instead, our wanderers live on fate, on the eternally unknown, and get what the unknown will give - loneliness, poverty and death. The wanderer today is not Christ or John, but rather the tragic figure, a part of ourselves escaped into a freedom that eventually ends in a cold box car or a greasy alley. To be a wandering holy man is tough, but to be a hobo is tragic.
Enter Bob Dylan
It always mystified me how Bob Dylan got to be one of the classic musical figures of our time. His voice is not good. His musicianship is mediocre. His lyrics are often incoherent when taken as a whole. Yet his music still has presence, which I have to admit to feeling - and liking. But of course, someone who hitched America in search of something would like it, as would anyone with an American soul. Yes, there are fragments or whole stanzas of the Civil Rights movement thrown in to some of his songs, but more often than not we have tales of wanderers equated loosely with biblical stories. Where are you going my blue- eyed son? The wanderer as grown child finding his new path, unknown to even him, a lost prophet in the desert. Highway 61 - God said to Abraham...another tale of a man on the run, but hidden within is a message, a quest - the quest of Abraham following the command of his god (or, like Jonah, running from it). And on and on - in a whiny, hopeless voice on a simple guitar and ridiculous harmonica, Dylan is our hobo, our free man singing our inner desire for freedom from work, from mortgages, from complications, to find - to find Meaning. Even as the path takes us through suffering and deprivation, even as the meaning points towards the abyss. He, Dylan, identified the American soul better than many others, and he profited, as pop-prophets often do in America, but that is besides the point. There is the longing there, what I picked up in near-infancy - the longing made possible through freedom of movement through a vast continent-sized nation. We can do it. Everything, even heaven, might be out there. And I wonder if God knows that we are waiting and ready, waiting as a nation, for a Moses to lead us out of the desert to the land of our longing.
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