May Day: Can I Borrow Your Mixtape? #5

photo by Annabel Graham

ANIMALS

Have you forgotten what we were like then

when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

it's no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn't need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

i wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days

-Frank O'Hara

[1950]

& some swell springtime tunes:

Can I Borrow Your Mixtape? #5

"Untapped Glimmerance," or an 149-Page Acid Trip: Bob Dylan's "Tarantula"

"Things were running wild at that point. It never was my intention to write a book."

-Bob Dylan

I recently received one of the best (and most unconventional) Easter presents ever-- an original second edition of Bob Dylan's first and only novel, Tarantula. Dylan wrote Tarantula in 1966 at age 25, but after being injured in a motorcycle accident decided against publishing the book. Bootleg copies of the manuscript were passed around for years (much in the same vein as Mark Z. Danielewski's experimental cult novel House of Leaves) until the first edition was finally published in May 1971. The Surrealist-influenced (Dylan was allegedly reading Rimbaud and the Comte de Lautreamont at the time), Ginsberg/Kerouac/Burroughs-esque, stream-of-consciousness style of Tarantula is certainly not for everyone (case in point: in 2003, Spin magazine published an article on the "Top Five Unintelligible Sentences From Books Written by Rock Stars," with Tarantula heading in at #1 with the sentence "Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns"), but it unquestionably showcases a different side of Dylan's unmatched poetic talent while capturing the turbulent spirit and rhythm of the 1960's. Journalist Mark Spitzer called the novel "An arctic reserve of untapped glimmerance dismissed in a ratland of clichés." Others have called it something along the lines of "an acid trip that Dylan decided to record while on the toilet and accidentally sent in to publishers."

Decide for yourself after reading the following excerpt:

Guns, the Falcon’s Mouthbook & Gashcat Unpunished

aretha/ crystal jukebox queen of hymn & him diffused in drunk transfusion would would heed sweet woundwave crippled & cry salute to oh great particular el dorado reel & ye battered personal god but she cannot she the leader of whom when ye flow, she cannot she has no back she cannot… beneath black flowery railroad fans & fig leaf shades & dogs of all nite joes, grow like arches & cures the harmonica battalions of bitter cowards, bones & bygones while what steadier louder the moans & arms of funeral landlord with one passionate kiss rehearse from dusk & climbing into the bushes with some favorite enemy ripping the postage stamps & crazy mailmen & waving all rank & familiar ambition than that itself, is needed to know that mother is not a lady… aretha with no goals, eternally single & one step soft of heaven/ let if be understood that she owns this melody along with her emotional diplomets & her earth & her musical secrets

the censor in a twelve wheel drive semi stopping in for donuts & pinching the waitress/ he likes his women raw & with syrup/ he has his mind set on becoming a famous soldier

manuscript nitemare of cut throat high & low & behold the prophesying blind allegiance to law fox, monthly cupid & the intoxicating ghosts of dogma… nay & may the boatmen in bathrobes be banished forever & anointed into the shelves of alive hell, the unimaginative sleep, repetition without change & fat sheriffs who watch for doom in the mattress.. hallaluyah & bossman of the hobos cometh & ordaining the spiritual gypsy davy camp now being infiltrated by foreign dictator, the pink FBI & the interrogating unknown failures of peacetime as holy & silver & blessed with the texture of kaleidoscope & the sandal girl… to dream of dancing pillhead virgins & wandering Apollo at the pipe organ/ unscientific ramblers & the pretty things lucky & lifting their lips & handing down looks & regards from the shoulders of adam & eve’s minstrel peekaboo…

worth contemplating on a rainy day in New York

Some of my favorite random photographs and drawings that have found their way into a magical folder on my desktop:

a drawing of mine circa 2005

a shot I took of the 10 West in Los Angeles, a few summers ago

not quite sure what this is or where I found it, but I like it.

Timothy Leary in Los Angeles in the 60's, photo by Jay Brown

hibiscus Polaroid by Jay Brown

film still of Johnny Rotten performing, from a documentary by Jay Brown

Warhol polaroids by Jay Brown

my brother Charlie taking a nap with his dog in the early 80's

a "calligraph" in the shape of the Eiffel Tower by Apollinaire. My shoddy translation: "Hello world, of which I am the eloquent tongue, whose mouth, O Paris, sticks out and always will stick out at Germans" (written during the German occupation of Paris, obviously..)

no explanation necessary

a doodle I did, circa 2004

my mother outside a cinema in France, circa the early 90's