The Wikiness

I saw you, Bob Dylan, walking toward me last Sunday on Decatur headed north. Your blue eyes darted onto my bright yellow t-shirt, the one with Nina Simone’s portrait and her defiant love cry printed on the front. A slight smile crinkled your mouth’s edge, and in a flash, your eyes sparkled friendly approval, reassuring me of the soundness of my t-shirt concept–borrowing big ideas from big people and sharing them in my own way.

Of course, that was your game at the beginning, too, Bob–you weren’t content with merely listening to Big Joe and Woody Guthrie. You sought them out, hung your ideas off their structure, and doing so, you found your voice. Your approbation reminds me these shirts speak for me.

I’m overcome with gratitude. “I’d love to talk with you further, Bob, about my plans, and whatnot. Would you be my guest at Adolfo’s, that wonderful little walk-up on Frenchmen?”

“I’ve eaten. But I’ll have a drink with you.” 

“Great!,” I say. “We’ll want a place where people mind their business, Let’s head over to Esplanade. We could get a table at Igor’s Checkpoint Charlie. No one will bother us.”

You agree, and soon we’ve slipped inside the dark joint with laundromat attached and found a table away from the crack of pool cues. 

“What’ll you have?”

“Bourbon on ice,” you say. 

“Well, it’s Checkpoint Charlie’s–they won’t have your brand,” I tell you. “What’ll you have instead?” 

“Evan Williams. I like the vanilla and oak notes.”

When I return to the table with the drinks, you notice I’m drinking nothing stronger than tonic and a twist.

“Alcohol no longer works for me,” I shrug. “But my spirit is still here. Salut!” and we clink glasses and drink.

I describe my American t shirt line, giving you a few examples–Eleanor Roosevelt, Theodore Roethke, Sitting Bull. You nod your head again and ask, “What about Octavia Butler?”

“Yes! I have her quotation: ‘The only lasting truth is change. God is change.”

“That’s a good one.”

I feel emboldened. “Bob, one of your songs declares, ‘Don’t ask me nothin’ about nothin’. I just might tell you the truth.’ So I’m not gonna ask you nothin’ about nothin’. We’ll deal with whatever truth arises.”

You smile, and nod.

Feeling encouraged, I go on. “With this shirt series, I know I can’t control what people think, but I’m trying to make some people, people who are open to it, think higher thoughts than they would otherwise. I want to inspire them, I guess.” 

I’m suddenly embarrassed telling you, the Nobel Prize winner, this. But perhaps warmed by the whiskey, you kindly reply. 

“No, Andrew. This is why we create. The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for anyone but inspire them?”

We talk a bit longer. I tell you how distracted I get, thinking how my reputation will change when my stuff hits the market. I wonder when it is that I can say I’ve succeeded. 

You finish your bourbon and look at me with your piercing eyes, “Now listen, it’s not to anybody’s best interest to think about how they will be perceived tomorrow. It hurts you in the long run.”

I am letting this sink in when you tell me, “At the end of the day, a man is successful if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night, and in between does what he likes.”

Thanks, Bob. I needed that.

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NOTE: Dylan’s words about the purpose of art, success, and reputation are all verbatim quotations taken from interviews he has given.