up all night, baby

"beachhead of cooperation,"
not
"beachfront"

Geez.

...Let both sides join in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved. 


All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet.

But let us begin.
[Pres. Kennedy inaugural address]

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I guess I like this speech because it looks at the whole big picture, and has positive ideas and proposals, and because it's beautiful, and most importantly because it is --

for everybody.

It is like the music of Bob Dylan:  it's for everybody.  It is offered to anybody and everybody who wants to partake, listen, consider, be inspired, question, wonder....It's offered to all the People.  It's open to everybody.  "With liberty and justice for all."  That's kind of what America means, for me.

------------------------------
Well, I ride on a mailtrain, baby, can't buy a thrill


Well, I've been up all night, baby, leanin' on the window sill

Well, if I die on top of the hill

And if I don't make it, you know my baby will.


Don't the moon look good, mama, shinin' through the trees?

Don't the brakeman look good, mama, flagging down the "Double E"?

Don't the sun look good goin' down over the sea?

Don't my gal look fine when she's comin' after me?


Now the wintertime is coming, the windows are filled with frost

I went to tell everybody, but I could not get across

Well, I wanna be your lover, baby, I don't wanna be your boss

Don't say I never warned you --

when your train gets lost. ...

------- "It Takes A Lot to Laugh, It Takes A Train to Cry"
Highway 61 Revisited album.  Columbia Records,
1965.

It's like now, Bob Dylan continues to tour.  He wouldn't need to make money; he's just a troubadour, bringing his music to the people.  Similar to John F. Kennedy -- with giant family wealth behind him, he didn't need the presidency as a high-salary job -- he did the thing, to do it.

Once I stayed in the same hotel as Bob Dylan.  (Not in same room.)  In about 2001 or 2....I was in a town for work & to see the concert, and I wondered if he might stay in that same establishment....I never saw him, but I did spot a man in the lobby area who looked like he wasn't "from here."  Just some kind of unique "energy field" about him -- he was talking on a cell phone and when he hung up I asked him if he was with the Bob Dylan tour.

He was.

He talked to me -- he didn't mind.  When I asked him how long the current tour had been going on, he looked at me and said seriously, in a low-key and precise manner, "Dylan's basically been on tour for ten years."

(So, now -- that would make 20 years.)

Thank goodness I saw the tour member, and not Bob Dylan.  I'd have made a fool of myself. 
(I saw Pat Paulsen once when I was 17 -- not on-stage, but just walking along, in Chicago.  I told him who he was.  Two or three times.
"You're Pat Paulsen!
You're Pat Paulsen!"...yikes.)

And -- a guy who was either a roadie or a back-up musician, can't remember which, with a country band, told me once, "You're actually probably luckier if you don't meet your favorite singer, or rock star, or whatever, because some of those guys are assholes.  They've just had too much adoration, admiration, and just -- too much people," or something like that....And I realized before he was done talking that he was probably right. 

I don't need to tell Bob Dylan who he is.  Or get his autograph.
(There's a great film clip in "No Direction Home," Scorsese's documentary, where you see Dylan being followed and badgered by fans and press, in the 60s, & some girl wants his autograph, and he says, "You don't need it.  If you needed it, I've give it to you."  And when you watch that you know instinctively exactly what he's saying:  we don't need the artist, we need the art.)

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