'Highway 61 Revisited' by Bob Dylan (1965)
He sits there, staring smugly down at us, smoking a Pall Mall, his eyes hiding behind those twin black veils. Every question asked of him he either evades or makes a joke out of. Why? Why is he so afraid of answering? His movements, the timbre of his voice. Those glasses are appropriate I guess. A wayfarer indeed. I scribble a few things in my notepad, get up and leave the room, right in the middle of an answer.
'Evidently that man doesn't like what I have to say.'
The crowd laughs. My colleagues, laughing, trying to suck up to a man who is obviously playing them like that damn harmonica strapped to his neck every night. I look back at him and shrug. 'I'm not getting any answers, so I figured I'd get a bite to eat.'
Dylan is silent. He ashes his cigarette and smiles. 'What's your name?'
'Jones.'
I wink at him and exit, hoping I've given that smug son of a bitch something to think about. Maybe he'll write a song about it.
***
The city disgusts me. Pimps and thieves populate every corner. Pushers and hookers. Homeric sirens. Sorry, but I'm on a different sort of odyssey. Steam rises from the sewers as if hell resided just below the cracked, dirty pavement. I'd believe it. I pass a kiosk. The headlines are about him, of course, about how he just blew into town.
His name change is public knowledge by now. Zimmerman. I find it strange he constantly avoids his past, how he avoids the entire topic of the past entirely. It's not like it's of great importance, but it is interesting. Says a lot about who he is. How a history and an identity are things you can simply invent. It makes me wonder how many people I know are simply invented personae. Maybe Dylan is just one of the few people who are aware of their own charade. A strange admiration of the man grew inside me.
I pass a park bench and decide to sit down. Behind me are the inevitable pillars made of rock and stone, life teeming. A man with a shopping cart passes by me. In it is a shovel and a pile of masks. He stops relatively close to me and starts to dig. I get up and approach him.
'...just got my mask on, yes sir, don't bother me none I got my masks and got em here so's I can get em whenever I wants em, yes sir.'
I stand behind him and watch as he fills the hole up with different identities. One of them is a clown. One is a lion. One looks like the president. Another resembles a superhero.
'Good luck with that.' I say.
The man turns around and tips his hat at me. 'Don't need luck when I got my masks, sir.'
A smirk emerges on my face. 'Masks.' I start to walk away.
What was that one thing he said in that concert once. Another journalist told me. 'Don't be scared. It's Halloween. I got my Bob Dylan mask on.'
His Bob Dylan mask on. Maybe there's a bit of a mask shop inside all of us. In this impersonal modern society, it's essential to be someone else. The risk of being yourself may be too great.
Look at Dylan. That isn't him. Look at every celebrity. That's not them. Even if they act crazy, even if they act like individuals, that isn't them. We all are actors. Shakespeare once said that all the world's a stage, and we're all players. Truer words have never been written. And I won't improve on them.