A series of essays.....
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| BOB DYLAN AROUND 1971 |
.....as seen through my eyes!
By: Jacqueline E. Hughes
Upon my return home after ten fabulous days in Michigan with my children and five amazing grandchildren, I discover that our Bright House DVR (Digital Video Recorder) has reached an all time high of eighty-three percent!! What? How can that be?
I know that we record many good shows each week and tend to watch them within twenty-four hours so as not to collect them for extended periods of time. With my absence, those hours filled our seemingly controlled void rather quickly. The Voice was the main culprit and, considering this season was soon to wrap-up, there were several taped hours to catch-up on before the finale on Tuesday evening.
One of my favorite contestants, a home-grown Michigan boy who attended Michigan State University and now lives in Traverse City, Michigan, Joshua Davis, performed a song written by Bob Dylan in 1971 entitled "When I Paint My Masterpiece." Dan and I have retained all of our albums from "back in the day" and I vividly recalled this particular cut off of Bob's Greatest Hits, Volume II album. It was first released by the group The Band who covered the song on their album Cahoots. This song has always held a soft spot in my heart because it represented a young, aspiring, female writer who had nothing but the entire world to roam around, play in and write about in her future. The world was a blank canvas and she was going to make sure it didn't stay that way for very long.....
I was just out of college, single, and the world truly was my oyster.
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| BEAUTIFUL DYLAN |
Listening to Joshua sing the lyrics so beautifully brought back memories of people attempting to second guess Dylan's intentions specifying his conspiracy implications, witch hunts, and turning the Spanish Steps in Rome into code for more clandestine operations. Okay. Our minds can translate almost anything into whatever we want them to be. I never bought into it. I like to think my explanation reached a more personal and straight-forward dimension called....reality. Hopes, dreams, and the power and sadness of love, for me, inspired Bob Dylan's words in "When I Paint My Masterpiece":
"Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble
Ancient footprints are everywhere
You can almost think that you're seein' double
On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs
Got to hurry on back to my hotel room
Where I've got me a date with Botticelli's niece
She promised that she'd be right there with me
When I paint my masterpiece
Oh, the hours I've spent inside the Coliseum
Dodging lions and wastin' time
Oh, those mighty kings of the jungle, I could hardly stand to see 'em
Yes, it sure has been a long, hard climb
Train wheels runnin' through the back of my memory
As the daylight hours do retreat
Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody
When I paint my masterpiece
I left Rome and landed in Brussels
With a picture of a tall oak tree by my side
Clergymen in uniform and young girls pullin' muscles
Everyone was there but nobody tried to hide
Newspapermen eating candy
Had to be held down by big police
Someday, everything is gonna be diff'rent
When I paint my masterpiece"
Lyrics © BOB DYLAN MUSIC CO
Listening to this song again, after so many years have passed, brought me back into the present. I thought about the trip I had just returned from and all of my interactions with the five young lives that teach me more about life, love, and myself than anything else could on a daily basis. Five bright stars out-shining the billions of others as they float dream-like in the heavens above. Their light is so bright it hurts my heart and brings tears to my eyes. Arms hug me so tight, my muscles ache and sweet, sugary kisses bless my lips with a thousand calories of loving deliciousness. Heaven.
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| MEMORIES FROM THE FARM |
Thanks to a very dear friend of mine and her gracious husband, Farmer Fred, my children, grandchildren and I discovered the daily workings of an active sheep farm that was surrounded by lush, forested, and rolling Michigan acreage. The 'little ones' took turns steering the enormous John Deere as their small shapes were comfortably ensconced within the distinct glow of green and yellow paint, and Cheshire Cat smiles. The quintessential white Amish farmhouse rose high above the sweet lambs hopping in the green meadow below. And, the cherry on top was the huge, multi-level barn, home to the mighty rams and celebrated 'ancient ones.' It was built by hand decades upon decades before, painted barn-red over and over again and houses unimaginable treasures, unpublished memories, from within its dusty, shadowy nooks and crevices. Truly a writer's delight!
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| "HOME TO THE MIGHTY RAMS AND CELEBRATED ANCIENT ONES" |
A simple trip to the Mall to ride the double-decker carousel over and over again turns into a journey. Pretending to capture a jungle excursion on the back of a giant gorilla, one grandson straddles the 'giant beast' as the other rides his zebra along the vast Serengeti Plain while the sun sets over a Masai village in Tanzania.
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| SERENGETI PLAIN |
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| A ROMP THROUGH THE JUNGLE |
Our imagination is captured by the miracle of flight when we visit the Air Zoo in Kalamazoo. My youngest granddaughter harnesses her inner Amelia Earhart in order to fly solo across the concrete floor in her shiny, blue machine.
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| SOLO FLIGHT |
Mother's Day memories are captured on three smart phones while fingers and toes are painted bright, Easter egg colors at a nearby Spa. Three amazing women can only just sit now while their bodies imbibe delight through every pore as they enjoy one another's company. Relax my beautiful Daughters and Mothers in your own right. Relax because the world often just gets in the way.
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| CELEBRATING MOTHER'S DAY |
Birthday celebrations were in order for my oldest granddaughter who turned eight years old during my visit. Oh, and did I happen to mention that she lost yet another tooth on her birthday eve? What a busy, wonderful time!
Bob Dylan wrote his song about all of the above....and, a little bit more.
He wrote about the struggles and emotional journey we all endure in order to find what makes us whole....our own masterpiece called 'True Love.'
He wrote about the artist striving to create his 'masterpiece' while self-doubt, disillusionment, and time nips at his heels. It's about filling a hole in our soul and discovering the power of faith, hope, and love.
He wrote about feeling the disappointment of allowing time to slip through our fingers while our masterpiece sits, incomplete. The awakening is when we realize, after all this time, that along each journey we decide to take, every story our life writes, and all the people we meet and love along the way, each one helps to complete our masterpiece. In the end, our personal masterpiece is our own legacy handed down to each life we have touched; each life that has touched us in return.
In Dylan's case, it was about the task of growing-up and simply observing his own maturity. He stopped talking strictly about his 'social world' and began speaking in terms of personal growth. "Yes, it sure has been a long, hard climb," he writes.
His whirlwind tour of Europe among a post-religious era fills him with a strong sense of the practical secularism sweeping through Europe at the time. A new Enlightenment looms on the horizon and this 'golden thread' weaves its way into Dylan's new world. He anticipates his future, at home, when the time will come for the hero to finally take the time to paint his masterpiece.
My favorite line of this song has to be, "Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody when I paint my masterpiece." I wonder if Dylan has achieved this goal yet. As long as we are breathing, everything remains possible.
Copyright © 2015 by Jacqueline E. Hughes
All rights reserved
