Bob Dylan’s Secret
an essay by Steve Nelson
  

 

Well Bob you caused quite a stir with that Victoria’s Secret ad—and I’ve got to tell you that while most people, even the self-proclaimed hardcore Dylan fans, cried sellout, I understood completely; not only why you did it but how it all fits together, you and Victoria’s Secret, your song and that girl. I’ve been listening to your stuff for a while, but it’s different since I’ve seen that ad, since I’ve seen the flash of your sour puss as you gaze upon that dreamboat in Venice, well, it all makes sense to me now, at least I understand what you’re getting at, and I’m not sure everyone else does, which is why I’m writing you, to lend my support, to let you know that I get it, and maybe to give you something to think about too.

You’ve always had the reputation of an ambivalent sort, mumbler, back to the audience, that sort of thing, but obviously you’ve had plenty to say, and wanted others to hear it too—if you didn’t care you wouldn’t be singing, but you are, and while the Victoria’s Secret ad may seem like a desperate grasp to some, I see that it’s a stroke of genius, your genius, which I could never fully appreciate until I heard your voice as I looked into the eyes of that temptress and felt like crying, and that’s the point you’re trying to make, right, that that’s what life is all about—desire, pain, suffering. 

“All life is suffering,” that’s what the Buddhists say, that’s what the original Buddha discovered that day long ago as he sat under that tree and tried to make sense of his life, all his pleasures, then his sacrifices. He had nearly starved to death when he figured it out finally, and he figured out more than that of course, but that was the first truth and you really can’t move on to the others if you don’t get that one first and I’ve been thinking about this for years, and have had an idea what he meant, but I never really felt it until I saw you in that Victoria’s Secret ad and felt finally that desire does not lead to frustration, but rather is frustration, because we know, we know, that our desires can never really be satisfied.

So it seems you’re spreading the word and maybe that makes you a Bodhisattva, huh? Has anyone ever called you Bodhisattva Bob? Maybe not. I read in a book once that you’d “found” God, which as far as I know isn’t the Buddhist way, but can’t you see how it all fits together, you and Victoria’s Secret and the Buddha—now that’s a crazy love triangle, huh, and it’s all about time, isn’t it?  Time is the four letter word and in a Victoria’s Secret ad, especially a television ad, time is key, because the fleeting glimpse is all you get. As soon as you begin to soak something in, a juicy leg, a delicious breast, it’s gone, replaced with another image, the blue eyes, the smoldering lips, which again lasts just long enough for you to think you’re about to get a good look before it too disappears. You want it to come back, you want a better look, but you can’t have it because time is going, because time never stops. That’s what you’re getting at, right? That Life = Desire and Life = Suffering because in life the fleeting glimpse, the passing glance, is all one can ever get, and I can see now that you’ve been singing about this all along, but I never quite got it until now, which I guess means I’m a step or so behind you Bob, but that’s not a bad thing, a step behind you is not such a bad place to be. 

Now of course I don’t mean to say that your songs are about eyeballing supermodels. They’re about the human condition, right, the fact that life is temporary, that in life we’ve got ourselves and other people and everything else is just a means to better understand or appreciate one or the other. My favorite songs of yours are the ones about love and I like the way they mix that bursting feeling of falling in love with the somber acknowledgement that it can’t last, that is to say that even if the love affair lasts, the buoyant feelings of the onset don’t. Most other people’s songs are about one thing or the other, are either celebrations or laments, but you somehow capture the glee and the gloom at the same time, because that’s how we truly experience life, if we’re able to open ourselves to our feelings, we get the birth and death, as it were, all at once, and maybe yours are the only real love songs ever written, though I think I may be overstepping myself a bit by saying that, I haven’t listened to everyone’s love songs and don’t want to, but I say that because the achy throb that runs through me while listening to your songs is the same I have when I’m trying to bring a prancing Victoria’s Secret model into focus. There’s desire of course, longing, and simultaneously, and that’s the key, simultaneously, there’s melancholia, borne out of the the admission that the dream can never be realized. And the dream is not just a lusty one, not just want of the girl, though others are obviously confused on this point. Really the dream is that of stopping time, and the downheartedness I feel after seeing a Victoria’s Secret ad is the same I get when listening to your songs like “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right” or “To Ramona” or “I Want You” and I almost hate to start listing songs because I’m sure to leave some out, to make some mistakes, but like in “Lovesick,” the song in the ad, the begrudging admission you make is that nothing can last. I think that’s what we want most out of life—something to last forever. Instead we learn that all we get are moments, a second, an hour, a day, a lifetime. These are all just moments. The moment is all we have, but the moment is not enough, unless it’s too much, of course, which it is at times.

I hope I’m not confusing you Bob. And before I go on I should say that Victoria’s Secret has always done something for me, even back before they hit the TV, when they were just catalogs that came in the mail. What delightful surprises amidst the bills and credit card applications, and that Stephanie Seymour was always my favorite, because she was the sultriest one, the most divine, the most diabolical, and I see that she’s acting now—she was in that Pollock movie with Ed Harris, she played, I don’t know, “the beautiful woman,” which I suppose is the kind of work she’ll get. Did you see that movie, Bob? Do you go to the movies? I know that Elvis used to rent out movie theaters. You’re not quite Elvis, but you are Bob Dylan, which is still something, and I can’t imagine that you wouldn’t go to movies, I suppose you do, but famous people are so mysterious. I wonder if you even know who Stephanie Seymour is. I think she used to be married to some rock stud. I don’t know if they’re still together though I doubt it—you know how relationships seem to fall apart nowadays. But if you don’t know who she is you should take a look some time. She’ll bring you to tears, if you know what I mean, and of course you do, because what I’m trying to do is take what you’ve told me and say it back to you, right? Is that what I’m trying to do? I guess I’m not so sure. 

Another thing before I move on is about that biography of yours I read a few years ago. I’m sad to report it didn’t tell me much. The most interesting thing was that on your way to record Desire you picked up that fiddle player on the side of the road. Is that true? I can’t imagine that album without that, and I think that’s my favorite album of yours, though I know it’s wrong to pick favorites, as it discounts everything else, and is small-minded, and here I’ve just done it twice, but I like to listen to that album over and over, some of those songs seem to have no middle and end, they just are, they’re so natural. “Sarah” of course just kills me, and I love “The Hurricane.” The only problem is that when I listen to that album I can’t fall to sleep because the songs keep going on and on in my head. I think I read somewhere that some guy killed his mom because she was hassling him to turn off his stereo on which he was playing Desire over and over and over. What is it about that one? Maybe it’s circular, huh, like the Buddhist cycle of life and death. Well, it’s literally a circle too, but that’s not important. Facts rarely are.

But about that biography, everything was pretty superficial, which is the problem with most biographies, don’t you think? I mean, if I ever got famous and someone wrote a biography about me, they’d have to guess at most everything and probably get it all wrong, the important stuff, that is, because I’m a stealthy sort and I think you’re the same way. I mean, who knows what’s really going on inside another person? I say no one, though those are the interesting things, and I suppose that’s the other problem with life—besides the fact that it goes too fast and ends in death, we can never really know another person. We’re isolated, alone. These are the two things we want most out of life but we can never have them. (I hope this isn’t bringing you down Bob. For example, if you were having a good day and then began reading this and now feel like crap, I do apologize.)

I suppose now I should bring up sex, because to say this is not about sex would be wrong, right? Well, I’ll admit, as you surely know, that there’s no greater joy than being wrapped up with a beautiful woman. Sure, there are other kinds of peace and satisfaction, other kinds of gladness, but for joy, pure joy, that’s it, that’s tops, the thing we do that empties our minds, that makes time disappear, and that’s no secret, or at least it shouldn’t be, and I guess what I’ve always liked about the Victoria’s Secret girls is that they seem to promise this time-stopping joy, because when you soak in the gaze of one of these girls for a long moment, well, you know how everything else just goes away.

Depicting them as angels is another stroke of genius, not yours this time, but somebody’s, and aren’t all strokes of genius so obvious after the fact, don’t they all make perfect sense, and this one too relates to time and life and death and that other place, heaven, is it? That imaginary realm beyond time. When a beautiful woman opens herself to you you’re in heaven, right? That’s what I think. And giving the girls their angel wings not only acknowledges this, but the sacredness of the sex act as well. I don’t know how you’ve been operating over the years Bob, but I’ve always been an all-or-nothing guy, that is, I want sex with love, but not either alone, not just love, not just sex. I’d rather be alone than have only one of the two though I’m beginning to realize that an all-or-nothing guy usually ends up with nothing. Sometimes he may think he’s got it all, but then when it all comes clean he’s got nothing, and that nothing’s a lot worse when you think you may have had it all. Maybe nobody can have it all, but that’s what I’ve always wanted; I guess I’m simple that way. But surely you know that simplicity leads to complexity, that simplicity is just denial of complexity, right? Anyway, I know when I find myself caught in the eyes of a Victoria’s Secret model it nearly suffocates me and I’m not sure what I’m feeling—lust, love, fear, pain, and it sure seems that when you’re singing in that commercial you’re feeling the same things—lovesick, sexhungry, captivated, and contemptuous all at once—and you’re “sick of it” because you can’t stop the feelings, you know you’re at their mercy.

You’re a soldier of love, Bob, and we both know that all soldiers get wounded eventually. And we know that it’s not really about sex at all, that sex is only a means to an end, a pathway, that the coalescence of bodies is simply the closest thing we have to stopping everything and getting a real glimpse of another person. That’s why it’s a sacred transaction, why the girls are angels.  They’re otherworldly, of course, not coming literally through our television sets into our living rooms but more than that; in situations like this, one is brought face to face with the truth that any satisfaction a person can have is fleeting, temporary, doomed. This is what you’re trying to tell us, right Bob, this is the sad reality of life, that nothing can last, because time can’t be stopped, that the entirety of our existences are mere flashes, getting every moment ridiculously smaller and smaller. From what I understand the Buddhists would say that putting this into perspective is exhilarating, that’s what the Eightfold Path is about, dealing with this, and maybe someday we’ll get to that state, huh? Where every moment is an infinity unto itself and everything is good and fine. Of course, wanting to get there stands in the way of getting there, that’s a hurdle for you, but I’m not getting tripped up on that right now because the way I’m feeling I don’t see how that state can really exist. I mean, how can you tell yourself there’s a state of mind where “nothing matters” and “everything’s perfect” when every time you see a beautiful woman prancing in her underwear you begin to ache?

And we feel that ache other times too, with other people, but it’s strongest when there’s lust swirled up with it, which should be no surprise. Matters of the flesh are of paramount importance to us because we are made of flesh, 100%. There’s something more to us, of course, but there’s nothing else, so it makes sense that we do things for our bodies—sex, drugs, vitamins, exercise.  If we can get our flesh right, we can get in touch with that something more, maybe, even if for just an instant. That’s heaven if you ask me. Heaven exists only on earth, only when we forget the fact that we’re going to die. Life teaches us that we’re going to die. When we learn that, we want things, like love, like heaven. And these things that we want most of all really don’t exist, are mere flights of our imagination—while the one thing we don’t want, death, is the only certainty. If we didn’t know we were going to die, if we didn’t care, we could live happily. We wouldn’t need love, we wouldn’t dream of heaven. But we’re too smart for that. Or too scared. Love is fear of death in a way. It’s more than that, but we want it because it’s something we think will last. That’s what we want most in life, something to last. When we realize that can’t happen, we ache, and at the bottom of the ache is our loneliness, our admission of absolute isolation in time and space, our acknowledgement that the world is so big and we’re so small, that there’s so much we’ll never see, never know, never say, because time is passing, because time won’t stop, and we are powerless to do anything about it. That’s why all life is suffering, right?

Sometimes I think it’s simply a matter of not caring anymore, but I know that’s not non-attachment, but surrender, denial, that that’s not living, and life, hard as it may be, is all we’ve got. So Bob I guess I’m writing this because Victoria’s Secret ads have always made me sad, but this one that you’re in doesn’t, it doesn’t leave me feeling quite as gloomy anyway because your lovesick scowl tells me that I’m not quite alone, that your anguish is the same as mine, and now when I hear you sing I know you’re saying that life’s impossible, that we’re mortal, destined to lose everything, and suffer in the meantime. I’ve felt this under my skin for a long time but now that I’ve tried to spell it out I feel a little better about things. It’s like when there’s a stink in a room and you don’t know where it’s coming from, you’re uneasy. When you discover the source, though it still smells the same, it’s not as bad anymore, because you can deal with it. So I guess this is to thank you for helping me deal with this. I feel a little better about things now and next time I see a Victoria’s Secret ad and can’t look away at least I’ll understand why I ache like I do—because I’m alive, right, because I’m feeling the ache of life. It’s no great feeling, but better than death anyway. Because death is darkness. Because when you die, you’re gone. And even though life is doomed, we can still forget about that once in a while, we can wrap ourselves up with angels and forget about it, right? Is this what you’ve been trying to tell me Bob? Well, this is what I’m getting.

  

©2005 Steve Nelson

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