Dream analysis, the "pain" of writing?

Not for this kid, sorry about that. Don't hold it against me, please...

It’s probably not a good idea for any of us to talk about our dreams. There are all sorts of theories about what dreams actually are. Freud had one theory, Larry “The Cable Guy” has one. And I’m sure psychiatrists and psychologists have plenty of ‘em.

But this one was strange and somehow sweet. Bob Dylan dropped in to talk to me.

Now, if you’ve been reading my Substack for a while, you know I’m typically not one of these fantasy, dream-world, Tolkien kind of writer. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but I’d never go there.

So that was what was so odd about Bob just dropping in to say hi. We were in some sort of luncheonette, it seemed to me, or we were going into one. He had one of those crumpled up black hats on and was smiling at me as we started into the place.

Sorry, I just can't buy the "Writing is torture" theory. Hope that's OK with you.

“You’re pushing me,” he said, softly. Sort of smiling the crooked way he does.

“What?” I said, baffled by that comment.

He pushed the door open and looked back at me. “Keep pushing me,” he said. And again, he smiled, a sort of disarming, truly genuine, gentle smile, something you don’t see from Bob all that often.

I thought we were playing. So I said, “Is there going to be a Chronicles, Vol. II?” “Chronicles, Vol. I,” of course, is Bob’s wonderful memoir that won a National Book Award a few years back. He didn’t answer.

“I’m writing a memoir,” I told him as we walked in. “I’m calling it, “Chronicles, Vol. II” And for some reason, he started laughing, really laughing. That was it.

When I woke up this morning, a little later than usual, I sat in bed and tried to think what might have caused that. I saw a spot with Sarah Sherman on Late Night with Seth Myers where she talked about dream analysis so maybe that’s where that came from.

And the Dylan stuff, well, driving home from Moonspin in Thomasville last night, I confess that on my phone I listened to the playback of the post I did just before “A Complete Unknown” came out, a post where I shared the Introduction I wrote for the third edition of “Bob Dylan: A Descriptive, Critical Discography and Filmography” a book I’ve written for McFarland and Co. My wonderful editor Gary Mitchem, who has to be the nicest guy this side of George Saunders, told me yesterday that I’d sold 479 print copies and 74 E-books, which he said was great for a third edition.

So I just thought, well, let me listen to that Introduction again. I timed it perfectly and it finished as I pulled into the driveway. And I don’t want it to sound like I’m bragging, which I guess this does, but it’s as good a piece as I can write. That’s what I thought. I worked really hard on it, it was important to me, Bob’s been important to me, I wanted to do him and his career justice. I’d like to think I did.

But then earlier in the day, while I was doing some research for my Neil Young book, I had a YouTube chat between George Saunders and Anne LaMott playing. And the two of them started talking about how difficult and painful, even, the writing was and LaMott said “and you KNOW it’s not going to go well…” and that sort of stopped me in my tracks. I NEVER think that way. Never have. Never will.

For me, writing is enjoyable, fun, challenging, rewarding, satisfying. Not always easy, of course, but it’s the kind of rigor I enjoy and always have. So then I thought, well, maybe I’m just too shallow, too front-of-the-brain for that kind of thinking and torture. Saunders later said he had stories that he’d been messing around with for ten years. And I couldn’t go there. At least, not yet.

When Dylan sat down and wrote “Mr. Tambourine Man” I doubt that he thought, “Hey, man, this is a classic.” It happened to be one and later, I think he hinted that it was the only one of his songs he ever tried to replicate. But it just happened, it had that quality about it.

Having been a writer for this many years, thinking about the millions of words I’ve put on pages in newspapers, magazines, books, you hate to think they’re disposable and easily forgotten but they are, aren’t they? That doesn’t mean that in the process of conceiving and writing and delivering the words it’s as if it doesn’t really matter; it does, of course. At least to you, the author.

But you don’t get to decide. Which is, I guess, how it should be. In a sense, you are writing for you, but you’re really writing for an audience that, chances are, you’ll never know or meet or understand.

What made me think about all this stuff, honestly, was a post I did on January 10 about the former lead singer and songwriter for The Replacements, Paul Westerberg. He turned 65 on December 31, I’d remembered reading that and a few days later, thought he’d be a good topic for a Substack. I loved The Replacements as well as much of his solo work, found it fascinating that a high school dropout like him was writing for the New York Times and citing Carson McCullers in his songs, so I wrote a post.

Within a couple of days, I had over 5,700 views and 65 new subscribers. I was thrilled. I trotted out the other Westerberg/Replacement pieces as a way to say thanks and even re-watched and wrote about Westerberg’s DVD “Come Feel Me Tremble.” That was exciting, mind-blowing, even. Thank you to everyone for that.

But it also made me wonder, what was it about that particular post that made that happen. I thought I did a very good job with it, I genuinely think I understood him and his music, as much as anyone could, but the dimension of that response was, well, so overwhelming. And it made me think of, say, a young Bob Dylan, up at all hours of the night, writing and recording feverishly, never once thinking he was writing “a classic.” It turned out it was. And there were more to come, too.

I guess I could agonize over these posts, let the words sit there for hours and days, try to refine them, whittle them down to their essence, extract all possible meaning but I guess I’m not a deep-enough thinker or a tortured-enough artist to go there.

Writing, for me at least, is fun. It’s probing, if only ankle deep, it’s going somewhere unknown every time you start and quite often, you come away with something that you didn’t know you had in you. Sometimes, that seems to click with my loyal, always supportive readers out there, who are generous enough to “like” what I’ve written, sometimes even toss a comment or two, which I love. I read every one.

I’m truthfully not sure why “Bob” showed up. Or even if I should have shared this with my Substack friends. But sometimes, like I said the other day to a writer who was bemoaning his lack of views, you’ve gotta take a chance. Columbus did.