note to file: I & I - bob dylan, annie hall, and you - sadi ranson-polizzotti

You may never find this but right now that’s not important. The important thing is that I get this down on paper, filed away somewhere because otherwise, the historical record will be inaccurate and that pisses me off and frankly, it just seems wrong and I hate that. I studied ethics and philosophy. It bothers me that something that ought be said would be left unsaid. This may or may not be of import.

I was watching the film Annie Hall, by, of course, Woody Allen. You know the film, and if you do not, see it. But if you know it, you probably know it as a major cultural reference. We use it as a sort of identifier of sorts. There are those people who like Woody Allen and those who do not. We identify with those and those who do not. “Them” – “Us”. It helps us sort out who we think we might get on with and who not. We may hate that we do this, but we do it anyway. There are likewise Dylan people and then not-Dylan people, which is not to say that all Dylan people feel kindredness because I don’t think they do and this sort of bothers me. But this is as absurd as saying everyone who likes pistachio ice cream should get along. Just because we share a common thing does not necessarily mean that we have much in common or really anything other than this one thing. And this one thing – this love of Dylan – may mean one thing to you and another thing to me. You may get X. out of it, while I get Y.

What I do not understand however is this: Since we all do truly care about Dylan and his music, I wonder sometimes about the disparity I feel within the community, which is almost a “Competitive Dylanness” (I have this song and you don’t, nonny nonny boo boo and etc. or “I know so&so and you don’t….”). It’s nonsense and I frankly don’t get it and in a way I’m glad I don’t get it because the minute I understand it, that’s the day I become it. I want only what is best for the community of Dylan – no, I’m no angel – never claimed to be. But we share a common love: and as such, I always encourage the exchange of information. To me, this is key – but then, communication in general is important to me because I am, by trade, a writer (this and more, but let’s stick with that).

Back to Annie Hall because I digressed and this is important. Alvie Singer goes on a date with a reporter who is a Dylan “fan” and just covered the Dylan show the week before. for Rolling Stone Magazine. The show, she tells Alvie, in an almost holy tone (she is worshipping at the Altar of Dylan), gave her “the chills” and then she launches into a verse from “Just Like A Woman” as if it were absolutely transcendent, a sort of litany – you know these lines – but hear them here, infuse them, with an absurd reverence as the reporter says, recounting her Dylan-chills;



She aches just like a woman
She breaks just like a woman
She makes love just like a woman
…but she breaks – just like a little girl

I’ll give the whole stanza here, but there is a key word and you’ll no doubt see it glaring at you:

When we meet again
Introduced as friends
Please don't let on that you knew me when
I was hungry and it was your world.
Ah, you fake just like a woman, yes, you do

Fake! So in the final account, this character “fakes just like a woman.” Don’t tell me there’s not some measured anger beneath the surface of this song and not so deep. It’s a trick to handle it this well – to make it sound pretty and lilting while sticking the knife in, yet the knife goes in. In Allen’s film, the reporter has totally missed the point.

Okay. So this is the progressive Dylan woman of the seventies? Shit we were in trouble. A few things, and this is just my read: I never considered Just Like A Woman to be a very flattering song. Call me crazy and color me stupid but fine to break, but “just like a little girl”? So what does that mean – I’m not sure I see the need for the descriptor, “little girl” – because I find this sort of obnoxious, almost as if “little boys” don’t break. Sure, that’s an over-read on my part, but there you have it. I mean no offense; just something to think about while you’re thinking it’s all So Fucking Romantic, because I don’t think it is, because these lines to me are the big tip-off:

All of this equals “the chills”. Sure, I’ve gotten the “chills” at Dylan shows, I admit. It can be and has been an incredible experience and one that I find hard to really express, though I have tried as best I can. But this stereotype in Annie Hall – it just gave me the willies. As for Alvie, when she asks, “You catch Dylan?” His answer, “Me? No, no – I couldn’t make it. My raccoon had hepatitis.”

It’s worth noting that on this date, that Alvie and the Dylan reporter are currently on is one in which she is to cover the visit of the Maharishi. “It’s transplendent!” she exclaims over and over gain.

Alvie remains unmoved and ironic, but the reporter is perhaps a sad stereotype of a very surface-level and cursory attempt of the ‘typical’ Dylan ‘fan.’ The suggestion: we have lank hair. We are gaunt and flighty. We are stoners who spend hours braiding her hair. We are kind of flighty and always peaceful.

Heaven forefend – it is possible that a Bob Dylan “fan” (a word I never really think apt, because even Baez agreed that Dylan doesn’t really have “fans” – its’ not quite the same thing. You know what I’m talking about.) – So heaven forefend that a Dylan person be a fiery wild-haired electric prolific take-no-prisoners-bitch, at times, because that’s everyone and at least you know you can be and that’s honest. As to the male stereotype, I cannot speak because I am not male and wouldn’t presume to know any of you because I tend to believe that we are all individuals. That there is no “type” of Dylan-person. That like Dylan, we refuse to be defined and pigeonholed.

We are a defiant, rebellious bunch. Perhaps this is why we identify with Dylan himself. Who, if you are here, doesn’t hear The Chimes of Freedom and the lines;

Tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake
Tolling for the luckless, the abandoned an' forsaked
Tolling for the outcast, burnin' constantly at stake
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing

and just so see the whole damn thing and more, hear it, and see yourself young and vital and defiant and ducking inside of rainy doorways while the rain falls sideways as you madly go about doing whatever it is that you’re doing because you’re so full of élan. There has to be some spirit of rebellion and irony in you, I wager, for you to really get into Dylan. Without the ability to view life as so tragic that it is often comic and so fucking ironic, how can you possibly identify? The thing is – Dylan runs the gamut of human emotions, and we know, or will know, pretty much every one of them.

It’s so interesting to me that Annie Hall is such a cultural reference today, as is Woody Allen, who notes Dylan in his film – culture referencing culture. The whole cultural loop thing that I discussed with Phil Gounis. Still, while acknowledging him as a big deal, ultimately Allen is somewhat dismissive – or perhaps he is being ironic. Hard to say. Either way, he was smart, savvy, and/or prescient enough to know that Dylan was a big deal, regardless of how he (Allen) personally felt about Dylan and his music, he knew he was a cultural touchstone.

So we have the markers of the moment – the things we use as ‘identifiers’ perhaps – our touchstones with which and by which, we define ourselves. I like Annie Hall, I like Bob Dylan – by saying such things, we reveal a bit of ourselves.

I have to write this piece, if only that it is print somewhere to make these points because even if this is never read and simply sits in the either, I will know that it exists in type as a document, forever somewhere in a code of 1s and 0s and html tags, all virtual. All true.

I have never met a “type” of Dylan person – I would guess myself as the last cultural stereotype of a Dylan “fan”. I followed the Butthole Surfers around the country, I listen to serious hardcore, I listen to a lot of so-Cal music, I listen to opera as well as amazingly dramatic classical Louis Vierne, I love Erik Satie, I love Chet Baker, I love The Feels, I love Neutral Milk Hotel, I love Paul Rishell, I love Odetta, I love Al Green, I think Sinead O Conner has an incredible voice and so does Margo Timmins, I love Bach’s Solo Cello Suite No 1 G Major. I like a lot of stuff and I can’t even begin (though I’ve tried) to give you some sense (factor in Bongwater, Killdozr, Saint Saens, Nico). I have to stop myself now. You get my point. I would guess that your musical taste runs the gamut likewise. So pigeonhole who?

Yet I love Annie Hall and find it to be one of the funniest films I have ever seen. Allen is good at stereotypes, and is a parody of himself, of course. Everyone is amped up: the neurotic is overly neurotic, the Dylan critic is a parody of a Dylan critic, Annie’s WASP family is an overly-painted idea of what a WASP family is expected to be and yet we laugh because there is some small element of truth in all of it. It may be tiny, but we laugh because we recognize it.

So the Dylan critic Allen gives us – maybe she exists. Christ knows I know all kinds of Dylan appreciators and it runs the gamut. I’ve never met this type Allen presents, but have no doubt this person exists. What I find most interesting is that this type was and is largely created by the media: the “idea” of what a “folkie” or Village person who frequented Café What etc etc was or still is.

We are not afforded the luxury of change, if we ever were that. Fuck if I was a Mod and not a folkie and loved loved loved Dylan regardless like my father who was as Mod as it got yet is one of the biggest Dylan people I know and from whom I got my first exposure and it was from then on – he says – that I drove him nuts from a very very early age, insisting that he play continuously Bringing It All Home. Trust me – my father never was a hippie-dippy guy and is not now. He collects rare Alpha Romeos, wins prizes for them and has sold to people you would know. He rode a white Vespa (so did I) and wore black RayBans. He wore peg-leg pants and skinny ties. He never protested a goddamn thing though he holds strong and passionate believes. He never went barefoot but went streaking.

More? There’s me. The surface things. I dress in mostly vintage clothes that are from the forties, this or vintage Mod. I used to also own a white Vespa, which went Kaboom, sadly. I drive a red Mini Cooper. My other writings are considered “radical” – the thought of which, amuses me, because I am the least controversial person I know and I do mean that. I have long hair, yes. I do listen to a lot of Dylan, yes. I also listen to a lot of other music. I do not have a “crush” on Bob Dylan. I do not worship at his altar: I can identify with his songs and I am grateful for this. I am described by others in various ways, “bitch”, “girl”, “dazzling”, “quirky”, “compelling”, “reckless”, “light”, “prolific”, “difficult”, and probably some really nice things and some really awful things. Who cares. I don’t identify by others – but by myself, right? That’s how it ought be. You know it, Dylan knows it.

So what’s my point? I suppose only to ask you – and tell you, should you find this piece, this – that I just found it interesting how a major cultural reference had referenced Dylan which I thought was savvy and smart but that we had been reduced to such a stereotype that it hit me hard and fast and really, quite funny because I so did not identify with this “type” before me and in that moment I realized that I defied every social register.

I am not sorry for this. Nor ought you be.

As for Dylan, I expect he remains utterly unapologetic.