“Excuse me, but what’s your name?”

The beautiful girl who Johnny had been stealing looks at all too frequently and blatantly throughout lunch from halfway across the cafeteria looked up at him from her seated position at her table.  She had been eating with two other girls, but they had both just vacated the table for some reason – maybe it was divine intervention – and Johnny had jumped at the chance.

From his own table, he had noticed her walk in with her friends, and had halted mid-conversation with his, as his mouth had immediately dropped and hung slightly agape, and his eyes had trailed her as if attracted by a magnet, following her until she had sat down at a table.

That was thirty minutes ago, but to Johnny it felt like a few hours, as his eyes had been repeatedly darting from his friends who he was sitting with back to her, dividing his time into two different worlds, and thus seemingly multiplying it as well.  The air of mystery that had surrounded such a beautiful creature had captured Johnny’s mind, and even when his eyes weren’t fixed on her, his mind was.

He was a sophomore in high school now; still a lowly dreg in the hierarchy of high school seniority and popularity, but he didn’t care.  He was no longer a freshman, the true bottom of the totem pole, and to Johnny that meant he and his friends were now kings.  He knew they really weren’t, but it still gave him some satisfaction to know that he could now look down upon and laugh at the wide eyed and nervous looking freshmen who now occupied the same social status that he himself had no less than a few months ago.  It was the first day of school, and for everyone but freshmen and new students, it was an easy day.

But for those unfortunates, one false move, one slip of the hand, one incorrectly played hand of cards could mean spending the next four years of their adolescent and puberty-stricken lives alienated, bullied, picked on, or laughed at.

Johnny himself had seen it first hand; one of his friends the previous year on the first day of school had thought he was too cool for school, too good and tough for the well-worn and ancient rules of high school hierarchy that had been established as all powerful and unchanging since the dawn of high schools everywhere.  He had been talking with a girl in the hallway and been knocked accidentally by an older student.  Hoping to impress, he had turned around and yelled out, “Are you going to say excuse me?”

Well, it turned out that he had inadvertently decided to showcase his arrogance to just about the meanest junior in school, who had turned around and stared for a second, too confused by this puny little freshmen’s outburst to act immediately.  After gawking for a few seconds however, he had gotten over it, and promptly walked back and punched Johnny’s friend in the stomach.  As he leaned over, gasping for air, the kid who had punched him calmly and smilingly told him that he had just signed his abuse certificate for the next two years of his life.

This as evidence, today was a tense day for freshmen.  The one who had ensnared Johnny’s mind however, seemed above these issues.  Johnny knew she was a freshman because he didn’t recognize her or her two friends.  She could have been the senior prom queen though, given the way she looked.  And she didn’t carry herself like most girls in high school who looked as good as she did; she seemed to be aware of how she was perceived, but chose not to be cocky about it.  It was like she knew how attractive she was, but at the same time didn’t care to flaunt it, as if she had more to offer.

As she stared up at Johnny, her eyes seemed to glitter innocently at his query.  They were light blue, with just a splash of dark green – or was it the other way around?  Johnny couldn’t quite tell, but whatever exact color they were, they were sure as hell beautiful.  He stared into them for a second as she considered him, and time seemed to stretch on forever in that moment as he became lost in them.  When she spoke, he barely even heard her words.

“Uhm…I’m Ashley…Ashley Shane” she said, unsure if she should have offered her last name.  “What’s your name?”

Johnny shook himself mentally, though he immediately noticed he had done it physically a bit as well, and coughed and covered his mouth in an attempt to cover it up.  She smiled lightly, as if she knew exactly what had happened.  It wasn’t an arrogant smile; it was…a genuine smile.  And add to that beautiful.

As Johnny freed his eyes from the spell of hers, he took notice of the rest of her face, and his breath was immediately lost.  He coughed again as he attempted to find it, this time in earnest, but quickly regained himself as her smile widened.  “I’m…I’m Johnny,” he said, searching frantically in his head for the good sense and charm that normally came out in these types of situations.  They seemed to have deserted him at the moment however, as he took stock of the rest of her face.

Her eyes were by far the most amazing feature on it, but this did not detract from the obvious gorgeousness of her other features.  Her hair was somewhere between brown and blonde and fell just below her shoulders, and the left side seemed to cover her face just a bit more than the right.  Her nose, more extraordinarily cute than beautiful, was petite and round at the end, and seemed to be in perfect proportion to the rest of her face.  Her eyebrows were pencil thin, but somehow looked as though they had the potential to be quite expressive if need be.  Her smile hadn’t widened enough yet so that Johnny could see her teeth, but somehow he knew they would be as white as pearls, and probably just as perfect.  “Johnny Carpenter,” he said, reciprocating her action of giving a last name.

Johnny himself was no bad looking guy.  Regarded by some girls as the best looking in their grade, he had short brown hair that he let grow out for a few months or so at a time before buzzing it short again.  It was more near the beginning of this process now, and it rested about an inch over his dark brown eyes.  His nose was straight and average size, situated above a mouth with an award winning smile that he flashed a lot out of pure instinct, simply because he genuinely liked to smile, not because of the attention it got him from girls.  Speaking of which, Johnny was no amateur when it came to talking to.  But he wasn’t the classic attractive, popular, cocky high school guy.

Yeah, he knew he was good looking, and sometimes it came in handy.  But really he was a closet romantic, and had always known he would enjoy a passionate kiss with someone he cared about more so than an exciting sexual act with someone he didn’t.

He got over the initial shock of seeing her up close and in person, this seemingly angelic girl who had captured his attention from the moment he had seen her, and his senses seemed to return to him.  But he still couldn’t quite believe how attractive she was.  “Do you mind if I sit?” he asked, not moving until she spoke.

“Uh…I suppose not,” Ashley said, unsure of what was happening.

Johnny gratefully took a seat next to her, not removing his eyes from her while he did so.  “So do you believe in love at first sight?” he asked with a small grin.

Ashley almost snorted.  Now she knew.  “Why, are you going to say you’re in love with me?”

“What?  No,” Johnny said, feigning a look of surprise on his face.  “I’m in love with this table.  Once I saw it, I just had to come sit at it.  You just happened to be sitting here as well,” he said with a cheeky grin.

Ashley laughed.  She didn’t mind what was going on, and was never really a tease, but decided to put his ego in check some.  “Oh, okay.  So you won’t mind if I leave then?”

Johnny’s charm seemed to have no answer readily available to this, and he was a bit taken aback.  “Oh, uh…no…I mean yes…”

Ashley laughed humoredly again, amused at how flustered he became.  “Tell you what; I won’t leave – yet – if you tell me why you really came over here.”

Johnny laughed himself.  This was one gutsy freshman!  She seemed to know she had him in control, but at the same time, wasn’t abusing that power.  Gutsy and humble…along with gorgeous. And Johnny could sense, just from their few brief interactions, as well as the aura that seemed to hover around her, that her looks were really just the surface of more amazing things that lay inside.  “Alright.  You win.  I guess I don’t really love this table.  I came over to talk to you,” he said honestly.

Ashley had expected this, but she still laughed at his honesty.  “Oh?  And why did you come talk to me?”

“Well, because you look like you have a beautiful personality,” he said.

Ashley was not expecting this.  She had perhaps expected the word beautiful, or some other word relative to it, in some type of context, not because she knew she was, but because of how he had approached her.  But his words surprised her a bit, and she may have let it show a little on her expression. “Oh, well…thank you.  I think it’s okay,” she said, regaining herself.

Johnny laughed.  “I think it’s more than okay,” he said.  “Mine’s just okay,” he continued jokingly.  “But would you want to…maybe…let my personality go out on a date with yours?” he asked, perhaps a bit too hopefully.

Ashley laughed again in surprise.  “Uhm…I don’t think so,” she said, though with a slight smile.

Johnny’s heart fell. “Can I ask why?”

“Well for one thing, I don’t know you,” Ashley said.

“Sure you do.  I’m Johnny.  I have lunch this period and math next period.  What about you?”

“Uhm…what about me what?

“What do you have next period?”

“Uh…” she seemed unsure of why he was asking.  “English?” she said, as if questioning why it mattered.

“Oh, cool.  Who’s your teacher?”

“Trager, I think my schedule said.”

“Oh, awesome!  I had her last year, she’s really cool.  You’ll like her.  But there; now we know a bit more about each other.  So will you go out with me?”

Ashley laughed. “I don’t think so,” she said kindly, still amused by what was taking place.  “That’s not the way I’d want to be asked out,” she said, though she hadn’t minded it in the slightest.  She saw her friends returning from the bathroom together.  Girls always had to go to the bathroom in two’s at least.  Ashley had opted to stay and finish her food alone, a bold move for a freshman on the first day of school.  But she didn’t mind sitting by herself.

But now she saw them giggling from behind Johnny, and she smiled at him as she got up.  “Sorry Johnny,” she said, making a point of saying his name. “I see my friends.  I have to go,” she said, raising her eyebrows and smiling one last time before she did.  She took her tray with her, thinking how she had enjoyed her first lunch in high school.

Johnny’s eyes followed her as she left the cafeteria, just as they had when she had entered.  Then his mind went to work, and he got up and returned to his own table.  His friends sniggered at him as he approached, having seen her leave him.  “Ooooh, shut down by a freshman,” one of them teased.

Johnny laughed it off.  “Ah, shut up Matt,” he said as he shoved him playfully.  “Hey Franklin, you said you had math sixth period?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Who’s your teacher?”

“Uhm…” Franklin took out his schedule and looked it over.  “Wilson.  Why?”

“Awesome!  We have class together.”

“Oh, sweet dude!  Let’s get there early and get good seats.  And by that I mean in the back,” he said with a laugh.

“Sure, whatever,” Johnny said, brushing it off.  “But listen; do you remember when you wanted to get out of that test last year, and so you gave the nurse my cell phone number and had me pretend to be your dad and tell her that you sometimes get migraines and have to lie down for an hour or two?”

“Yeah…” Franklin said slowly.

“You remember saying you owed me one?”

“Uhhuh…” he said slowly again.

Johnny grinned.  “OK, well it’s time I cashed in on that.”

Franklin groaned.  “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

Johnny flashed another grin.  “I don’t think so, no.  So here’s what I’m thinking…”

The bell rang for the next period, and then again a few minutes later to signal the start of it, and the hallways were soon empty.  The class Johnny and Franklin were supposed to be in was missing them at the moment, something their teacher soon found out when calling roll.

“Baker?”

“Here.”

“Branson?”

“Here.”

“Carpenter?”  The teacher looked up from the attendance sheet and around the room.  “Carpenter?” she said again.

As if on cue, the slightly cracked door burst open, and Johnny and Franklin fell through, the latter trapped in a headlock by the former, struggling intensely.

“Oh!” the teacher exclaimed in surprise, but it soon turned to anger.  “Stop this at once you two!” she practically screamed.

They stopped almost immediately, with Johnny letting Franklin out of the headlock, and the two stood looking at their teacher.  She seemed surprised that they had listened to her so quickly.  “Uhm…good.  That’s better.  Now, I’m going to have to send you two to the principal’s office.”

“Ah, shoot,” Johnny said.

“That’s right.  Now go, and don’t you two so much as look at each other on the way there.”

“Yes, mam,” Franklin said, and without pause, the two turned and exited the room, shutting the door behind them.  They walked to the principal’s office and explained to the secretary what had happened, then took a seat and waited to be seen.

After a few minutes, Johnny was called in first.  “Well, well, Mr. Carpenter,” Principal Simmons said when Johnny entered and sat down.  “Didn’t take long for you to end up in here, did it?  I had to wait a few months last year as I recall, but it seems you couldn’t even wait until the second day to grace me with your presence this year.”

“I’m sorry.  It won’t happen again.”

“Right, I’m sure it won’t.  I thought you and Franklin were good friends, no?  What’s this about you fighting?”

“We are good friends.  It was just a childish argument.  I’m sorry, it won’t happen again,” Johnny repeated.

“Uhhuh.  Well why -.”  Just then he was interrupted by a blood curling yell from outside the door.

“AHHHH!!!” Franklin’s voice sounded from just outside.

Puzzled and looking slightly worried, Principal Simmons rose from his chair.  “Stay here.  I’ll be right back.”  He strode past Johnny and out the door, shutting it behind him.  Johnny sprang up and went behind his desk, opening the first drawer and not even having to rummage through it before he saw what he was looking for.  He grabbed it and pocketed it, returning to his seat on the other side of the desk.

Not a few seconds later, Principal Simmons returned, hauling Franklin in with him.  He plopped down in the seat next to Johnny, and Principal Simmons returned to his own chair behind the desk, eyeing the two of them suspiciously before speaking.  “It appears Mr. Lange here had a sudden, momentary, and extremely painful stomach pain he felt we all needed to be made aware of.  He assures me it’s gone now though.”

The two stared impassively back at him from across the desk as he eyed them shrewdly.  “What’s going on?” he asked.

“Uhm…nothing.  Really, I had this weird pain for a second and it just surprised me is all.  I’m sorry I yelled,” Franklin said.  “But Johnny probably already told you, we’re good friends, we just got into a stupid argument over something.  We’re sorry, it won’t happen again, I promise,” he said, inadvertently mimicking Johnny’s earlier words.

Principal Simmons continued to eye them both, before grunting in frustration.  “Whatever.  I don’t have time for this.  Get back to class.  And shut the door on your way out.  If I see either of you back here all semester, you’re not going to like it.  Now go.”

The two quickly got up and exited the office.

When they reached the hallway, Johnny took out what he had snagged from one pocket and pulled a pen out from his other.  He quickly scribbled some writing on the former, and then handed it to Franklin.  “Good job,” he said with a smirk and a laugh.  “Okay, she’s in Mrs. Trager’s classroom.  You remember which one that is?”

Franklin snorted.  “Of course I remember.  It’s where you got sent to Mr. Simmons’ office for spitting a spitball at me last year.”

Johnny laughed at the memory.  “Oh yeah, I had forgotten about that.  Anyways, you know what to do. I’ll see you back in class.”  The two exchanged high fives and then parted, going separate ways.

A few minutes later, Franklin knocked on the door to Mrs. Trager’s class and then entered, enjoying the inquisitive look on all the freshmen’s faces as they looked up to see who it was.  “Hey Mrs. Trager,” he said.

“Hello Franklin.  What can I help you with?”

“I have study hall this period and volunteered to be the office aide.  They sent me down with a pass for…”  He glanced at the hall pass his best friend had procured from their principal’s desk.  “Ashley Shane?” he said as he glanced around the room.

Ashley’s head perked up in surprise, as she wondered why she could possibly be being called to the office on the first day of school.

Mrs. Trager it seemed had not gotten a chance to remember everyone’s name yet.  “Ashley…” she called out, to which Ashley raised her hand.  Franklin walked the pass over and handed it to her, then turned and left the room.

Ashley eyed the pass curiously before getting up and following in Franklin’s wake. She closed the door behind her, and was surprised to see an empty hallway.  He seemed to have vanished. Confused, she looked at the pass she had been given again.  Ashley Shane it said under the ‘name’ section.  Room 105 it said under the ‘where to’ section.

A bit puzzled, she started down the hallway towards where she thought the room was. She hadn’t been in school long enough to know how to get to the room, and so it took her a few minutes to locate it.

When she did, she opened the door and went in. She was surprised to see it was an empty classroom; empty that is, except for the lone figure kneeling on one knee a few feet in front of her, holding a freshly picked violet in his mouth.

Johnny had waited until a few minutes after the hallways had cleared to stage his fight with Franklin, during which time he had scanned the school until he found an empty classroom, of which there was always a few during any given period.  He had gone outside and picked a flower from the school’s front display while Franklin had been off delivering the forged note (although since the teacher hadn’t even looked at it, it wasn’t really forged, as it really was calling Ashley to room 105). And then he had waited.

Ashley couldn’t quite believe what she was looking at, and squinted her eyes with a bit of a quizzical look on her face before registering what was going on.  When she did, her puzzlement turned swiftly into joy, and she laughed out whole heartedly and smiled largely, finally revealing the full potential of her smile.  It caused Johnny now to be surprised; it was even more beautiful than he had imagined.

He took the flower from his mouth and held it out in his hand to her, offering it out.  “How about now?” he said, smiling, this time inadvertently as well as genuinely.

Ashley felt her heart flutter, and she enjoyed the feeling.  She answered with her smile that was larger now than Johnny’s.  “Okay,” she said happily, accepting the flower.

When I was a senior in high school my English teacher had us watch Al Gore’s famous (or infamous) movie, An Inconvenient Truth. I did not know what to make of it at the time but I fully believed that my professor would not lead my classmates and me astray. Full of official-looking facts and figures, the argument seemed legitimate enough and Gore was without doubt persuasive. I feel that a scenario like this is how many were first introduced to the issue of Climate Change and after, most believe in the theory to a certain degree. This is exactly why a book like Rael Jean Isaac’s Roosters of the Apocalypse is so necessary. It puts the debate into perspective and propounds the sides of the issue that may not be popular in the public eye but are scientifically correct. Isaac also goes one step further and explains why the Climate Change movement is like any other apocryphal message: it stirs up the masses to create change but fails to deliver in the end. I thoroughly enjoyed this read and I hope that the words that follow will convince you to read it as well.

The general premise of the book and the genesis of its title are found in the distinction between what Isaac considers a “rooster” and an “owl”. “Roosters” are those who, “Crow a new message” to announce a movement and gather support for it. They attempt to sway the opinion of the public towards their beliefs by heralding a popular message supported by evidence that they create and control. Global warming proponents such as Al Gore, heads of powerful environmental organizations like the EPA and Sierra Club, and even our President, Barack Obama, can all be considered roosters.  “Owls” are the dissenters to the movement of the roosters and are portrayed as skeptics and “gloomsters” in comparison. Their message is seldom heard because they are drowned out by the roosters’ cries. If the roosters hope to overwhelm the owls’ opposition they must rally the elites in favor of their cause. This is very difficult unless it “pays” to believe in their movement, which in the case of Global Warming it most certainly does. Isaac remarks that, “We need to ask not what we can do for Climate Change, but what Climate Change can do for us”.

The most important, and in my opinion most interesting, component of the book is the comparison of the Climate Change debate to a story of the fate of a small South African tribe in 1856. A 15-year old member of the Xhosa tribe had an apocalyptic prophecy that revealed the end of her people unless certain conditions were met. She claimed that obedience would bring forth a new age characterized by the return of tribal ancestors, an exodus of the British influence in southern Africa, and an abundance of resources much greater than what was found at the time. Following her instructions the tribe destroyed all of their food sources, including burning all stores of grain and slaughtering an estimated 500,000 cattle. By the end of the next year approximately 40,000 people had starved to death, decimating almost half of the original population of the tribe. Isaac contests that the world is following the same path as the Xhosa tribe. Just as the Xhosa gave up their most valuable commodity, cattle, for the misguided revelation of a teenage girl, we too are giving up our most important resource, energy, to appease the environmentalist movement.

During the main body of the book the author masterfully shows how the Climate Change movement gained so much momentum worldwide, maintained this momentum, and also how it was able to silence dissenting voices. The most imperative part of an apocalyptic message, for Isaac, is that it must be able to change with the times and explain parts of the prophecy that do not come true. The movement in question was originally entitled “Global Warming” but in 2002 the unexpected happened: world temperatures stopped increasing despite continued carbon emissions. Fixing this was easy, however, as the movement was simply renamed a more vague title: “Climate Change”. Now a perpetual rise in global temperatures was not needed to continually validate the theory, proponents simply spoke about how carbon emissions were changing the makeup of the atmosphere and would drastically affect climate in the future. Today as support of the movement is fading, it has been modified once again to focus on “Energy Independence”.  The focus has been taken off of any empirical data and instead is placed on developing renewable energies to eradicate our dependence on oil and the foreign powers that control it.

When any apocalyptic message begins to fade, the leaders of the movement must find a way to regain momentum by blaming others. In the case of the Xhosa tribe, when the prophecy was not coming true the people blamed the “owls” who had not believed the prophecy and not recklessly slaughtered their cattle. Today environmentalists blame big oil companies and those countries who have not pledged to lower carbon emissions for their apocalyptic prophecies not coming true. The focus is thus shifted to the new “wrongdoers” who have derailed the conditions set forth in the revelation, whether they are “polluting” the atmosphere or hoarding resources.

An important component of this is also silencing any dissenting voices or evidence that may arise to challenge the message. A very important piece of evidence that arose against Global Warming was the Medieval Warm Period which raised global temperatures high enough from 950-1300 AD to allow the Vikings to establish a prosperous colony in Greenland. This was a glaring flaw in the argument of the environmentalist movement so they simply fudged the data to take it out of the equation. Anyone who has seen An Inconvenient Truth remembers the graph Al Gore uses to show how world temperatures stayed relatively the same in the past few thousand years but have risen exponentially in the past century. Scientists lovingly refer to this graph as the “hockey stick” and snicker about how the Medieval Warn Period and every other unexpected rise in the data have been averaged out by the ridiculous scale of the graph. Like the Medieval Warm Period, leaders and scientists supporting the Climate Change movement suppress the facts that do not support their views by keeping them out of the media, official reports, and scientific journals.

I could continue writing about all of the interesting and insightful things that are contained in Roosters of the Apocalypse but it would only spoil the book for any prospective reader. I do hope, however, that this small taste of what there is to find in the book will whet your appetite enough to give it a chance. Probably the best part about the book is its brevity. Most authors would have dragged out the rhetoric to thrice as long as Isaac does but at fewer than 90 pages this work is the perfect length to stay interesting throughout. I thoroughly enjoyed every page of this book and would give it 9.5 out of 10. On the back of the book it says that Roosters of the Apocalypse is, “Required reading for anyone interested in environmentalism, climate change, or contemporary social movements.” I believe that this characterization is too limited; any informed citizen of this country and this world should read this book. After reading they will not only be better prepared to deal with issues of the present and future but will have thoroughly enjoyed the ride.

“Although this rendering reflects serious sleuthing, what you’ll find here is less a research treatise than a detective mystery in the spirit of Sherlock Holmes. The inquiry goes where the evidence leads it. And while this book doesn’t solve the crime of our century, it does take us closer to that goal.”
-Author’s Preface, Mounting Evidence, Paul Rea, PhD

Mounting Evidence: Why We Need A New Investigation into 9/11 is billed as “a thorough but readable introduction to the complex issues surrounding 9/11” (ME, pg. 535).

From the first few pages, Dr. Rea sets out a goal – and he stays within that goal over the course of the book. He points out the discrepancies between what he calls the “Official Story” (or the account of 9/11 that was published by the government in the 9/11 Commission report and broadcast to the American people at large) and what evidence has been found surrounding 9/11. Dr. Rea’s goal is to draw attention to the areas where the evidence and the story do not necessarily match, and in many places he offers conflicting data and testimonies that complicate the story most Americans know.

The evidence offered in Mounting Evidence is overwhelmingly reliable. In many instances, Dr. Rea sites news reports or internet-available videos from September 11^th that can be viewed by anyone with a computer. Sometimes a more thorough search is required, but even then many of the government documents (such as the 9/11 Commission report itself and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) reports of the towers falling) are available freely on the internet. He also draws from a wide variety of texts, interviews, and sometimes even films.

The challenge of this article is to take a critical, objective eye to the theories and evidence provided in Mounting Evidence. I do not necessarily agree or disagree with the information presented by Dr. Paul Rea, but I attempt to examine his argument objectively, identifying both the strengths and weaknesses of his evidence. To present a complete write-up of the validity of his sources would be too lengthy for an article like this (Mounting Evidence is over 500 pages, and his bibliography is quite impressive), but I will address some of the main arguments and issues surrounding 9/11. A great deal of research went into the writing of this review, both in the form of fact checking and dirt digging. Dr. Rea provides a complete bibliography on his website (www.mountingevidence.org), and I attempt to follow his example by providing a list of my own resources for this article.

The 9-11 Commission Official Report, released in 2004, is freely available for reading in its full form of 585 pages or an Executive Summary of 35 pages. Before being released to the public, the report was edited of potentially classified material. The Official Report can be found here: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/911/.

The NIST report on the fall of World Trade Centers 1 and 2 published in 2005 is available for reading in its full form of 298 pages here: http://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=909017. The NIST report on World Trade Center 7 published in 2008 is available for reading in its full form of 130 pages here: http://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=861610.

The Official Story and the Commission Report

Mounting Evidence begins with a few introductory chapters with a sweeping look at American history, particularly its wars. Beginning with the Mexican-American War and continuing through the Gulf of Tonkin, Dr. Rea examines the different ways America becomes involved in war and how America handles the imagery. The overwhelming trend he points out is that America’s wars are always responses to enemy action, but that enemy action may be direct or indirect results from American meddling. While many of the conclusions Dr. Rea draws are undocumented, they are not impossible (and one would imagine retrieving proof from the Mexican-American War would not be readily available). But it does set the stage for the rest of the book.

Much of Mounting Evidence concerns itself with the way the Official Story of 9/11 was created, how information was presented to Americans, and what was conveniently omitted (for example, a chapter dedicated to the truth about Flight 93 and the movies produced after 9/11). Dr. Rea dedicates an entire four chapters to the forming of the 9/11 Commission and the writing of the 9/11 Commission Official Report. The Commission was composed in 2002 to investigate 9/11, and the report was released in 2004. Many of the Commission officials (half selected by Congress and half, including the chair and executive director, chosen by the Bush Administration) had strong connections to the Bush Administration, the neoconservative agenda, and even Saudi Arabia.[1]

Dr. Rea dedicates an entire chapter to exploring the backgrounds of the Commission staffers, all which are very interesting and involve questionable past circumstances. Of particular interest is Phillip Zelikow, who was the Executive Director of the Commission. Zelikow was a former top member of the Bush Administration and was a founding member of the Project for a New American Century (a neoconservative nonprofit promoting American imperialism as ideal formed in 1998 with Dick Cheney and others, discussed later in this article). During the investigation and writing, only Zelikow and one other Commission staffer had full access to classified documents.[2]

Beyond discussion of the Commission staff, Dr. Rea includes three other chapters about the failings associated with the Commission and Commission Report, all incredibly detailed and well-sourced. Most notably, the 9/11 Commission Report does not place blame on any individuals for failing to implement security procedures or protocol on 9/11.

The Twin Towers

Before 9/11, no steel structured building had ever collapsed from fire damage, and as such many alternative theories have been offered for why the 110-story Twin Towers fell. Controlled demolition is the theory of choice in Mounting Evidence. The chapter from Dr. Rea on this topic is quite involved and cites a great deal of scientific evidence from multiple sources, including information from engineering expert Dr. Thomas Eagar from MIT and The National Fire Protection Associations Guide for Fire and Explosion in regards to controlled demolition and many engineering-based 9/11 truth organizations. Rather than going directly to the theories he supports, Dr. Rea explores the different facets of FEMA and NIST’s arguments on why the Towers fell, including false expert witnesses and conflicting stories.

Another important part of the Twin Towers’ story are the “The Sept. 11 Records,” a collection of over 500 eyewitness interviews with firefighters and emergency medical workers from 9/11 that were impounded by Mayor Rudy Giuliani as possible evidence that could be used in federal trials. Three years later, the records were released to the public by order of the New York Court of Appeals.

The NIST report claims that the steel was weakened by the fire and cites structural flaws that aided the collapse. The facts are that steel melts at 2,800°F and jet fuel burns up to 1,200°F. The North Tower was struck at 8:46am between floors 93 and 99, and the South Tower was struck at 9:03am between floors 77 and 85. The South Tower collapsed at 9:58am, 56 minutes after being struck; the North Tower collapsed at 10:28am, 1 hour and 42 minutes after being struck.[3] The buildings collapsed suddenly, at near free-fall speeds, straight down into their own footprints in seconds, creating huge clouds of pulverized dust. These are the six primary characteristics of The National Fire Protection Association’s Guide for Fire and Explosion and explored in depth by Dr. Rea.

A controlled demolition theory requires that explosives must be present to cause sufficient damage to the core structure of the building such that the building will collapse in on itself. Several 9/11 witnesses have asserted hearing sounds of explosions, including NYPD Battalion Chief John Sudnik and FDNY Captain Karin Deshore as well as several bystanders from the streets.[4] Dr. Rea admits that the evidence cannot yet tell how explosives found their way into the Towers, but he does cite elevator renovations occurring up to September 11^th.

World Trade Center 7

Of course, the Twin Towers were not the only buildings to fall in New York on 9/11. A third building, World Trade Center 7, also fell that day without being hit by a plane. Also called “the smoking gun of 9/11” or “Building what?” (New York City Judge Edward Lehner’s response to attorney Dennis McMahon when he informed the judge at a hearing in 2009 that Building 7 had come down on 9/11 as well), a national study in 2006 showed that 43 percent of Americans did not know that three buildings came down in New York on 9/11.[5] Many alternative theories of 9/11 point to Building 7 as the cornerstone of debunking the Official Story. Dr. Rea devotes an entire chapter to the mystery of World Trade Center 7, covering topics from Mayor Rudi Giuliani’s crisis command center (which was located in Building 7 despite many warnings against it) to the rental insurance on the building (Larry Silverstein had a 99-year lease on Building 7 for $3.2 billion, but collected $4.6 billion in insurance after the building fell)[6] to another look at controlled demolition.

The fact is that Building 7, a 47-story steel framed skyscraper, collapsed at 5:21pm without having been hit by a plane. The NIST report of World Trade Center 7 released in 2008 cites fires caused by debris from the falling Trade Towers and structural problems. Dr. Rea once again explores theories given by the government (which have similar patterns to those given for the Twin Towers) and looks again at controlled demolition. This time, however, there is much more evidence given to the explosives, since no plane actually hit Building 7. Dr. Rea cites independent research groups who found evidence of “nanothermites” or very small particles of iron and aluminum that burn at very high temperatures. While the researchers involved believe that nanothermite is an answer to some of the questions, both they and Dr. Rea are careful not to discount other, possibly simultaneous, options as well.[7]

The fall of World Trade Center 7 and the Twin Towers are explored in great detail by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. They provide detailed presentations from certified professionals about the mechanics of controlled demolition and the circumstances surrounding the collapse of the three buildings. For more information about Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, you can find their website here: www.ae911truth.org. All resources are available free on their website.

One aspect of the WTC7 controversy is the mysterious case of Barry Jennings, who escaped from Building 7 on 9/11. Given only a few paragraphs in Mounting Evidence, Barry Jennings and Michael Hess were trapped in Building 7 for hours after the building had been evacuated. Barry Jennings and Michael Hess originally testified that they heard explosions in Building 7 before the Twin Towers ever fell – the video of their interview with reporters after escaping the building on 9/11 is freely available on the internet. While Michael Hess later changed his testimony to fit with the Official Story, Jennings never did. Jennings gave an interview to filmmaker Dylan Avery in 2007. Jennings died in 2008 two days before the official NIST account of WTC7 was released. His cause of death was not immediately released, but later revealed to be a heart attack.[8] Barry Jennings’s interview is available in full here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LLHTh_UjBc

The Pentagon

What happened at the Pentagon? This is a huge question with no definite answer. To some, it is not even clear that what struck the building was in fact a plane. Dr. Rea discusses the variety of theories, but stays mostly within the bounds of airplanes (although ideas that it was a missile are also popular among alternative theories).

The flight plan offered in the Commission Report marks American Flight 77 departing from Washington Dulles at 8:20am. The flight is hijacked at 8:56am, performs a U-turn at 9:00am, and remains off the radar until it hits the Pentagon at 9:37am. Dr. Rea offers his own alternative flight plan, and, though largely undocumented, it does have elements of truth.[9] It is true that the flight plan of Flight 77 documented in the Commission Report does not match with the radar data released later, although one would assume that the 9/11 Commission would have had access to the data well before it was released to the public. It is also true that there are a multitude of eyewitness testimonies available about which direction the plane came from, and many of them are inconsistent. However, the Federal Aviation Administration reports sightings of the plane at 9:20am, when it was supposedly “lost” according to the Commission Report.[10]

Another controversy of Flight 77 is why it was allowed to remain in the air for so long. A rogue airplane in Washington D.C. should be cause for alarm, since it is our nation’s capital and there had already been two terrorist attacks that morning. However, there is a good deal of controversy (a lot of it cited in Mounting Evidence) about how much air defense was available to the Pentagon and whether they even knew a plane was in the area.

Other questions regarding Flight 77 include how the hijacker was able to make such an impressive right turn when many former Air Force pilots, Colonel Robert Bowman among them, have come forward saying they themselves would be unable to perform it. There are also reports of a “mystery plane” much smaller than the Boeing 757 of Flight 77 spotted flying low in the area that day.

Mounting Evidence does a good job of providing evidence that is inconsistent with the Official Story, but there are a great deal of questions about the Pentagon that have no answer and can result in a lot of confusion. No footage is available from the plane striking the Pentagon and a great deal of evidence about the event has not been released to the public. However, the goal of Mounting Evidence is to raise questions that need to be answered, and Dr. Rea points out how very little the public knows about this instance.

“No people can be both ignorant and free.”
- Thomas Jefferson

9/11 remains a very emotional topic for Americans. While researching for this article, I have had many discussions with friends and relatives about the topic, and the reactions are always strong. Some are intrigued by the idea but know about as much as I did when I began this, some listen and dismiss it, and some refuse to hear it entirely. But the main question that evolves from these theories is a basic enough question: Why? Why would the government want to hurt its own people? Another way of asking this question is to say: Who? Who benefits from a “government conspiracy”?

Mounting Evidence offers a few answers (in much greater detail than offered here):

The Pentagon (headed by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and other neoconservatives) had plans to build an oil pipeline through Afghanistan that would give American companies direct access to resources, but the Taliban would not allow it. Bush invaded Afghanistan in October of 2001, and by December of 2002 Unocal had signed a deal for the Trans-Afghan pipeline. One of the companies to benefit from the Unocal pipeline is Halliburton, which had Dick Cheney as CEO during the time.

Project for a New American Century – This project, headed by Dick Cheney and other neoconservatives, was first introduced in 1997 as an idealistic return to American imperialist values, including support of war with Iraq and Afghanistan years before 9/11. Their goals would require a larger military budget (which would benefit many more than just the Project for the New American Century) and they cited a need for “some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”[11]

The connections between the Saudi royal family and the Bush family are quite extensive, going back to George Bush Senior’s CIA days.[12] Islamist groups have been receiving both CIA and Saudi funding to fight since the 1970s, including bin Laden himself. The deals between America and Saudi Arabia, modern weapons for inexpensive oil, struck following World War II and continuing through today are cited by Dr. Rea as reasons for garnering Islamist hate.[13] Mounting Evidence dedicates a whole chapter to the relationship between the Saudi royal family, the Bush family, and Al Qaeda, paying particular attention to the favor given to the Saudi family and even members of the bin Laden family in the weeks following 9/11.[14] Sibel Edmonds, a translator for the FBI, before being hit with the strictest gag order in US history, reported about 9/11 that “you have money-laundering activities, drug-related activities, and terrorist support activities converging at certain points and becoming one.”[15]

Issues of democracy underscore the entire book, but are not given special treatment of their own. Mounting Evidence lays out the reasons for a new investigation into 9/11 but does not always turn its attention to what has happened since 9/11. The passing of legislation such as the Patriot Act (2001) and the National Defense Authorization Act (2012), which restrict civil liberties and give the government increased control over the American people, cannot be overlooked as consequences of 9/11. The Patriot Act allowed the government to conduct searches without cause to assist in terrorism cases and to detain people indefinitely on baseless accusations. The National Defense Authorization Act, passed by Obama only a few months ago, also allows the government to detain people indefinitely based on accusations alone. In this regard, the government benefits by reducing the rights of its citizens.

“The truth about 9/11 is that we still don’t know the truth about 9/11.”
- Col. Robert Bowman, PhD, former fighter pilot and Director of Advanced Space Programs Development, US Air Force

While Dr. Rea compiles endless streams of evidence and points out stark deficiencies and contrasts within the Official Story, he is not actually arguing for a specific alternative theory – and he makes this clear from the beginning. What Mounting Evidence offers is not a concrete timeline or set of proofs to point the finger of blame directly in the face of specific politicians. It is not a “government conspiracy” or a hoax. Mounting Evidence calls attention to the questions that have not yet been answered or have not been answered truthfully. It draws the eye to the small details that have been overlooked and the large facts that have been ignored. It is a wake-up-call more than a call-to-arms, and inspires its readers to take a critical eye to what they are being told. Dr. Rea never discounts the role of the hijackers in the attacks and does not say that the government is never to be believed. As he says in Chapter 3, “Skepticism is healthy; cynicism is toxic.”

9/11 is a complicated issue, and Dr. Rea treats it as such.

Mounting Evidence is well-written, thought-provoking, and accessible – even and especially for someone who has never read up on 9/11 before. It covers a wide variety of issues, not always explored to their depths (the book is already over 500 pages, with three chapters dedicated to the 9/11 Commission and four to Al Qaeda, and there is easily enough information available on 9/11 to double the page count), but to the point of eliciting real thought from a concerned reader. The book is well-organized and easy to follow, though at times it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information offered.

But following Dr. Rea’s encouragement of skepticism, I recommend approaching this book (any book of this sort, really) with a healthy dose. The sources are well documented and available for full viewing on Dr. Rea’s website, and you may be surprised what you can learn if you check them out yourself.

Dr. Rea closes out Mounting Evidence with an outline of four questions that a new investigation should seek to answer:

1. Why didn’t the intelligence agencies identify the growing threats and head off the attacks in the first place?
2. How do we account for the spectacular failures of air defenders to intervene, despite the billions spent on state-of-the-art equipment, supersonic aircraft, and highly trained pilots?
3. What would explain the unprecedented structural failures of not two but three World Trade Center buildings?
4. The FBI has acknowledged that it has “no hard evidence” to hold Osama bin Laden responsible for the attacks; so if bin Laden didn’t do it, then who was responsible for the deaths of 3,000 Americans that day?
   - pg. 534

In an interview with a professor about this very book, the question was asked: What if we do have a new investigation? What if the facts that emerge are not the facts we were previously told? What happens then? How do we recover?

Dr. Rea does not give this question much attention beyond a few short sentences at the end of book, but it is clear he believes recovery is possible and necessary in order to move forward with a truly democratic body once more. He ends Mounting Evidence by saying, “Restorative truth is out there: a truly independent inquiry will bring it to light.”

—-

[1] Mounting Evidence, pp. 133-138

     Morris Kuritsky (my maternal grandfather also known as Moshe to kith and kin) illegally yet surreptitiously boarded the gangplank and suddenly became a fugitive of a rather rickety old wooden ship by stealthily hiding under an escape hatch and burying himself inside a large crate of some specialty export good. Rest assured (dear reader) that fate landed him squarely inside a Kosher product! No, he did not find himself in a pickle!

      As a mischievous prankster, he merely meant to play this advanced game of hide and seek in order to escape those utterly beastly, ruthless, totalitarian figures of authority. They happened to be close on his heals before luck smiled on him. This brief synopsis hopes to explain how he subsequently emigrated to America well over one hundred plus years ago!

     Unbeknownst to him (and the majority of other people that comprised the vast proletariat strata) this self-imposed exile made haste from his Mother Land and preceded the still far-off clarion call to exit pronto from the impending civil war!

     Though devoid of any book learning, he possessed an avid insight and intractable and visionary intuition. His personal writings (essays mainly – composed in a rather allegorical fashion) hinted at that looming threat away off on the distant horizon. Although said ominous danger and portentous evil (quite some decades away), this extra sensory perception goaded him to high tail quickly to a safe haven. The Russian Revolution would be due to arrive in about a quarter century!

     Rather than risk capture (from incognito dressed bounty hunters) and face countless years incarcerated deep in the bowels of some dismal dungeon for expressing (and also crudely publishing antithetical) independent viewpoints, he literally jumped (onto) a cargo steamer at the once in a lifetime chance to secret himself as a stowaway.

     How he chanced upon the least sturdy looking contraption requires an explanation.

     When he turned eighteen years old, the first steps toward reaching The United States of America began! Without bidding farewell to his father, mother, countless brothers and sisters (whom in fact said family members would never be seen again), he made a quick and surreptitious exit. One rucksack comprised survival kit. This took place before dawn that July day circa 1890 plus or minus a small margin of error.

     Let me backtrack a bit and provide a very quick character sketch. As a mere stripling of a boy, he became forcefully indentured as an apprenticed tailor. This handy skill acquired in lieu of being in a formal classroom setting to help feed his younger siblings. All the while under said tutelage, the overactive cogs and wheels of his imagination triggered one instantaneous idea after another. Morris tirelessly worked his fingers to the bones. Those precious formative years became arduous toil under a rigorous contractual obligation. No doubt exploitation occurred per being brow beaten and whip sawed from a strict task manager. This brutish, nasty and short-lived childhood wove the fabric for escape from land of Engel’s, Lenin and Marx.

     Once the creaking and seasoned timbers from the aged galleon got yanked seaward from the strong tidal current, the aromatic and fragrant smell of the ocean (ebbing, flowing and spraying salty mist against the Russian peasants receding on the shoreline), Morris emerged from his cubbyhole. A deep inhalation indicated in which direction to locate the maritime depot. A quick study with hawk-like and keen eyes identified the most desirable vessel under cover of darkness. Nocturnal lunar rays the only source of illumination, which offered just a faint trace of moonlight. The vast assemblage of sloops with their attendant crew members delegating tasks to the deckhands could be clearly identified. Unsure about which of these various and sundry ships to board (without drawing undue suspicion), he elected the most powerful, robust and sturdy looking ship. Unbeknownst to him, the brightly colored Cyrillic letters painted in dark letters spelled Rebecca.

     Although illiterate (and most likely innumerate) this direct descendent (the father of my mother) at first blush characterized as innocence and naiveté (all rolled into one) possessed an air of cunning maturity and smart sophistication in combination with a calculated and measured braggadocio. Yet despite inarticulate and illegible penmanship, the informal log- books (purportedly his authentic handiwork at keeping a personal diary recorded poignant details about a dangerous ocean voyage) offer me this golden opportunity to publicize in more understandable fashion, an abridged saga (preserved more or less intact for more than a century) a testament to courage, grit, luck plus mental, physical and spiritual stamina.

     The shrill blast of the whistle and attendant plume of steam (meant to signal immediate departure), punctuated the end of one existential chapter from birthplace and the beginning of another in a strange land! He sequestered his agile and nimble body into an unlit and unlikely discovered hideaway. When safely and securely situated, his dexterous and tooled fingers assumed an automatic, and a voluntary reflex took over to manipulate needle, scissors, thread, and scrap pieces of cloth. The first three mentioned items always carried as if a natural anatomical part of his person. The latter purchased with a handful of tokens tucked inside a pants pocket prior to that bold decision to strike out in the direction of cultural melting pot and risk life and limb in the process. Devoid of artificial or natural luminary object to avoid detection, the materialization of a complete outfit magically appeared!  Presto! Ingenuity and garment concoction ticket to the land of milk and honey!

     The portal to Mecca epitomized in the international landmark (known as Ellis Island) would open up like the gates of heaven and offer Yankee entrepreneurship to experience rags to riches tale! Many days and nights subject to the whims of Mother Nature cloistered in cramped quarters of an ocean going contrivance would need to take place.  Faith and optimism from departure (in a familiar but deplorable demesne) to arrival at unfamiliar destination constitutes the remaining portion of this short story contest.

     Between what seemed like an eternity (but only a few short months in actuality) holed up deep below the floorboards of the marine craft and that moment of utter salvation with bended knee on Brooklyn shoreline comprises my personal interpretation of deceased matriarchal zayda! Such an awesome odyssey (rife with extreme drama on the high seas), would spark the fiery attention of a present day movie mogul.

     Some invisible entity, whether viewed as benign cosmic force, divine eminent fate capitalized on holier than thou reputation, especially as blessing and fortune delivered this human cargo thru countless confrontations with hostile circumstances. Maelstroms wrought havoc yet witnessed a miraculous journey thru the serpents and tempests that inhabited the dark and deep waters! Intervention (perhaps engendered via religious confections of faith and prayer per protective designs of so called biological creator) delivered this marginally familiar male descendent.

     Those interminable days of (what must be described as a worst fate than death) hermetically entombed in a damp, bobbing, airless chamber made pessimism difficult (if not downright impossible) to fend off, which hallucinatory thoughts akin to some vicious predator! All sense of rationality and sensibility became extremely distorted under those abysmal conditions! Real threats to his very survival took shape in the form of varmints that scurried and (as applied to other species) scuttled for self-preservation into the very same dark nook and cranny! Sometimes, even the vibration of a shark fin nearly caused the rigid hulk to capsize!

     Maintenance of sanity for psyche and sustenance for body politic indicative of exemplary and fittest Darwinian ability! Devious schemas dreamt up to provide boon for optimism amidst dire travails. As a devoutly (namely orthodox) Jewish personage, he found his will power to transcend Earthly dilemma with fortitude and gumption! The acquisition for basic staff of life in the form of drink and food seemed to proffer ample opportunity! Time and again plentiful jugs and plates got left unattended in close proximity to his trapdoor niche.

      Outcome yielded unexpected metamorphosis just by mere mental wishing upon a star for such bare necessities for survival!

The parking lot was full of lost souls.  Their footsteps crunched against hard, cold cement.  Hands shoved into pockets, fighting to stay warm.  White wisps of breath danced into the air, weaving in-between their shadows against the pale lamp post light.  Eyes met darkness and then those penetrating headlights.  There would be no rest for them tonight.

The ride along the country streets was vacant, but not for long.  Traffic lights flashed red and then green.  Tires bumped along in quiet, and minds were full of memories.  They remembered the wine, whose bottle now laid on its side.  They remembered the empty plates that once held all that they could eat.  Now, they sit here against cold, rubber seats, whereas their chairs next to their hearth remained empty, begging for them to remain home, but they were called away.  And now they were here.

The school bus dropped them at the curb.  Its yellow, glass doors slammed shut.  Without hesitation, the engine roared, taking off.  The driver didn’t waste time, not wanting to be trapped here, and left them behind, in the cold and the dark, and slowly they trudged down to their assigned outlet store, knowing what was to come.

The bright lights inside gave comfort to the cold darkness.  Warmth chased the chill away.  Hands were released from pockets, and feet kicked the floor, shaking off the snow.  Breath escaped into the air, and eyes took in all that stood before them.  But then the glass doors slammed shut, locked in place.  Time to go to work.

The storeroom was now empty.  The shelves were stocked.  The racks were full.  Registers clicked and clacked.  The staff wore bright yellow shirts that made them stick out against the growing darkness, targets for the mayhem to come, but they laughed and talked instead, anything to kill the growing tension.  But in the distance, they saw it, the golden caterpillar that now weaved its way here, and with it would come a million arms of chaos.

The wait was over.  The golden caterpillar arrived, engulfing the roadways under it, and the screams of brakes, the annoyance of honks sounded off into the night.  Its eyes glared red, lighting up the darkness, and its legs spilled out across every vacant parking lot, now consumed.  Its hands split into a pouring sea of the hungry, the rampant, who would soon reach these doors.  Its voice rumbled in its throat, rising higher and higher, and it was a voice that could warm the heart of fear, that could annihilate tonight.  And now their shadows were seen, spreading across the outlet mall, spilling over each other like a mob that would have no fury but a mindless rampage to destroy everything in sight.

Twelve hours and counting.  They set their watches, wincing at the scratches against the door.  If only they could stay home, their minds begged, but they needed to be here.  They needed the money, and this was the price to be paid.  And again, they flinched as another struck the door.

“It’s time,” the manager yelled.  “It’s time.”  He waited until each one of them arrived at their assigned stations.  He gave a swift look over the merchandise, satisfied with what he saw.  He then glanced at those behind the registers, noting their fear and anxiety.  “Ready!”  They tensed with his word.  “Set.”  His eyes and theirs fell on those pressed against the door, begging to come in.  “Hello, Black Friday,” and with his last breath, he opened those glass doors.

There was no hesitation.  They came on swift wings.  Security failed to hold them back and drowned beneath them.  Their screams were muffled under a thousand feet, and the hungry stretched their hands, their claws out into each and every direction, snapping on what they desired.  If another dared grab the object of their affection, a battle would ensue, and the victor would leave, leaving the wounded behind.  There was no time to care.  This was war.  They were on a mission.  Nobody was going to stand in their way, and the store was gone, lost in mindless mayhem with a piercing wail from the golden caterpillar.

Six hours to go.  The store was a mess.  The shelves were already empty.  The racks were destroyed.  Paper, boxes, bags decorated the floors.  They were still coming, never to relent or fall back, and they swarmed the small outlet store, pressing those in yellow shirts up against the walls.  Anticipation was replaced with anger as they asked for what they wanted, only to be told that their object of desire was now sold out, and they screamed a bloodcurdling scream of loss and fury.

Break.  One hour of freedom.  Sandwiches and soda were brought into the break room way before the chaos erupted.  Now, that food and drink was devoured, filling those on the edge of exhaustion, and they still had hours to go.  If only they could go home, their minds begged, but there was no going home.  There was only going back into the melee that waited for them behind those stock room doors, and they shuddered at that thought.  But if only they could survive the rest of their shift, they could go home, leaving the night crew to take over where they left off.

One hour to go.  Rays of sunlight broke through the darkness, giving false hope because they were still coming.  Warmth and cold danced as strangers, toe to toe as those glass doors swung back and forth.  Lights flickered overhead with intensity, and a thousand voices were the wind that swept through the small store.  The madness was here to stay, and it screamed with the word, “Sale.”  But the stockroom was now empty, and their hunger went unsatisfied.  So, instead of leaving, they destroyed, attacking those, who tried to wait on them, but the true relief, their escape from this rampage was the arrival of the night crew.

Horror shined in their eyes.  They struggled to push past those that blocked their way to the store room, but a thousand hands grabbed onto their arms, trying to pull them in.  Their feet struggled to walk as fast as they could, but they were bombarded with question after question, questions that they could not answer.  They just got here, taking the school bus as close as it dared go, and they hadn’t even put on their yellow shirts yet.  But the mayhem didn’t care, snapping at their laziness to not respond with what they wanted to hear.  Where had their humanity gone?  They were now pieces of the golden caterpillar that held traffic in a deadlock.

Freedom.  The staff exploded from the stores, throwing off their yellow shirts.  They moved through the swarms that crowded around stores, dodging any grasp or question.  They were off shift, so they didn’t want to be bothered.  All they wanted was the yellow school bus that would rescue them from this chaos and take them back to where they began.  And then, they could finally go home, but instead of being happy at that thought, they shook.  They trembled because they would have to return tomorrow and the day after that to tango with the yellow caterpillar and its minions all over again, but not now.  Now, they were free, and there was the yellow school bus.

The night crew had no such luck.  The hours dragged by.  The shelves were broken.  The racks were crippled.  The floor was showered in debris.  Fingers crunched against register, and voices engulfed each other, screaming the word, “Sale.”  And they kept on coming, and they refused to go away.  Even when those glass doors closed back in place, locked one final time, they struck the door, sending the night crew jumping back, but they would not let them in.  Make them wait until tomorrow, their minds begged, and tomorrow would come on swift wings.  And they were not going home.

Have you ever seen a war zone?  Bodies lied in its wake.  Smoke rose up into the air.  The echo of gunfire was still loud and clear.  Destruction reigned supreme, and pulling the pieces back of an ordinary day would take a lifetime.  But the night crew didn’t have that long, and they wanted to go home.  They slowly picked one part of the store and started there, knowing that they could be in that spot for hours to come.

And hours went by.  Finally, the store was put back together.  The floor was cleaned, and now black garbage bags filled to capacity waited to be thrown out.  Nobody dared go outside, not even to the dumpster because they would slip in, and they would have to start all over again.  The shelves were still bare, but the racks were filled with whatever was left.  They wouldn’t be satisfied tomorrow, and the morning crew would pay that price.  But they would be rescued by the night crew, and the night crew would have to stay behind like tonight.  But for right now, their job was done, and it was one in the morning, the crossroads of Friday into Saturday.  And they just wanted to go home.

The glass doors slowly opened.  The night crew slipped out with garbage bags in hand.  A shadow moved, and they froze.  It was only a stray cat, and the manager urged them on.  He turned to close and lock the door, thinking they were home free, but as they took another step, one of them appeared.

“Are you open?”

“Are you kidding,” the manager thought.  “No.  Ten a.m.”

“Okay.”  A shadow of a person wavered before them.  “I’ll wait.”

The night crew watched that person slip away.  He melted into a growing line around the store.  Hungry eyes met their gaze as they huddled together for warmth.  Their hands were folded with anticipation of what they would soon hold.  Their breath rose up into the air in sync, hearts beating together, tendrils of the golden caterpillar that would never go home.  It was released from its cage, and it was here to stay right through Christmas, and after that, this place, this store would become a ghost town.

“Last bus,” the manager yelled.  “Hurry, unless you want to stay here.”  He watched the night crew run as if their lives depended on it.  He padded his coat pocket, making sure the money was safe.  It was his job to go to the bank and drop it off, but he couldn’t let anyone outside the store know how much he was carrying.  He hurried to his car as fast as he could go, but the shadows circled around behind him, filling him with fear.  “Home free.”  He jumped into his car and slammed the door shut, frantically pushing the lock button.  “One day down.  One month to go,” and his voice trembled with that thought.

As his car warmed up, fighting to stay alive, the yellow school bus rose into view.  It peeled away once all were on board, bypassing the yellow caterpillar, who merely shrugged at its annoyance.  The monster was tucked in for the night, and its arms and legs itched with readiness, waiting for those glass doors to open.  And those on board that bus would have to return to do this song and dance again.  The manager had to return for the night shift tomorrow night, but his mind begged him to stay home.  Call in sick, but if anyone dared to call in sick, they would be looking for another job real soon.  And jobs were scarce.

As the manager slowly left the parking lot, shrouded in darkness, he sought out the radio stations still thriving along the air.  Music melted his fear, his tension, and his fingers uncoiled around the steering wheel.  His heart was free to beat, and warm breath escaped from his lips.  But as he paused by the red traffic light, the final exit to escape the mayhem that tormented him until now, fear and terror struck home, horror stories on the news of the world gone mad.

“Shooting erupted at a local mall.  Mass mayhem in the streets.  Local employee gets trampled in store.  Multiple car accidents reported.”  A long pause.  “Yes, folks.  The yellow caterpillar was king tonight.  Hello, Black Friday.”

“For I is someone else,” wrote Arthur Rimbaud in one of his famous “seer letters” of May 1871. “If the brass awakes as a horn, it can’t be to blame.” France was just out of its war with Prussia, and Paris was controlled, for the rest of the month at least, by the Marxist Commune. Living in his childhood town, Rimbaud seems to have gone mad from boredom as uncertainty swirled in the capital. This was a year into the precious five in which he would write all the poetry he would ever write, and the surrealist savant was already furiously marching into the “unknown by a derangement of all the senses.” On his path to becoming a secular “seer,” Rimbaud claims to have known himself well enough to see his own thoughts with a degree of removal. “I’m around for the hatching of my thought: I watch it, I listen to it.”  You can’t help who you are, he contended, but you should at least realize how vapid that self of yours really is. “It is wrong to say I think: one should say I am thought.”

“When I read those words, the bells went off,” wrote Bob Dylan of Rimbaud’s letter in his “autobiography,” Chronicles. “It made perfect sense.” In March of 1965, thirty-five hundred Marines landed in South Vietnam. Two weeks later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama with thirty-two hundred protestors as the Civil Rights movement gained real traction. Later that month, Dylan released Bringing It All Back Home, kicking off his “neon Rimbaud” phase as David Dalton terms it in his new book, Who Is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan (Hyperion, 2012) Dylan was also deranging his senses—with speed, marijuana and fame—and writing lyrics that were “almost a direct transcription of how his mind works.” He was seeking refuge from “the smoke rings of [his] mind,” “the twisted reach of crazy sorrow,” as “Mr. Tambourine Man” puts it. The listener of Bringing It All Back needs only to sit with Dylan on that “windy beach” to watch as the images and ideas tumble out of the waves of his subconscious.

Dalton is kind enough, though, to sit between you and the “National Living Treasure” to translate, substantiate and contextualize what we see in front of us. The veteran rock critic explains to us on the second page that “Dylan is a method actor who sees his life as an emblematic movie.” This film begins with Robert Zimmerman leaving the University of Minnesota after a year of school for New York in 1959, where he named himself after a poet and then proceeded to lackadaisically fill in the new identity with dozens of pasts, and soon Bob Dylan had made a name for himself in the thriving folk-revival scene in Greenwich Village. By 1961, he gained the notice of the New York Times, which declared that “it matters less where he has been than where he is going.” That the ubiquitous nomadic legend/cultural institution was, at this writing, preparing to play a show in Buenos Aires, having played Porto Alegre, Brazil yesterday, testifies to the Delphic nature of that insight. And as if to hammer the point home, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” came on in the bagel shop as I wrote this paragraph.

Of course we’ve all heard Dylan’s music in public, and perhaps millions of us have been to his concerts. We know the public image of an image-obsessed man, as Dalton makes clear from the beginning. Take Dylan’s stance on the famous 1965 Newport Folk Festival incident, when Dylan was supposedly booed for performing on an electric guitar for the first time. In 2005, he said definitively that they weren’t booing at him, but the following year, “You’re nobody if you don’t get booed sometimes,” reverting back to the public narrative he allowed to develop about it in the 60’s. At this point, it’s advantageous to have the likes of Dalton as a guide: “Nevertheless, the booing of Bob at Newport (now enshrined in pop-music history) is a myth. There may have been murmurs from a few die-hard folkie purists, but most of the objections I heard that day were about the lousy sound system.”

Dalton expertly holds on to the first person for these sorts of “I was there” moments, which both dispel myth and grant the reader a direct line to Dylan. His style peels back the cloudy laminate of popular history, which at times shows us just how much we conflate and exaggerate the past to fit our preferred image. Because, with Dalton, we see that he lives in each of our heads, behind cagey, allegorical lyrics that in prodding our subconscious minds gives us insight into why we must ask questions like Who Is That Man? To pursue the “real” Dylan is to realize the reconstructive nature of personal memory and the mythologizing tendency of collective memory, and Dalton’s perspective offers us a portrait of Dylan that is by no means transparent, though much clearer than any collective cultural memory could be.

In 1965, much the same as Rimbaud in 1871, Dylan was coming loose, acquiring new friends, morphing into “the Dylan he would spend the rest of his life trying to escape.” Both were intoxicated on what was going on around them, but their artistic output was not in any way about those times so much as it was of them. “The song is infrequently the work of a singer, which is to say rarely is its thought both sung and understood by its singer,” wrote Rimbaud. The sheer haphazardness with which Dylan created both his music and the various personas that inhabited them seems to indicate that this held true for Dylan as well. “This wasn’t an act; this was simply Bob,” as Dalton says.

It’s interesting, for a Dylan neophyte like myself, to see how the seasoned music journalist’s experiencing of a song from that time, such as the frenetic “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” runs up against my own. The song has the breathless quality of hip-hop, as Dalton points out. It hits you over the head with its pace, leaving the listener to wander in a state of confused rapture. The meaning always forms in your head a half beat behind the words, if you can understand what he’s saying. Regardless, “the hallucinatory style” imparts at least some of the speed-blitzed highly-associative paranoia of a man that’s been “standing on the pavement thinking about the government.” But I also can’t help but expect a bass drop after that line, the same place where Dalton hears Chuck Berry. In 2009, Juelz Santana’s “Mixing up the Medicine,” was a minor internet hip-hop hit, rising quickly but then deflating meagerly into the corner where it lives on YouTube, having plateaued at the decidedly mortal view count of 1.9 million. It, like the famous opening scene of Eat The Document, features Santana holding up posters with the lyrics hand-written on them. In the rap video, this interesting homage only lasts for the length of the initial hook. The song then sadly falls into boring verses about how good of a rapper Juelz Santana is, how good he is with women, how good he is at making hits, and so on. Like cheap bread, the song is sweet and easily consumed when fresh, but goes stale in a week.

It’s somewhat appropriate though that Dylan, the magpie of folk music, has had his Beatnik blues so callously sampled. He commandeered the folk music of Appalachia  and electrified it to express a mid-sixties existential disillusionment (“Twenty years of schoolin’ and they put you on the dayshift”); Juelz Santana, with his short-looped hook and choppy verses, reflects the instant fame, “hype” driven hit cycle of the internet.  Ever since the Byrds did their Sweet-N-Low version of “Times They Are  A Changin’,” more pop oriented acts have been making Dylan more digestible for the mass market, for no  easily discernible artistic reason. “Mixin’ Up the Medicine” takes up that paper crown, and in doing so, confirms that our culture is still interested in putting on Dylan’s masks, on playing his songs and, without even realizing it, being played by his mind. Pop culture is the brass that has awoken a horn, and it the likes of Dylan which plays it. Who Is That Man? documents its way to the same point Rimbaud makes in his ecstatic letter. The book makes no strong argument or over-arching interpretation of Dylan’s life or music, and instead accepts and surrenders itself to the chaos of Dylan’s mind.

I can see by the way you’re looking at him that there is a sense of resentment, but let me assure you that you’re misunderstanding the situation. You probably think that he’s doing this for a public relations reason, but unfortunately that’s not it at all.

Here – take a look at this picture. Notice the way the man looks at his student? Those adoring eyes, the sweet embrace and tender smile, he wouldn’t do that to someone he didn’t care for deeply. You see these two individuals use to know one another long before this man ever established a name for himself.

Let me explain.

Look out the window. See the man, who now sits on the curb before you, has faded like the very jeans that shelter his lower limbs, his tattered shirt soaked in sweat, and his dirty skin that reeks of odor, was once a famous musician. One might even suggest he still is, though he now refuses to play. You might find it difficult to believe this, but that same man is Wes Campbell. Yes, the Wes Campbell.

His melodies once resembled those like Johnny Cash and yet his compositions were considered richer, better. Rooted with choruses that created a window describing sweet dreams and cruel disappointments of life – The man once screamed to a crowd, “Ol’e Whiteman didn’t know it at the time, but he wrote about me once.” The crowd continued to admire the musician’s words by delivering whistles and boisterous cheers. He continued with, “I am the epitome of ’Song of myself.’ You’d just have to hear my story to believe it.”

He was never easy to get along with. In fact, Campbell would become passionate, even livid, during discussions of what made a good song. I once heard he almost crippled a reporter who tried to explain that writing music was “immature” and so simplistic an idiot could do it. It wasn’t until a few drinks rendered his ability to hold his emotions properly did he confess that the reporter was his son. A bitter son; he had left thirty years ago and not once accepted his existence. I could tell Campbell was pained by guilt from how his hand would quiver with each spoken word.

There was even an incident regarding a journalist who questioned him where music came from. The musician turned and delicately whispered, “Life unfortunately, the harder it is – the better the song. God must want me to write a damn gospel with the ghosts that haunt me.”

You might be wondering about the student I mentioned earlier. Well, he was a child of good fortune. Gifted by writing with a musical ear, he took piano lessons at the age of four and guitar at thirteen. The adolescent was raised in New York and spent summers running through the city. At night his room was full of crumpled balls of paper, like little white roses, which peppered the floor around the waste basket. His hours of composing music would collide with moments of lost inspiration.

He decided nothing was more daunting than a blank page staring back at him, daring him to mark its surface, mocking his ability.  Although, with such a rare gift, by the time he was a high school senior, the boy played concerts to an audience that paid to listen.

How did the two meet? Well, the young boy, now a twenty-something man, went to college. He chose a certain University due to Campbell teaching a special class every spring semester. The two met in his office when the boy went to ask for advice, and they fit like a glove. Campbell admired him for his technical prowess and the student complained that his experiences in life rendered his ability to feel what he was playing.

I recall Campbell’s office vividly. The olive green walls spoke of recollections, a blue couch sat against the corner, and the smell of cigars and peanut butter stained his furniture.

He had an old rustic desk that embodied scars from age. There were neatly stacked papers to the right corner of it, a small bible and the left contained pictures of him in performance. Campbell once claimed pictures were the root of inspiration, for if one could see how they look on stage then there is always motivation to feel that rush again. I’m not sure if I agreed with that same sentiment, but I did become attached to his small world.

I remember that same olive color made up the University’s recital hall, and Campbell would hold lectures in that space. At first glance, he appeared to be arguing, but if you listened, you realized that he was discussing the minutest details of his pieces, just filled with this animated passion. Details of phrasing, the composer’s intent, the historical context of the composition; our discussions of the art were always full of intensity.

Maybe that matter is irrelevant. However, things do change. The young man’s career was starting to take off in the very place he’d least expect. Summer was beginning to blossom its sweltering haze, ending Campbell’s semester.  And as his works came to be performed, his character changed. He became more irascible, and more convinced that people did not understand his work, or so he argued.

My first inkling that something was wrong came during what I describe as a strange interaction between him and a young fan. The cute admirer had big blue eyes, round rosy cheeks, and hair twisting around her necklace. She couldn’t have been much older than the age of twenty. The girl simply complimented him on the beauty of his playing and he thanked her for the kind words. As she continued to account what moved her, he became misty-eyed – and couldn’t continue the discussion. I was not prepared for what was to happen next.

After she walked away, he turned to me with bewildered eyes. I can not say if it was a look blemished with dismay or frustration. I handed him a Styrofoam cup filled with sweet whisky thinking it would help him gain a sense of composure. He followed with a sip and said, “They never seem to understand that when the music is moving, I can not be thanked – I am merely a technician at best. My heart is on the loose when my fingers pluck those strings. It is not within my control, much as I’d like to think it is.”

I figured the liquor had become a thorn in his side urging this humble disclaimer to brush his lips. But later I realized I was witnessing the start of a thought process which would dominate his one and only world.

He was troubled by melancholic overtones that, as he described, echoed off the floors and walls. Once, he asked that I didn’t sing miserable hymns any more for he could not bear to hear them. I think he had always been too sensitive for his own good. There were times, if someone criticized his music, he would take it to heart, as if it were an indictment of his character.

As I recall, the religious judgments started slowly. He had always bemoaned the fact that human nature wasn’t what it should be- that his colleagues walked around wallowing in their abstractions oblivious to the suffering that was going on around them.

At first he spoke of the need for people to get in touch with the principles that underlie religion. But I believe that his music is what had him drown in this psychotic madness.

One night he offended several people by declaring that most of his early performances were nonsense, and that his works inspired by God were the only thing worth listening too. Friends and family could only exchange disconcerted looks as his blood ran cold and his eyes took on a blank stare.

The musician began playing the piano more often and his stringed instruments less.  I would talk to him, but even I wasn’t given a defined response. That night he left his loved ones with concern, I took the intoxicated Campbell back to his office. His body felt heavy as I laid him on the small couch and exhaustedly sat at his desk. My hands began to rub my face as I noticed the floor had stacks of loose paper intermixed with scriptures, each marked with red graffiti.  The sight before me was disturbing and my heart was beginning to fall, “What have you been doing Wes?” was all I could say before a soft sneeze broke the moment.

It was after a performance, for which he played the piano, that I heard him say  there had to be a God, and that his words were an expression of the Lord’s word, for no one could write something so moving unless he were directly inspired by a higher power. I expected Campbell to let a smirk tug his lips and let irony elevate, but no such image even flickered a resemblance.

Now, I know his argument sounds rather embellished, and I pointed that out to him, but his ear flushed a violent red and skin began to perspire. He said, “Descartes was merely referring to the idea of God, whereas he was referring to the feeling – the emotion, the pathos. I could not write music capable of evoking such deep emotion and reverence”, he said, “Unless divinely inspired.”  At that moment, his eyes burned into mine and our voices crossed with provoked anger and confusion. That day I clearly remember I was losing my friend to something else.

Unfortunately, soon after, he stopped composing and declared he would perform only religious works. He became impossible to work with and even refused to take care of himself.  His beard grew shaggy, he wore a hat to hide the oiled salt and pepper hairs, and always hid blood shot eyes with a pair of sunglasses. He argued with band members, stumbled on stage, and even wept openly during performances. At one point he confessed he no longer existed- that he was merely a medium for God to express himself.

His friends, those who stuck around, had suggested counseling, or a sabbatical–anything to break the cycle that had trapped him.

Though, it was after an autumn show that he finally broke down.

That night he was playing the guitar –it was actually used quite sparingly–I can still see his intensity as he sang the chorus during the first part. I caught a peaceful expression come over his face, as if something had clicked in his mind. I remember precisely the tenor recitative: “My Rum and Cigarettes, I’m so lonesome without you. This heart on my sleeve, left bleeding because of you. Jus this old love of mine soaks the floor, I’m so lonesome without you, that I stand here and burn in my skin.” Why this would ease his pain, I have no idea. Over time I have pondered that very moment to the point of fatigue. Though, I believe that night is when he said good bye to those who mattered, and a new Campbell emerged.

After his performance, we went outside to smoke a cigarette. We talked idly about the quality of instruments, future performances and such, and for a second, a hint of his old soul had returned. An energy that had not been witnessed for a very long time made his voice carry a youthful tone.

As he spoke about music, a beggar at the corner, a woman of 50 or so, quietly held forth an empty paper cup. Campbell gently touched my arm and said, “Look!” We watched for about thirty seconds as the departing concert-goers hurried by, lost in conversation, and then he looked at me with a strange, almost bemused expression, and said, “Not one! Not one person stopped and said anything to me! But they did stop to put money in that woman’s cup!”

Following this, he shook my hand, dropped a quarter in the woman’s cup, and walked away.

I certainly didn’t know it at that time, but I am told that he walked to his car, drove himself to the hospital, and had himself committed. Can you imagine that?

There, he was submitted and given antidepressants. He sat in his room, read only the Bible, and wept while playing his guitar. Please know that I visited him on one occasion, and he seemed weary. The fire was still gone from his eyes, replaced by what appeared to be a look of calm resignation. His psychiatrist, he told me, knew nothing of religion and even less of music. My friend had become thin, his cheeks had sunken. He stressed to me that his body ached from playing. When I asked if he would return to the University, he looked at me as a sympathetic father looks to his son. “I doubt I will,” was all he said.

After that meeting, I felt compelled to escape in Campbell’s office. I stood in the doorway for a long time. The early vestiges of sunlight were yet to be seen; moonlight filtered in through the glass at the far side of the room, painting a landing strip and coating everything a ghostly shade of silver. I caught a quick glance at the clock that confirmed it had only been eight hours since our conversation. The musician’s confession was carved on the walls as a token of who he had become. I was praying for a rewrite to the day’s previous scene, only knowing one was not forthcoming. I remember sighing as I fell into his chair. His drawers were empty, his pictures marked with scratches and yet, there was paper neatly stacked on the corner of his desk.

You see, I was stressed beyond belief and needed some form of outlet. I quickly grabbed a piece of paper and pen, only to begin the process of doing what I knew best – writing music. Before I knew it those little white roses were surrounding me in a space that I felt could be my own. I glanced around the drawers looking for more paper when I found a picture with Campbell and me. Surprised I began to observe it closer and when I turned it over a small yellow note fell. I opened it and smiled at the words, “Good Fortune Gavin – You are considered my weary note.”

Upon his release, he resigned from his position, and has, as you can see, taken to living on the streets. He refuses to play or write any music, saying that each individual must hear for themselves the melodies that God has planted in their hearts. Sometimes you might see him trembling a bit, but for the most part, he seems happy.

Even I, for the most part, severed ties with him, as we both became frustrated with our inability to communicate with one another.

You might wonder what happened to the young apprentice. Well, I must confess that I’m that student who is mentioned throughout this story.  Though, I am neither young nor play concerts anymore. I simply teach and watch my friend dress like a beggar while he mumbles sweet nothings.

I now run the special music class that is only offered in the spring semester.  And I tell this story to my students to show how a man, a musician, lost himself.

Why? The scene before us, I think, is less of sadness and one of beauty. That is all. He is a good man and deserves to have his story told.

—-

Amanda Todd is a freelance writer and illustrator. She specializes in taking words and using them in a creative composition. With sweet coffee nectar coursing through her veins, she is at constant battle with characters who affectionately bug her. A majority of the time, those buggers want a creative story written about them. Nonetheless, she loves to write, design and sketch. If you would like to reach Amanda you may do so at acwriter1985@hotmail.com.

The old guy wobbled around to the door. I knew he was there because the light darkened against the soap splattered glass above my head. You get really sensitive when you’re down on your knees. You get sensitive of sounds and moments, because each moment ticks away as time you won’t get back. You keep saying that in your head…temporary…temporary…temporary. My once polished sense of self-consciousness was replaced with an obsession about the position of my ass. When you’re on your hands and knees, it’s all about your ass.

He asked me if I was down on my luck and I sunk into my chest. I couldn’t help think, even in that low-tide moment of my life, that this wouldn’t have fazed me twenty years ago. I knew something had changed. I had crossed an emotional line and I was in deep. This wasn’t temporary. This was where I was and there weren’t little lights twinkling up in space…little hopeful prayers wrapped in glimmering hopeful stars. There were just dull floors in dull bathrooms for old rich people who asked dumb questions. A mental line had been crossed and I was becoming self-conscious about my own desperation. I didn’t have this going in, but after six months it all settles in like dirt.

When he left, the door click-thumped shut behind him and I remember feeling like I had just been locked into a kitchen freezer. There’s a certain click-suck sound to some doors. I’ve found this in apartment complexes…the run-down, cheaper ones where you hear people on the steps in the hall. I’ve heard it on the outside doors of retirement homes. It’s the sound of finality; of being really in some place alone…really, really alone. I hear the sound when I go into the walk-in of a liquor store at the end of my day. I never close the door behind me, even when I know it won’t lock. Sometimes a buzzer stays on and I get embarrassed. Paranoid bastard—the counter guys must think. But the concept of being trapped scares me. And I was in a different kind of trapped, one where you can’t see yourself where you are and you can’t see yourself anywhere else, then you’re really trapped. And I was really trapped.

In my shoulder bag were some peanuts and an apple, along with a container of yogurt that I rarely got time to eat. I sometimes had to chuckle about the brown leather shoulder bag that once held important papers. The papers were always jammed in half sideways as I rushed down airport ramps or up elevators to a next meeting. It had become a sack to hold a few spare rags, some extra deodorant and a bagged lunch that I could only eat in the hallway between the bathroom and the kitchen sink.

How do things happen to us in life? Or more importantly, and this is something I desperately need to understand; how do we let things happen to us? When we’re younger, every serious turn in life seems to have an apparent reason. We get mad and leave a job. We take a chance and try something new, something that will launch us to a better place. My wife and I used to joke about the rocket ride. Every time I had some crazy idea I’d tell her to get ready, we’re going on a rocket ride. We’d just laugh and pour another glass of wine. How she put up with me so long I’ll never know, though lately I’ve been hinting at getting an answer. I test her…maybe a slight joke about my day, just to see if she still sees the absurdity of what I had ended up doing. But of course she doesn’t laugh anymore like she used to, because it’s really not that absurd at all—and not that funny.

Really, I could blame a whole lot of events for why I was where I was. But that gets back to my point, when we’re younger, decisions and predicaments make more sense. When we get older, circumstances involve a long litany of tiny, dumbass ideas and decisions that if not clearly focused, spin off course and then in wide circles— so wide we don’t even know we’re going down until we’re down too deep to see the top. Even in our forties we’re young enough to take a dare, but it ends up like when we’re kids and someone bets us we can touch the bottom at the nine-foot end of the pool. The lesson of that bet, for any ten-year old, is learning just how real your decision was when you’re just six inches from the top. In later life we make decisions that get us in too deep as well, and there isn’t anything beyond that glimmer of water up top but death.

I leaned up from the bathroom floor, thankful my knees didn’t hurt too much. Screwed up knees would have seriously dampened my survival probabilities. I got my bucket and looked down the hall towards the dining room where Tina was finishing a quick dust. Tina was a child of twenty four and already with three kids and a deadbeat husband. She was just one of a million stories I found myself subjected to in my new life. In corporate life the stories were limited, either boring as hell or secretly scandalous, not much in between. I go back to a long ago Monday morning where a pudgy, middle-aged guy droned on for twenty minutes about a golf game. But when the editorial assistant with the straight brown hair fumbled by with her bags and sunglasses in the hallway, straight back from some weekend ocean trip, we followed her round ass down the hall in full blown hopes that reincarnation truly exists.

Tina had a way of swirling her twenty pound Kenmore Hempa-filter vacuum like a Marine hauling a flamethrower. Good house cleaners have an intensity, mainly because they’re working shit out in their heads. There wasn’t a person on that crew who wasn’t working something out. Sometimes the more screwed up a person was, the harder they beat on that bucket— pumped and pounded on their waxy rag like a prize fighter. Tina had that kind of energy and I liked her for it. She gave me hope. This wasn’t just about having a job in hard times; it was about being in a fight. Every time Tina pulled the neck of that vacuum she was wringing her husband’s runaway neck.

I also liked the way Tina wore her clothes; her torn Billabong t-shirt and gray sweats fought her on every inch of pale white flesh—pulling away and running for the hills. She was short, blonde and compact, arm-strong and beautiful in the eyes—beautiful because she knew who she was and was not far from knowing most people on a single glance. When she cleaned a floor, her shirt fell to a space below her small pointy breasts, near to the rim of her nipples until I had to look away. And when she walked, her pants dashed south and up her back side, off to the side and down she fought, pulling and pushing with one arm dusting and the other finding something lost and exposed. She made me smile just to watch.

Let me say outright that cleaning is a tough job, much tougher than my old desk job. The average time for cleaning a house is four hours for three floors, two on top, one and a half in the center with kitchen and then one half hour in the basement, depending on size. But this wasn’t a normal size. We were back and off the grid, back into genteel horse country north of Baltimore. It was here that I sensed the true depth of my descent into the American archipelago of underpaid labor. In the city, the space between classes is like a reach through effortless air, if you stretched just long enough you could slowly drift your imaginary fingers down the cheek of a rich person’s face. The eye exchanges are devoid of insinuation—the handshakes as plain as those at an Amway meeting.

But up in the valley, the distance is not only wide, it’s cultural—maybe even part of the DNA. Words are spoken like they’re scripted, level with the activity of business. In some ways, I liked this state of being better than the small houses. In the big houses, you’re a cog in a great wheel of contractors. It’s a tiered and entirely subjective hierarchy of skill…a figurative Animal Farm of related worth to the head farmer. But here there’s a rhythm and a placement and above all…purpose. To clean the house of a twenty-nine-year-old pharmaceutical rep is about as dry an experience as eating over-cooked chicken, but an estate puts you back in the circle of events. And as any person on the bottom would say, there’s hope in connection. And any hope is good hope.

The entrance to the estate I drove into on these cold mornings was gated but always open. The tall, black iron bars, pulled far back to the sides, were half meshed into the bulky line of forsythia and Juniper trees hovering like unruly teenagers over the faded brick walls. There was a two-story gate house to the right of the entrance that intrigued me. I couldn’t stop looking at it each time I drove up there. The building hadn’t been used in decades and the windows reflected an empty blackness through a grey, cobwebbed haze of glass. To think there was a time when someone’s whole life was devoted to one damn gate—a keeper of horses; a watcher of events in time. He, the gatekeeper—at the very edges of this privileged societal galaxy—was the face of tested expectation to generations. He’d have been a glorified gardener to the face of the world, but the secret keeper of dreams to those whose misplaced ideas were pushed away behind the misty pillars hovering ahead. You can enter the narrow gate of the rich but when you leave you won’t want to look back…it’ll depress you too much.

The old house has a small pillared overhang and a large set of marble steps that lead to a wrap-around southern-style porch. Everything beyond the house is set for the enjoyment of the one percent, including a garden path leading to an overlook where one could take in all of Hunt Valley on a good day. Tennis courts and a pool aligned the path to the right. The pool was built straight into the rocks that edge off to the less sloping side of the back yard. Straight back from the house are rolling courses of perfectly managed grass leading to a pavilion overlooking fenced pasture. In the center stands the big house—square and staunch as a cigar smoking fat man in a white tuxedo.

One time the owner of the house, probably the son of the old man who stared at me in the bathroom, came out on the upper part of the marble steps with his personal assistant attached to his left shoulder. He was around my age, well-dressed but casual. I expected him to look good since I had many times put his forty-plus pair of shoes together in long rows along his closet floor. They were divided by purpose, color, and quality and the instructions were explicit. I was learning the secret intuitive messages of butlers handed down since the dawn of the aristocracy—the master’s shoes defined the day and I would have to act accordingly.

I reached out my hand and he turned his full chest towards me. I could tell he was surprised that I didn’t just stand there like a squire uncertain about the complexities of the next joust. He took my hand with an eye-to-eye assurance that told me he understood me to be the guy in charge—a fumbling keeper of rags—yes—but still the commander on the field. Though from where he saw me, I’m sure my words seemed little more than a well-practiced soliloquy to an empty room, or a mimed play set to preserve the dying vestiges of my male ego. Still, I took a sense of worth where I could get it. It’s the American way to rise up, but it’s a hard road on deciding exactly where and when to do so.

There were times in my middle-aged downfall where I felt frustrated and trapped, and other times when I felt like a wild teenager. There’s a romantic freedom that comes with being on the fringes. I can’t deny that this feeling of undaunted giddiness hit me at certain points, and if it wasn’t for the violent emotional hammer of pending mortgage payments and an unsettled wife, I could probably have dissolved quite nicely into the fringes. I would simply have ridden a wave of artful eccentricity straight to societal oblivion. But fantasy flares up and dissipates quickly when we’re pushing fifty. The subtle laughter of a short, cute, twenty-four year old like Tina can spark memories that crash smack, head-on into my middle-aged reality, and I’m okay with that, because knowing that the tide is going out and not fighting it will determine when and how I’ll eventually jump overboard.

After the old man left, I just sat there in the bathroom staring down the hall to the grand entrance and the column of stairs that circled up to the second floor. The entire room was lit in natural light pouring from windows that wrapped in all four directions high up above. From the front entrance hallway, yellow and red stained-glass pushed dancing rays out against the crystal vases on the dark dresser at the bottom of the stairs. Maybe these were those hopeful prayers wrapped in shimmering stars?

With a deep breath I picked my sponge back up and forced my eyes from that widening universe of chandeliers, disappearing into the dusty streaks of light and a thousand disconnected thoughts. There’s a certain hesitation to starting work when one has drifted off, especially when it’s late in the day. It’s not far from the feeling I get when I wake up on a Monday. Since the day I lost my job, almost two years ago, I still wake up on Monday thinking I had some bizarre dream, just before a load of sand starts pouring and pounding against my chest.

I started off again in the corner, scrubbing the tile under the sink. Cradled in this chromed, cobwebbed underworld curled to the shoulder against the tile baseboard below the sink, I faded like a ghost into the inner workings of the big house. I heard the echoes and footsteps. Some mumbling voices, maybe some faraway laughter from the kitchen. I paused when I saw a strand of Victorian wallpaper still peaking behind the plaster against the tile below my knee. My mind followed the pedals of each faded flower and I was gone again in my head.

—-

Emerson John Probst is a freelance writer and former publishing executive in Baltimore, Maryland.  He  writes about the challenges facing older creatives and those seeking to redefine themselves in today’s economy.  When Emerson isn’t writing he enjoys cheap wine and stone masonry—often at the same time.

“Like Bob Dylan, the authentic American genius is a synthetic personality. They’re all hybrids, hence, inevitably, charlatans. It’s the chameleon nature of the American hero—the confidence man, the hustler. His solution to the question of identity is that of the three-card monte player. Anyone looking for the Grand Unifying Theory of Bob is just going to have to keep looking.”—David Dalton, Who Is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan’s not an easy man to pin down. He confounds the public, at one moment a sage and a prophet decrying materialism and war, and the next an eccentric aging musician doing gigs for Victoria’s Secret. His music is equally unpredictable, at times so insightful it resonates on the deepest level of your being, and the next barely tolerable—especially when, as John Jurgensen describes it in a piece for the Wall Street Journal, it is couched in his “always-raspy voice, now deteriorated to a laryngitic croak.”

For almost half a century, Bob Dylan has been a primary catalyst in rock’s shifting sensibilities. He has starred in and been the subject of major films; his work is taught in over 200 college courses; and few American artists are as important, beloved, and endlessly examined as he is. Yet he remains something of an enigma. Who, we ask, is the “real” Bob Dylan? Is he Bobby Zimmerman yearning to escape Hibbing, Minnesota, or the Woody Guthrie wannabe playing Greenwich Village haunts? Folk Messiah, Born-again Bob, Late-Elvis Dylan, Jack Fate, or Living National Treasure? In Who Is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan (Hyperion, 2012), David Dalton, cultural historian, screenwriter, novelist, and a founding editor of Rolling Stone, paints a revealing portrait of the rock icon, ingeniously exposing Dylan’s chameleon-like persona.

Dylan’s life in music, song, film and art, as Dalton recognizes, is really a metaphor for America. “Like most American geniuses, he’s a synthesizer,” Dalton writes. “America is a polyglot: a patchwork, a hodgepodge, a crazy quilt pieced together by our imagination. A work of fiction.”

For those who came of age in the Sixties, however, Bob Dylan was the voice crying in the wilderness—the conscience of a generation. He set to music what many were struggling to put into words and in so doing, he gave the civil rights movement some of its greatest anthems. Classic protest songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” “Desolation Row,” “Chimes of Freedom” and “Masters of War” set the mood for a youth-driven cultural revolution whose anthems were about peace and love and fighting oppression. In fact, as Dalton writes, Dylan “was seen as an antihero ready to lead an army of freaks to pull down the walls of Babylon, and amphetamine is sprinkled over Dylan’s mid-’60s albums like volcanic dust.”

Powered by idealism, the Sixties generation purported to reject materialism, helped put an end to racial segregation, opposed the military establishment and its never-ending wars, brought down a president (Richard Nixon) and essentially put a halt to the Vietnam War. And Dylan provided the soundtrack for all of it. As the legendary Judy Collins observed:

We wanted so much to change the world; we all wanted to stop the war; we wanted to stop social injustice. They were good causes because they had an innocence about them. But there was something about what Dylan was doing, a certain sophistication, that deepened our understanding of what’s really going on here. Bob dragged us from literary immaturity and made us grow up emotionally. He dragged us into the world of alliteration and metaphor in a way that nobody else could do. He was our higher education.

From the beginning, Dylan’s songs taught that there is an incestuous relationship between authoritarianism, social evils, militarism, and materialism and that the solutions to corruption are spiritual. Dylan proclaimed the existence of a God who brings judgment, a “hard rain” as one of his songs puts it, on those who perpetrate evil. Dylan’s topical songs mixed the power of Beat poetry with the folk style of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger—all with prophetic overtones. Although his songs often incorporated real events, they went beyond mere journalism to the moral underpinnings.

Bob Dylan was one of the few pop singers of any real influence who clearly articulated political ideas in his music. But, as if in midstream, Dylan abandoned politics. Perceptive enough to realize that politics is never a real answer, Dylan knew the times were not changing as he had expected.

The initial sign that Dylan was becoming disillusioned with the left and the political movements of the Sixties came late in 1963. Only days after the country had been traumatized by the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Dylan was invited to the grand ballroom of the Hotel Americana in New York to accept an award for his work in the civil rights movement. The result was a disaster. An intoxicated Dylan felt alienated from his adoring audience, which included many aging activists from the left-wing movement. He first appeared to insult them, saying, “It’s not an old people’s world.” He then simply baffled them with his speech, in which he spoke about race, class and the establishment.

I look down to see the people that are governing me and making my rules—and they haven’t got any hair on their head—I get very uptight about it…. And they talk about Negroes, and they talk about black and white…. There’s no black and white, left and right to me anymore; there’s only up and down and down is very close to the ground. And I’m trying to go up without thinking of anything trivial such as politics…. I got to admit that the man who shot President Kennedy, Lee Oswald, I don’t know exactly where—what he thought he was doing, but I got to admit honestly that I, too—I saw some of myself in him…. I saw things that he felt in me—not to go that far and shoot. [Boos and hisses] You can boo, but booing’s got nothing to do with it. It’s a—I just, ah—I’ve got to tell you, man, it’s Bill of Rights is free speech….

Dylan’s drunken rant reflected his growing view that all people are victims of those who control the system and that even the African-American hierarchy had compromised to gain political power. The speech caused an uproar, and Dylan left the hall amid a mixture of boos and applause.

“I don’t want to write for people anymore. You know—be a spokesman,” Dylan told Nat Hentoff in 1964. “From now on, I want to write from inside me.” Thus, by 1965, Dylan had abandoned the civil rights campaign and moved beyond political activism. In fact, although he had participated in key civil rights events, Dylan was not present for the final and most grand civil rights event where black and white protesters and musicians came together—the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in March 1965. There, over 5,000 people sang Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin.’”

On the musical front, Dylan abandoned the acoustic folk sound and became a rocker. By the time he went electric with his breakthrough album Bringing It All Back Home, it was clear that Dylan had assumed a new role. He had abandoned the shabby rambling-man look and assumed the countenance of a pained and scrawny ascetic.

Painfully obvious by now was the fact that drugs were driving the content of much of the rock songs of the Sixties—including Dylan’s. Dalton writes: “And in the USA of 1965 Dylan knew you needed drugs to be able to penetrate the fog of lies, barbecues, suburbs, and security.” However, while most of the Sixties generation would soon choose flower power, love and the fallacy that drugs were going to create a new society, Dylan saw the apocalypse approaching. A pivotal song is his 1965 masterpiece “Desolation Row,” which cries for humanity to renounce materialism or face destruction and alienation.

Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row.

“Desolation Row” brought Dylan to the level of the great apocalyptic poets such as T. S. Eliot. Moreover, Dylan became a prophet whose main concerns are moral, not political. And he condemns virtually all he sees.

Dylan’s conversion to Christianity in the late seventies didn’t soften his views on the nature of the world. As late as 1991, when asked about the apocalypse, Dylan replied: “It will not be by water, but by fire the next time. It’s what is written.”

Unfortunately, in recent years, we’ve seen less and less of Dylan the prophet and more of Dylan the self-promoter and entertainer. Yet not even his appearance in a Victoria Secret’s commercial, surrounded by scantily clad, winged lingerie models, or reports of his being picked up by police after being mistaken for a wandering vagrant managed to diminish his impact on those who have taken his music to heart.

Strangely, however, Dylan’s ever-changing façade has inspired many. In a tribute piece for AARP in honor of Dylan’s 70^th birthday on May 24, 2011, Bono shares:

When I was 13, Bob Dylan started whispering in my ear…it was a hoarse whisper, jagged around the edges, not-too-plain truths…ideas blowing in the wind about how the world could be a better place if we could just get it out of the hands of the hypocrites. When I was 16, Bob Dylan whispered in my ear about how the real enemy was not flesh and blood, but of a spiritual nature. At 21, with the slow train of faith having picked up a little too much speed, I stood at a religious crossroads and heard “Every Grain of Sand” stop time. When I got married at 22, Bob Dylan was whispering in my ear about love and infidelity. When I had my first child at 29, Bob Dylan wrote “Ring Them Bells” and “What Good Am I?” When I ran out of gas in the late ‘90s, I had Time Out of Mind to hold on to. When the world crumbled around two shining towers, and New York had its two front teeth knocked out, I had Love and Theft to hang on to. Now, having faced 50, I’m realizing I knew much more then than I do now. I’m returning to the brutal truth that “The Times They Are A-Changin’” — but you don’t have to let them change you. In short, all my life, Bob Dylan has been there for me.

Still, despite the glowing tributes, Dylan received his fair share of criticism for “playing it safe” during his 2011 concerts in China and Vietnam. “Bob Dylan, whose rasping songs of protest were once the definitive clarion-call for activism and dissent, belted out an unmistakably neutered version of his world-famous repertoire last night as he made his concert debut in Beijing”, reported Leo Lewis for The Times. “Although ground-breaking and heartily welcomed by fans, the long-awaited concert bore the hallmarks of compromise with authority—precisely the sort of accommodation the 69-year-old singer railed against with such venom in his earlier days.”

Mind you, this is the same man who walked off the Ed Sullivan Show in 1963 rather than submit to a censored song list. Then again, perhaps Dylan the activist who once claimed that a hero was “someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom” has simply given up the fight and wants only to be Dylan the musician. As he once remarked, “Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.” After all, why should Dylan be any different from the rest of his once idealistic generation, many of whom have now become part of the very establishment they once opposed?

As Daniel Blackburn points out in the Spectator:

Western governments have largely ignored Beijing’s clampdown, which began in February as democratic activism spread from Cairo to Chinese websites. No trade sanctions or UN Resolutions are being issued here, just stern communiqués. Given that it’s nearly 50 years since Dylan purposefully stopped being the ‘voice of conscience,’ his reticence does not come as a shock… Why should Dylan do what we are too timid and politic to do? Besides, what could he achieve? Dylan’s words might be welcome to some Western ears, but he’s just one man selling records. He does not command divisions, even in the metaphorical sense. Human rights violations in China are for governments to challenge. Perhaps Dylan’s silence expresses that.

But should we really be surprised that any entertainer, no matter how Herculean they may appear, is in the end a human being like you and me? After all is said and done, Bob Dylan is and has always been an entertainer. As David Dalton tells us:

Godlike as he is, Dylan, like everybody else in the entertainment business, was subject to the three-year cycle of fame. In the ‘60s and on through the ‘70s, Dylan reinvented himself brilliantly, along with revolutionary new musical genres. But you can only reinvent yourself (and the music) when you’re on the beam; then you can multiply yourself as often as you like. Otherwise it’s just changing sets and costumes—and the outfits of the last three and half decades have left a lot to be desired: funny getups, top hats, plastic cowboy hats, gloves, hoodies, fake beards, and wigs.

Bob Dylan’s influence has been immense and his mythology will continue to haunt the cultural landscape long after he bites the dust. That influence—quirks and all—is brought to life by David Dalton in Who Is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan. David took some time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions about the enigmatic one.

John W. Whitehead: Dylan grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota—an out-of-the-way place. Many devout Jews live there. Dylan was a Jew. In 1954, at his bar mitzvah, young Bob read from the Haphtarah which is a selection of readings from Jewish prophets. He read in Hebrew. Bob talked of his moral duty of being a Jew. How in the world do you get from reading the Torah in 1954 to writing and singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” in the early Sixties?

David Dalton: In America, we are a culture of outsiders, and Dylan is basically a double outsider. He was a Jew from a very remote part of America. Thus, Dylan’s view of the United States is of somebody who had almost a foreign vision. I mean, America is something he desperately wanted to be part of and identify with, yet he himself was part of an estrangement that has colored everything he has done. Dylan basically made himself an American through the reams of music he produced. At the same time, however, there actually is an interesting phenomenon in the folk movement—that is, there were a lot of Jews who were folk singers. Even from the 1940s on, the folk movement was thought to be a way of becoming part of the American community. This was through communal singing and involvement in the folk movement.

JWW: But it wound up being a critique of America in the end.

DD: Yes, of course. At a certain point, folk music and the protest movement merged. Very specifically, in the early 1960s, it merged with the Civil Rights movement, led by people such as Pete Seeger. Seeger, of course, was part of the Weavers who were part of the first folk movement. They had some hit songs.

JWW: “Goodnight Irene” and all those songs.

DD: Yes, and others. Those songs were not overtly political. The model, however, for all of this, of course, was Woody Guthrie. Guthrie had “This Machine Kills Fascists” written on the face of his guitar. It was Guthrie who fused American folk music with protests against union busting, opposing war mongers and so on.

JWW: And the corporations.

DD: And the corporations.

JWW: Which in Guthrie’s day would have been the banks.

DD: Guthrie is the model for the first phase of Dylan’s career. When Dylan came to New York City, he was looking, as all young people were, for some forbearer. So Dylan went to the hospital where Woody Guthrie was suffering from Huntington’s Chorea. Guthrie was so sick that he was basically unable to speak or correspond. Thus, nobody knows whether he really understood what Dylan was saying to him. But the general idea is that Guthrie passed on the folk mantle to Dylan. This is according to Dylan’s mythology.

JWW: Mythology is the right word. As you point out in your book, Dylan’s various transformations emerge from standing in the shadows of other people. In Dylan, you have a fusion of James Dean and Woody Guthrie and others. Is that how you see it?

DD: Definitely, he fused with James Dean who was, oddly enough, a hero of the Beats. You would have thought that the Beats might have seen Dean as a product of Hollywood. Jack Kerouac of On The Road fame once called himself the “James Dean of bebop” or something like that. James Dean is an important element in all of this.

JWW: Again, as you point out in your book, on the cover of his album Freewheelin’, “Dylan is trying to look like James Dean walking down a New York street.”

DD: That’s right. Dylan is actually the James Dean of the 1960s. American culture shifts often after a cataclysmic war such as World War II. It needs a new persona, a new character to identify with. The new sensibility—the sensibility that James Dean projected—was a teenage sensibility. The teen culture erupted with James Dean and the year after his death, of course, Elvis Presley came along who was another admirer of James Dean. Elvis was also another idol of Dylan, oddly enough. And interestingly so, Dylan basically serves the same James Dean function in the 1960s. There was all this turmoil and everything happening and here was somebody who embodied all of these other personas. Dylan embodied a James Dean-like quest for stardom. He was unabashedly ambitious with folk music, which represented authenticity. Eventually rock music would serve the same change of persona function. Rock music’s secret function was its subtext, which was “we can change the world.”

JWW: How does Buddy Holly fit into all this? Dylan has a strange fixation with Holly. As a young man, Bob went to a Buddy Holly concert and he actually thought that he and Buddy Holly had connected somehow. Holly, as you know, had a big influence on other groups like the Beatles. How does Buddy Holly figure in with the complexity that is Bob Dylan?

DD: Buddy Holly had a different influence on the Beatles. Buddy Holly represents the group which was a new phenomenon in rock-and-roll when the Beatles were coming onto the scene. Throughout the 1950s, there were singers who had bands, but they weren’t identified with those bands. Buddy Holly and the Crickets were a unit. They finally quarreled and broke up, but their inheritance for the 1960s was the rock group—the rock group as a sort of a gang. For Dylan, Buddy Holly’s influence was that he combined basically folksy tunes with a rock rhythm. Moreover, Holly was the first identifiable teenage rock star. There was Eddie Cochran. There was Gene Vincent. But none of these people were like Holly. There was something more accessible about Buddy Holly.

JWW: Unlike Elvis.

DD: Elvis to most people was really an oddity. He was a kind of southern hillbilly or an alien character as far as a northern, middle-class kid such as Dylan was concerned. Buddy Holly was somebody that you could imitate in the same way as James Dean. You could put on a red windbreaker and jeans and look sullen and angry and you were James Dean overnight. But Elvis was something else. The gold suits and the whole country western oddity of Elvis was harder to mimic.

JWW: The thing that drew me to Dylan in the Sixties was he saw right away that there was an incestuous relationship between authoritarianism, social evils, militarism, materialism and the corporate state. Dylan, whether he was mimicking James Dean or Woody Guthrie, was speaking to that in those early songs and even into his electric phase.

DD: Yes. Absolutely. Dylan came to Greenwich Village with all these early songs. They come out of a genuine impulse.  In fact, his first album was marvelous, but his first album was also a failure and Dylan, although he denies it, was extremely ambitious. There is a definite element of opportunism in his involvement with the protest movement. I don’t mean he didn’t believe in what he was saying, but there are many songs that he subsequently admitted he wrote because that was what people were looking for.

JWW: But it had an unintended effect. Dylan helped create that great resistance movement we saw in the 1960s.

DD: Absolutely. With “Blowin’ in the Wind” (aside from the fact that it really doesn’t say anything) Dylan had hit upon a very successful formula—that is, to take these old songs and add a political impetus to them. But, of course, eventually the popularity of this new kind of protest—folk rock and/or protest song—actually destroyed the folk music that had created them. Dylan was very astute about not repeating himself because his innate paranoia has to do with his insecurity about being Jewish and coming from this obscure mining town.

JWW: I don’t think he wanted to be pigeon-holed.

DD: Exactly.

JWW: It was 1963 and Dylan was honored at the Thomas Paine Awards. Bob was receiving a civil liberties award, but he vented with a drunken rant and drew the audience’s wrath.

DD: That was so amazing. Dylan actually identifies with Oswald.

JWW: Yes. Exactly. But Dylan was showing his left-leaning fans that he was not going to be pigeon-holed. Then in 1964 he tells Nat Hentoff, “I don’t want to write for people anymore. I don’t want to be a spokesman. From now on I am going to write inside of me.” So after that, things change. Next up we get Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. Dylan becomes, as you show in your book, our Electric God.

DD: Well, actually Dylan combines that with a messianic presence. Dylan is basically, in a way, the last great flowering of Beat literature. He took the Beats and the source of the Beats inheritance—which is Rimbaud—and he put that to rock music. It was an unbelievable fusion.

JWW: As you note in your book, Dylan made rock music literature.

DD: The diehard Dylan fans call Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 and Blonde on Blonde the “Holy Trinity.” And those albums are inscrutable and profound. Nobody has ever really transcended what Dylan did.

JWW: What about the effects of drugs in all this? The 1960s was awash with LSD, amphetamines and so on. Drugs, as some argue, open alternative views of reality. Wasn’t Dylan affected by drugs as he moved on through his journey?

DD: Absolutely.  Peter Stampfel of the Holy Modal Rounders, who was a good friend of Dylan’s, said it was basically amphetamines that led to Dylan’s breakthrough.

JWW: And Dylan also lived an alternative reality in who he really was.

DD: Yes. What happened is he was exposed in Newsweek as not being who he seemed to be. His name wasn’t Bob Dylan. It was Robert Zimmerman. He hadn’t grown up in the circus or with the Sioux Indians or all these stories he made up.

JWW: He wasn’t an orphan.

DD: He wasn’t an orphan. All these crazy, wonderful stories.

JWW: Dylan’s father said that his son’s persona was an act.

DD: Right. He said that his son was a corporation or something like that. In my book, Who IsThat Man, what I emphasize is that to take his mythology as seriously as the facts of his life is a mistake. As Dylan says in the Martin Scorsese documentary, No Direction Home, he may have been born from the grooves in some 78 records that his parents found when they moved into a new house. He acted as if he were a foundling. Dylan basically functioned as someone who lived between the fictions he created and the actual situations of his life. The problem with many Dylan biographies is you can’t just treat him like he did this and he did that. You cannot treat Dylan’s life the way you would George Washington or Barack Obama.

JWW: Dylan has created a myth around himself.

DD: That’s right, and that myth is as potent as any literal fact about himself. Dylan is really that character. Not only are albums like Freewheelin’, Highway 61 and Blonde on Blonde such classic creations, but the person singing them, with the curly hair, the shades, the polka dot shirt and the whole thing is also a classic creation. Look at the famous interview that he did with Nat Hentoff. It is fantastic. I mean, we had never heard anybody except maybe the Beatles who had this wonderful humorous sort of surreal way of talking. For example, John Lennon was asked, “How do you find America?”

JWW: —and Lennon responded, “Turn left at Greenland.”

DD: Yes. That was great, but Dylan took this to a high art. You can see this in Dylan’s book Tarantula.  He is incredibly verbal. He is almost supernaturally talented in spinning words and images, and nobody had ever heard anybody at a press conference do this except maybe Marlon Brando. If you listen to Marlon Brando’s early interviews, he does the same thing. Like Brando, when Dylan was asked direct questions, he gave very elusive, funny responses to them.

JWW: In June 1967, the Beatles debuted Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The reaction to that album was phenomenal. As one writer notes, “The world stopped and listened.” The reviews of the album were astounding in that the critics said the Beatles had created rock music as art. At the same time, however, Dylan was getting ready to release John Wesley Harding, which was juxtaposed against the psychedelic electric sound of the Beatles. Was Dylan looking for guidance?  Was he doing that on purpose? What do you think?

DD: I think what happened was he was on a suicidal course in 1966. He was obviously taking a lot of amphetamines. He was not sleeping. But Dylan always had a basic compass to his life that came from his family where he realized he had to stop or he was going to die. John WesleyHarding came from the times when he supposedly stopped doing amphetamines, stopped roving around the world and settled in Woodstock. If you look at the pictures of him in Woodstock, it is almost as if somebody had kidnapped him.

JWW: It looks like he grew up in 1860.

DD: Yes, he looks like a rabbinical student. I think that he had to reconnect. Dylan realized before anyone else that the 1960s had basically run its course. He no longer had the ambition of transcending rock or folk music as did of a lot of singers of the 1960s. The Sixties had exhausted itself, and it had now become pretentious.

JWW: Do you think that led to his religious conversion—that huge schismatic conversion that happened in 1978? Dylan thought it was real, don’t you think?

DD: Oh, absolutely. There is no question about it. John Lennon, Keith Richards and others made some snide remarks about it, but Dylan was totally genuine. Dylan’s marriage broke up and he was suddenly adrift. He had always basically focused his emotional life on women and love. When that fell apart, he desperately needed something just as overwhelming to take its place.

JWW: And that was God.

DD: Yes, God. Dylan’s religious, right-wing rants during that time are nutty, and there is a lot of nonsense in them. However, people who saw him in concert during his Christian period have said he was at his absolute intensity, and those songs are still great.

JWW: Slow Train A Coming is a good album.

DD: That is a great album, and the two that followed were good. I know people over the years who apologize for Dylan when he came out with lame albums. If, however, an unknown person had produced them, they would say that they were unbelievably talented. Slow Train is great. But of course, Slow Train was preceded by Street Legal which is the first time Dylan used a gospel chorus and apocalyptic imagery.

JWW: Dylan seems to be obsessed with the apocalypse.

DD: Dylan has always been a possessed character, and I think the religious phase is something that was always there. I mean, he spoke of “flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark” in “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).” That kind of conviction was always there. He simply took it a lot more literally in his Christian phase. And he sang one of those songs in his recent China tour.

JWW: You have closely studied Dylan. What are his religious beliefs? Didn’t he slide back into Judaism?

DD: He was involved with Hasidic sects in the early seventies. The problem with the Christian thing for Dylan was that he felt it was a betrayal of who he was and where he had come from. All kind of apocalyptic themes run through Hasidic beliefs. In a profound sense, it is basically not all that different from apocalyptic Christianity.

JWW: Dylan had a heart attack in 1997. I actually saw him perform live right after that. Before that, I had seen a few concerts where he mumbled. You could not understand a thing he was saying. But in that 1997 concert, he sang everything clearly. He took roses on stage. He did a little dance. He smiled. Do you think his heart attack changed anything about him?

DD: Dylan is a collective entity. The reason that Dylan is so confusing now is that Dylan is partly him, partly his creation and partly what we have made of him. Near the end of my book, I invoke this idea of the group soul. This comes from the way certain insect colonies act. All the insects in the colony function as different parts of the same body and mind. They all function as one sort of unit. This is somewhat true of any rock concert. However, with Dylan, it’s more so because he has siphoned off religious apocalyptic political ideas that all fuse together and fuse us together.

I have seen Dylan concerts in recent years that were just horrible. I was really appalled at Cooperstown when he sang virtually every one of his songs, including “Just Like A Woman.” These kids standing in the audience, 18-year-old kids, were saying, “Isn’t he great?” I didn’t say anything to them, but I just was horrified. Then, in 2011, I went to Bethel which is the site of the original Woodstock concert. His performance was unbelievably good. He had a kind of claw-like attack to the piano keys, but the concert was unbelievably inspiring. Everybody was tuned in, and I think he reacts to that. I think that when he comes on stage, he reacts to the audience. At Bethel, everyone in the audience—old and new fans—were fused together. We all identified with him because, in a way, he is us. We all think of the ideal human being, and it is like Thomas A. Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ. Whether it is a religious image or a popular image, we always look for the person that we think is the exemplary character who embodies our best thoughts, impulses and emotions. I think that is who Dylan is. He is us.

JWW: How do you square the Dylan who sang about “flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark” and the Dylan who did a Victoria’s Secret commercial?

DD: Dylan wasn’t a poor boy in the way that a lot of rock singers were, but he has an absolute obsession with money. Why did he do the film Streets of Fire? He asked an actress friend of his to be in it and she said, “Why would I want to be in such a horrible thing”? He reportedly said, “Well, it’s a million dollars.”  People say every time Dylan puts out a record he buys a new apartment building. He is very …I don’t know…

JWW: Very American.

DD: Yes. Very American in the same way that he idolizes Woody Guthrie and Dion and Elvis and Liberace at the same time. He is a very promiscuous character, and he is also very American. Dylan believes in the whole idea of success in the same way that, for instance, James Dean and Hank Williams did.

JWW: Or Barack Obama.

DD: Or Muhammad Ali and so on. They don’t see any difference between success and financially supplementing their talent. The Beatniks and the abstract expressionists and the folk people disdained fame and money. Dylan embraces it all. Money is plasma in American society.

JWW: In your book, you say Dylan is basically a charlatan and that America is a fake. Explain.

DD: America is a country that we basically invented. It is very different from Europe. We are always pretending to be something we are not. We have never really grown up. We are these teenagers who are perpetually acting out a fantasy. In fact, that fantasy and charlatanism is the basis of American culture. It is the basis of the music. Writing songs is totally make-believe charlatanism. Every time you get on stage, you are pretending to be someone. The movies are our kind of dream world, our fantasy, our charlatanism. There are people up there on the screen pretending to be Alexander the Great or Thomas Edison, and they are fakes. However, that is the brilliance of American culture and its profound belief in its own charlatanism.

“We’re not computers, Sebastian. We’re physical.”—Roy Batty

Thirty years ago right around this time, Ridley Scott was wrapping up production on his film Blade Runner. By the summer of 1982, it had opened in over 1,200 theaters across the country. Routinely panned and even attacked by test audiences, the film fared little better in theaters. In fact, it was a certified box office flop. Virtually no one, it seems, liked Blade Runner. Fortunately, in the three decades since it first debuted on the big screen, viewers discovering the film on cable TV and DVD have come to appreciate it as not only a cult film par excellence but an emotionally challenging, thematically complex work whose ideas and subtexts are just as startling as its now famous production designs.

Set in Los Angeles in the year 2019, Blade Runner depicts a world where the sun no longer shines. Instead, a constant rainy drizzle adds to the dark character of this futuristic landscape. Although the opening shot’s aerial perspective suggests a modern Los Angeles, the audience soon discovers a very different city in which the endless archipelago of suburbs have been replaced by a dark and ominous landscape lit only by occasional flare-ups of burning gas at oil refineries. An energy shortage has crippled life in the future. The earth is decayed, and millions of people have been forced to colonize other planets. Those who remain behind live in huge cities consisting of a conglomeration of new buildings four hundred stories high and the dilapidated remains of earlier times.

The streets teem with Asians, Hare Krishnas and men in fezzes, all lit by a lurid blaze of flashing neon. The crunch and crush of modern population seems overwhelming and totally dehumanizing. Genetic engineering has become one of the earth’s major industries, with humans now assuming the role of “maker” and “creator.” Since most of the world’s animals have become extinct, genetic engineers now produce artificial animals. And artificial humans called “replicants” have been created to do the difficult, hazardous and often tedious work necessary in the colonies on other planets.

If Michelangelo were alive in Ridley Scott’s future world, rather than portraying God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he would likely paint the human creators of the Tyrell Corporation, the world’s leading manufacturer of replicants which has just introduced the “Nexus-6,” a replicant with far greater strength and intelligence than human beings. These latest-model replicants represent an obvious potential danger to human society, and their introduction on Earth—an offense calling for the death penalty—has been strictly outlawed. When the replicants somehow make their way back to Earth, they are systematically “retired” (but not “killed” since they are inhuman) by special detectives or “Blade Runners” trained to track down and liquidate the infiltrators.

Police receive an emergency report that four “combat model” Nexus-6 replicants—two male and two female—have killed the crew of a space shuttle and returned to Earth. The Blade Runner assigned to track them down and “terminate” them is Deckard (Harrison Ford, in his best performance).

The film shifts dramatically when the replicants, who are on a mission to extend their short life span, display a stronger sense of community than the human beings on Earth. With his three partners now destroyed by explosive bullets, the silver-blonde replicant Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) succeeds in finding his way to Tyrell himself, the master of the Tyrell Corporation and the genetic engineering genius who actually designed him. Batty wants to have his genetic code altered to extend his assigned four-year life span. He simply wants to live. But when he discovers he cannot, Batty kills Tyrell in a despairing rage, calling him (as Zeus to Cronos) “Father.” At one point, Batty remarks: “It’s a hard thing to meet your maker.”

Blade Runner cannot be understood without comprehending the deeply felt moral, philosophical, ecological and sociological concerns that are interwoven throughout the story. Three key, yet profound, questions contribute to the core of Blade Runner: Who am I? Why am I here? What does it mean to be human? Thus, the eternal problems in the film are essentially moral ones—that is, should replicants kill to gain more life? Should Deckard kill replicants simply because they want to exist?

Defining what it means to be human, however, provides most of Blade Runner’s philosophical focus. This is increasingly the dilemma faced by contemporary society—that is, the most vital question confronting us is how to maintain our humanity in the face of overwhelming technologies that tend to dehumanize us.

Philip K. Dick promulgated a “sheep” metaphor in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), upon which the film is based. “Sheep stemmed from my basic interest in the problem of differentiating the authentic human being from the reflexive machine, which I call an android. In my mind android is a metaphor for people who are psychologically human but behaving in a nonhuman way.” During research for an earlier work, Dick had discovered diaries by Nazi SS men stationed in Poland. One sentence in particular had a profound effect on him. That sentence read, “We are kept awake at night by the cries of starving children.” As Dick explained, “There is obviously something wrong with the man who wrote that. I later realized that, with the Nazis, what we were essentially dealing with was a defective group mind, a mind so emotionally defective that the word ‘human’ could not be applied to them.” More importantly for us, Dick observed, “I felt that this was not necessarily a sole German trait. This deficiency had been exported into the world after World War II and could be picked up by people anywhere, at any time.”

The dilemma is even more acute than when Dick was penning Sheep, for we have moved deeper into the methodological terrain of a new world—one more than ever dominated by what we believe to be the machine. As a consequence, we have reconstructed the self in the face of the dissolution of the ontological structures that have heretofore provided a validation of being. In the wake of this dissolution, as Scott Bukatman writes in Terminal Identity, we “humans” have arrived at “a new subjectivity constructed at the computer station or television screen.”

In the case of the replicants in Blade Runner, the so-called fusion of machine preciseness is meshed with the matrix of human flesh—but supposedly without the human characteristics of emotions, empathy and so forth. Deckard, who had been indoctrinated into believing that replicants were mere machines, was facing an emotional dilemma because of a stirring of regret (or empathy) when “retiring” the replicant/machines. As we find out in the later 1992 director’s cut of Blade Runner, this could be that Deckard, possibly a replicant himself, intuitively identified with them. Or was it simply his humanity emerging from the closet of decayed urbanity that engulfed him?

The central problems in Blade Runner are essentially moral ones. As producer Michael Deeley points out, “Should the replicants kill to gain moral life? Should Harrison Ford be killing them simply because they want to exist? These questions begin to tangle up Deckard’s thinking…especially when he becomes involved with a female replicant himself.”

Blade Runner postulates the theorem that what has feelings is human. Thus, Blade Runner is as much about Deckard’s recovery of empathetic response as it is about the replicants’ development of such a response. The irritated Nazis kept awake by the children’s cries with their inability to empathize were less than human. “What raises the android Roy Batty to human status in Blade Runner,” writes Norman Spinard in Science Fiction in the Real World, “is that, on the brink of his own death, he is able to empathize with Deckard. What makes true beings is that ultimately, on one level or another, whatever reality mazes they may be caught in, they realize that the true base reality is not absolute or perceptual, but moral and empathetic.”

The ultimate relevance of Blade Runner lies in its challenge of what it must mean to be human. It raises the eternal gnawing doubt as to our own humanity or lack of it. These are the same issues raised by the great religions and philosophies of the past. And it speaks to how we respond to the pain of those around us. Do we reach for the one downed by the crushing perplexity of modernity or do we merely pass by, forgetting about that grizzled human lying on the sidewalk who is drowning in the gutter created by the disintegrating and dehumanizing post-modern existence?

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Please visit https://www.rutherford.org/multimedia/on_target/ to view Whitehead’s weekly video commentaries.

About John W. Whitehead: Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute and editor of GadflyOnline.com. His new book The Freedom Wars (TRI Press) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.