76 LIFE BOB DYLAN
And then he had the “good fortune”
to encounter Raeben, “who taught me
how to see... He put my mind and my
hand and my eye together, in a way that
allowed me to do consciously what I
unconsciously felt.”
Separated from Sara and his family
but pining for them, examining what
had gone wrong, Dylan began to write
the songs that would fill his paramount
album, Blood on the Tracks. He focused
on the concept of “no time”: “You’ve got
yesterday, today and tomorrow all in the
same room, and there’s very little that
you can’t imagine happening.” Raeben
was a spirit on his shoulder: “I was just
trying to make it like a painting where
you can see the different parts but then
you also see the whole of it... with the
concept of time, and the way the char-
acters change from the first person to
the third person, and you’re never quite
sure if the third person is talking or the
first person is talking. But as you look at
the whole thing, it really doesn’t matter.”
True enough.
Whether it was the first or third
person, and whatever road or sage had
delivered him to this point, Dylan was
talking again. Speaking to us.
In words and music well worth
listening to.DYLAN ALWAYS LOVED ART AND PAINTING,
and became ever more serious about it
after his tutoring by Norman Raeben. Here
he is in 1974 at the Phillips Collection in
Washington, D.C., where he appreciates the
French artist Pierre Bonnard’s 1918 canvas
The Terrace. In the back ground, bearded, is
his friend Louis Kemp. Kemp was from back
in Minnesota; Dylan stuck through the years
with several of the guys Bobby Zimmerman
had known. Kemp was sometimes on the
road with Dylan—he helped manage the
Rolling Thunder Revue tour, which we will
learn about beginning four pages on—and
also ran Kemp Fisheries in Duluth (“smoked
salmon to The Last Waltz”). It is clear from
reading Chronicles: Volume One that Dylan,
in his seniority, has become his better self,
probably his best self. He has no more hills to
climb, during which effort he might once have
climbed over others, or positioned himself
so that others might pull him up. He can’t
release music without everybody buying it.
He can’t show up without everyone wanting
to watch and listen. Everything he might have
been desperate for is now guaranteed, and he
can just relax—and ask his boyhood friends
what they think of the painting. BARRY FEINSTEIN60-79 LIFE_Bob Dylan 2020 Retreat.indd 76 FINAL 1/13/20 4:28 PM