LETTERS FROM HOME: HOW DOES IT FEEL, AND HOW WOULD YOU KNOW?

Nov. 21, 1996

Dear Julie,

At the beginning of the '70s, Bob Dylan performed in St. Louis at a huge hall containing 10,000 awestruck people. He spit commentaries on the state of things in grateful faces. The lights went on for "Like a Rolling Stone" at the end. Ten thousand people on their own, complete unknowns, asked each other "How does it feel?" It felt like the beginning of something.

By the end of the '70s the hall was smaller and so was his perspective. I think he'd discovered Jesus by then. The experience had left him muttering in unintelligible tongues.

Last weekend in Columbia the auditorium was small, the acoustics damnable. Dylan appeared on stage in a shiny silver cowboy suit with a stripe down the legs. He wore a hat Mexican American males who live in border towns wear when they dress up. The vaquero from outer space.

He hasn't made an album in awhile, so the band played Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits. "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" was DC's favorite. The Boomers were there with their nearly grown children. The kids tried to get some dancing going down front, but Bob Dylan doesn't dance.

"Like a Rolling Stone" was one of the encores but few sang along. Every new generation gets to find its own anthem.

By now, we know how it feels. Scary, thrilling, confusing, unbelievable, like wrestling an 800-pound gorilla, like a saffron shower. Much more mysterious than we'd at first thought.

Near the end of the concert, two girls of about 14 years appeared stage left and began dancing. One was short, blond and wore a black leather jacket. She didn't seem comfortable dancing there but kept moving in and watching Dylan. He seemed not to notice until the last number. When she was just a few feet off his shoulder he finally dropped the stare and really looked. And he looked again.

With the last strains of "Everybody Must Get Stoned" she rushed up and hugged him and he hugged back. Nobody hugs Bob Dylan without some kind of key to his heart. I imagined a father and daughter reunion but don't know.

It might have been the first time any audience has seen Bob Dylan show any emotion. For me it was the concert's best moment.

I left wishing Dylan could acknowledge his relationship with the audience as well. He never speaks and only walks around a 10-foot area of stage he stakes out for himself. There's no interplay with the other musicians.

During wild applause he turns his back like Miles Davis used to do. His vision seems confined to his line of sight, as if that limited view was instead a protective barrier.

It's as if he adopted this persona as an alienated, teen-aged singer/songwriter/genius and can't give it up. It's a character he plays and no long differentiates from his true self.

I used to go out to clubs with friends who'd dance all night while I sat and watched. One asked me why I didn't join them. "Because that's my M.O.," I said without thinking.

Eventually you realize that M.O.s and personae will hang around long after their usefulness has ended if you let them. I'm still realizing that.

A few days after the concert, someone on the TV show "Sunday Morning" was talking about Kurt Vonnegut and one of his famous aphorisms: You are who you pretend to be. So be careful who you pretend to be.

Or stop pretending.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.