Self Portrait (1970) Bob Dylan
By Kimberly Mayer
They sat next to each other, essentially, in first class. Aisle seats across from each other on a United Airline flight out of Tulsa to Denver. My friend, Karen, and the older man who was the last passenger to board the plane. Wearing shades and a leather jacket. Bob Dylan.
What I love is that for the one and a half hours of the flight she gave him his space and anonymity. Dylan, with a newspaper upon his tray, tearing articles into strips and rearranging them on the page of a notebook where he began writing. Having just toured the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa and seen his many notebooks of songs, rewrites and revisions, she was not surprised by the way he cramped his hand to write so small. His handwriting is miniscule.
And just when you think you are traveling with the gods, Dylan begins dropping things. First his newspaper, later his drink with ice cubes.
Dylan sold his archive to the George Kaiser Family Foundation of Tulsa in 2016 and there lie unreleased recordings, poems, notebooks, handwritten manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, leather jackets, and the like. Dylan was born in Minnesota, but folk singer Woody Guthrie was an Oklahoman—and a huge influence on the early Dylan. Oil billionaire George Kaiser also founded the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa. “Tulsa is the beginning of the west, but it is also on the edge of north, south, and east,” notes historian Douglas Brinkley. “There is no better crossroads city in America.”
And didn’t Dylan always like the heartland?
But back to what he was doing on that plane, tearing the articles into strips. What Karen witnessed was a creative process, of course, as well as Dylan’s extraordinary skill at detachment. A master at it, finding a personal domain in which to write.
I found a YouTube “Don’t Look Back” out take (1965) of Dylan demonstrating a similar process. “I wrote out the song, you know? Then I cut it up on the paper, like into four. I cut it in the middle, then I cut it across. And then I rearranged the paper so it comes out like this.” And then he continues in a song-like manner, “It’s just a technique, which some people say some people invented and other people say other people invented. And some people say it’s a very old technique.
And I realize it’s similar to how I learned to write papers—on index cards, all over the floor of my room. It’s the only way I’ve ever known. I’ve graduated since to tables, but my notes remain on index cards. I wrote two manuscripts this way. I write my blog posts this way.
And now I’m going to sound like Dylan and say: some people say they taught me, some people say I made it up. And some people say it doesn’t matter anyway.
a little elbow room
a little elbow room 
What an extraordinary and surreal experience for your friend, Karen, to have just visited Bob Dylan Center and then to share space on an aircraft while he’s processing his thoughts!
I know! And the fact that she shared it with me. Karen later said to me, “I couldn’t imagine what you would write about my chance encounter or why you would want to, but that’s how you always write… starting out with something small and then bringing in the whole world.”
Well, that’s pretty fascinating. I feel like I know Robert Zimmerman a little better. And you, too! The creative process is itself creative. Thank You!
It is, isn’t it? We just spent the weekend on the Artists’ Studio Tour on island, an annual event I enjoy as much for seeing the studios as the art itself. Plus there’s often something still in the works that looks intriguing.
I love these glimpses into your world, Kim. A world only you can describe with such tenderness and such clarity.
Why thank you, Dulcie. I can only say the same about your writing, my dear.
Your writing is a reflection of your style. I hope this makes sense. There are your written words and then there is the style in which you put them together. You have compartmentalized your writing just like index cards introduced by the word, “and”.
Breaking a lot of rules here aren’t you? Lol. Yes, by all means break them. It keeps the reader effectively following but a bit off balance. I am learning more and more to learn the rules of writing and then, break them.
I am becoming increasingly convinced that this is what will separate good writing from AI. AI has the ability to write a paper that will earn the writer a, “B” grade. Boring but precise. That “A” paper is the one with the human touch, the touch that is not afraid to break the rules in just the right places. It is precisely our human quality which separates us from a machine
You know I love the short declarative question making up the entire paragraph: “And didn’t Dylan always like the heartland?” It directs the reader to where you have been, summarizing your point in case the reader has any doubts. It also leads the reader on saying this is where we were and now guess where we are going.
What you say, “Your writing is a reflection of your style” makes sense to me. Off the top of my head I think of Lydia Davis, but then there are so many. Thank you, I want to say.
One of my heroes and certainly a big part of my adolescent memories. Remember Newport Jazz Festival? I love that your friend honored his anonymity as he was encapsulated and transported by his craft.
Whatever that unique style of exploration and discovery that comes from tearing up newspapers, the electrical synapses and neuronal connections firing, the cramped hand to ‘write so small,’ is just so exhilarating like listening to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Winter.
The mind, body and soul connection that leads to disorganization, arousal activation (sometimes with the pain of giving birth), and then the crescendo where the newspaper and the drink fall in a state of creative emergence and the charged moment of ‘eureka.’
Not an imperfection but this continuous duality of organization and unraveling that defines life itself and moves us towards more complexity and creativity. A glimpse into his world and into yours. Index cards and newspaper strips.
I can only relate in a simplistic way that my own process is less defined and always finds a moment of doubt and uncertainty where an idea or thought appears intangible and then comes surrender, and finally the moment where something new and dear is formed; a process that feels less from my own larger, swooping hand and, more from the universe and spirits that surround.
Makes me love him more and especially you for this enticing piece of creativity.
How I love your description of Dylan’s creative process. My guess is this happens all the time with him. As he once said, “The songs are there, just waiting for someone to write them down. If I didn’t do it, someone else would.”