Apparently sent out a post today with themes I had wanted to develop that just said “The” as the title. I’ve been ill off and on (more on than off, or more ill than not) since around mid-October. I had been doing pretty good since the first of the year, but today was horribly painful and I abandoned the post I was working upon to edit, but apparently published.
In November, my wife sold our crumbling trailer for considerably more than I envisioned we would be able to do since we didn’t own the three-quarter acre plot the trailer sat upon. So we moved into a little house in old Sparks. I immediately got too ill to do too much and my wife was continually calling the ambulance to haul me off to the emergency. Nothing wrong, nothing wrong. 2020 all over again, I’m thinking. Then they decided I had a viral gut infection which of course there was nothing they could do.
I have an appt. with the G.I. specialist, but there’s a shortage of docs in our area and appts are three to six months out.
During the move my cloud was removed to flashdrives but I haven’t been able to access them yet, since it was done for me at my request, and not by me to the appropriate drives. If you wonder why I still do it that way it is because I don’t want to pay google for extra drive storage on my chromebook and therefore need to remove files every couple of days and powerwash the computer.
I seemed to begin recovering towards the tail end of December and my wife took me to see the matinee showing of A Complete Unknown. I could listen and follow the story pretty well, while since my vision became impaired I have generally been totally lost about what any movie was about unable to follow the action.
I remember Dylan’s Chronicles v.1 and I don’t remember Seeger being in the story too much. I do remember Dylan speaking about Dave Van Rock and his early mentorship of Dylan. Maybe I misremembered.
But in the earliest mention of Seeger in the movie we are thrown (without guidance) to 1951, not ‘61, when Seeger would have been before the house communist witch hunting committee. (“Unamerican Activities”).
As I said,I might be totally wrong about Seeger’s involvement; and he was close to Guthrie. I know he did build a log cabin in the 40’s along the Hudson; but I don’t how near that was to NYC or to the hospital where Woody was being held.
My first inclination was maybe the movie producers inserted Pete Seeger for Van Ronk since Seeger was much better known. And then I remembered Dylan writing about singalongs with Pete and Sidsel Gleason , and Woody’s son Arlo that sometimes included Ramblin’ Jack (Elliott).
But it still doesn’t seem there was very much emphasis on Seeger in Chronicles and a lot of emphasis on Van Ronk, There was no ta great deal of emphasis in the book on Baez’s relationship with Dylan either.
Am I remembering wrong or was there a reason that those two played lesser roles when Dylan was recalling those first days? Or if they played larger roles in Chronicles is there a reason my own mind has mainly blotted them from the story?
And then my norm would be to notate those I was less familiar with and not necessarily note those I was overly familiar with, and maybe I just damn well forgot because I didn’t notate
Seeger (or Baez), and taking notes has always been my most effective memory tool. Even now, when I can’t read handwritten notes too well–but just writing notes while reading seemed to connect my memory better by the dual action of reading and writing simultaneously.
But the movie title… well for half of the movie at least, he was very well known, and an acquaintance who accompanied us to the movie complained they should have been able to do a movie just about Dylan's unknown years.
On the other hand my complaint with the title is that I think the entire movie was aimed at depicting the climatic transformation of the Newport Fest by one who had become the most well-known folk musician in the world, and second only to the Beatles in international acclaim. So I do think the movie was mistitled, though I wouldn't be able to suggest an alternative. But I liked the movie and I’m just nitpicking.Whether about the movie,or about my memory, I’m not quite clear.