Throwback Thursday: Rivers

"All rivers run into the sea, and yet the sea is not full."
~Eccles. 1:7 

At one time rivers were the roads. Before the infrastructure of highways and byways, of rails and roads, the rivers were our transportation routes. In other words, geography played an important role in the generation of wealth.  

In Herman Hesse's novella Siddhartha, the river is a symbol. As he encountered the river in various stages of his life, its wisdom was revealed to him as it reflected his soul. 

At one time in my life, the word "rivers" meant Larry Rivers, an artist whose paintings made an impression on me when I was a young art student at Ohio University, Athens, which itself was located on a river--the Hocking.

Larry Rivers. (Creative Commons)

The best part about one's college experience is the vast sea of influences one gets exposed to. University libraries are just the ticket for getting that exposure. I lived in Scott Quad my first year at school which was possibly the closest you could get to the school's library without sleeping as a vagrant on the main green. Row upon row of large fat books filled with full color photos of art seemed to reach out to me. I explored, found that the number of artists I'd never heard of was countless, and so much of their work fascinating. In this manner I encountered painters and sculptors from all periods of history, favoring the moderns at the time.

To call Larry Rivers my favorite artist would be a misnomer, but for sure I identified with the originality and passion with which he created his work. As a young art student, I found inspiration when viewing his work. He had studied with Hans Hoffman but rejected abstract art, choosing instead an approach that gave viewers something to grapple with, figures and forms rather than fields of color or designs. 

A Ukrainian Jew born in the early twenties, he emerged as a successful painter of central influence in the 1950s New York circle with numerous shows and accolades. In the early 1960s Rivers lived in the Chelsea Hotel, the selfsame residence as many other notables like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin, Dylan Thomas, Arthur C. Clarke and others. 

If nothing else he was exceedingly productive. Making art is what he did, and I liked the liberated sense with which he attacked his work. You can see examples of his work here.

Originally published April 2010.

Spotlight on Writer and Expecting Rain Contributor Laura Leivick

Ms. Leivick on her way to a Dylan concert.

When I was a kid growing up in the Cleveland suburb of Maple Heights, my best friends were the kids on my block. Proximity brings people together. So it is that we become friends with classmates at school who likewise are "neighbors" in the sense that our lives intersect at a space in time.

With the advent of the Internet all kinds of horizons opened up for meeting people. Forums on every topic under the sun emerged, and even before the World Wide Web there seemed no end to the possibilities available through America Online and other portals.

The other day I found an "address book" of email addresses for people in the screen print industry back in the early 90's. In my drawer is a file of conversations with a disparate batch of early Usenet users that included a former member of the psychedelic rock band Strawberry Alarm Clock. But if you're a Dylan fan in the 21st century, sooner or later you will eventually discover these two ever-flowing springs: Boblinks.com and ExpectingRain.com. The former is our hotline to Dylan's schedule and a history of his playlists, with concert reviews, news and more. The latter is something of a mashup of Dylan-related stories, news and other tangentially related themes.

If you follow the latter, you can't help but have noticed that one of the ongoing contributors there in recent years is Laura Leivick. This past week I learned she has been a professional writer among other things. And it is apparent she is a serious Dylan fan.

EN: How long have you contributing to Expecting Rain?

Laura Leivick: I began around 2015, when my friend Lloyd Fonvielle died and his blog pretty much died with him. Like you, he was interested in almost everything of interest. He had posted at least one terrific account of a Dylan concert that ran on Expecting Rain, so I automatically visited.

Somehow, I ended up contributing nearly every day. It makes me happy. I also think it's become kind of a superstitious practice.

EN: You’re obviously a Dylan fan. When did you first take an interest in Dylan’s music?

LL: When his first album came out I was ready--and just succumbed. I was a precocious kid and already knew a million genuine folk songs--and lots of blues, because of Paul Oliver, Sam Charters (books and anthology albums) and the Library of Congress field recordings. I used to go to the LOC some afternoons (when I wasn't at ballet school) and sit trying to transcribe the lyrics of songs like Bukka White's "Parchman Farm."

EN: Do you have a handful of favorite albums you keep returning to?

LL: Just Love and Theft. Usually I get hooked on the last one I loved and play it for months and can't listen to anything else.

EN: How many times have you seen Dylan perform?

LL: No idea. A lot but not enough, never enough. He's always different--he moves so far so fast he don't cast a shadow. (I said that.) Many of his concerts find you changed and change you more.

EN: Do you have a “most memorable” concert experience?

LL: I was especially knocked for a loop by some Radio City shows he did with G.E. Smith (who can be an egregious showboat but at those concerts wasn't). They did "Gates of Eden" and I thought, "I am in the same room as Bob Dylan," and the world fell away.

The most exhilarating show I saw was at Jones Beach in 2000. Here's a link to Lloyd's review "Dylan in the Rain."

EN: I believe there are Dylan celebrations in a lot of places on his birthday each year. Have you ever been to one in New York? Do you think you’ll ever make a Dylan pilgrimage to Duluth and Hibbing?

LL: No to all of the above. (Though I did celebrate some of his birthdays here with Lloyd.) But a public event? I'm not that kind of girl. Concerts, recordings? Yes. Fan activities? No.

EN: Can you briefly share a little about your writing career? How did you come to take an interest in writing?

LL: I was a dead serious ballet student, but I failed at it. On the other hand I have always been an obsessive reader, and a writer/literary critic at heart. At 13 I got hooked by the Literary Horizons column at the Saturday Review of Books. I started publishing in my teens -- first subjects: rock, blues, ballets. Then I went to U.C. Berkeley and got serious about literature--wound up valedictorian of my class and so on. But I tell myself I was more a devotee than a nerd.

I spent the next six or seven years working for San Francisco Ballet, and writing a lot for Bay Area publications.

In New York I worked as a copy editor and did some writing that led to features in the New York Times Magazine and the paper's Arts & Leisure section. I also reviewed top-of-the-line literary fiction for the Wall Street Journal. I also reviewed two Dylan bios for a special music issue of Paper magazine.

I was lucky to freelance copy-edit at the Times and all over town. The best gig I had was at Rolling Stone in the Wenner era. That place had the best and most knowledgeable staff. (It also had a great house band and great parties.) Every day at work you heard a wild range of music coming out of the offices. And I got my first taste of Dylan cred, though it was strictly in-house.

I'm proud to say I made it my business to thank Jann for preserving the history of a great American art form. We were in an elevator.

EN: What did you think of Dylan's Chelsea Hotel door that sold this past week? Have you been in the Chelsea Hotel when it was a nest place for stars?

LL: I was fine with the door sale, who cares? Yep, I stayed at the Chelsea, around 1970. I was so clueless I associated the place most closely with Dylan Thomas, though I heard rumors. "Nest Place"?  More like a rat's nest! The place was famous for being cheap, like Paris in the 20's, and no doubt that's how it drew its on-the-verge clientele. Anyway, the Chelsea was roach-infested and at night there was always bedlam behind the thin doors and walls. My memory is of a demimondaine flophouse with all this art in the lobby. For some reason, it all appealed to me and I never wanted to leave. I wish I never had.

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Related and Indirectly Related Links
Dylan's latest venture: Heaven's Gate Whiskey
ExpectingRain.com
Boblinks.com

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Engage it.

Dylan Trivia: Everything You Know Is Wrong

One of the features of Duluth Dylan Fest each year is the Dylan Trivia event at Carmody's Irish Pub. For 51 Sunday nights throughout the year Carmody's hosts a trivia contest featuring miscellaneous trivial themes. Then there's Dylan Fest in which the questions deal with all things Dylan.

As the author of a few of these Dylan Trivia contests I tend to notice news items with Dylan ties as they cross the ticker. For example, last week I saw a news story that the doors to the historic Chelsea Hotel were auctioned off. Several trivia questions came to mind. Here are two.

1. How many of the following famous people did NOT ever call the Chelsea Hotel "home" at one time or another?
Mark Twain, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Dylan Thomas, Jim Morrison, Leonard Cohen, Arthur C. Clark, Allen Ginsberg, Stanley Kubrick, Dennis Hopper, Robert Crumb, Claes Oldenburg, Cher, Tom Waits, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, Jane Fonda.

Answer: None. At one time or another all these folks stayed in the Chelsea Hotel.

2. The door to Dylan's room in the Chelsea Hotel went up for auction this past week and sold for how much?
a. $20,000
b. $50,000
c: $100,000
d. $400,000

Answer: You can find the answer here. (If the Vice link fails, try Google.)

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"Dylan Discovers a New Way of Seeing" 

Originally I planned to have this post yesterday as a FLASHBACK FRIDAY in which I re-posted one of the Dylan trivia blog posts from the past. Thursday's explosion at a refinery in Superior rocked the city and upended my plans here.

In 2016 I shared DO YOU LIKE DYLAN TRIVIA? The aim, of course, was to remind blog readers that Trivia Night is one of the events we have each year at Dylan Fest.

Last year, after DDF was over I received a link to another Dylan Trivia questionnaire titled TANGLED UP IN THE BIBLE: A BOB DYLAN QUIZ. It was fun, and perhaps a prescient preview of Dylan's Bootleg #13: Trouble No More which would be released late last year. You can find David Buckna's original quiz here on Facebook.

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DON'T OVERTHINK IT
The main point of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink is that we should learn to trust our instincts and not overthink things. We "think without thinking" he says. Granted, this is an oversimplification, but when it comes to trivia contests with nothing at stake, unless you are super-competitive, then have fun and don't overthink it.

On the other hand, I guess there's always the contrarian view, which Weird Al is happy to provide in this video.

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Related Links

Dylan Fest Schedule can be found here at BobDylanWay.com
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Meantime life goes on all around you. Engage it.

Brett Whiteley: Art, Dylan and the Other Thing

"An intriguing, absorbing and assured account of Brett Whiteley's life and work." 
--Mark Knopfler, Dire Straits

Brett Whitely was an artist who became a fairly substantial force in the Australian art world, with international recognition, having lived and painted in Italy, Britain, New York and Fiji. Born in 1939, Whitely was the youngest artist to have work acquired by the Tate in London.

After living in Italy and Britain, and looking for the epicenter of the times, he moved to New York for a spell where he took up residence in the famed Chelsea Hotel where he and his family "befriended Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and the rock and roll royalty of the era."*

After two years in the Big Apple, he became impatient with the amount of time it was taking to get recognition, whereupon he up and left for Fiji, then ultimately returned to Australia where for the rest of his life he pursued his passion for the arts.

The book is called Brett Whiteley: Art, Life and the Other Thing, by Ashleigh Wilson. A central, inescapable thread that runs throughout the book is the music of Bob Dylan. Even his ex-wife's book about their relationship took its name from a Dylan song, Tangled Up In Blue, My Years with Brett Whiteley.

Mark Knopfler, by Brett Whiteley

Though he'd won Australia's most prestigious prizes and great recognition for his art, the final chapter of Whitely's life closed out early when he overdosed in a motel room in June 1992, two years after his wife left him.

The book is a bio that not only tells Whitely's story, it includes many illustrations and photos of his work beginning with his earliest drawings. (His drawing of a cowboy that he drew at age 7 reminds me of a cowboy I drew in second grade.) By the time he was 20 he'd gained recognition as someone to notice.

When I first saw the cover the the book it stylistically brought to mind the art of Britain's Ralph Steadman: the energetic expressiveness, the draftsmanship, the bold distortions of a practiced eye and hand, the confidence with which he approached his work.

To some extent Whiteley was a product of his times, meaning he was immersed in an ethos of drugs, sex and rock 'n roll. Reading about his life journey, one sees echoes of many other artists of his era. From early immersion in LSD and mind-expanding explorations there is a descent into heroin and the cycles of addiction. Jim Morrison and Jerry Garcia come to mind, even Dylan himself had his peaks and valleys.

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Dylan by Whiteley

Brett Whiteley described Bob Dylan as ''the most satisfactory voice in pop, I think. There's sort of mango and Courvoisier and the best sort of hissing and low gravel Jewishness on it.'' But Dylan's importance for Brett Whiteley went beyond a mere appreciation of the voice.

His sister, Frannie, records in her biography of Brett that ,"He found an intellectual and spiritual brother in this man... Brett was obsessed with poet-musician Dylan... He collected his albums and was intimate with every song as though they were speaking to him directly. He listened to Dylan almost daily for most of his life."

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Whitely images from the book.

According to artist/blogger Harry Kent, The Chelsea Hotel was also where Bob Dylan lived in the 60's, where he wrote Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. Brett kept a huge portrait of Dylan on the wall of his modest penthouse apartment there. It was an acquaintance and adoration that would last the rest of his days.

I believe that he discovered in the person of Dylan the kind of intuitive artist, gifted genius even, that he himself aspired to be ... a bringer of gifts from the gods. He saw in Dylan a kindred spirit writ large. In short, he idolized the man and the musician.

* * * * 
Ashleigh Wilson's book is replete with photos of Whiteley's paintings, sculptures and illustrations. It also contains a fairly thorough index so that one is able to find your way through the book back to its various references. Dylan references are sprinkled throughout, and in places come in chunks. 

Those who have long followed Dylan's career remember well his tour in the 1980s with Tom Petty and band. It was during this time that a major event came together in Whiteley's personal life. While in Sidney Whiteley hosted a Bob Dylan press conference in his art studio. This was huge for him personally. Here's an excerpt from this 1986 event:

This was not Dylan's last visit to Whiteley's studio. In 1992 while again in Sidney, Dylan paid a visit to the artist's lair. Artist Harry Kent, whose TACHISME blog is full of insightful commentary on a variety of arts related themes, devoted this 2012 entry to Brett Whiteley, which concludes with Dylan's 1992 visit a month before Whiteley passed on.

Brett had bought tickets to every show and carried with him every night a copy of the catalogue from his recent exhibition in case he got the opportunity to present it to Bob. Dylan's minders were under orders not to admit anyone new to his dressing room. But Brett was not new and the opportunity came. Dylan looked at drawings and asked, "How'd you do that man?" Brett was elated over meeting, "Tastic".

But better was to come. The following day Dylan came to the Brett's studio. They spent a couple of hours together looking at Brett's work and discussing painting. All his life Dylan's student, in those sweet hours he now found himself his hero's teacher.

A month later, Brett Whiteley was dead.

Reading these things leaves me saddened. Life is complicated. It's apparent that even fame and riches come packaged with challenges.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Whiteley
**You can find a copy of the book itself here on Amazon.