Babe

Bobby, girls, and married two weeks.

What’s not to like.

(NOTE!!! I didn’t see the movie. This is not about the movie. I will see the movie maybe when it streams for free. This is not about the movie because I didn’t see the movie!!)

At nineteen, Bob arrives in New York and starts sponging up the phrasings and picking of other musicians. The dead thing in his eyes is what makes him butch, and you can see from his slight body how any girl can be butch if she doesn’t ask for love or move too smoothly in her joints.

Bob sings for other men. In the early days, he sniffs around men for what they can do for him. In photographs, he's looking inward, as if the camera could snatch away something essential. He had a habit: Whatever worked for him, he didn’t give it away. Dylan is not a place to go if you are hungry, yet everyone wants him because of that. Girls: take note.

Dylan’s music laughs. If you want to hear it that way, it can laugh at the irritability and pomposity of the lyrics. The music is jazzy, jangly, bluesy, rough hewn, electric, and stirring. He became a master of melody—think “Tangled up in Blue,” “All Along the Watchtower,” “Forever Young,” “If Not for You,” and “Knocking on Heaven’s Door.”

The voice is a snarl and a whine. It’s twangy and davening—insistent, ferrety, seeping—the not-beautiful thing we can connect to.

The thing for women to steal from Dylan is the energy to get where you need to get to. To keep working, against all odds. Nothing is cooler than being willing to let everything fall away, including your youth and stamina, and still keep making art. You have to trust it in yourself. Just DON'T DATE BOBBY or become road kill under his wheels.

Singing a duet with Bobby.

Bobby:

Come over here from over there, girl

Sit down here, you can have my chair

I can't see us goin' anywhere, girl

The only place open is a thousand miles away, and I can't take you there

Laurie:

Okay, first, I don't want your chair. And why are you telling me you can't see us going anywhere? Like I'm supposed to care? And by the way, if I want to get to the open place a thousand miles away, what makes you think I need you to take me, huh? I got a car.

Bobby:

I wish that I'd been a doctor

Maybe I'd have saved some life that had been lost

Maybe I'd have done some good in the world

'Stead of burning every bridge I crossed

Laurie:

Why are you telling me this? I don't care. No one cares, to be honest. Go feel sorry for yourself a thousand miles away. Here, take my car keys.

A male human on Facebook

A male human on Facebook said I was very mean to Bobby by pointing out that Bobby is a horrendous shit to female humans in his songs. The male human on Facebook said in effect all men are shits to female humans in their songs, so why was I harping on Bobby?

There is no denying the excellent point this man was making.

Here's why it's fun to harp on Bobby. When you harp on Bobby, you remind people not that Bobby is a horrendous shit to women in his songs. Everyone knows that. You remind male humans they didn't notice that Bobby is a horrendous shit to women in his songs, and you point out to men the reason they didn't notice is they especially enjoy the way Bobby is a horrendous shit to women and gets away with it. Bobby is loved for it. Babe.

Stop telling me Bobby is not a nice person.

As if I give a shit ever if a person is a nice person. My point is to look at the way women are mis-identified, discredited, weakened, and trivialized in works of art by men and women. This is a serious contemplation and a global one that gets drained of power, as if the objection is prissy, personal, and moralistic. My feelings aren't hurt by Bobby. I don't want to instruct Bobby or uplift him morally. I don't actually care about Bobby one way or the other. I just told you what I care about.

What I care about now, as we enter 2025.

Here’s my New Year’s resolution for my fellow humans. Well, my request. I request you resolve not to turn an insight on how society works against women into a piece of personal pain. The gigantic social and political ill of hating women does not hurt my feelings. The gigantic social ill of hating women, sanctioned by religions, civil laws, and traditions, includes segregating them, policing their sexuality, restricting their circulation, silencing them, killing, raping, and maiming them. This is a social issue—about to become government policy. Not a personal insult that makes me unhappy.

Also, when I and other feminists object to the loving embrace of hatred of women in the writings and other art forms made mainly by men but not only men, our delicate nervous systems have not been jostled. When I say for example Norman Mailer made relegating women to the status of whores and servants a model of cool, I’m not holding my nose at his idea of hot sex. Nothing is more effective at dismissing the insights of feminists than classifying them as prigs and puritans and claiming they want to restrict your orgasms.

Also, I couldn’t care less about reforming, teaching, or uplifting men at a personal level. Do it yourself or don’t do it. It’s not my job to teach you or guide you step by step out of your swamp. My job is to say that when you lovingly embrace people who hate women and make it clear they find women disgusting, weak, and not really quite human, when you love the work of these people without noticing the hatred of women in it, you are supporting a giant social ill that harms me and people like me. Go ahead and keep loving what you love. I can’t stop you.

To review. Hatred of women is a giant social ill, not a personal insult or a matter of hurt feelings. The critique of this giant social ill is not an example of sexual disapproval. The critique of this giant social ill is not an offer of unpaid teaching labor.

Married on day 11.

The other day, I had a small car accident in a town 20 minutes from where we live. No one was hurt. My car and another car have external damage that can be repaired. I called Richard, and as the incident unfolded, he sent me texts about how to handle myself, all helpful. I called my insurance company. A police officer filed a report. He was nice. It was cold, in the low single digits.

After everyone left, I couldn’t start my car. It was a battery thing. I had to wait for a jump in the cold for more than an hour. I drove home, and this is what I want to tell you.

I felt bad. I felt rattled. I felt I’d hurt the car. I felt the sad shake after an adrenalin rush. Richard said, “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is you weren’t hurt and the other person wasn’t hurt. Only the car was hurt, and it can be fixed. The money doesn’t matter. I made you a drink. It’s in the living room. I’ll eat a cheese sandwich for my tea. I put the heat on. We’ll watch tellies. I know the bad feelings won’t go away. I know you will hold onto them. You didn’t do anything wrong. Honest.”

NEWS FLASH! Richard and I will be the subject of the “Vows” section in the New York Times in the digital version on Friday January 3 and in the paper edition on Sunday, January 5. Oo La La!

_______________________________________

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The next ZOOM conversation is on TAKING RISKS, JANUARY 25 from 3 to 4 EST.

RSVP: lauriestone@substack.com

Last Saturday, Richard and I hosted a Zoom conversation on taking risks in writing. We divided the subject into risks with content and risks with form, and lots of people showed up. Everyone wanted to take more risks, however they imagined moving from point A to point B, and everyone's idea of risk was different.

It was such a thrilling event, I FORGOT TO RECORD it. I was so engaged by the pleasure of talking with a group of people and seeing their thoughtful faces. We were together to work and play, and I was reminded of the ways you forget the outline of yourself in a conversation that becomes jazz.

I didn't really care I'd forgotten to record because the experience was an improv and a collaboration and something that could only have taken place in that moment with those people, and so in that way it was intimate and writing on sand the next wave erases.

It was such a rich topic, WE HAVE DECIDED to stage another version of it on SATURDAY, JANUARY 25 from 3 to 4 EST. You can sign up now, and I will send you a link a few days ahead of the event. Please RSVP: lauriestone@substack.com.

Working together one-on-one for Paid Subscribers.

If you would like to work with me on your writing on a one-to-one basis, please email me at: lauriestone@substack.com. The first conversation of about 15 minutes is free for paid subscribers, to establish whether I am the right guide for your work.

I can also help you start and grow a Substack publication for an hourly fee as well. There is no free introductory conversation for this work.

Smoke and mirrors, what all art is.

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