Why Bob Dylan won't be performing in France

 

In October, health providing, 85 year old Bob Dylan will begin touring in Europe!!!!

He is going to:

Norway

Sweden

Denmark

Germany

Belgium

Luxembourg

Switzerland

Italy

Slovenia

Austria

and...

England.

Did you notice any big European Countries bordering most of these other countries that he is not coming to? Big, big country, plenty of cities, kinda tucked inbetween all these other countries? North of Italy, just across from England, right alongside Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, and Switzerland?

Maybe a country where I live?

Yep, he is not going to play any dates in France!

Does Bob Dylan hate France?

Oh, no. He has been here twice since we moved here. He had "reasons" for coming, but it might actually have been to visit me, though maybe I'm dreaming that. It's possible he does have some kind of business here though I don't know when he would have done it. He once said to me in passing while we were drinking spritzes made with green chartreuse at a rooftop bar (let's call it an emerald spritz) "I almost bought a villa here in the nineties."

Since I live here now in decidedly not a villa, I was very interested in this story. "Why didn't you?" I asked.

"It's too much like Malibu." He said. Which is at once completely insane and I can see his point.

 

I know for a fact he likes my pretty belle epoque city though, and he was sad to hear we might move. Both times we hung out together here, when I wandered off drunkenly to go home and go to sleep after our lengthy night of drinking, I am pretty sure he, an extremely famous 85 year old man, some time after midnight, went for a long aimless walk on the random streets of this large city. Maybe that was his business.

Don't forget to put your little hoody up, Bob.

He says he gets recognized less now that he is so old. "Being old hides you." He said with a mysterious glimmer.

I realize this doesn't explain his not playing any dates in France. 

Well, that was my fault.

We were drinking pastis at a kind of pastis bar. It's not really how a person is supposed to drink pastis, but Bob and I have our tasting thing. I got an awful headache later though. Always remember to drink too much water. Anyway, I said to Bob "I read somewhere that Leonard Cohen said that you said 'As far as I'm concerned, Leonard, you're number one, I'm number zero.' And then Leonard Cohen explained it: 'Meaning, as I understood it at the time- and I was not ready to dispute it- that his work was beyond measure and my work was pretty good.'"

Bob suddenly looked very uninterested.

"From one Nobel Prize winner to another, what number am I, Bob?"

That made Bob laugh despite himself. Not only don't I have a Nobel Prize, but one day, surely far in the future, clerkmanifesto will be quietly landed without any number at all. Also Bob was a bit toasted.

"I'll tell you what." Bob croaked. "The next time I play a concert here in France I will announce what number I think you are live on stage."

I thought he was kidding, but I guess not. And so, apparently, his solution is to never play live in France again. 

Sorry France.

I gave Bob an obscure lyric just to see if he could pick it up. He's a genius you know. "It wasn't for nothing that they put me away." I said. "I fell with my angel down the chain of command."

I thought Bob might have nodded off, but he looked up at me through his one dying eye and quietly intoned: "There's a law, there's an arm, there's a hand." A bit of later career Leonard Cohen and one of Bob's favorites.

I almost said, but didn't: "Oh Bob.You'll always be number zero to me." I didn't want him to understand, or to not understand. 

One of the two.