Bob Dylan Archives - Revolutionary Misfit

An Exercise in Self-Losing

October 17, 2014 by costaricaguy 1 Comment

Most of us…wait, all of us…think too highly of ourselves.

Well, don’t we?

I’m currently on a cross country exploration (with “country” signifying the U.S.A.).

What am I exploring?

The idea of potential repatriation, but perhaps a better explanation is that it’s a journey, or an exercise in self-losing.

Not self-loathing, mind you…as I’ve already done more than my fair share of that.

Right now I’m in Portland.

I’ve heard a lot of nice things about Portland…that there are a slew of nut jobs, sort of like me, in Portland.

I just debarked from Amtrak yesterday afternoon, so the jury is definitely still out. Looks nice enough.

I haven’t even been to Voodoo Doughnut, yet. Oh, yea, I’m headed there today!

My stay in Portland will be partly in a hostel and partly couch surfing in homes of real people. I’ve never done anything like that.

One thing I quickly noticed here, in Portland, as well as the U.S. in general (also visited New York!), is that people really don’t care. Back in Costa Rica I was “the gringo.” Here I’m just another schmuck who’s arrived on the scene…not really welcome to anyone’s party.

And that’s OK. In fact, that’s good for me.

You see, I’m trying to figure out exactly who the fuck I am…

and where I belong.

But those very thoughts betray a psychological problem we all face.

We think we’re someone, when we’re not.

Our regularly thinking such colossal BS compels us to live guarded lives. We guard our egos as our most prized of possessions. In fact, a lot of the other shit that we guard is really just there to prop up that one highly valued (in our own mind) asset…the ego, or the self…the one we think is the sine quo non of our very existence.

Isn’t it true?

Bob Dylan once wrote that “when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”

Well, I’m almost there and it feels like a mixture of panic and bliss…with moments of each fading in and out.

I believe the ego, or the hallucinatory thought of a self worthy of guarding, gets in the way of our impacting the world in ways that, well, the world needs.

We need each other…not a bunch of selves running around, frantically trying to prove how worthy they are of the admiration of everyone else.

The “mine is bigger than yours” mentality that tends to pervade western, developed, cultural consciousness.

An exercise in self-losing, hopefully, will at least nudge me further along the path of letting go of these delusional ideas, which I still harbour to a lesser extent than in my past…

but that linger on nonetheless.

We’ll just have to see how much progress I can really make, as the self will only go kicking and screaming!

The moral of the post: if you have to think, think highly of others and stop thinking of self, or ego, because in reality, it doesn’t even exist…

Also, try not thinking at all from time to time…it’s actually quite refreshing.

I’ll be blogging a lot about my journey…

stay tuned!

On Painting Masterpieces

August 26, 2014 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

This morning I reach way back into the CRG archives once again…

Bob Dylan once sang that…

Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody…when I paint my masterpiece.

I believe Dylan was being facetious with that line, maybe with the entire song.

And then I also remember Big Tony (Robbins) once proclaiming that…

The road to someday leads to the town called nowhere.

I tend to draw inspiration from eclectic sources, don’t I?

I think Tony’s right because in my experience that mythical “someday” just doesn’t exist at all.

Waiting for some “day” to arrive at your doorstep in all its glorious perfection is like “waiting for Godot.”

But, as in the play, Godot just never seems to show.

I have often said that someday I will, or someday I won’t anymore.

Aspirations built upon the shoddy foundations of forlorn hope and recalcitrant expectation.

But life never gets smooth enough, the rough edges never hewn enough, the fog never lifts to be clear enough, and life just…goes on…

and my masterpiece in waiting…

waits.

Hold on…here’s a novel idea…

Maybe joy can be found in the painting, whatever form my metaphorical brush might take on.

In splashing on the colors like Jackson Pollock on an acid trip.

Chaotic? At best.

But one can find joy in chaos, no?

I often like to describe the music of the Grateful Dead, my favorite band of bands, as “organized chaos.”

I guess a painting that would be a truthful representation of my life, all 53 years into it, would indeed be rather…chaotic.

A “Masterpiece?”

Now that’s really not for me to say and, in all truthfulness, I won’t be around to judge, will I?

The point of this post on painting masterpieces?

Try to enjoy the damn painting for god’s sake!

Doing It Like Dylan

February 16, 2014 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more…

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan has been a force in my life for as long as I can remember. My earliest memories were sitting around listening to “Coach Taylor” strum his guitar and belt out old Dylan tunes in the living room of my childhood home on the west end of Holden Beach.

Dylan’s music and life define paradox.

Consider…

he wrote and sang as the leader of a movement, but loathed the very idea of being that leader…

he was worshiped by the masses as the god of folk, but then just up and decided one day to plug in and he got booed off the stage for it…

he was a revolutionary and a rebel, but then he “got religion” and again was booed off the stage for it…

What is it with this guy?

Dylan just doesn’t care what you nor I think. He follows his creative impulse, wherever it might lead him. And it has led him to diverse and sundry places.

I have to say that in many ways, I am similar (well, without the guitar, but I can do a pretty good nasal-twanged impression).

I am alarmingly paradoxical and all you have to do is go back and read through posts to my old Costa Rica Guy blog to see that very clearly.

Consider…

my earliest posts reflected my deep love for Costa Rica and that was the impetus behind my initial blogging efforts…

later on I shifted gears and started writing on topics like sustainability, anti-materialism and capitalism run amok…revolutionary stuff that could get me in trouble…

I went through troubled times in my marriage and wrote a lot about relationships (incidentally, back then I also started translating my posts to Spanish – why? – well, rationally to gain more Spanish-speaking readers, but deep down in hopes that it would get the attention of my wife and, hey, it worked!)…

then I just kind of stopped writing for a while (the creative genie was bottled by the lizard brain)…

I went through another relationship hiccup, moved to Perez Zeledon and started writing a lot about my faith (which, similar to Dylan, pissed off some of my readers)…

and lately I have looked deep inside to “find my voice” or what it is I really want to write about and for whom and that inspired me to launch the Revolutionary Misfit blog…

It is no wonder that my posting has betrayed my schizophrenia. After all, like Dylan, I am paradoxical. A person who wants to do good, but too often is quite “bad” (in self-destructive sorts of ways).

My recent struggle deciding on an ultimate direction for my blogging, or even if it should have one at all, is indicative.

Sure, I would love to “make a living” blogging. It is a passion and I love doing it…my way. But the idea of figuring out what an audience wants and pandering to them kind of makes me, well, queasy.

It certainly is not at all inspirational.

I also blog for my vacation site and those posts do pander quite a bit (and are always a chore for me to write). All the experts (those who incessantly write about the 10 ways to drive traffic to your blog) tell me to do that.

But then the rebellious (revolutionary misfit) side of me says fuck no! I will write what’s on my mind (and in my heart) and if it pisses off the world (or just my mom) so be it.

Because in the long run, while I am many things, conformist doesn’t appear on the list. And I’m okay with that…even though I do suffer for it.

Dylan refused to conform. If his main concern was giving his audience what they wanted, then he would never have plugged his guitar into a wall socket (and we would never have received his gift of Like a Rolling Stone).

I listened to an interesting interview that Merlin Mann did of Seth Godin a few years back this morning. They talk a lot about Dylan and his nonconformity and paradoxical tendencies.

Seth is also one of my nonconformist heroes. He is a marketing non-conformist (now if that’s not paradoxical, I don’t know what could possibly be). He tells me that I must have the guts to create art and then to ship it and if the masses don’t approve, then screw the masses…you’re not writing for them anyway.

You’re writing for the weird ones. There may be less of them, but they can be far more loyal to your cause (because it’s theirs too).

There are many who hate Dylan and I am sure he is well aware of that. But, I doubt very seriously that he ever sat down to write a song and thought…now how can I make them love me.

So, I’ll take my own advice in this post on doing it like Dylan and refuse to do that as well.

image credit: hugovk via Compfight cc

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