Incongruity

On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:55:22 -0700 (PDT), Mr Jinx <...@hotmail.com

I went to see Dylan a few years ago in an English seaside town called
Bournemouth. It was sunny high season and the venue - a glorified
sports hall - was right by the sea so the sparkle from the water
reflected on its dark tinted windows.

Dylan's black tour bus pulled up to the side of the hall and for one
evening the world outside disappeared as we made our way inside.

All day I had been down by the sea thinking about the show. I ate
some fish and chips. There was an odd sense of dislocation there, old
age pensioners walking along the promenade, children with ice creams,
seagulls. It was so hard to square this genteel scene with the
ferocious endeavour of the Never-Ending Tour and the rough-hewn
reality of Bob Dylan. It was incongruous in the extreme. Like
finding a strawberry in the deep blue sea.

Dylan played his set and we spilled out into the warm coastal night
once more. How the hell did the man in the black cowboy hat and suit
fit in with this place? How did he conjure Lovesick when the rays in
SeaWorld glided silently past each other just a few yards away down
the seafront?

After the show with the music and a thousand ideas buzzing in my head
I looked at the sea stretching away in the dark. The black tour bus
pulled away from the venue and it was almost as if nothing had taken
place there at all.

Mr Jinx