“Do you recognize the person in this photo?”

“Do you know who Bob Dylan is?”

Recently, I had the opportunity to ask a few persons under thirty-five these questions as I showed them this photo of Dylan. From almost all of them, the response was, “I don’t know who he is.” 

I responded with a quiet sense of astonishment…and acceptance…that I, too, must be on the fringe of the forgotten at my age. But not to remember the musical impact made by Bob Dylan??

For those who do not know, Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, author, poet, and visual artist, who’s been a major figure in popular culture for more than sixty years. The lyrics in his ‘anthems’ for the Civil Rights movement defied convention as he “incorporated a wide range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences." In 2016, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."

About the time this photo was taken (circa 1963), I was living in an $11/week garret apartment in Greenwich Village, NY, listening to Dylan perform at small clubs and coffee houses when he introduced his song ‘Blowing in the Wind’, that included the lyrics:

Given what is currently going on in our nation, and the world, I’m pressed to ask, “if the answer, my friend, is still ‘blowin’ in the wind,’ where are the writers and singers of songs today to awaken the heads that have not yet ‘turned’ toward action?

The early 60’s were an exciting time for me to be in Greenwich Village. I was there to begin a career as an actor/singer/dancer with my eyes toward performing on Broadway in musicals. Following a brief stint two years earlier as a student at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, I was on fire with a passion to perform. I was dancing down city streets like one of the Jets from the musical, West Side Story with the soundtrack of memorized show tunes playing in my head. I was lost and in the process of finding myself, and my way in the gritty streets lined with possibility. I was a ‘wanna be’.

At the time, the local clubs were often no more than coffee houses, bars or restaurants into which was a small stage and a microphone made available to a willing performer who was paid, or not. Within a few Village blocks surrounding Washington Square, you could find the Purple Onion, the Night Owl Café, Café Wha?, the Gaslight, Café Figaro, the Bitter End, and the Champagne Gallery, where I was one of the singing waiters who performed during breaks from table service. On a few sets I was the singer act with the support of a piano or trio, alternating with the performance by a little known comic, Richard Pryor, who was close to my age and who most impressed me with his unrestrained humor. There was also the famed Folk City that hosted Dylan’s first paid public performance. Folk City helped launch Peter, Paul and Mary, Judy Collins, Jose Feliciano, Phil Ochs, among others. I recall Richie Havens and Barbra Streisand were also discovered there during this time.

While working at whatever day jobs I could find (slinging steaks on the grill at Tad’s Steak House, waiter at assorted restaurants), I was also taking classes at Ballet Arts above Carnegie Hall, private singing lessons from a friend of famed musician, Leonard Bernstein, and acting classes at The American Theater Wing. For a few months, I was employed by Radio City Music Hall to work their concession stand. While there, I would often go the rehearsal studios above the stage to practice singing my show tunes in a hall intended for the Rockettes dancers. The hall was lined with eight-foot tall mirrors and a ballet bar that I would grab a hold of while singing toward myself, a soliloquy from the musical, Carousel, or another song that wanted all of me.

When I wasn’t performing somewhere at night I would settle myself into some dark corner of a coffee house and write in my journal about my observations. More than a few times, a young woman would approach me with, “Excuse me. What are you writing about?”

“My life…as I see it,” or whatever response might come to me from being interrupted while ballads and love songs played me from the other side of the club. It wasn’t unusual for her to stay a while, or for me to host her, whoever she was, in my tiny home with only a bed, few cushions, hot plate and a dining table made from scavenged fruit crates that I covered with a decorative tablecloth, two fancy cloth napkins, and a tall, pottery candle holder laden with wax drippings of all colors from prior dinners I prepared. It was enough of a bed–enough of a table–to keep me entertaining as a ‘starving artist.’

Regularly, after working or performing at night, I would walk home around 3am on the streets of the Village singing out loud, enjoying the sound of me reverberating off close knit buildings and wet pavement, the way I enjoyed singing in the shower…when I had one. “Hey! Shut up down there,” someone would call out from a darkened window. This would neither silence me, or discourage my song.

I took the above photo in 2017 of a 'Heart of Compassion' heirloom tomato that Dagma and I just harvested, and placed it on the poster of Dylan where I thought his heart might be.

More to come later, about my surviving this period in NYC, while exploring my sexuality and cooking skills.