On “Subterranean Homesick Blues” in Westport - Ben Henschel

I’m at a dive in Westport, and the idea is to make noise. I found a pack of Camel cigarettes and kept them, but not for me. I don't know who they're for yet. What I know is that the people here are strangers but not distant ones and the music is old and playlisted but sounds like there’s a band in the back of the place playing it live. I am not the only one who isn’t dancing, and so I know that I can’t be the only one wondering about things. 

I have dedicated some time this year to drift around, letting my goals rest for a moment. I have avoided staying put with anything I do. I have milked the University of Missouri for whatever trips it can help fund. I have walked up and down some curbs and yellow grass in Rockville, Maryland where the sidewalks stop running and the highways start, then toured down and across the interstate concrete mammoth walking bridges in Falls Church, Virginia. I have drifted with the privilege of having nowhere to be for a few hours at a time. It’s almost a fiction to slip into. I present a moving target. I wander and see what I can get up to. When I travel like this, I intend to understand a place—impossible, but fun to try. That’s what tonight is about, back in Kansas City, forgetting my hometown and treating it like someplace new. And still I tell myself the point is to make noise, meet some friends or else a future wife and build an unexpected memory. Aim high, land low. 

The thirty-something bartender asks me what I want and I auto-pilot a double gin with a bit of tonic. He nods and I look down the bar, which is full of couples and the occasional lonesome-seeming man reading a newspaper or phone. It's a few minutes past sundown and I can't tell what they want from their reading. But I see there are only three of them, and they’re the only ones here above thirty. Them and the barback. 

Behind us is the dance floor, or at least a gap the size of a small room between high-top wooden tables. That’s where the noise is, the kind I wanted to join. I see what looks like my entire generation sprawled out. There is the crew in sweaters and rings, Gen Z's beatniks. The blockchain finance guys with their branded puffer vests and fruit drinks are here, and so is the one who orders an old fashioned out of his depth. There are the girls in short tops and high-waisted denim or leather pants with their vodka sodas and lemon drops and mules and the one girl who’s into tequila. There are two or three girls together letting their arms cascade all the way down to the beat, leaving everything to the beat. One of them's in a jet black leather jacket and a cropped shirt that says “Living,” sipping what could be a negroni or a dark n' stormy, carving the space to the beat. I think I could propose right now. Everyone feels in tune with something like a purpose. We're at least all here in the spirit of seeming young. 

The barback gets done with my drink and sort of hovers it by my hand and only when I reach for it does he set it down. Weird moment. I thank him and sign the check, then turn toward the dance floor and lean against the wooden bar. I look across all of them, all of us, and let myself smile at how comfortable it feels. 

I hear "Subterranean Homesick Blues” start up. And then I really let myself smile. 

I think enough of my generation has heard about Bob Dylan. We might know that Dylan is seen as the voice of a generation despite trying to duck the title. He wandered around with the aftermath of the beat generation and played shows at coffee shops until enough people took him—and, mostly, the forgotten names behind the folk scene—seriously in the 60s. Acoustic guitars in Washington Square Park broke big, naysayers broke bad. Arena tours came once the words rang too true to ignore. “Hootennany” lit the screens of most TV sets in the homes of families and drifters and squares alike. An emerging generation suddenly had a voice, and that voice came from the mouths of Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie, The Kingston Trio, Dylan, and swarms of others. 

Then we might know about how the reverence for Dylan can seem overdone, and is overdone. But at the center there is just the sense that the words ring true, almost always, even if we can’t point to our experience in order to verify it. I sense this is true for many artists who choose an acoustic guitar and a pen and paper before they consider other tools. The words click without distraction and the songwriter receives our credit. Maybe it’s been a while since the words of an old folk-turned-rock song turned a dive bar full of young people upside down here in Westport. But you wouldn’t know if I didn’t tell you. 

When the song revs up behind me, I turn and see a couple of people get excited about the acoustic strums and electric licks of the intro. Maybe they know the song. The girl in the leather jacket smiles and sways with her eyes closed. She definitely knows it. Dylan kicks into his words and most of the crowd falls into a weird jig. The ones who know the song try to keep up and the ones who don't fall back and forth between each hip on the beat, like one-two / one-two / one-two / here-we-go. 

Johnny's in the basement, mixin' up the medicine 

I'm on the pavement, thinkin' ‘bout the government 

I look over to my right by the bathrooms and there's a crew of three who look beat, ready to eat the rich. One girl has frizzy blonde hair and a tight flannel long-sleeve tucked into light-wash jeans, with the jeans bunched into beat-up amber Red Wing boots. She’s hanging onto a taller guy in a Chiefs jersey who’s moving nothing but his head to the beat. The person next to them has some silver eye paint on and a mirrorball dress. There’s a girl in a cropped "Edge of Seventeen" shirt with a floating Stevie Nicks head in some witch garb staring out at you. I watch the frizzy blonde woman mouth the words and run her fingers clockwise around her plastic cup, slow, shifting from foot to foot. 

Oh, get born, get warm 

Short pants, romance 

Learn to dance, get dressed 

Get blessed, try to be a success 

I think often about songs that deal with purposelessness, and about how well Dylan spoke on it. There are dozens of books on this. Even the Talking Heads said we’re on a road to nowhere, and they will always be right. I'm interested in all of this, but tonight I’m most interested in how my generation carries or proves the message. I get the sense that with "Subterranean Homesick Blues," we can feel some resonant hum. The song is for the most part a list of commands and so we listen and at least consider the merits. 

I get the sense to ask the barback if all this dancing is normal. At Mizzou, everyone would’ve left the floor by now. 

"Do you guys typically play Bob Dylan for young people?" 

"We play whatever," the bar back tells me, and then says something like: "We didn’t used to have only kids around. But we mix in the right stuff with the old stuff. They like it when we put it all together like that." 

“That’s smart.” 

Now I want to know how we’re moving the same to this Dylan tune as we do in college bars to rusty EDM remixes of pop songs from 2012. I think maybe the group to my left could have some answers. Three guys make up the group. One of them’s the tallest and has long hair and a lot of rings, and I can tell the other two are caught up in his tide. I take a look every few seconds and see that he talks and talks through a minute or so of the song, the other two just nodding to him and then to the beat. One of the others is much shorter, softish looking with a blue cap that’s too tight for his head. The third is pretend drinking and staring at the bar shelves. He's dressed like a librarian. 

I get within earshot of them. The tallest one keeps saying "George" to the librarian. The other guy never seems to get acknowledged. 

"George. Shut up. Shut UP. Listen to me, man. George. The only thing stopping you is you. You're getting in your own way," the tall guy said. 

"I think if I just—" 

"Listen, though. George. I've done this a billion times. And Barbara, I've been with Barbara. I know her and I know she'd go for you," he says again. “I know it. Come on.” 

They speak weird, it all feels unreal. 

There is a long pause. The tall guy must have exhausted them. 

"Did I tell you guys what happened at Troy's house the other day?" tall guy says again. 

And I just feel like shit. I want to cut in and let the two guys know they’re being played. The tall guy is all schadenfreude and self-obsessed, I’d say. You guys are string cheese. It’s not my business, but he’s using you for your ears. Get out of there, I’d say. And still, I say nothing. 

I close my tab at the bar and move toward the bathroom. The bar is huge, mostly wooden. It’s nice enough to keep your feet from sticking to the floor with every step. I hold two small plastic bar cups in one hand, the gin cup between two fingers and a water cup hooked onto my pinkie. I walk up to the bathroom line, which leads to two gender-neutral single rooms. It looks like all the girls are going in groups and everyone else is going in by themselves. The back of the line is a scene. There are two platinum-blonde women, maybe sisters, in cropped black shirts and jeans, one of them looking startled. A third woman with this brilliant long and wavy brunette hair with clear-rimmed glasses looks concerned, but calm. I think they’re all my age. 

"I fucking told him, you know what dad? You know what? I fucking told him—" 

"Stop, Brooke. Just stop," the younger blonde woman said. 

"I shouldn't have to stop. I haven't even started living for real yet and I'm a full-ass adult," the other blonde woman said. 

I try not to listen and get sucked back in. I do this over and over again. 

The brunette woman talks like her mind has pushed through decades, but no more than two have actually pushed through her. She says Honey, hey, slow down. Yes, she’s about their age, but she speaks like a sage and smells like cigarettes and peppermint in front of me. I’m charmed, pretending to read news on my phone, trying to mind my business. Problem is I’m failing to and falling a little for her and fighting it. She turns to see the crowd and then sees me, we hang in a glance for a second, and everything about her makes me forget my English—this is a good sign. Her friends pull her back into the fold to move forward in line and I realize I’ve still said nothing to anyone here beyond a few questions to the bartender. 

I reconsider. I think the best I can do is be everyone’s witness—can’t remember another time when that’s been true. No words are exchanged, and I can’t help but listen while she goes on to tell the blonde girl a 30-second story about her own parents. She talks about how they get so strict for no reason, but how when you ease back, look spooked and let them freak out on their own, they overcorrect and get nice. They say sorry and things go back to normal for a while. Maybe they'll ease up on you if you give them less agency. The punishments ought to be featherweight, that's how she said it. 

I hear the song in the background. 

Walk on your tiptoes, don't tie no bows 

Better stay away from those that carry round a fire hose 

Keep a clean nose, watch the plainclothes 

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows 

***

I’m back at the bar with my phone away and things have slowed down. My friend Aaron and two other buddies join me. They come in from a place where they’d let in the youngest of us, still not 21, but he went home. It’s just Aaron and I at the bar for the moment and I’m waiting to talk about how arriving here earlier has made me nothing but an eavesdropper, how weird that is. But Aaron’s on about career stuff. 

"And that's what I'm looking for—that's the stuff we want to target when the business launches and the promo’s done," Aaron said. The name of my buddy is changed for his own corporate sake. 

I nod along to what Aaron was telling me about. He has his professional life straightened out. He has a business plan to chip away at on the side, all kinds of “daytrading,” plenty of family members with a pulse on the financial times. I suspect he doesn’t need to think much about school in order to be alright down the line. I get the sense that I’m behind, that I ought to keep up. I used to be willing to abandon my own plans—years in the making, with hours of isolative work chosen over hangouts and assured memories—if it meant joining a crew of friends down a path that could offer me some more money or inclusion. Taking people at their word when they talk about how this sector and that job are where the money is. I’ve outgrown those compulsions, but no one ever really quits comparing. 

This junction, the one where we consider keeping up with the Joneses and lose some faith in the paths we’re on, is where I think "Subterranean Homesick Blues'' is most useful. We’re being told to do so many things and couldn’t hope to do them all. We’re staring at five empty grocery bags blowing across the blacktop and choosing to check our phones instead of picking them up and throwing them away, doing the right thing. It feels an awful lot like autopilot, giving up, cowering instead of living. I nod along to Aaron’s plans, but I’m adrift. 

Dylan might be consoling a wayward criminal in "Subterranean Homesick Blues," but it could also be any of the people my age at the bar. I know I’m not alone. Everyone is giving their friends outsized answers that ride the line between so it goes and c'est la vie, and almost no one seems to be right. 

Oh, get sick, get well, hang around an ink well 

Hang bail, hard to tell if anything is gonna sell 

Try hard, get barred, get back, write braille 

Get jailed, jump bail, join the army if you fail 

I think back to old George! His tall ringed jerk buddy is the last one to seek advice from, yet there he was, poisoning their time and feeling powerful. George and his friend weren’t listening, I hope. Just nodding to let the guy think he had it. 

Look out, kid, you're gonna get hit 

By losers, cheaters, six-time users 

Hangin' round the theaters 

I take a long look again at the crowd, and think back to the evergreen generational sentiment that everyone is Tired of Being Tired and Never Really Done Working. That is the sort of worn sentiment that is reassured by a list of commands and quips in a song like “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” Nobody I see in this bar seems calm enough to have their hands wrapped tightly around their life, or even just the moment. Speaking strictly for me, I hear too often of high-priced houses and graduating during a recession and how I can't just buy a house or spot to live out of college anymore with a fixed-rate mortgage. Whose words to trust? I only know we hear too much advice, always advice that contradicts and complicates things and corners us into whatever shows or books or drugs double as our vices and our respites. Choice paralysis. We hear too much and read too much and so I think we are living finally enough when we choose to hear nothing but the harmonies that make us move and love and sometimes dance. Until we truly need to do or hear something else. 

And so at least tonight, I am alright with my choice to feel all of this rather than make some noise. Earlier, when “Subterranean Homesick Blues” was on and the people were moved to dance, I saw people leave autopilot behind. The song might not give us answers, but it can point us somewhere better than here. 

Ah, get born, keep warm, short pants, romance 

Learn to dance, get dressed, get blessed, try to be a 

Success, please her, please him, buy gifts 

Don't steal, don't lift 

20 years of schoolin' and they put you on the day shift 

I’m up to the door with my buddies in tow and before I push the door open to leave, I see the brunette girl dancing to another song a few feet away. It’s “Cherry-coloured Funk” by the Cocteau Twins and her friends are under her spell, just watching. I push the door open a little and hover there and her eyes catch mine again for a long moment. We smile at each other, and I open my mouth to say something. I just purse my lips, open them and say Have a great night. I smile and leave, not saying another word. It’s not that I forgot my English again. It could be the nerves, but more precisely it’s the idea that now this perfect version of her lives between the filtered guitar and echoes anytime I hear that song. This beautiful girl I’d be lucky to see again someday when I’m less hung up, and one more living reason to come back home to Kansas City. 

I listen to “Subterranean Homesick Blues” now, months beyond the night, and think of someone new every time. I think of the girl but also her friends and George and the jerk and everyone who looked both adrift and alright with it that night. I think of that night and I’m lucky to feel some kinship—not for the ways we deal with things amid hopeless advice, but for the fact that we choose to try. And so I can say that if there are no answers or promises for you in "Subterranean Homesick Blues," at least there is the wild beat. At least there is the sense that we can wade past unwarranted advice without an answer for a few hours a day and do so with control, a song to set our pace to. At least the words show us there are always things to do other than cower.