Kennedy Resonator Deaths: Early 2020

On December 19, 2019, I wrote a year-ending list, "JFK Resonator Obituaries of 2019."

Examining the foundation terminology, this observation was shared:

A resonator (first used in 1869) is a device or system that exhibits resonance or resonant behavior, which naturally oscillates with greater amplitude at some frequencies, called resonant frequencies, than at other frequencies.

Resonator is often defined as a device used to make something (such as a musical instrument) louder. Can individuals be defined as "resonators" that call forth more attention to a specific event? Certainly.

In April 2019, cryptokubologist Alex Fulton began using "resonator" in Twitter. In August 2019, Fulton clarified his use of "resonator" with a modified human-aligned definition pointing to a person who has a greater amplifying effect on a specific event ~ often related to the JFK assassination. (His graphic is above.)

JFK/RFK Resonator Deaths

As 2020 dawned, while #JFK resonator deaths were on the scene again, what became evident was an increase in the #RFK resonator events too, in a landscape overwhelmed by COVID19 deaths.

Here's a chronological look at the occurrences of the first few months of the year.

January 2020

American mountaineer of Dutch origins, Dee Molenaar, 101, died, on January 19, 2020, in Burlington, Washington State. He was born June 21, 1918. Along with "Big Jim" Jim Whittaker and Robert F. Kennedy, he was a member of the 1965 climb and first ascent of Mount Kennedy in the Yukon, named after John F. Kennedy.

Mickey Wapner, the widow of "People's Court" Judge Joseph Wapner, dies at 94, on January 22, 2020. She held senior positions in the campaigns of Kennedy for President in 1960, Brown for Governor in 1962, Salinger (JFK's brother-in-law) for Senate in 1964, Kennedy for President in 1968, and McGovern for President in 1972.

February 2020

Maria Louise Moessen, 64, born on February 19, 1956, died at her North Carolina home on February 29, 2020. She survived nearly two years with pancreatic cancer. The Internet Movie Database credits her as actress Maria Mason in JFK (1991), in the role of Jim Garrison’s secretary.

Dancer and choreographer Harry Woolever, born August 17, 1929, died February 12, 2020, at 90, in Montoursville, New York. Among a lifetime of dance performances, on January 31, 1963, he was part of a dance group of eight people who participated in a dance for President John F. Kennedy in Washington, D.C. That show was later broadcast on national TV.

March 2020

Known as the photographer of RFK's assassination, Boris Yaro died March 11, 2020 at the age of 81. His obituary brought to my attention the deaths of other witnesses to RFK's assassination: Busboy Juan Romero died October 1, 2018. The 17-yr-old volunteer Irwin Stroll, who was shot at the RFK site, died at 43 of AIDS, on February 16, 1995.

Peter Hardin Jackson, 53, son of the late U.S. Sen. Henry "Scoop" M. Jackson, died Saturday evening, March 21, 2020, in Seattle. He had been an editorial writer.  His father, Senator Jackson had been JFK's first choice for Vice-President. 

In Peter Jackson's Everett, Washington Herald obituary, the following story was shared:

Bob Ferguson, Washington’s attorney general, met Jackson when they were UW undergraduates. On Monday [March 23, 2020], Ferguson recalled walking into Jackson’s room back then and seeing a picture of Robert Kennedy with a young child. Ferguson wondered which Kennedy child it was — but soon learned it was Peter Jackson as a boy.

On March 27, 2020, Bob Dylan shared his first new track in eight years. “Murder Most Foul” is a 17-minute song about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It almost immediately went to #1.

April 2020

Maeve Kennedy McKean (née Townsend; November 1, 1979 – April 2, 2020) was an American public health official, human rights attorney, and academic. She served as the Executive Director of the Global Health Initiative at Georgetown University. A member of the Kennedy family, she was a granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy and a grandniece of President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.

On April 2, 2020, McKean and her eight-year-old son, Gideon Joseph Kennedy McKean, went missing while paddling in a canoe near McKean's mother's waterfront residence in Shady Side, Maryland. McKean had taken her family to Maryland to stay in quarantine during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Reports from the Maryland Natural Resources Police say they were attempting to retrieve a kickball that had landed in the water. Due to high winds, they were swept further out into the Chesapeake Bay. Fire officials from Anne Arundel County received an emergency call at 4:30 PM that day from a man who reported seeing a woman and her son, presumably the McKeans, in a small canoe near the community pier at Columbia Beach. McKean and her son were last sighted ten miles south of Annapolis, near Herring Bay. Marine units from the Queen Anne's County Police Department, Anne Arundel County Police Department, Maryland State Police, and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, as well as the United States Coast Guard, searched the Chesapeake by boat and helicopter. Natural Resources Police reported that an overturned canoe was found around 7:00 PM on April 3, 2020, near Rockhold Creek in Deale. Later that night, after twenty-six hours, the Coast Guard suspended its search. At 7:30 PM, Maryland officials called off the search due to darkness. As of April 3, 2020, she and her son were presumed dead. On April 4, 2020, the search was resumed by Maryland police.
McKean and her son's disappearance has been referred to in the media as part of the "Kennedy curse", a series of deaths, accidents, and other calamities involving the family.
McKean's body was found on April 6, 2020, and her son's body was found on April 8, 2020. On April 8, 2020, the medical examiner reported McKean accidentally drowned in the turbulent and chilly water of the Chesapeake Bay.

After Maeve Kennedy McKean died, the year-old discussions between the McKean-associate Bill Gates, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about vaccines, in the new age of COVID19, resurfaced. Indeed, RFK Jr. posted on social media in April 2020, the following:

"Promising to eradicate Polio with $1.2 billion, Gates took control of India's National Advisory Board (NAB) and mandated 50 polio vaccines (up from 5) to every child before age 5....that paralyzed 496,000 children between 2000 and 2017." ~ RFK, Jr

In 2019, RFK Jr. felt he had "exposed Bill Gates relationship with big pharma."

RFK Jr said that the "Gates Foundation routinely paid PR relations firms to manipulate scientific decision-making in favor of genetic engineering technologies that Foundation supports. Gates loves #vaccines"

Maeve Kennedy McKean had made news in 2019, for co-authoring a column criticizing RFK Jr. for his anti-vaccination activism. The critique was co-authored by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Joseph P. Kennedy II, and Maeve Kennedy McKean. Those three were identified by these affiliations:

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is the former lieutenant governor of Maryland and the former chair of the Global Virus Network.
Joseph P. Kennedy II, a former member of Congress from Massachusetts, is the chairman and president of Citizens Energy Corporation.
Maeve Kennedy McKean is the executive director of Georgetown University’s Global Health Initiatives.

++++++

On April 5, 2020, the actress Honor Blackman (born August 22, 1925 in Essex, England) died. She was especially recalled for her portrayal of the Bond girl Pussy Galore in Goldfinger (1964). 

President Kennedy listed From Russia with Love as one of his favorite books. After that ringing endorsement, Ian Fleming’s James Bond books started flying off of the shelves.

The Kennedys became friends with Ian Fleming. In 1959, Jackie Kennedy sent Director of the CIA Allen Dulles a copy of one of Fleming’s Bond novels, which captured his attention and led to him making contact with Fleming, sparking off several years of correspondence and friendship. Dulles wrote back to Jackie in November 1959, thanking her, mentioning he’d made contact with Fleming and enclosing a copy of Goldfinger (1958) for her and JFK to enjoy. Since filming began on January 20, 1964, and JFK had been killed on November 22, 1963, he never saw the movie.

JFK's and 007's womanizing ways were often compared.

Blackman died in the UK, although she owned a summer house in Islesboro, Maine, United States.

+++++++

Garfield in The Candidate

On April 7, 2020, during the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, Allen Garfield, 80, died of COVID-19. Garfield was born Allen Goorwitz on November 22 (the JFK assassination date), 1939. He appeared in over 100 films and television programs. One of the movies was The Candidate (1972), which starred Robert Redford, which had Redford in a role with a close resemblance to a Kennedy brother. Allen "Garfield," of course, reminds one of James Abram Garfield (November 19, 1831 – September 19, 1881) was the 20th president of the United States, serving from March 4, 1881 until his death by assassination six and a half months later.

+++

See also:

JFK Resonator Obituaries of 2019

++++

Random John F. Kennedy Airport notes: 

April 9, 2020. The first confirmed coronavirus case in New York was a woman who flew into JFK in February and tested positive March 1. The next day, Gov. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio promised investigators would track down every person on her flight. No one ever did. (New York Times)


BREAKING: TSA reported April 9, 2020, that 327 employees, both passenger checkpoint screeners and baggage inspectors, have tested positive for COVID-19, mostly at JFK, Logan and Seattle international airports. 13 employees have recovered, and 2 have "succumbed" to the virus.

Take Me Down To The Crossroads

On April 30, 2017, shortly before 6:00 p.m. local time, Peter Raymond Selis, 49, opened fire on several people of color, whom he targeted, at a pool party at the La Jolla Crossroads apartment complex, 9085 Judicial Drive, University City, California.

Selis was seen and photographed to have calmly had a beer in one hand, and a gun in another as he fired on people at the pool party.

Selis was an American resident of University City, California. He committed a mass shooting in Universal City, California, leaving at least 7 people injured and one woman dead, before being shot dead by San Diego Police on April 30, 2017. 

He was employed as a car mechanic at a local Ford Dealership in San Diego, California. Selis had a legal separation with minor children in a marriage with his wife Michelle Selis in 2008. In 2013, he married another woman, Patricia Martinez.

Psychologically burden by an enormous amount of debt, his motivation was seen as stress from a recent separation and the money he owed. The white gunman who opened fire on a group of black partygoers at a San Diego apartment complex was “despondent” over his love life – not driven by racial hatred, police said the day after the shooting.

According to police, the victims included three African-American females, one white female, two African-American males, one Hispanic male, and an African-American-male who broke his arm fleeing. The woman who was shot at but not struck was identified as a Hispanic female. Police initially misidentified the Caucasian female as African-American.

San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman said at a May 1, 2017 press conference that Selis deliberately spared a white attendee at the poolside gathering.

“We have zero information that this was racially motivated,” she said.

An intriguing conclusion.

====

Robert Johnson goes down to the Crossroads

The famed bluesman Robert Johnson said he sold his soul to Satan at the crossroads of Highway 49 and 61.

The recent LaJolla incident pops into sync-land via various threads and names.






Crossroads Apartments -> Robert Johnson's story of selling his soul at the Crossroads.

Crossroads Mall shooting: On September 17, 2016, a terrorist mass stabbing occurred at the Crossroads Center shopping mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Ten people were injured, and the attacker was shot dead inside the mall by an off-duty law enforcement officer. The FBI began investigating the stabbing as a possible act of terrorism. Dahir A. Adan (c. 1994 – September 17, 2016) was a member of St. Cloud's Somali-American community. He was born in Kenya and moved to the U.S. at the age of two on a refugee visa, becoming a U.S. citizen in 2008.

San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman commented on the Crossroads apartments shootings. Robert Zimmerman (Bob Dylan) commented on the Robert Johnson "crossroads" story.

Dylan is very tied to Johnson - via his album Highway 61, and other material.

The gunman (at the La Jolla Crossroads Complex) Peter Selis was 49 years old (Highway 49). He shot six people, killed one (Highway 61). Robert Johnson stood at the intersection of Highway 61 and 49 when he "sold his soul" to the devil. (h/t Steve Lindsay.)

Many celebrities have told about selling their soul to the Devil. 

The "Crossroads" are often a key and a metaphor. 

But then, it all may be more, as Nate Arthur suggests (here).

Highway 61 Revisited: Bill Paxton Dies

Bill Paxton died on Saturday, February 25, 2017, a day before the Academy Awards were to be handed out on Sunday.

William "Bill" Paxton (May 17, 1955 – February 25, 2017) was an American actor and director. Paxton was born in Fort Worth, Texas.

The films in which he appeared include The Terminator (1984), Weird Science (1985), Aliens - see above - (1986), Predator 2 (1990), True Lies (1994), Apollo 13 (1995), Twister (1996), and Titanic (1997). Paxton also starred in the HBO series Big Love (2006–2011) and was nominated for an Emmy Award for the miniseries Hatfields & McCoys.

On the film front, Paxton's final (known) film role is playing the father of Emma Watson's character in The Circle, co-starring Tom Hanks, which will be released on April 28, 2017.

One of the famous "Forrest Gump moments" in Paxton's life concern his being photographed, in a crowd (the child seen raised above the crowd) before President John F. Kennedy emerged from Hotel Texas on November 22, 1963, the day JFK was shot. This was in Fort Worth, three hours before the President would die in Dallas.

Fifty years later, in 2013, Bill Paxton served as the narrator for the documentary, JFK: The Day That Changed Everything.

The historical drama film Parkland (2013) recounts the chaotic events that occurred following John F. Kennedy's assassination and was produced by Bill Paxton with Exclusive Media's Nigel and Matt Sinclair and by Playtone's Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman. (Thanks, KT, for mentioning this.)

This is another angle of Paxton (being held up, in the pink shirt).

Paxton died suddenly at the age of 61, apparently in California, after he underwent heart surgery and had complications post-op when he suffered a fatal stroke.

Paxton

English surname derived from the names of several locations in Britain. Of Old English origin, and the meaning of Paxton is "Poecc's settlement". Poecc was an Old English name whose meaning has been lost.

May also be derived from the Latin pax, meaning "peace" + ton meaning "town."

By extension, the word "cross" is associated with the name.

Highway 61 Revisited

Miguel José Ferrer (February 7, 1955 – January 19, 2017) was an American actor. His breakthrough role was the OCP Vice-president Bob Morton in the 1987 film RoboCop. He is the main character in Toto's music video for the song "I Will Remember" (1995). He also voiced the antagonistic Hun leader Shan Yu in Mulan (1998) and Big Boss in Rio 2. Ferrer's other notable roles include Dr. Garret Macy on Crossing Jordan, NCIS Assistant Director Owen Granger on NCIS: Los Angeles, Vice President Rodriguez in Iron Man 3, and FBI forensic pathologist Albert Rosenfield in Twin Peaks(above) and, reportedly, in the new reboot.

Ferrer's cousin, George Clooney, on the left.

Ferrer was born in Santa Monica, California, and died at age 61 of throat cancer, in his Los Angeles home, on January 19, 2017.

Highway 61 Revisited
 by Bob Dylan

Oh, God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe said, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God said, "No" Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want, Abe, but
The next time you see me comin', you better run"
Well, Abe said, "Where d'you want this killin' done?"
God said, "Out on Highway 61"

Rest of the lyrics, here. 

Watson

In my 1983 Mysterious America, I wrote:

Cryptologic or coincidence? Jim Brandon should be credited with calling attention to the name Watts/Watkins/Watson, and its entanglement with inexplicable things.

Thanks to SL for some hints.

Synchrocinematic Tonto

We should always consider, through respect and heritage, the legacies that live on through synchromystic media and cinema in the blood of our own and others. The opening of The Lone Ranger is no exception.

My maternal grandmother Nellie Gray's father, John Gray, was a full-bloodied Eastern Band Cherokee. First Nations people's flows through the genes of many Americans.

Synchrocinematic Tonto

Tonto is going to be the major focus of the new Lone Ranger film because of the actor - Johnny Depp - who is playing that role. 

Tonto, of course, is a fictional character, the American Indian companion of The Lone Ranger, another one of the popular American Western characters for the Lone Ranger series, created by George W. Trendle and Fran Striker. It is a character that can have pathos, humor, strength, and irony.

In 2013, Tonto does take "center stage," as so many media reviews have noted, in this new version of The Lone Ranger. Some have said a Native (Western First Nations) American should have played the role. But, of course, in a brave new colorblind world, everyone would do best to play any fictional roles they can do well, no matter the ethnicity and racial overtones. While I may have issues with the continued bad choice of "Redskins" for a professional football team, the notion of an AfricanAmerican playing a Caucasian role (in whatever movie) or a basically Caucasian actor playing a Native (in The Lone Ranger) makes some sense to me.

The [original Lone Ranger] radio series identified Tonto as a chief's son in the Potawatomi nation. His name translates as "wild one" in his own language. For the most part, the Potawatomi did not live in the Southwestern states, and their regalia is different from that worn by Tonto. The choice to make Tonto a Potawatomi seems to come from station owner George Trendle's youth in Mullett Lake, Michigan. Located in the northern part of the Midwest, Michigan is the traditional territory of the Potawatomi, and many local institutions use Potawatomi names. Other sources indicate that Camp Kee Mo Sah Bee belonged to the father-in-law of the show's director, James Jewell. According to author David Rothel, who interviewed Jewell a few months before his death Kee Mo Sah Bee and Tonto were the only two words that Jewell remembered from those days. Tonto's name may have been inspired by the name of Tonto Basin, Arizona.
"Tonto" is also a common Spanish and Italian word meaning "stupid." Interestingly, "Kee Mo Sabe" comes pretty close to "que no sabe," roughly Spanish for "clueless one" (i.e. "tonto"). Source.

For those that understand that the differences between a Mohawk and an Apache may be as great as that between a white actor who is part Creek and a Dini, you get it. After all, the character of Tonto was portrayed most famously on television by Jay Silverheels, a Canadian Mohawk First Nations actor - not a Southwestern Amerindian.

Johnny Depp, who plays Tonto in the new film, was born in Owensboro, Kentucky, and raised in Florida, as the youngest of four children of Betty Sue Palmer (née Wells), a waitress, and John Christopher Depp, a civil engineer. Nick Barratt, a researcher for the BBC genealogical TV program Who Do You Think You Are?, stated in 2011 he had traced Depp's family name, Deppes, to 14th-century French Huguenots living in England. Depp has surmised that he is part Native American, saying in 2011, "I guess I have some Native American [in me] somewhere down the line. My great-grandmother was quite a bit of Native American, she grew up Cherokee or maybe Creek Indian. Makes sense in terms of coming from Kentucky, which is rife with Cherokee and Creek." Source.

I’d actually seen a painting by an artist named Kirby Sattler, and looked at the face of this warrior and thought: ‘That’s it’. The stripes down the face and across the eyes… it seemed to me like you could almost see the separate sections of the individual, if you know what I mean. There’s this very wise quarter, a very tortured and hurt section, an angry and rageful section, and a very understanding and unique side. I saw these parts, almost like dissecting a brain, these silvers of the individual. That makeup inspired me. ~ Johnny Depp

Depp's statements sound like the introspective transfiguration comments of Bob Dylan, detailed by Andrew Griffin and myself, recently. Maybe Bob Dylan should have played Tonto, but he didn't. He already played Alias in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and it seems to be Depp's time in history to play Tonto.

Let us see how this opening night at the movies unfolds!

Synchromystic Bob Dylan

I have connected with Bob Dylan's music for a long time. Since 1975, I've seen him perform several times - in San Francisco, Cambridge, and Portland, Maine. I appreciate his varied styles; that is all kinds of his music, whether acoustic, electric, folk, folk-rock, blues, ballads, or whatever he has to offer for the night. I have seen him grow old, as I have, and enjoy his gravelly voice as a testimony to his hard years on the road, in the studio, and on stage.

To me, Dylan is a poet. Simply and profoundly. But he may turn out to be more. His lyrics are Rorschach tests for every individual listener, and each person forms their own perceptions from his songs.

Quite literally, Dylan's newest album, Tempest is a masterpiece. Songwriter, critic, and my friend Jerry Clark, privately shared with his circle of music friends these insights: "This is among the greatest of all Dylan recordings. It holds up against just about anything in his career in its beauty and maturity."

With that in mind, I feel his new album Tempest and his concurrent interview in Rolling Stone reveal Bob Dylan as a synchromystic prophet or, at the very least, a twilight language patron. 

Others have noticed this too. Andrew W. Griffin, editor of the Red Dirt Report, early in August looked at Dylan’s upcoming Tempest album. In Griffin's excellent "A 'Tempest

On The Horizon," he wrote: "You have song titles including 'Soon After Midnight.' 'Long and Wasted Years.' 'Scarlet Town.' 'Early Roman Kings.' Of course there is 'Tempest' and the song 'Pay in Blood' with the line 'I’ll pay in blood, but not my own.' And note 'Scarlet Town.' This would echo the blood spilled in Aurora – a “red dawn” event – in the state of Colorado (Spanish for 'colored red')."

"The night is darkest just before the dawn. And I promise you, the dawn is coming." 

~ Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight, 2008.

Griffin's essay acknowledges that I've been talking about the lines in The Dark Knight Rises alluding to a "storm coming" for some time. Dylan's Tempest merely reinforces that notion.

Selina Kyle: There's a storm coming. 

Bruce Wayne: You sound like you're looking forward to it. 

Selina Kyle: I'm adaptable. 

~ The Dark Knight Rises, 2012

Griffin also notes that Tempest, despite that various details of the music were known for weeks, had as its official release the highly symbolic date of September 11th ~ symbolic individually to Dylan, as well as societally to America, needless to say.

Let's look at some segments of Dylan's songs' lyrics:

Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowingBlowing like it's gonna sweep my world awayI'm gonna stop in Carbondale and keep on goingThat Duquesne train gonna ride me night and dayYou say I'm a gambler, you say I'm a pimpBut I ain't neither oneListen to that Duquesne whistle blowingSounding like she's on a final run….Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing
***
Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowingBlowing like it's gonna kill me deadCan't you hear that Duquesne whistle blowingBlowing through another no good townThe lights of my native land are glowingI wonder if they'll know me next time aroundI wondered if that old oak tree's still standingThat old oak tree, the one we used to climbListen to that Duquesne whistle blowingBlowing like she's blowing right on time~ "Duquesne Whistle" lyrics by Bob Dylan

I know the phantom of the train of which Dylan speaks. I sense the "rhythm of the rail" that his music invokes. If one mentions "Duquesne" (read Du Quoin, Illinois) and Carbondale, then this song is historically talking about Amtrak's City of New Orleans (although the train runs are called the Illini and the Saluki today).

The Fifties were a simpler time, at least for me and the situation I was in....It was just woods and sky and rivers and streams, winter and summer, spring, autumn. The changing of seasons. The culture was mainly circuses and carnivals, preachers and barnstorming pilots, hillbilly shows and comedians, big bands and whatnot. Powerful radio stations and powerful radio music.
~ Bob Dylan, "The Rolling Stone Interview," Rolling Stone, Issue 1166, September 27, 2012.

I grew up in Illinois in the '50s, in the time of the "Duquesne Whistle." Damn, my mother's mother, Nellie Grey, was murdered in the coal mining town of Shelbyville, Illinois, on Valentine's Day in 1940, by my mom's stepfather. A bullet from a rifle whizzed by my future mother, killing her mom on the davenport in her sister's front room. Life was simple back then. But the 1940s turned into the 1950s, and it became a time of baseball, vanilla ice cream, outside circuses, and searching in the woods for wild animals.

In the 1960s, I got out of central Illinois and I rode Illinois Central's City of New Orleans to college. Well, at least, infrequently, that is, when I had the fare and didn't have to hitchhike to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale (the home of the Salukis) in Little Egypt.

Dylan's music picks up nicely on the rattling tracks and the sway of the cars. As one academic blogger wrote, Bob Dylan’s “Duquesne Whistle,” is "the only song" he could "think of that mentions trains and Carbondale."

(I was reminded, of course, of Steve Goodman's "The City of New Orleans" too. See Goodman singing his song at the end of this posting. Goodman died at 36. I'm glad we still have Dylan around at 71.)

Griffin notices that the song "Scarlet Town," calls attention to Colorado's Aurora (literally, "red dawn"). In "Duquesne Whistle," Dylan mentions "that old oak tree." The Oak Creek, Wisconsin, Sikh Temple attack flashed into my mind when I read those lyrics.

Hauntingly, another of Dylan's lyrics says,

It's soon after midnight,And my day has just begun
"Soon After Midnight" synchs with the actual time of the Aurora shootings.
And what do we see in "Early Roman Kings"? The early early Friday morning shooting, down from the mountains of Colorado, in Aurora? Or was this a flash about the suicide that followed a month after Aurora? I penned about just such a death, without knowledge of Dylan's song, in "Tony Scott: Divine Sacrifice of the King."
All the early Roman kingsIn the early early mornComing down the mountainDistributing the cornSpeeding through the forestRacing down the trackYou try to get awayThey drag you backTomorrow is FridayWe'll see what it bringsEverybody's talkingBout the early Roman kings

Kurt Gegenhuber writes about one song when he says, "Bob has thrown Duquesne to the Dylanologists like meat to ravening wolves." 

Of course Dylan has. And none of what he wrote is really about Aurora. Or Tony Scott. Or anything prophetic, is it?

This is true about this entire album. As Gegenhuber notes, "Bob Dylan is indeed sending me — and not you — subliminal messages through his song lyrics."

But, of course, Dylan is sending all, every one of us, messages, overt and covert.

In the comment section to Gegenhuber's blog posting, Jerry Clark checks in and sends along some insights about the title song, "Tempest," which is based more on the sinking of the Titanic than Shakespeare: 

Dylan's "Tempest" is indeed based on the 1952 Carter Family version of "The Titanic." It quotes the lyrics, prominently but not exclusively the opening line "The pale moon rose in its glory" (not unique to the Carters, by the way), and the words composed by Dylan can be sung to the older melody. "The watchman" also figures in the original, and other lyrics borrow or parody the Carters's. That may be plagiarism to Joni Mitchell, but to the rest of us, it's Dylan's continuing, brilliantly employed use of the folk process.
The LA Times writer evidently missed all of this, but at least he has some marginal awareness of Titanic ballads -- albeit, it seems, not this Carter gem -- in American traditional music.
~ Jerry Clark

Bob Dylan is not playing games. He's just being an artist. And a synchromystic. And perhaps even a Fortean.

His interview in Rolling Stone is quite interesting. It tells of Robert Zimmerman's/Bob Dylan's transformation and much more.

Among the revelations in the interview is that the death in the '60s of a Hell's Angel named Robert Zimmerman, which was Dylan's real name, captivated him to the point where Dylan believes they are somehow connected, though there doesn't appear to be a family relationship. Zimmerman's death was chronicled in the book Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger, written by Barger.
As Dylan explained it to Gilmore, “Look at all the connecting things: motorcycles, Bobby Zimmerman, Keith and Kent Zimmerman, 1964, 1966. And there's more to it than even that. If you went to find this guy's family, you'd find a whole bunch more than that connected.”
He says the Barger book gave him an identity. “I didn't know who I was before I read the Barger book.”

~ Steve Marinucci 

Andrew Griffin also pointed out to me that we should look at the name of the Hell's Angel who broadsided and killed his brother Hell's Angel, "poor Bobby" Zimmerman. That Angel's name is "Jack Egan." That's a spooky shadow of "James Eagan Holmes," the alleged Aurora shooter.

From reading the Sonny Barger book, which he found was about him, Bob Dylan discovered transfiguration. The interview details his feelings, his excitement, his wonder, in finding out those "name game"/twilight language details. 

Bobby Zimmerman's motorcycle-related death occurred in 1961 (the book gives the wrong date as 1964). Dylan's near-death Woodstock motorcycle accident happened in 1966. Transfiguration took place in Dylan's life, and it is reflected in his changing art.

That's synchomysticism at work, plain and simple. Yes, it evens happens through the life and music of Bob Dylan.

The carnival came to town, the carnival left and you ran off with them. It's just what you did. You don't travel to the end of the line until someone gives you a gold watch and a pat on the back. That's not the way the game works. People really don't retire. They fade away. They run out of steam....
~ Bob Dylan, "The Rolling Stone Interview," Rolling Stone, Issue 1166, September 27, 2012.

I have a younger brother, my Irish twin, who actually ran away to a carnival and worked a summer in the South. My youngest brother took off to meet his Waterloo in Napoleon, Ohio. And my youngest sibling, my sister, departed the plains of Illinois to the earthquake country of southern California. I guess I escaped to college in Carbondale, and beyond alternative service, to be transfigured into a father and a writer. Like Dylan, I'm not done yet. And most of us aren't. 

But getting there is transformative.

We all met our Buddhas in the middle of Highway 61 or Route 66, one way or another.

###

Remember Steve Goodman, 

who died 28 years ago on September 20th.

 

Steve Goodman, singing his song, City of New Orleans.

Steve Goodman died at the age of 36 (July 25, 1948 – September 20, 1984). He was a Jewish-American folk music singer-songwriter from Chicago, Illinois. He wrote "City of New Orleans," which was made popular by Arlo Guthrie, John Prine, and Willie Nelson.  According to Goodman, "City of New Orleans" was inspired by a train trip he and his wife took from Chicago to "southern Illinois, not Carbondale," as he said in an interview, but "to Mattoon, Illinois," to visit his wife's mother in an "old folks home." Yes, that is that Mattoon ~ the site of 1944's Mad Gasser of Mattoon. Steve Goodman won two Grammy Awards and he made his family very proud of him. He died much too young. In April 1988, some of Goodman's ashes were scattered at Wrigley Field, the home of the Chicago Cubs.

###

Portions of this blog, in terms of photos and content, are reprinted under the 

Fair Use Doctrine of International Copyright Law

as educational and/or editorial material 

of which commentary is made, 

without benefit of financial gain. 

This is applicable throughout 

the entire Twilight Language blog.

Some sources may be attributed above in embedded links, 

as well as mixtures and various tidbits from Wikipedia.

The Copycat Effect

(NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004)