Chad Dickerson's Field Notes

Astral Weeks, insofar as it can be pinned down, is a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralyzed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend. It is a precious and terrible gift, born of a terrible truth, because what they see is both infinitely beautiful and terminally horrifying: the unlimited human ability to create or destroy, according to whim. It's no Eastern mystic or psychedelic vision of the emerald beyond, nor is it some Baudelairean perception of the beauty of sleaze and grotesquerie. Maybe what it boiled down to is one moment's knowledge of the miracle of life, with its inevitable concomitant, a vertiginous glimpse of the capacity to be hurt, and the capacity to inflict that hurt.

Gone from Lyndon Johnson during the transition also are the outward manifestations of other aspects of his personality that had been prominent at every other stage of his career. The frenetic, frantic, arm-waving, almost desperate demeanor that had characterized so much of his life was, during this transition period, replaced by a disciplined calmness. As for the alarm clock "inside him" that "told him at least once an hour … to go chew somebody out," to "blow his top"—it went off seldom if ever during this period. During these weeks, there was usually, in fact, an underlying note of courtesy when he asked an aide to perform some chore. And, as one aide said, "I’ve never seen him so composed." "Composed," "calm," "self-possessed," "humility," "self-discipline"—these were the words used to describe him during these weeks. The boastful, gloating quality was gone, even with enemies over whom he now had power.

Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.

The people who know me best would say I have not changed much since I became president. And I’m happy about that. One of the dangers of being in the public eye, being in the spotlight, being in positions of power, is how it will change your soul. There is an expression: you start 'believing your own hype' – you start believing that you deserve all the attention. I actually found that I became more humble the longer I was in office. But I also think that I became less fearful. When you are young, you feel like you have something to prove, and sometimes you worry about making mistakes. Once you’ve been president of the United States, then a) you’ve made a mistake every day; b) everybody has seen you fail, and large portions of the country think you’re an idiot – but it’s a liberating feeling when you realise, 'OK, I’m still here, I still wake up every day, and I still have the opportunity to do some good', so that as time went on, I got rid of some of the anxieties that come with youth.

Q: As far as your fans and the music business were concerned, you literally disappeared during the 1980s. How did you and Fred spend those missing years? A: That was a great period for me. Until Jackson had to go to school, Fred and I spent a lot of time traveling through America, living in cheap motels by the sea. We'd get a little motel with a kitchenette, get a monthly rate. Fred would find a little airport and get pilot lessons. He studied aviation; I'd write and take care of Jackson. I had a typewriter and a couple of books. It was a simple, nomadic, sparse life. Q: Was there a period of adjustment for you, going from rock & roll stardom to almost complete anonymity? A: Only in terms of missing the camaraderie of my band. And I certainly missed New York City. I missed the bookstores; I missed the warmth of the city. I've always found New York City extremely warm and loving. But I was actually living a beautiful life. I often spent my days with my notebooks, watching Jackson gather shells or make a sand castle. Then we'd come back to the motel. Jackson would be asleep, and Fred and I would talk about how things went with his piloting and what I was working on. Because people don't see you or see what you're doing doesn't mean you don't exist. When Robert [Mapplethorpe] and I spent the end of the '60s in Brooklyn [N.Y.] working on our art and poetry, no one knew who we were. Nobody knew our names. But we worked like demons. And no one really cared about Fred and I during the '80s. But our self-concept had to come from the work we were doing, from our communication, not from outside sources.

And as was always the case with Lyndon Johnson, in addition to the obstacles before him there were the obstacles within, the emotions inside him that had been rubbed raw by that terrible youth in the Hill Country, the scars so deep that they raised the question of whether they would ever be healed— of whether anything could make him feel secure.  When he looked back on his ascension to the presidency in later years, these feelings were still vivid in his memory. The fact that he hadn’t been elected to the office was an objective consideration. But the words in which he described that aspect of his ascension went beyond the objective. "Illegitimate," "naked," "pretender," "illegal." And "the bigots and the dividers and the Eastern intellectuals, who were waiting to knock me down before I could even begin to stand up.… The whole thing was almost unbearable.” Fears, doubts, almost unbearable fears and doubts. … And once, during the very early days of his presidency, [Hugh] Sidey [journalist], walking out of the Oval Office after an interview, heard behind him words from Lyndon Johnson that were not spoken loudly but very quietly, as if he was speaking to himself: "I’m not sure I can lead this country and keep it together, with my background." … Not only were the men on his staff not smart enough, he believed, he also felt that his personal acquaintance didn’t include as many “smart” men as he was going to need to bring into the Administration. Among the “things he envied about the Kennedys most of all was that their old school ties go back so many years and so when Kennedy became President, he had people he could really trust because he’d gone to prep school with them, college with them and all that. Johnson didn’t have these old school ties and friendships,” says his aide James Jones. However unjustified Johnson’s statement about his lack of “smart” men— and it was quite untrue; it would have been hard to find a political strategist more astute than George Reedy, who had, after all, been at Johnson’s right hand during all the years of his ascent to power in the Senate; [Horace] Busby, forgotten though he may be by history today, was to Lyndon Johnson what Ted Sorensen was to Jack Kennedy, a wordsmith with a rare gift for turning his principal’s thoughts into memorable prose— that was nonetheless how Johnson felt. In an indication of his feelings, Lady Bird would say, “Our pool of high-calibre brains … is not too deep and wide.” Nothing the Kennedys felt about Lyndon Johnson could be any worse than what Lyndon Johnson felt about himself. The strength of these feelings, these insecurities— these terrors from his youth that combined to create a fear of failure so strong that, in words he frequently used to describe himself, they “immobilized” and “paralyzed” him— had been dramatically apparent in the effectiveness with which they had kept him from entering the race for President until it was too late. And now, stepping into the presidency, if he failed, the failure would be on a gigantic scale, on the largest scale of all, under the brightest lights of all, before an audience that would be the entire nation.

JOE HELLER True story, Word of Honor: Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer now dead, and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island. I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel ‘Catch-22’ has earned in its entire history?” And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.” And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?” And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.” Not bad! Rest in peace!

Cut now to Public Image Ltd. performing at the Ritz in 1981 in New York City. Sid Vicious was dead and the Sex Pistols were over. Public Image Ltd. had made an impact and their third album, The Flowers of Romance, had mystery, with its girl on the cover. The Ritz crowd anxiously awaited the band’s appearance. The huge movie-scale screen where videos were projected before bands appeared was still down. The screen was a natural barrier, used to create and motivate the crowd’s reaction. First up came a huge image of John Lydon’s face, laughing. Then he began to sing. Projected onto the screen was a strange film of a dark alley and the girl from the cover of The Flowers of Romance getting out of a garbage can. The film stopped, but the screen stayed in place, and suddenly behind it, the shadows of the three band members appeared. The screen stayed still. Furious at seeing the ghostlike, ritualistic figures of the group out of reach behind the screen, the audience became agitated; they couldn’t see the band in the flesh. They started yelling. A few of them threw metal chairs. The band ran offstage and the audience proceeded to destroy the screen. Public Image didn’t go out there intending to cause a riot. They were simply trying something new. The audience’s expectations were dashed. The band’s pure audacity had drawn crowds to the Ritz in the first place, but then the audience couldn’t accept what the band was offering. It was too much. And that experience, that feeling, will never appear on YouTube, will never be downloaded onto anyone’s laptop or phone. Today you will never find a picture of it, because the Internet didn’t exist, and no one was paying attention, or bothering to document what was taking place right before their eyes, with the exception of a zine started by a bunch of fifteen-year-old New York girls called The Decline of Western Civilization.

Do not laugh at me for writing you without having anything sensible to say. But I am so enraged by the base manner in which the public is presently daring to concern itself with you that I absolutely must give vent to this feeling. However, I am convinced that you consistently despise this rabble, whether it obsequiously lavishes respect on you or whether it attempts to satiate its lust for sensationalism! I am impelled to tell you how much I have come to admire your intellect, your drive, and your honesty, and that I consider myself lucky to have made your personal acquaintance in Brussels. Anyone who does not number among these reptiles is certainly happy, now as before, that we have such personages among us as you, and Langevin too, real people with whom one feels privileged to be in contact. If the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply don’t read that hogwash, but rather leave it to the reptile for whom it has been fabricated. With most amicable regards to you, Langevin, and Perrin, yours very truly, A. Einstein

Steve Jobs on liberal arts and technology

The thing that bothered me the most was when I had to return to the public eye in ’95 or ’96 when my husband died. We lived a very simple lifestyle in a more reclusive way in which he was king of our domain. I don’t drive, I didn’t have much of an income, and without him, I had to find a way of making a living. Besides working in a bookstore, the only thing I knew how to do was to make records—or to write poetry, which isn’t going to help put your kids through school. But when I started doing interviews, people kept saying “Well, you didn’t do anything in the 80s,” and I just want to get Elvis Presley’s gun out and shoot the television out of their soul. How could you say that? The conceit of people, to think that if they’re not reading about you in a newspaper or magazine, then you’re not doing anything. I’m not a celebrity, I’m a worker. I’ve always worked. I was working before people read anything about me, and the day they stopped reading about me, I was doing even more work. And the idea that if you’re a mother, you’re not doing anything—it’s the hardest job there is, being a mother or father requires great sacrifice, discipline, selflessness, and to think that we weren’t doing anything while we were raising a son or daughter is appalling. It makes me understand why some human beings question their worth if they’re not making a huge amount of money or aren’t famous, and that’s not right.

People talk loud and long, in order to say as little as possible. The really true and interesting things are the intrigues in the background, about which not a word is mentioned.