"It's the Road"

Reaching the ferry for Helsinki, Sept. 22, 1987

Bob, Mike Campbell, Tom Petty in Helsinki, Sept. 23, 1987 Photo: Harri Huhtanen

Bob had put Roy Orbison’s Greatest Hits on the sound system, and was sitting in the front of the bus chatting with his road manager, Victor Maymudes. The sun was behind us and the shadows were lengthening, like the road that seemed to go on forever. Mist had settled over the sea of trees, and the sky had turned from blue to grey. It felt like a landscape in a Bergman movie, under a lead-colored sky.

I had brought along Ulysses, anticipating these long stretches when I’d have nothing to do until we were in a room where I could do the body work that had made him feel so good, like rolling his thigh bones in their joints, or else just being quiet together, slipping into a timeless state.

My overriding image of Bob was of a man surrounded by a million people, every one of them wanting something from him, an autograph, an interview, a smile, a selfie, a quote. My protective instincts were on high alert. I felt like mama bear. Among many other reasons for needing solitude, a visionary poet needs it because the channel visions come through usually shuts down when others are around. And if I didn’t keep that foremost in my mind, I might become part of the problem.

With that in mind, I had made myself a promise not to crowd him, not to assume he wanted my company unless he gave a sign. The trouble was, I didn’t know his sign language. I was walking a tightrope I had strung for myself, careful not to fall into that sea of faces wanting something from him, but that meant turning off my true feelings of wanting to be near him, which confused him.

He came up the aisle to check on me, offering a smile, asking what I was doing. But before I could answer, he saw the book in my lap, and his expression clouded over.

“What!? Why would you bring Ulysses?”

“I thought there’d be a lot of hours on the bus sitting by myself.”

“Why by yourself? Where did you get that idea? I asked you to come with me, didn’t I?”

“I thought you needed your solitude.”

He didn’t answer that, but gave me a hurt and baffled look that seemed to say, “Why have you changed on me?” He had carved out a niche for me, at his side, and I had lost the confidence to occupy it. Strange, how one’s moment of weakness and lack of self-worth can be felt as an insult to someone else, because you’re not giving them your trust anymore. You’ve started to worry that you’re disappointing them. Which can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

He turned away, went to his bedroom to lie down. I felt like I was floating in outer space, like a disconnected astronaut. I couldn’t read his mind, and he wasn’t sending clear signals. But, then, neither was I. The brazen confidence I had had in Rotterdam – taking him over my shoulder to let his spine hang loose; telling him he should let me warm up the audience for him, leading them in some call-and-response toning so they feel and hear themselves, feel completely present as themselves, instead of disappearing, losing themselves in a state of worshipping that he hated – had been what made him want me around. Where had that person gone?

Ironically, I, too had lost myself, and it had happened in a matter of minutes.

Humpback Whale breaching, Inukshuk, British Columbia Photo: Jackie Hildering

Bob’s energy field is like a Humpback whale – a massive, noble, multi-dimensionally intelligent being who has the power to transmit its song across an entire ocean, to be heard and responded to by his extended family. Bob has that kind of mysterious – and at times other-worldly – presence. On stage, he seems to surge up from a great depth, breaching straight into the sky, throwing you into contact with an overwhelming power and spirit. It was easy to lose myself around him.

Bob was welcoming. I wasn’t sure where we were headed. Photo: Masa Ushioda

I suddenly understood why people like him are called stars. It isn’t, as I’d always thought, because they shine so brightly. It’s because they have a gravity field as strong as a star, like our Sun, pulling anything that comes close into orbit around them. Every one of us on the bus, and on the other 4 buses and the trucks – the band, the backup singers, the crew, the caterers, and all the others – were spinning in the orbit of this Sun, which was keeping them all alive. I needed to locate my own gravity field, reclaim my center, remember my own identity.

I mused on how Bob had developed such a gravity field. It’s a beautiful thing to think about: He fell in love with the magic of songs when he was young, and followed that love all his life. He was faithful. He kept a guitar in his hands. He listened to everything. He read. He wrote. He memorized endless songs, from antiquity up through to his own, their complex music, their epic lyrics. He made a vow to God: You send me the songs, I’ll give you my life singing them. That’s what I’ve always heard him saying in Mr. Tambourine Man. In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you… And when he sings, years later, You gotta serve somebody, he is the living proof. He served.

But there’s something else powering his gravity field, besides his integrity, his vow to God and music, and that’s the golden key he carries – when or where he got it, I can’t begin to guess. It’s the knowledge that all power lies in the present. When he sings …with all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves, he’s spelling it out: Past and future are illusions; there is only this moment, the eternal present, which holds all within it. And most of us, I’d venture to say – knowing it’s true for myself most of the time – let our hearts wander off into the past or into the imagined future, two places where we have zero power to create. If I had to put the message of the Sun into words, it would go something like: Go forth into life and create. Live in a continual state of creation. For he not busy being born is busy dying. Like Bob says, “You don’t find yourself, you create yourself.”

When Bob entered a room, the air changed. Michael had that, too. The Dalai Lama, too. Those are the only three I have known who had that effect. The quality of the air changed even before you saw them, as if the ripples on a lake suddenly were still. They enter the room from behind you, while you’re staring expectantly at the stage, and you’d feel it: a contradictory sensation of the air coming to life, charged with a tingling life-force that could make a tree bloom in winter, and at the same time, a feeling that everything has relaxed, and there is more space between all the atoms. I see in the three of them these shared commitments: to the truth of our experience, to being honest with oneself, to having compassion for all, and to recognizing this very moment as the only moment in which we ever have the power to do any good in the world. That bundle of commitments is like a bundle of fibers in a muscle, making a powerful presence, a gravity field, a force that stills the waters, that opens the portal, that hands you the mirror, in which you see God looking through your eyes, and feeling with your heart.

The next thing I knew, Bob was sitting beside me, looking concerned. He locked me in his gaze, gave me a sympathetic smile, and said, “It’s the road…you’ll be alright.” His energy felt fatherly, sharing his wisdom of years on the road. He gave me that awkward sideways shoulder-hug that is the only kind of hug possible, seated on a bus. His compassion and understanding were just the medicine I needed. The road… Right… You’re nobody on the road. You’re pulled up like a tree, with your roots dangling in the air, and especially if you aren’t the one performing – but even if you are – you’re unplugged from the Earth, the source of our life, our power, and until you learn to master it, you can also get unplugged from your sense of who you are.

I remembered hearing about indigenous cultures who were so connected to the landscape that it was part of them, and they part of it. Parents taught their children how to store their memories and knowledge in it. They would envision a story, a song, a memory as an object stored in a certain hill, or cave, or rock face. So a familiar landscape is always reflecting back to you who you are, what story you’re part of. It remembers your past for you, so you never have to worry about forgetting any of it. I had that kind of relationship with many parts of the San Francisco landscape, growing up. It held my identity, my stories, the stories of three generations of my ancestors. That all disappears on the road. If the landscape doesn’t recognize you, maybe you don’t really exist.

“You know that thing you wanted to do with the audience, get them to sound with you? I trust you. Let’s try it. You could do it in Helsinki. What do you say?” I was touched that he was trying to cheer me up, and relieved that we were still good, he hadn’t given up on me after all. But I honestly didn’t know anymore who had proposed that crazy idea.

“I don’t know, Bob, I don’t think I could pull it off.”

“See how it goes tomorrow…maybe you’ll feel like yourself again. Don’t worry, okay?”

“Okay.” I felt like my blood was flowing again, like I was coming back to life.

“And Victor told me that the captain of the ferry taking us to Helsinki has offered us his cabin…it’s big, for a boat, and right at the front. We’ll sleep well tonight.”

“That was really nice of him.”

Stockholm ferry terminal.

Victor came over to us and said we’d be arriving at the ferry terminal in a few minutes. It was just after 11, and the boat sailed around midnight. He’d been told there was a big party with a live band scheduled on the boat – which was more like an ocean liner, for it was a long crossing – and we were invited. I was apprehensive about how it would feel for Bob, but he seemed game. After all this time on the bus, I guessed a little excitement is just what he needed.