If Not For You-For Laura Perkins With Bob Dylan’s If Not For You In Mind
By Zack James
Sam Lowell was riding in his car one morning to meet a fellow retiree in order to play a round of golf, a recreational activity that had helped keep him physically and mentally alert in his retirement days, when he decided to switch off the car radio which he had had for as long as he could remember been glued to the all-news National Public Radio channel and put on some CDs. He randomly picked one from the CD folder which sat on the empty passenger seat. A CD from the never-ending Bob Dylan bootleg series that had been given to them as a gift when his longtime companion Laura Perkins had renewed their membership to the local folk music-oriented station in town, WUMB, the station run by UMass/Boston. These Bob Dylan bootleg series CDs, now in double digits, consist of variation on old standards, outtakes, concert performances, and material that could not find its way onto albums in the old days when the lyrics in Dylan’s head ran far ahead of the commercial ability to put all the work out into the public sphere.
The very first selection on the CD that Sam had put the CD player was a variation on Dylan’s famous If Not For You done in slow heartfelt tempo with a meandering mellow fiddle in the near background something that was not featured on the original commercially released version. The slowing down of the tempo of the song allowed Sam to seriously listen to the lyrics and reflect on the meaning of the song. Allowed him too to reflect on how much his companion Laura had meant to him over the years, and how he would have been a very different person if not for her gentle influence in his life.
As Sam drove along, after replaying the song to hear that background fiddle again, he thought back to the days in the late 1970s when he, the consummate angry young man, if not for Laura would have gone on to some vagabond gypsy existence. Thought back to the times if not for her that he would not have done many things that he felt he had to do to make his place in the sun. If not for her would have been in endless despair about the world that he was desperately trying to change, to leave a mark in the struggle for the “newer world” that had animated the better instincts of his nature since he was fresh pup kid adrift in a sea of negativity and despond. He smiled to think that if not for her, and him too, continually showing up after their first improbable meeting in a country music bar in of all places Harvard Square that he would not have been able to offer her that gentle handshake that sealed their fate, the fate of two wandering waifs in the world.
A million thoughts flooded his mind about different times more recently when if not for her he would have been rudderless. About the night he was so proud of her when she had been so nervous she could hardly sit still since she was at heart a very private person and yet she sang to make the angels weep for their inadequacies in her first public singing performance. Or the time up in Maine the summer when she had just retired and they were sitting in an ice cream shop with a jukebox and she swaying to some old time rock and roll record like a young schoolgirl. Or the time in Paris when she sat like some fairy tale princess on a merry-go-round horse and he was so proud to be in her company. His thoughts just then so numerous and jumbled that it would take half of cyberspace just to express them.
As he made the turn to the golf course parking lot Sam thought about something from just the night before that made him smile. He and Laura had been watching television, one of the twelve million reality shows that have inundated the airwaves during the last decade, and when the show was over he called her to the couch to say good-night and give each other a good-night kiss. He swore something in her laughing eyes and her slightly parted lips making her look very young made him realize how at times like that she made him feel very young again. Yeah, if not for you.
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