Friday, October 23, 2020

Bob Dylan saves the day. Welcome breeze of warmth, tingles to the bone. Reminds me of home back a long time ago when poetry and guitar was a fireside chat on the West Bank of Minneapolis, in a cafe, amongst furry feathered hippies getting warm on cups of hot Joe. Watching some Mpls acoustic guitarist speaking in rhymes with poetic grace.

 



I heard that Dylan hung in or around this area, the West Bank of Minneapolis just across from the University of Minnesota campus (but there is a West Bank center of the university as well, i.e. the theater department.)  Stories of Dylan playing and then getting sort of kicked out of the scene before running away to the grand ole NYC Greenwich Village were he wasn't ousted for not singing in tune and being a blonde Minnesota Nazi type playing hippie for a season.


There is a warmth that I feel sinking into my being when I hear Dylan and his poetic surprises of labyrinth Life's little big scores amongst all the whores of the closed doors. (See music in the video below about New York). This was a cafe I hang out at a few times (friends played guitar there) and I had a lot of organic food that was absolutely without any taste of pleasure in eating (all the same color organic tofu with greens and organic brown salad dressing that tasted like ketchup without salt). Wonderful local musicians and poetry readings! I went there with a friend on LSD for a poetry reading. The walls began to breathe and pulse and move inward and outward until me and my friend began to giggle constantly and had to leave running out into the West Bank and around the Mississippi River running into the night laughing and I can't remember what else happened! It was fun. The West Bank Cafe was the beginning of that journey into a short night's trip! Fantastic.


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I was livin' in Minneapolis at the time of this video (or maybe I was still in NYC but returned that same year).

It is insulting that these H-wood actors teleporting me have lambasted and literally tortured me for years because I kept to the Minneapolis non-sell-out stance and held true to the convictions of being true to your honesty to justice and keeping your word to your authentic fight for all that you hold dear when it comes from the heart. That unfortunately can also apply to the opposite convictions that are opponents to your freedom but....


when these H-wood abusers are riding on the wave of this movement out of Mpls, but tortured me for holding true in the face of murder that they were and still are inflicting upon me, and they are being held up as some symbols of this strength while they are the weakest most sell-out parasitic prostitutes possible in the face of real convictions and a stand against injustice and inequality and all that hate, which they uphold for profit whenever possible.


It is a degrading thought that they are now riding on this wave of protest but nearly have killed me and are continuing to murder me slowly because I am of that same fiber that these Minneapolis protestors relied on to prove a type of real fight against racism that these prostituted whores never could or ever would even BEGIN to understand or care about.

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Most of the nights at the West Bank Cafe were of hippies playing guitar and poetry readings and people hanging out and discussing ideas and thoughts and poetry and art concepts and etc etc. and gossip of course the usual! This video above was something I may not have stayed for the completion of but it is a place I recall with friendly warmth. Dylan reminds me of this warm, Minnesota genuine concern about Life and it's properties that reach the heart and soul. (of course, not for "all" the people but in some circles that I may have touched in my few years living there). The West Bank, where I lived one summer, was a uniquely creative place for artistic pursuits and alternative living. Lots of gay people living there, lots of musicians and artists and actors and creative types.

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On second thought, after viewing this video, I had searched for Minneapolis cafes and this came up, but the video has no information on which West Bank of the USA this cafe sits. When one of the artists mentioned paying for an audience member's Long Island Ice Tea, I remember that NO ALCOHOL was served at the Minneapolis West Bank Cafe. Let me search for another video that may be actually in Minneapolis in that area---because the above video in no way represented what I remembered of the atmosphere and the types of musicians and artists that were presented. Like this one with some rustic jazzy boogie stuff, more like the West Bank style (you can see in very old Prince videos he wore feather hats, very much the "in" style of the alternative culture of Mpls during that time in the 80's--


This video was only made a few years ago. The times they ain't a'changin' any in ole Minneapolis in some respect on the West Bank. You see, dearie dread readers, I have to spend most of a day to get the awful sickening drugs out of my system so that by nightfall, my usual happy and complacent self emerges from the sickening and death fog from having been sliced, cut into, subliminal hate messages poured into my sleep all night long by hissing hate terrorists operating for your huge smiling parasitic prostituted hate actors and their politico friends--ordering the wanna-be rich minions to inflict all kinds of sinister bad energy into my otherwise very happy natural state of being.

It always takes a full day to get some of these poisons out of my system, although they linger. But luckily, I watched a Bob Dylan video and immediately this same sense of warmth, that instilled sense of calm, depth, meaning that I also experienced (not ALWAYS WITH MANY PEOPLE) BUT WITH  a few kind souls, the impression upon your heart is like warming up to a fire on a welcoming hearth in the home of your soul's journey through the long, cold rainy deluge.

But you can also boogie there to that old blues route from St. Louis to Minneapolis, up the old Mississippi River route----




Gimme Gimme Shelter (from the Storm)




"MAY YOU ALWAYS REMAIN RIGHTEOUS, MAY YOU ALWAYS REMAIN TRUE. MAY YOU ALWAYS REMAIN FOREVER YOUNG" (lyrics to song heard after I wrote the above about being true to your heart, to your convictions, to your soul. I have of course heard this song before perhaps I drew it from my collective unconscious library after having heard it many years ago.


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Even back in the day of '81 I was one year away from moving from Milwaukee to the great citadel of Minneapolis. The bars and clubs featured in this featurette were closed by the time I got there, many of them. Now it's a completely different scene, or even before the riots in May, 2020. It was a different weird and wild and cozy and cool bar and club scene every block. All completely unique and original in most respects. There were no McBars or McDiscos at that time in downtown Mpls.


At 2 minutes into the video above, there is the 7th Street Entry, which turned into the 7th Street Entry that people don't know much about because it became connected to First Avenue (Prince's throne).

SO IF YOU ASSUME THAT MINNEAPOLIS WAS A BORING TOWN BEFORE IT BECAME A RED NECK TOWN, WELL IT USED TO BE VERY HIP AND COOLEST PLACE ON EARTH (subfreezing at -40 F sometimes and one time -80 F with wind chill for just one day, a very cold day at that!!)

But yeah, it was as swank as all those big city folk on either coast, but with lots of good parking spots! It was a groovy town, I wonder if it is still as wonderful. It seems that it isn't as radical or hip or alternative as it used to be, from videos I have seen of how First Avenue has turned into a Hard Rock Cafe tourist attraction and the area has closed down all the drag queen clubs that used to proliferate and the sleazy but wild strip has been tamed into an upper middle class spectacle featuring the very nice and pleasant First Avenue attraction that plays very nice and calming sort of broken down elevator musick. I mean...compare what is the current atmosphere with the video above, where you could hide your infidelities, your secret desires, your alternative personalities behind a dark-lighted Hennepin Avenue weekend crush party zooming from one club to the next within walking distance but freezing in your sheer tights getting around in your heels.

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And why you wanna treat me so bad?



DEDICATED TO THE SOUL MUSICIANS OF MINNEAPOLIS--AND THE SOUL DENIZENS WHO CREATED A DEN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS




THE ORIGINS OF THE MINNEAPOLIS SOUND



LET THE DOVES (OF PEACE AND LOVE) FLY



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Non-stop pounding and hammering on rooms below, and near on multiple floors. The expletive who moved down the hall a few days ago is slamming his door with violence multiple times per day. //My arms look like spotted decayed fabric from years of poisoning creating liver spots covering my arms from toxic liver shock plus chemicals poured on my hands and skin nightly--every night and day they are poisoning me. The person who was "looking" at my room to buy it, who poured stinking fungus in my kitchen sink area killed a moth on the wall sprayed filth and debris and dirty on clothing and all over the floor has bought, supposedly, this room (it's the purchase of the celebrities, this entire hillside has been bought out by them). The renewal of the contract is due in DEcember, the landlord is telling me that he will come in February to renew the lease, and that is exactly when it ends. He will not answer any questions about new owner and price increase but says everything will be renewed by him--but he's selling supposedly so any contract is mute and not legal (fi I could go to court).//The hate group you all love have blocked every single earning capbility I remain in subpoverty with prices in this area having gone up at least 100% in the past 3 years. I am stuck with extremely ghetto options and just endlessly fighting. Going downstairs to pick up items for delivery assaulted by people blocking entrance to elevators and closing the doors by pressing the "close" button as I am entering while they exit---blocking my entrance and then trying to "help" me by getting in my way and blocking iuntil the elevator closes and is instantly going some other floor--people surrounding me with malevolence who are agents sent to attack me. Rooms on all sides with pounding drilling all day, literally for over 6 hours so far without a moment of pause. Not even for a lunch break the pounding is literally every single minute non-stop drilling and pounding rapid repetition every minute punding. Every day, it goes on and on.