Don't Attend The Ceremony

a freewheeling Christmas

My Christmas dinner was a hotdog with sauerkraut and mustard and 1 full sour pickle. It cost $6.95, I went to Katz’s Delicatessen after my spot in Brooklyn. After that I walked to the Village East Angelika theater and watched the new Bob Dylan biopic. I say “new” one, because in my life time I think there will be one more good one about Bob Dylan before we pass the baton to the next round of tortured young poets that we make biopics about.

I remember Christmas’ of years prior. Some fondly, some not. Every Christmas though, no matter the year, the part I would dread most was when me and my sisters would reach the end of our gift unwrapping. Not because there were no more gifts, but because then it would be time for my parents to exchange what they got for one another. I dreaded this because it never went well. It was tense and awkward to watch two people who hated each other tenuously tear through wrapping paper with the word Joy printed all over it.

Slowly the air crept out of the room as they each uncovered material evidence of just how much they didn't know their spouse. A pastel yellow tracksuit for my mom, slippers for my dad, cleaning gadgets, coffee mugs, and robes upon robes upon robes. Objects with no meaning.

I got into Bob Dylan because one year my dad got my mom a “Best of” Bob Dylan CD which would have been such a great gift for a Bob Dylan fan, unfortunately my mom was not one. My Dad wasn't even a fan either. My dad likes Funk and Dean Martin. My mom likes Whitney Houston and Carole King. My guess is that my mom said something about Bob Dylan once in the week prior.

I took the CD and burned it onto my iPod. I was hypnotized immediately — it was unlike any music being offered to me as an adolescent. It was intense and mystical. It was poetry. I wanted to know what kind of adults said things like this. One song in particular stayed on repeat — “She Belongs to Me.”

These are the lyrics:

She's got everything she needs, she's an artist
She don't look back
She's got everything she needs, she's an artist
She don't look back
She can take the dark out of the nighttime
And paint the daytime black

You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees
You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees
But you will wind up peeking through her keyhole
Down upon your knees

She never stumbles, she's got no place to fall
She never stumbles, she's got no place to fall
She's nobody's child, the law can't touch her at all

She wears an Egyptian ring, it sparkles before she speaks
She wears an Egyptian ring, it sparkles before she speaks
She's a hypnotist collector, you are a walking antique

Bow down to her on Sunday
Salute her when her birthday comes
Bow down to her on Sunday
Salute her when her birthday comes
For Halloween, buy her a trumpet
And for Christmas, get her a drum

What I knew then, is what I know now: that I’ll never been frail and pretty enough to be a muse. But, what I thought instinctively and know to be true now, is that I am soft and ruthless enough to be an artist in my own right.

This Christmas, this year felt like my first Christmas ever. The first Christmas of my conscious adult life. I can eat a hot dog by myself in the Lower East Side on Christmas. I finally, can take the dark out of the nighttime and paint the daytime black.

The last words on the epilogue of the biopic detailed how Dylan was the first person to receive a Nobel Peace Prize in literature for his songs however, and they let the last words linger on the screen for a few seconds longer—“he did not attend the ceremony.”

There is no ceremony. Ceremonies aren’t for the maker. Ceremonies take you out of life and steal your time. Ceremonies force you to look back but a conscious life shows you that there is no back. It’s just here and now. It’s a hotdog in the Lower East Side.

Happy Holidays. I wish you all an unceremonious new year if that’s your kind of thing.