Dylan.

Bob Dylan just won the Nobel Prize for Literature. There are critics and there are supporters. Some people get it, some people don't. Dylan, most probably, takes it easy.

Few years ago, under the influence of too much fantasy rollercoastering in my mind, I wrote a story. I named it The Shortest Love Story. It was the shortest love story. And it has no other value than a very personal value.

I dedicated it to Dylan. My hero. For everything that he was: the poet, the songwriter, the grumbling musician, the revolutionary, the hopeless dreamer, the misunderstood, the careless wanderer. The voice of a generation.

The Shortest Love Story

* All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

There is nothing that can stop a story to happen. And it was so. In the dim, bold night seemingly borrowed from the Devil himself, the city gazed stark-naked at the people around. A twist of fate, mistaken thoughts, or not, absent fears, flames extinguished behind. Glowing shadows over bridges and roofs, the gleam of the yellow moon pressing hard over the senses. The fantasy was a just a step ahead. Hidden well, down the rabbit hole.

Straight forward, then turn right and there you are. You should hear the music.

OK, I then replied. I guess its like Atreyu who must face his true self when passing through the Magic Mirror Gate. How many wishes do I get, then? I suddenly burst, displaying a faint smile.

But the gateman did not reply. He just sat there, calmly adjusting my camel coat on the wiry, flimsy hanger. He must have thought I was mocking him.

It would have been impossible to explain. And it still is. The only thing Im sure of is that in that very moment I felt just like Bastian when asking The Childlike Empress How many wishes do I get? As many as you want. And the more wishes you make, the more magnificent Fantasia will become.

And there I was, looking onto an extraordinary night. The inside of that backstreet bar was dull. A square room, a wooden stage in the rear, guarded by some pale neon tubes. Everything was rather ordinary. On the right hand side, bolted to the stage, there was the artists corner. Or so it seemed. The rest of the room was filled with stools arranged in clusters of four, gravitating around cheap red tables.

The atmosphere was hazy. Indistinct voices all around, music bursting from the speakers. A voice mumbling in the mic. Silhouettes were tuning in the instruments. In spite of everything, there he was. All alone, leaning against the bar.

I imagined him sober. and pretentious. Wearing dark shades only to hide his sad, colour blind eyes from his adoring public.

Everything was floating in a placenta of indifference, in streams of smoke and alcohol. Just like in Kerouaks existing in milk, living in lilies and creamy emptiness.

Old demons started to take shape in the rear of my mind. That conscience that makes cowards of us all. I struggled to refresh my braveness. I took a step. He might have been magnetic, or call it as you wish. But eventually he would end up just like traces of ink on the same blank pages, like all those before him. Ive interviewed lots of people before him; travellers and painters, famous poets and directors; I faced Dean and Brando and Wayne and Ford. Why, then, should I have worried? I rested like that in the enlightened darkness, hanging by the strings attached, with a teddy bear clumped in my fist, for something less than an eternity. I abruptly made the first step.

Hello.

A Hi! echoed from beside me.

Am I interrupting? I was having a go, striving to follow his regard, carefully scrutinising me.

By no means. His eyes glazed over, like a fine-tooth comb. I would never get to know the true meaning of that look in his eyes.

I did not know how to react. I could not define the stiffness that shrouded. Unexpectedly. Just ask him if he has time to answer some few questions. I was trying to win over myself. He would say yes or no, most probably yes. I would then ask him for a date, the right time, the perfect place. He would indicate both of them, pretentious as he is. The occasion would have eventually arrived. No chit and chat before. He was too busy singing his own music. I would grab my recorder, address the questions. Swallow his answers, then turn back to my life. Like nothing happened. No more than any other before him, no less than any of those to come.

I clinched my jaw.

Would you join me down the Rabbit Hole?

Oh, darlin! As low as you go.

Thinking back on it, I am quite sure thats not what Ive asked. On the other hand, I am one hundred percent positive he replied As low as you go. That moment, everything seemed smart. Made sense.

After a short while, I was there. Sitting at the same table with the man in the long black coat.

Curled in an obsolete stall, trimmed in burgundy velvet, leisurely sipping his dry, red wine, he seemed disconnected from the rest of world. He was peeling off a bottle of whisky, strangely asking me if he could stick the label on my arm.

I stretched my arm.

Tell me the story of your songs.

I cant say when it occurred to me to write my own songs. I couldnt have come up with anything comparable or halfway to the song lyrics I was singing to define the way I felt about the world. I guess it happens to you by degrees. You just dont wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs, especially if youre a singer who has plenty of them and youre learning more every day. Opportunities may come along for you to convert something something that exists into something that didnt yet. That might be the beginning of it. Sometimes you just want to do things your way, to see for yourself what lies behind the misty curtain. Its not like you see songs approaching and invite them in. You want to say something about strange things that have happened to you, strange things you have seen. You have to know and understand something and let go past the vernacular. Sometimes you could hear a song and your mind jumps ahead.

He paused, and added:

Sometimes I weep when listening to my own songs. It happened yesterday.

What song was it?

It was Po Boy.

The conversation went on. And there was nobody around to shake our sheer tranquility. The night was still young. The place was romantic. In a decadent way. Paintings and drawings, all depicting tango scenes, were hanging on the walls. I still recall one of them. It was a black and white watercolour, entitled: The Essence of Tango. It envisaged two bodies, blending into each other, while dancing away through plain existence.

If you're tangled up, just tango on, he added, in a darling sense of complicity.

I smiled.

Indistinct noises were running from the next room. Dancers pounding on the wooden floor and a backstabbed bandoneon cry.

Suddenly, an enormous white rabbit, wearing a stovepipe hat, rushed out. He waved at us and continued his run.

Soon after, Shakespeares Puck, the merry wanderer of the night, also came in. He was kind of sober, mischievous grin, sparkling dark eyes. He did not wave at us, but bowed and winked. His mistaken doings will probably provide the convulsions of the whole plot. Or, who knows, will write the story in its entireness.

The lights went down. The room remained filled with faint reddish light. The indistinct noises vanished. Music started to play.

He sat up and took a few steps, while scrutinising the dark outside the window.

You know, I have this bizarre, but very accurate feeling the more I walk these streets, the more the night turns deeper. He uttered, feasting his eyes upon my broken high heels.

He approached me. Took my hand and pulled me tightly to his chest. While dancing, I could hear the tones of his breath and feel his heartbeat. It was beating fast.

I wished he pin a yellow rose on me. It was my turn to hold to the unspoken.

We waltzed and silently twittered in that semi-obscure darkness, hours passing by. He was constantly throwing me that same irreversible look, while I touched the sadness his eyes could not conceal.

And here we are. The point where reality escapes. That precise split second in ones personal history you would later on recall as the moment when you crossed the thin red line.

But after all, be it a straight dream or twisted reality, however magnificent the tale might to be, it always ends up like a fool's story.

I keep on asking myself, even at the present moment, if I really made it up all, or if it really happened. In that truly accidental, but unmistakably quintessential and deadly radical way. In fact, it was so; until he was saying nothing at all and you understand that it was nothing but the fierce vexation of a dream.