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.
