Web Letters: The Film We Dreamed

I remember reading one of Erickson's novels in the early-to-mid 90s, tho I don't recall which at present. Through the guts of the novel, Erickson over & over refrained the following Dylan lyric with masterful hallucinatory effect: "sometimes Satan / comes as a Man of Peace". As it synchronicitally happened in my life at the time, I had indeed been listening to Dylan's Infidels even before picking up the book--Infidels being the album this lyric & song is a part of. I myself had been haunted by this song and this particular lyric: "sometimes Satan / comes as a Man of Peace". I often listened to it over & over as if the meaning would mysteriously & almost miraculously become clear, even if nothing else ever would.

The book didn't attempt to explain the lyric, but simply the space it seemed to inhabit. This frustrated me. At the time, I couldn't wrap my mind around any of it: either Erickson's book & its nonchalant walk through the apocalyptic dance, or Dylan's Midrash-of-an-album, whose entire weight & scope could conceivably be summed up in the lyric Erickson had chosen to use as literary device. Surviving the wilderness is nothing if not a solitary & collective journey through the confusion manifested upon us, and I was doin' the one small step in front of another thing, as good as any other I figured at the time.

To say I've been haunted ever since would be to reduce the thing itself. To say the space it inhabited now inhabits me... well, I suspect Zeroville doesn't apply just to A Place in the Sun or to something called Alphaville but to pretty much everything our private selves inhabit, as Men of Peace or no. Dylan always knew you create your own creation, or else it will create you. Erickson creates his creations, but that's it. Creation is all you get. The wilderness runs away from the journey; the movie runs away from the image. Some say this could be considered a gift of the Creator... others an hallucination of the opiates & the people. Satan would not have it any other way. I have since discovered that Satan often comes as neither Man nor Beast but simply as the hour through which we look through the glass. I suppose I have Erickson to thank for that. Better yet, I probably owe him something even more: the understanding of the Midrash of it.

Thanks for the review.

Sherlock Debs

San Diego, CA