Camilla

Hmm... Interesting situation you have going on here. In that case, I think I speak for most of us when I kindly say...

Nothing personal, of course.

Tony if you keep wondering what or whom WB's songs are "about", we're going to come take your wb decoder ring away. It's a disservice, I think, to the way the mind of a true creative writer (artist?) works...which is virtually always more connected with -- in communion with -- his inner life and numinous realms than with the pale, limited creatures pacing about "out here"

Tony -- I was more rough on you than I intended...(or could have used a smiley face or two, perhaps. Dunno). I mean, obviously writers use "real things" in their lives to write from...although almost never, I've learned, in the way non-artists like me and perhaps you assume they do.

I rarely asked WB directly about this sort of thing....I just waited for any observations he wanted to make sort of seep out over the years!. He did say that he used people for their superficial features sometimes...the color of hair, a mode of dress, a vocabulary or way of speaking etc, in building an entirely different and otherwise unrelated character.

He also said something more than once that I'm not sure I entirely believe...although I have heard other writers say the same thing so maybe there's something to it; he said he almost never wrote about something that had happened to him...but found that what he wrote about would often then happen to him in the future. Or something like that.

Anyway --- ! down with literalism! is my point :-) It's so rarely goes down as "we" think it does. I always thought I was a creative person and in many ways I am....maybe 1 SD (that's "standard deviation") from the mean...but man....meet a real internal artist, somebody living out on the tail somewhere, get to know them a while, and marvel at how they really are just built (; experience. live) differently than the rest of us

Hi D.

Your kindness in response to Tony is beautiful and nourishing to ears starved for sanity and kindness. The dark days are ending I think. Thank you for sharing more of an artist who touched me deeply and I know I am a better, richer person for WB's music.