Bob Dylan's new film Renaldo and Clara is long, but it is really intimate and evanescent. "Art is the perpetual motion of illusion," Dylan says in the interview that follows -- which took place a week before Christmas in L.A. "The biggest purpose of art," Dylan continues, is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for anyone but inspire them?"

If someone asked me what Renaldo and Clara was about, I'd say: art and life, identity and God -- with lots of encounters at bars restaurants, lucheonettes, cabarets and bus stations.

Do you want to see it again? Would it be helpful for you to see it again?

You think I'm too confused about the film?

No, I don't think so at all. It isn't just about bus stations and cabarets and stage music and identity -- those are elements of it. But it is mostly about identity -- about everybody's identity. More important, it's about Renaldo's identity, so we superimpose our own vision on Renaldo: It's his vision and it's his dream.

You know what the film is about? It begins with music -- you see a guy in a mask [Bob Dylan], you can see through the mask he's wearing, and he's singing "When I Paint My Masterpiece." So right away you know there's an involvement with music. Music is confronting you.

So are lines like: "You can almost think that you're seein' double."

Right. Also on a lyrical level. But you still don't really know . . . and then you're getting off that, and there seems to be a tour. You're hearing things and seeing people . . . it's not quite like a tour, but there's some kind of energy like being on a tour. There's a struggle, there's a reporter -- who later appears in the restaurant scenes.

All right, then it goes right to David Blue, who's playing pinball and who seems to be the narrator. He's Renaldo's narrator, he's Renaldo's scribe -- he belongs to Renaldo.

Yet David Blue talks not about Renaldo but about Bob Dylan and how he, David Blue, first met Dylan in Greenwich Village in the late Fifties.

They seem to be the same person after a while. It's something you can only feel but never really know. Any more than you can know whether Willie Sutton pulled all those bank jobs. Any more than you can know who killed Kennedy for sure.

And right away, David Blue says: "Well, what happened was that when I first left my parents' house. I bought The Myth of Sisyphus." Now, that wasn't really the book, but it was pretty close. It was actually -- so he tells us --Existentialism and Human Emotions. So that's it: this film is a postexistentialist movie. We're in the postexistentialist period. What is it? That's what it is.

What could be more existentialist than playing pinball? It's the perfect existentialist game.

It is. I've seen rows and rows of pinball players lined up like ducks. It's a great equalizer.

What about the emotions in 'Existentialism and Human Emotions'?

Human emotions are the great dictator - in this movie as in all movies. . . . I'll tell you what I think of the emotions later. But getting back to David Blue: he's left his home, and right away you're in for something like a triple dimension. Just ten minutes into the movie he says: "I got in the bus, I went down to New York, walked around for four hours, got back on the bus and went home." And that is exactly what a lot of people are going to feel when they walk into the movie theater: they got on the bus, walked around for four hours and walked home.

There's another guy, later in the film, who walks out into the night and says to a girl: "This has been a great mistake."

Yeah. You can pick any line in a movie to sum up your feeling about it. But don't forget you don't see that guy anymore after that. . .He's gone. And that means Renaldo isn't being watched anymore because he was watching Renaldo.

Talking about mistakes and seeing double: it's fascinating how easy it is to mistake people in the film for one another. I mistook you, for instance, for the guy driving the carriage (maybe it was you); for Jack Elliott; and I even mistook you for you.

The Masked Tortilla [Bob Neuwirth] is mistaken for Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan is mistaken for Renaldo. And...Bob Dylan is the one with the hat on. That's who Bob Dylan is -- he's the one with the hat on.

Almost every man in the film has a hat on.

Right.

All those disguises and masks!

The first mask, as I said, is one you can see through. But they're all masks. In the film, the mask is more important than the face.

All the women in the film seem to turn into one person, too, and a lot of them wear hats. It reminds me of "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest":

He just stood there staring
At that big house as bright as any sun,
With four and twenty windows
And a woman's face in ev'ry one.

This film was made for you. [Laughing] Did you see the Woman in White who becomes a different Woman in White? One's mistaken for the other. At first she's only an idea of herself - you see her in the street, later in the carriage.... I think the women in the movie are beautiful. They look like they've stepped out of a painting. They're vulnerable, but they're also strong-willed.

Breaking just like a little girl."

That's the child in everyone. That's the child in everyone that has to be confronted.

"Just Like a Woman" always seemed to me to he somehow about being born. "I can't stay in here. . . I just can't fit." So by confronting the child in you, saying goodbye to childhood, you're born into something bigger . . .in a way it's a frightening song.

It always was a frightening song, but that feeling needs to be eliminated.

I was thinking of what looked like a Yiddish cabaret filled with older women listening intently to Allen Ginsberg reading passages from 'Kaddish,' his great elegy to his mother.

Those women are strong in the sense that they know their own identity. It's only the layer of what we're going to reveal in the next film, because

The poet Robert Bly has written about the image of the Great Mother as a union of four force fields consisting of the nurturing mother, like Isis (though your Isis seems more ambiguous); the Death Mother (like the woman in "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"); the Ecstatic Mother (like the girl in "Spanish Harlem Incident"); and the Stone Mother who drives you mad (like Sweet Melinda who leaves you howling at the moon in "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues"). Traces of these women seem to he in this film as well.

The Death Mother is represented in the film, but I don't know what I should say or can say or shouldn't say about who is who in the movie. I mean who is the old woman everyone calls Mamma -- the woman who sings, plays guitar and reads palms? She reads Allen's palm, saying: "You've been married twice." And me, later on I'm looking at the gravestone marked HUSBAND; Ginsberg asks: "Is that going to happen to you?" And I say: "I want an unmarked grave." But of course I'm saying this as Renaldo.

In 'Tarantula' you wrote your own epitaph:

Here lies bob dylan
killed by a discarded Oedipus
who turned
around
to investigate a ghost
and discovered that
the ghost too was more than one person.

Yeah, way back then I was thinking of this film. I've had this picture in mind for a long time -- years and years. Too many years. . . . Renaldo is oppressed. He's oppressed because he's born. We don't really know who Renaldo is. We just know what he isn't. He isn't the Masked Tortilla. Renaldo is the one with the hat, but he's not wearing a hat. I'll tell you what this movie is: it's like life exactly, but not an imitation of it. It transcends life, and it's not like life.

That paradox is toppling me over me.

I'll tell you what my film is about; it's about naked alienation of the inner self against the outer self-alienation taken to the extreme. And it's about integrity. My next film is about obsession. The hero is an arsonist . . .but he's not really a hero.

'Renaldo and Clara' seems to me to he about obsession, too.

That's true, but only in the way it applies to integrity.

The idea of integrity comes across in a lot of your songs and in lines like: "To live outside the law, you must he honest" and "She doesn't have to say she's faithful/Yet she's true, like ice, like fire.

We talked about emotions before. You can't be a slave to your emotions. If you're a slave to your emotions you're dependent on your emotions, and you're only dealing with your conscious mind. But the film is about the fact that you have to be faithful to your subconscious, unconscious, superconscious -- as well as to your conscious. Integrity is a facet of honesty. It has to do with knowing yourself.

At the end of the film, Renaldo is with two women in a room (the Woman in White played by Joan Baez and Clara played by Sara Dylan), and he says: "Evasiveness is only in the mind -- truth is on many levels....Ask me anything and I'll tell you the truth." Clara and the Woman in White both ask him: "Do you love her?" as they point to catch other -- not: "Do you love me?"

Possessiveness. It was a self-focused kind of question. And earlier, one of the women in the whorehouse talks about the ego-protection cords she wears around her neck. Do you remember that?. . .In the scene you mentioned, did you notice that Renaldo was looking at the newspaper which had an article on Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in it? Joan Baez and Bob Dylan at this point are an illusion. It wasn't planned that way. Joan Baez without Bob Dylan isn't too much of an illusion because she's an independent woman and her independence asserts itself. But Joan Baez with Bob Dylan is.

So at the moment you open up that newspaper, art and life really come together.

Exactly.

And what about the moment when Joan Baez, looking at Clara, says: "Who is this woman?" and you cut to your singing Sara? Talk about art and life!

It's as far as you can take it -- meaning personally and generally. Who is this woman? Obviously, this woman is a figment of the material world. Who is this woman who has no name? Who is this woman, she says...who is this woman, as if she's talking about herself. Who this woman is is told to you, earlier on, when you see her coming out of the church carrying a rope. You know she means business, you know she has a purpose.

Another way of putting it is: the singer's character onstage is always becoming Renaldo. By singing "Sara," the singer comes as close to Renaldo as he can get. It brings everything as close as possible without two becoming one.

It was pretty amazing to see you use your personal life and the myth of your life so nakedly in that scene with Renaldo and the two women.

Right, but you're talking to me as a director now.

Still, you do have that scene with Joan Baez and Sara Dylan.

Well, Sara Dylan here is working as Sara Dylan. She has the same last name as Bob Dylan, but we may not be related. If she couldn't have played the role of Clara, she wouldn't have done it.

Is she talking about her real problems or pretending that she's an adventurer?

We can make anybody's problems our problems.

Some people will obviously think that this film either broke up your marriage or is a kind of incantation to make your marriage come back together.

Either one of those statements I can't relate to. It has nothing to do with the breakup of my marriage. My marriage is over. I'm divorced. This film is a film.

Why did you make yourself so vulnerable?

You must be vulnerable to be sensitive to reality. And to me being vulnerable is just another way of saying that one has nothing more to lose. I don't have anything but darkness to lose. I'm way beyond that. The worst thing that could happen is that the film will be accepted and that the next one will be compared unfavorably to this one.

Strangely, the scene where the two women confront Renaldo reminds me of King Lear, in which each of the daughters has to say how much she loves her father.

You're right. Renaldo sees himself as Cordelia.

I've always interpreted some of the 'Basement Tapes' as being concerned with ideas from King Lear: "Too much of nothing/Can make a man abuse a king"; "Oh what dear daughter 'neath the sun/Would treat a father so,/To wait upon him hand and foot/And always tell him, 'No'?"

Exactly. In the later years it changed from "king" to "clown."

King Lear had a fool around him, too, and, when the fool leaves, Cordelia comes back. She's back, takes his place, and he takes hers.

The roles are all interchangeable.

As in "Tangled Up in Blue" and as in your movie.

Yes it is.

Were you specifically influenced by King Lear when you wrote songs like "Tears of Rage"?

No, Songs like that were based on the concept that one is one.

"... and all alone and ever more shall be so."

Exactly. What comes is gone forever every time.

But one is difficult to deal with, so Christians gave us the Trinity.

The Christians didn't bring in anything -- it was the Greeks.

Jesus is a very strong figure in 'Renaldo and Clara,' I noticed. There's that song by you called "What Will You Do When Jesus Comes?" There's the woman who says to you in the restaurant: "There's nowhere to go. Just stand and place yourself like the cross and I'll receive you." And then there are the shots of the huge cement crucifix in the Catholic Grotto.

Right. Jesus is the most identifiable figure in Western culture, and yet he was exploited, used and exploited. We all have been.

There's also that scene, near the end of the film, where Allen Ginsberg takes you around to see the glassed-in sculptures of the Stations of the Cross -- and we see Jesus killed for the second time and then buried under the weight of the cross. On one level, the film is about the Stations of the Cross, isn't it?

Yeah, you're right, like the double vision having to be killed twice. Like why does Jesus really die?

Spiritually or politically?

Realistically. . . . Because he's a healer, Jesus is a healer. So he goes to India, finds out how to be a healer and becomes one. But see, I believe that he overstepped his duties a little bit. He accepted and took on the bad karma of all the people he healed. And he was filled with so much bad karma that the only way out was to burn him up.

In my film, we're looking at masks a lot of the time. And then when the dream becomes so solidified that it has to be taken to the stage of reality, then you'll see stone, you'll see a statue -- which is even a further extension of the mask: the statue of Mary in front of the statue of Jesus on the cross in the Crucifix Grotto.

Throughout the film, I also noticed the continual reappearance of the red rose. Every woman has a rose.

It has a great deal to do with what's happening in the movie. Do you remember the woman in the carriage? She's bringing a rose to Renaldo, who gives it back to her.

But then it appears in your hat when you're singing.

By that time, it's all fallen apart and shattered, the dream is gone...it could be anywhere after that.

Joan Baez carries one when she's with Mamma. And then the violinist Scarlet Rivera gives it to you in your dressing room.

That's right. The rose is a symbol of fertility

Also of the soul 'The Romance of the Rose'- the dreamer's vision of the soul.

That's right....The most mysterious figure in the film is the conductor on the train. Do you remember him?

He's the guy who tells the Masked Tortilla -- who says he's going to a wedding -- that he's only been on the train for four hours (there's that magical four hours again!) and not for the six days that he imagines.

Yeah, he tells him, too, that he's going to possibly the largest city in the East.

I figured it was New York.

No. The largest city in the East!

The Magi!

That's not exactly what he's talking about - it's more like the holy crossroads.

There's another scene like that in which Mick Ronson is blocking Ronnie Hawkins' way to a backstage area. He seemed like some kind of guardian.}

He's the Guardian of the Gates. But scenes like these work in terms of feeling. It's like with Tarot cards -- you don't have to be confused as to what they mean ... someone else who knows can read them for you.

"Nothing is revealed," you sing at the end of "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest." Is anything revealed at the end of Renaldo and Clara?

Yeah, I'll tell you what the film reveals: this film reveals that there's a whole lot to reveal beneath the surface of the soul, but it's unthinkable.

(Silence)

That's exactly what it reveals. It reveals the depths that there are to reveal. And that's the most you can ask, because things are really very invisible. You can't reveal the invisible. And this film goes as far as we can to reveal that.

Under a statue of Isis in the city of Sais is the following inscription: "I am everything that was, that is, that shall be . . . . Nor has any mortal ever been able to discover what lies under my veil."

That's a fantastic quotation. That's true, exactly. Once you see what's under the veil, what happens to you? You die, don't you, or go blind?

I wanted to tie in two things we've talked about: the idea of integrity and the idea of Jesus. In your song "I Want You," you have the lines:

Now all my fathers, they've gone down,
True love they've been without it.
But all their daughters put me down
'Cause I don't think about it.

These are some of my favorite lines of yours, and to me they suggest that real desire is stronger than frustration or guilt.

I know. It's incredible you find that there. I know it's true. And in Renaldo and Clara there's no guilt. But that's why people will take offense at it, if they are offended by it in anyway, because of the lack of guilt in the movie. None at all.

This brings us back to Jesus.

Jesus is . . .well, I'm not using Jesus in the film so much as I'm using the concept of Jesus -- the idea of Jesus as a man, not the virgin birth.

But what about the concept of masochism associated with Jesus?

That's what happened to Jesus. People relate to the masochism, to the spikes in his hand, to the blood coming out, to the fact that he was crucified. What would have happened to him if he hadn't been crucified? That's what draws people to him. There are only signals of that in this film -- like a fingernail blade at one point.

What about the line in "Wedding Song": "Your love cuts like a knife."

Well, it's bloodletting, it's what heals all disease. Neither aggression nor anger interests me. Violence only does on an interpretive level, only when it's a product of reason.

People are attracted to blood. I'm personally not consumed by the desire to drink the blood. But bloodletting is meaningful in that it can cure disease. But we didn't try to make a film of that nature. This film concerns itself with the dream. There's no blood in the dream, the dream is cold. This film concerns itself only with the depth of the dream -- the dream as seen in the mirror.

The next film might have some blood . . . .I'm trying to locate Lois Smith to be in it. She would represent the idea of innocence. Do you know who she is? She was the barmaid in East of Eden. I'm trying to line up some people for the film, and I can't find her....

For some reason I've just thought of my favorite singer. Who is that?

Om Kalsoum -- the Egyptian woman who died a few years ago. She was my favorite.

What did you like about her?

It was her heart.

Do you like dervish and Sufi singing, by the way?

Yeah, that's where my singing really comes from ... except that I sing in America. I've heard too much Leadbelly really to be too much influenced by the whirling dervishes.

Now that we somehow got onto this subject, who else do you like right now? New Wave groups?

No, I'm not interested in them. I think Alice Cooper is an overlooked songwriter. I like Ry Cooder. And I like Dave Mason's version of something which is on the jukebox right now.

I wonder what you think of the guy who ends your movie singing this fulsome, crooning version of "In the Morning" with those memorable lines: "I'II be yawning into the morning of my life." Why is he there?

The film had to end with him because he represents the fact that Renaldo could be dreaming. And he might be singing for Renaldo -- representing him, the darkness representing the light.

He's like what's happened to one sentimental part of rock & roll in the Seventies.

He's not rock & roll.

Rock & roll isn't rock & roll anymore.

You're right, there's no more rock & roll. It's an imitation, we can forget about that. Rock & roll has turned itself inside out. I never did do rock & roll, I'm just doing the same old thing I've always done.

You've never sung a rock & roll song?

No, I never have, only in spirit.

You can't really dance to one of your songs.

I couldn't.

Imagine dancing to "Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35." It's kind of alienating. Everyone thought it was about being stoned, but I always thought it was about being all alone.

So did I. You could write about that for years. ... Rock & roll ended with Phil Spector. The Beatles weren't rock & roll either. Nor the Rolling Stones. Rock & roll ended with Little Anthony and the Imperials. Pure rock & roll.

With "Goin' Out of My Head"?

The one before that .... Rock & roll ended in 1959.

When did it begin for you?

1954

What is there now?

Programmed music. Quadruple tracking.

What do you think about the Seventies?

The Seventies I see as a period of reconstruction after the Sixties, that's all. That's why people say: well, it's boring, nothing's really happening, and that's because wounds are healing. By the Eighties, anyone who's going to be doing anything will have his or her cards showing. You won't be able to get back in the game in the Eighties.

I came across something you wrote a while back:

Desire . . .never fearful
finally faithful
it will guide me well
across all bridges
inside all tunnels
never failn'.

I even remember where I wrote that. I wrote that in New Hampshire. I think I was all alone.

Here's something else you wrote:

Mine shall be a strong loneliness
dissolvin' deep
t' the depths of my freedom :
an' that, then, shall
remain my song.

You seem to have stayed true to that feeling.

I haven't had any reason to stray.

In "The Times They Are A-Changin" you sing: "He that gets hurt/Will be he who has stalled." What has kept you installed?

I don't know. Mainly because I don't believe in this life.

The Buddhist tradition talks about illusion, the Jewish tradition about allusion. Which do you feel closer to?

I believe in both, but I probably lean to allusion. I'm not a Buddhist. I believe in life, but not this life.

What life do you believe in?

Real life.

Do you ever experience real life?

I experience it all the time, it's beyond this life.

[From Issue 257 — January 26, 1978]

(The Rolling Stone Interview: Part II)