The wanderer.

April 27, Ventura.

Dylan was born on the eastern seaboard, a few miles from the Atlantic ocean. Now he's crossed an entire continent and is taking in the Pacific. El bebe viajador.
He began traveling as a bunch of cells. He was conceived on the road, in Beaumont, Texas, where Fridman was contracted for a few shows, and then traveled - agárrate Fridmanito! - from Oklahoma to Florida and back, to Jersey City and New York City, on to France for a while, to Paris, the French Alps and the French Riviera, back to the States in Paris, Texas (hello, Wim Wenders,) and finally on to Savannah, Georgia, where he was born on November 14, a Monday.
Will he be a wanderer like his father and me? Living abroad you lose your ties to your country in a way that can't be undone and end up being from nowhere, a hundred times more so when you're constantly on the move. That's the price to pay for seeing more places in a month than most people will see in their lifetime. I often wonder if my son will miss that sense of being from a place, of belonging to a place the way people do when they are born and raised in the same town, the same house.
On the Sunday before he was born we had gone to the beach on Tybee island. I like to think he decided to join us the next day because he wanted to see the ocean, the wanderer's realm. Dylan is a Gaelic name that means "son of the sea."
He was not named with the sea in mind but after Bob Dylan, in honor of my brother, Patrick, who died at 29 in a car accident, and who simply revered the folk legend. The irony is that Patou didn't speak a word of English, learnt the words haphazardly studying the songs. I grew up listening to Bob Dylan and learnt the melodies by heart, his songs the background lyrics to my adolescence, their significance revealed years later.

If not for you,
Babe, I couldn't find the door,
Couldn't even see the floor,
I'd be sad and blue,
If not for you.

If not for you,
Babe, I'd lay awake all night,
Wait for the mornin' light
To shine in through,
But it would not be new,
If not for you.

If not for you
My sky would fall,
Rain would gather too.
Without your love I'd be nowhere at all,
I'd be lost if not for you,
And you know it's true.

If not for you
My sky would fall,
Rain would gather too.
Without your love I'd be nowhere at all,
Oh! What would I do
If not for you.

If not for you,
Winter would have no spring,
Couldn't hear the robin sing,
I just wouldn't have a clue,
Anyway it wouldn't ring true,
If not for you.
(Bob Dylan, If not for you, in the New Morning album, 1970.)