"Zeitgeisty, me"!

If you've ever wondered what Bob Dylan and Bryan Ferry would say to each other if ever stuck on an elevator, Waiting for Godot style, William Bowers constructs a lurid scenario:

BRYAN: If one must have an "American idol"--

ROBERT: (As if channeling a finicky muse) "Love's combustible thicket." "The purgatorial shriek of an old modem." "The grace with which we murder each other in the mind." "Goddess asleep in a rusty thong." "King Lear in his coveralls, scheduled for surgery to remove a partisan think-thank."

BRYAN: You're doing the poet thing? Like your old liner notes? B-but, you're not elliptical anymore. You admit your influences to Scorsese-- for PBS-- with a face so sincere, and you host explanatory radio shows, and release recombinatorily rootsy albums…Your mysterious era's kind of over.

ROBERT: "Newborn immigrants with license plates for faces." "Gormless, sozzled, and astringent."

BRYAN: You're not going to stop, are you?

ROBERT: Said the inventor of smooth jazz.

(The elevator door opens. They do not move.)