Bob Dylan

with thoughts on music and his own live performances, including what appear to be reflections on the 1987 "Temples in Flames" tour, incomplete drafts of songs, responses to public events including the Waco siege ("What a diabolical piece of work | To burn a guy's women and blameless children") and the Bosnian war, "song list", list of rhymes to "A-waiting", also with phone numbers, addresses, childish writing in another hand (presumably that of his daughter Desiree), and other notes, mostly written in pencil on the rectos only of a series of 18 loose index cards (each 105 x 152mm.), with printed upper cover ("Home & Office wire bound Index Cards") and card lower cover, also with two further pages of similar notes on the rectos of headed notepaper of Courtyard Hotels by Marriott (127 by 75mm.), early 1990s (altogether 22 leaves)

Victor Maymudes

A set of notes providing a fascinating insight into Dylan's creative processes. These index cards appear to have been used by Dylan as an occasional record of his thoughts in the early 1990s. They were certainly in use in 1994, when Dylan's young daughter Desiree accompanied the tour and would have had a chance to scribble on the cards. They include insights into his view of himself as a performer - counting Jerry Garcia among his role models and noting that technically more accomplished singers "don't need soul". His responses to current affairs come remarkably close to being in song form; indeed they show Dylan beginning work on a song about the 1993 Waco siege. There are also fragments and drafts of several songs, of which the most interesting includes an oblique take on modern life in the form of a dialogue provisionally entitled "don't believe that stuff":

"He said there's no such thing as supply & demand
You got to be a fool if you don't understand
The way the game is played - if you got it in your hand
You got the supply, you create the demand..."