Dreaming of Buffalo Bill

I was sitting in a Mexican restaurant on Vanderbilt across from Grand Central Station and I was daydreaming about Buffalo Bill Cody. Cody was a man but also an invention, a myth, and an advertisement. Therefore, it would probably not surprise anyone that I have always felt some sort of attachment to this particular legend. He was a pioneer, this Buffalo Bill, who traveled the world selling the myth of the American West.  

It was Sunday September 10^th the day before the fifth anniversary of the attacks of September 11^th 2001 and I was in New York City because I wanted to be there on “nine eleven” to absorb the mood. I was there because New York City had been on my mind daily throughout the summer. I could be nowhere else when the day arrived. Watching what happened in New York on television would be horrific and vacant. I would sink into my despair and search for ways to deaden and medicate myself doing that. I needed to just be and so I followed the natural and deep pull of the river running through my heart. I had arrived in Sleepy Hollow two days before to visit friends and then boarded the train alone that runs along the Hudson and watched its dark waters swirl as the train made its hurdy gurdy way into Grand Central. The tug in my chest was enormous.  

Buffalo Bill Cody had been visiting me in my dreams throughout the summer. The message I felt was clear. Bill was trying to tell me that he had his hand in creating all cowboys that came after him and as time passed successive cowboys became less and less actual cowboy and more and more Buffalo Bill myth. Buffalo Bill knew humanity identifies with, celebrates, and participates in myth with far more joy and verve than the truth or reality of any matter. Bill said to me in one of my dreams that he and he alone was the forefather of the future of America and that there could be no great American Empire without Buffalo Bill Cody. George W. Bush was his invention. I found that hard to argue but I recall in the dream I needled Bill anyway because I always found him such a blowhard.

As a boy, I had a replica painting of one of Bill’s advertisements for his Wild West show. It hung on my childhood bedroom wall and it was the catalyst for what has been my lifelong relationship with Buffalo Bill. Over the years I studied Bill and his exploits, real and imagined, and found that he does seem to have held considerable sway over what America has become. His myths are deeply imbedded in the bedrock of this nation and his methods were the blueprint for how this country conducts its business. I once asked Bill in a dream if he visits George W. Bush as well.

“Why should I?” he said. “I could do no more to influence him. I am surprised he does not appear before his public wearing my hat and beard.”