Daily Ramblings:
The Top Of The End ...12/30/2004 09:19:11 am
Nat Hentoff has this piece on Chronicles today. Another contemporary from those early years who does not take issue with the truth of any of the reminiscences in the book, although he acknowledges learning things that he did not know about the young Dylan at the time. Also has some first hand details about how that slam blast interview for Playboy came about.
Almost 3 months after its release, with Chronicles resting near the top of the bestseller lists, and on almost everyone's list of the best books of the year, it's nice to step back and appreciate the breadth of Dylan's achievement. Once again, he defied any and all predictions and created something both deeply entertaining and enduring, and in a style that was completely unexpected. It's what he's done again and again with his music, but who'd have thunk he'd do it in this form? As much of a fan as I am, I never would have expected his book to basically sweep the world the way it has. Someone like me would have been intrigued by it if the pages contained a series of black splotches interspersed with incoherent limericks - but this book has reached out and found its own audience. It could easily have been different perhaps. If a couple of prominent bad reviews had set the tone, and a few people with an agenda had succeeded in portraying the work as dishonest and unworthy of attention, then maybe it wouldn't be at the top of all these year end lists after all, but in the remainder bins. Simple twists of fate can decide such things. But even if that had happened, long after the noise had quieted, his book would still stand as the unique portrait of an American artist that it is. And it will contribute more to posterity's understanding of his life and work than a dozen books by the likes of Sounes or Marqusee.
Inaugural Update ...12/29/2004 01:18:12 pm
Right Wing Bob has received an acknowledgment, via U.S. mail, to the letter sent via the same means to the First Lady. It's clearly enough a form letter sent to people who write to Mrs. Bush on the subject of the inauguration. Nothing exciting, but it does specify the contact information for the official Presidential Inauguration Committee, saying that suggestions can be sent there. The website is:
The email is: info@inaugural05.com
The snail mail address is:
Presidential Inauguration Committee
Fifth Floor
330 C Street, S.W.
Washington DC 20599And the telephone number is: (202) 863-2005
Don't all call at once.
Though time's a wastin' for enlisting Bob, one should never lose hope. "I believe in the impossible, you know that I do."
A Christmas Carol ...12/16/2004 08:12:48 pm
Rock'n'roll writer Bill Flanagan interviewed Bob Dylan back in the 80's, and remarked about the song Sweetheart Like You that "anyone brought up with the Bible will hear that song one way, but the song will still work on a different level for someone else." It's a good observation and one that likely applies to Dylan's entire body of work. Dylan replied:
Oh, I think so, yeah. Because the Bible runs through all U.S. life, whether people know it or not. ... Those ideas were true then and they're true now. They're scriptural, spiritual laws. I guess people can read into that what they want. But if they're familiar with those concepts, they'll probably find enough of them in my stuff. Because I always get back to that.
There's another song of Bob's that I'm thinking of today, one that has always entranced me and seemed almost impossibly and excruciatingly mysterious. That song is Dark Eyes.
It closes the Empire Burlesque album of 1985. Just Bob alone on guitar and harmonica, in stark contrast to the rest of that album, which employs some very mid-80's production values, to the extent of having a time capsule quality when listened to today. You could be forgiven for listening through it and thinking, "Were there any real songs there? Was it just some things lying around and some studio tricks?" Then comes Dark Eyes, and you realize that yes, Bob is really there after all, and in top shape at that. It kind of redeems and lifts up the rest of the album, and makes you go back and listen for the very good songs that are in there, underneath the plastic. This is no accident, either; in Chronicles, Dylan describes how the producer (Arthur Baker) and he had agreed that the album needed an acoustic number to end on. Its effect is quite intentional, it seems.
The song is the simplest of melodies, unassuming and sweet. The lyric (and the singing) is Dylan in astounding form - evocative, beguiling and right under your skin - even as you wonder what the heck he might be singing about.
For such a relatively obscure song it seems to have some notable fans amongst fellow musicians. A recording circulates of Warren Zevon performing it live, introducing it with the the words, "This is a song that, well, this is the reason why I'm here." Patti Smith has dueted with Bob on it in concert. You can imagine artists hearing it as describing, if you like, the poetic condition: "I live in another world where life and death are memorized / Where the earth is strung with lovers' pearls and all I see are dark eyes." And who wouldn't think of Bob on stage in a stadium with the line: "a million faces at my feet but all I see are dark eyes."
Those readings would be just fine - the song lives on multiple levels, like so many of his songs do. However, keeping the Bible in mind, I'd like to meditate a little on the second verse:
A cock is crowing far away and another soldier's deep in prayer,
Some mother's child has gone astray, she can't find him anywhere.
But I can hear another drum beating for the dead that rise,
Whom nature's beast fears as they come and all I see are dark eyes.It struck me quite recently, after listening to and loving this song for years, that aside from hearing this verse as a series of mysterious images, you can also hear it as describing a key moment from the Gospels in a relatively literal way. You just need to take your cue from the first image: "A cock is crowing far away." Thinking Biblically, the crowing of a cock brings one pre-eminent moment to mind: Jesus is under arrest, facing death, while His followers scatter, and Peter, who had sworn loyalty, denies that he even knows Him. As Jesus had foreseen, Peter denies Him three times before that cock crows.
"And another soldier's deep in prayer" - who would that be, at that same moment? Someone guarding Jesus, who has a feeling deep within his bones that this is no ordinary night, no ordinary man - that something much bigger is taking place under his watch? Maybe even the one who had his ear cut off in the struggle in the garden, only to have it healed by the man he'd come to drag away? It could be many soldiers - and of-course that's part of what this line reminds us, "another soldier's deep in prayer" - there is always a soldier somewhere deep in prayer.
Staying in the New Testament, what does the next line evoke?
"Some mother's child has gone astray, she can't find him anywhere."
It is Jesus at age 12, when his parents lose him for 3 days, and then discover that he has stayed behind in Jerusalem, talking to the teachers there in the temple.
And yet it fits the moment we're already contemplating too; Mary's child has again "gone astray," and is in chains and soon to be executed. Soon to be taken away from her again, and also for 3 days, in fact.
Yet all the while that these events are happening, there is something else going on, something that no one can see at the time, but something which (if you are a believer) is more important than anything else that has ever happened on this earth. Jesus is in a sense acting out the final moments of a plan. The plan is not without opposition from the machinations of the devil. But it is going ahead - the pieces are falling into place - the great gift of salvation that Jesus came to give to humanity is on the verge of being bestowed. If you knew, and were watching the events unfold, how dramatic indeed it would have to appear to you:
"... I can hear another drum beating for the dead that rise"
This is the subtext of the story. Jesus is on the verge of being executed, but that drum is beating, and all the dead that shall rise are waiting to hear it, and that means us too.
But don't forget the beast:
"... whom nature's beast fears as they come ..."
Nature's beast. To digress slightly, there's an interview (I believe from the 60's though I can't place it this instant) where Dylan comments in his contrarian off-the-cuff fashion about nature, in response to something the interviewer has said. It's one of his quotable quotes - you can find it all over the internet. He says:
I am against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay.
"Nature is very unnatural." Aside from being funny, this makes a certain sense if you're thinking, again, in the context of the Bible. What was truly natural was the Creation that God gave us to begin with - i.e. what he gave to Adam and Eve in the garden. However, we / they rejected it in some way - broke the rules and went against God and were cast out from that perfection. Now everything's wrong, somehow, deep down. Everything is broken. As beautiful as nature can be, as glorious an example of God's greatness as it is, it is also a source of pain, unhappiness, decay and death. If you're a believer then you believe that we are promised something else - that it will be put right.
In a sense, in fact, outside of our human sense of time, it already has been put right, by that Jewish mother's child some 2000 years ago, welcomed into the world by parents compelled to travel at the worst of times, for the sake of a government census. God humbling Himself in a barn, to save us - sneaking in without glory on a mission that would culminate over 30 years later with Jesus dying a criminal's death.
* * *
The refrain of the song of-course is: "all I see are dark eyes." It ends each verse and is a key source of the mysteriousness of it all. I'm not going to try and fit it into my interpretation of the second verse - Dylan's mystery is just fine with me. He does write about it, interestingly, in Chronicles. Not in any way to explain the song or nail it all down, but just to describe where he was and where some of the inspiration may have come from. As referred to earlier, he'd agreed with his producer that the album needed an acoustic number to finish with - he just didn't have one. He returned to his hotel in Manhattan after midnight, and:
As I stepped out of the elevator, a call girl was coming toward me in the hallway - pale yellow hair wearing a fox coat - high heeled shoes that could pierce your heart. She had blue circles around her eyes, black eyeliner, dark eyes. She looked like she'd been beaten up and was afraid that she'd get beat up again. In her hand, crimson purple wine in a glass. "I'm just dying for a drink," she said as she passed me in the hall. She had a beautifulness, but not for this kind of world.
Unlike another musician whom he greatly admires (Bing Crosby), Dylan has never recorded a Christmas album. Not yet, anyway. So, while it's not quite Jingle Bells, I can find a little bit of Christmas here in Dark Eyes, in a funny kind of mysterious and Dylanesque way.
Addendum: I expect to be separated from my computer for the better part of the next 7 days or so, so consider this the Christmas post. God Bless Us, Every One!
Raison D'être ...12/12/2004 02:15:08 pm
On the essential-to-Dylan-fans clearinghouse site, "Expecting Rain," the little "NDC" beside this link warns us of "no Dylan content." The story is "White House linked clandestine operation paid for 'vote switching' software."
The first paragraph tells you all you need to know. The plot is "tied to an intricate web of shady off-shore financial trusts and companies, shady espionage operatives, Republican Party politicians close to the Bush family, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) contract vehicles."
Enough in there for a couple of movies each by Oliver Stone and Michael Moore.
No Dylan content indeed.
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Tell Me That It Isn't True ...12/12/2004 09:31:51 am
One hopes that the implosion of Bernard Kerik's nomination does not signal the beginning of a trend where those endorsed by Right Wing Bob go belly-up. I think not. However, now we need a new Secretary of Homeland Security, and with my favorite candidate out of the running, there's an opportunity to promote someone whom common sense and good taste had previously restrained me from suggesting. Well, enough of that.
Who could be better for the position of protecting America from Islamist terrorists than a man who has successfully, and single-handedly, defied the jihadists for over 15 years? From the reign of Ayatollah Khomeini all the way to the Ayatollah Khamenei (and onward I'm sure if we should ever encounter an Ayatollah Khamaney or Kiméni), this man has spit in the eye of bloody-minded Muslim fundamentalists everywhere, and lived to tell the tale (all the time enjoying a succession of progressively more glamorous wives).
I speak of-course of that scourge of radical Imams - author, jetsetter and friend-of-Bono: Salman Rushdie.
If he has been so successful at frustrating the rage of millions of vengeful fanatics for 15 years, just imagine what he can do with a whole Homeland Security department at his back!
Oh, sure, there may be a problem with some of his more incongruous political opinions, e.g.
"I have been fairly critical of the so-called war on terror which has to do with as you say the way in which the subject is being confronted. There is no doubt that radicalism, extremism does need to be confronted whether it's Muslim, Hindu or Christian fundamentalism. These things need to be confronted and it's a dangerous time in the world because they are rampant. I do not think what happened in Iraq has really made the world a safer place."
But perhaps when he feels the wind of the latest newly-recruited band of non-Christian fundamentalists breathing down his neck, he'll revise his priorities a little.
(By the way, given the chance to sign up for one of those three paths of jihad, which would you choose? Attacking the lone world Hyper Power - the United States of America? Attacking the state which has made kicking militant Arab butts its daily exercise regimen - Israel? Or, assassinating the decadent writer, champagne swiller and lover of models, Salman Rushdie? Any one of those can earn you your ticket to paradise. Which seems easier? Take your time, think about it. Well, don't take too long. No telling when some rogue Christian fundamentalists might get in on the action ahead of you.)
Surely nothing would gain the U.S. more credibility and respect in the radical Muslim world than hiring a man raised as a Muslim to direct U.S. Homeland Security. The editorials in the Arab press would be quite gushing, I'm sure.
If I were Salman, I'd be going over all my nanny paperwork even as we speak.
Original text copyright © 2004 by RightWingBob.com
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