Friday, September 30, 2005
Richard Manuel & Bob Dylan
Some thoughts on seeing No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese’s masterful biography of Bob Dylan, earlier this week.
Working only with archival footage – the intimate interview with Dylan himself had been conducted by Dylan’s manager prior to the decision to get Scorsese involved – the director managed to avoid what might be the greatest trap in an endeavor of this kind: reifying (if not deifying) its subject, or any particular version of the subject. During the period covered by Home, we see Dylan move through four distinct phases as a musician:
- A performer of other people’s music – this is Dylan the folkie, the one we find on his first
- The composer of his own topical tunes – this was the breakthrough work that got him identified with the topical song movement & the likes of Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, and others who writing songs about the events of the 1960s – the absence of these other writers is one of the noteworthy absences from the film, as is that of Ramblin' Jack Elliot, perhaps a more important influence than either Woody Guthrie or Dave Van Ronk.
- The composer of more poetic acoustic tunes – there is a wonderful scene of Dylan performing “Tambourine Man” at the “Topical Song” workshop at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964 as Pete Seeger sits behind him scowling, intently trying to fathom out this new more elliptical discourse.¹ This is the Dylan who is captured on Another Side, an album that was careful to telegraph that this was a Dylan you had not heard previously. In fact, tho, the Dylan of the eponymous first
- Dylan in his first electric phase, the one that lasted through three solid albums (Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited & Blonde on Blonde), making it the longest period of consistency in his career, even to this day.
Reading Chronicles & other bios of Dylan, it’s apparent that there was another Dylan even before these four, the rockabilly teenager who played (miserably by all accounts) piano for Bobby Vee under the name of Elston Gunn. Scorsese elides over this period so quickly that I don’t think you can get a sense of it distinctly in Home, focusing more on Dylan’s own later appropriation of Bobby Vee’s name for awhile before Mr. Zimmerman headed off to
Θ Φ Θ
One year before the debacle over Dylan’s electric performance at Newport in 1965, the one after party I got to attend at the festival in 1964 – I’d been invited by Buffy Sainte-Marie – found performers like Sainte-Marie, Noel Stookey (Paul from Peter, Paul & Marie), John Sebastian, Dylan & others jamming songs from what was then the first Rolling Stones album. Indeed, that was where I first heard of the Rolling Stones.
The dichotomy between folk & rock was indeed fairly hard in those years, tho the emotional force against the music had much to do with the corporate control of mind-numbing music. While Dylan’s entry into rock opened up the music’s lyric potential, the British invasion – not just the Beatles & Stones, but also the Animals & John Mayhall, who took Chicago Blues rather than the Tin Pan Alley of Gary Lewis & the Playboys² and their ilk, as their point of reference – was already breaking up the tight-knit control a half dozen labels had on the pop charts. Indeed, within two years of Dylan’s going electric, I saw one concert at Winterland in San Francisco in which the opening act was Pink Floyd (who had just released their first album), the second act was The Doors (who had just released Strange Days, their second album), and the headliner was Donovan. The so-called San Francisco Sound of the 1960s – the Dead, the Airplane, Big Brother & the Holding Company – really was the influx of folk musicians into rock.
It was ironic that Columbia Records signed Dylan – and fortunate for him that John Hammond basically let him do what he wanted to do – when he’d already been rejected by Folkways and Vanguard, the two major folk labels of the period. Tho
Θ Φ Θ
Hearing Dylan going electric at
Some of the clips show Dylan wearing his herring bone suit when touring with the Band. I remember seeing him in that suit at a show at the Berkeley Community Theater in, I believe, early 1966, thinking that it was the type of clothing I’d only seen before on older blues musicians. To my eye, it still looks much quirkier than the polka-dotted blousy shirt he’s wearing in the photo above.
Θ Φ Θ
One of the more interesting moments in the film is Allen Ginsberg choking up as he recounts his experience of first hearing “Hard Rain,” played for him at a party in Bolinas by Charlie Plymell. “I wept,” Ginsberg says, clearly recognizing the reflection of his own influence in Dylan’s lyrics, “The torch had been passed.” I remember my own experience, first hearing that song. Lacking Ginsberg panoptic reading (he was 37 in 1963, I was 17), I can clearly recall the hair on the back of my neck standing up: I had never heard anything like that before anywhere. It was an announcement that the world was going to be different very very soon – in spite of its apocalyptic message, the song gave me an unshakeable optimism that I would return to often over the next couple of years.
Ginsberg’s presence on the film makes great sense, not simply because he knew Dylan. Nor is he the only writer in the film – James Baldwin shows up twice, we hear a snatch of Kerouac & in a shot of heads at the Cedar Bar you can make out Frank O’Hara as he blurs past, unannounced & unquoted. Dylan may or may not be a poet, depending on your definitions – in my book, the answer is not, but frankly I don’t think it’s an important question – but his aesthetic, in virtually all its phases, is distinctly New American. And if Dylan’s own sense of logic in his songs is never that far removed from Ginsberg & the Beats (hear, say, the echo of Ray Bremser in “Positively Fourth Street”), the writer he is most like (I’ve said this before, but Home underscores the point) actually is Kirby Olson’s Doubting Thomist, Gregory Corso. Compared with Ginsberg or Kerouac, Dylan is almost shockingly uneducated – he’s not kidding when he says that he didn’t go to classes at the University of Minnesota – and yet he’s brilliant & an absolute sponge of data, an autodidact whose program of study, if one can find it anywhere, is a peculiar combination of cultural studies – sans theory³ – and the Bible. These twin sources have been constant throughout almost all of his different periods & personae.
Θ Φ Θ
In the film, his oldest acquaintances call Dylan a “receiver” (what a Spicerian term that is!) and a “shape shifter” & to the degree that Scorsese has to settle on a Dylan to use as his focal point, the one he gives us is Dylan the chameleon, the artist who is always at a remove from his own public identity, an actor who is forever “on,” leaving betrayed friends who thought they knew which one was the “real” Dylan everywhere in his wake – virtually all of whom have decided to forgive him. At some level, that’s not genius, but a personality disorder, a kind of narcissism perhaps, but one that seems utterly disinterested in his own Self. Certainly that’s consistent with the artist who “don’t look back,” who has lived his adult life with an invented name & who has come up with a new Dylan roughly every three years now since 1960. At the same time, the line that will stay with me from this film perhaps longer than any other is a wistful Joan Baez, who seems still able to get in touch with some kind of love for the man, saying that she has no idea what he’s thinking, “I know only what he’s given us.”
¹ Tho I was at the ’64 festival, I missed that session, going instead to listen to the jug band of Sleepy John Estes, Yank Rachel & Hammie Nixon perform at a blues workshop. To this day, that is still the best acoustic blues show I’ve ever attended, so I can hardly say that I regret my decision. When I finally met Dylan at an after-party at the Viking Hotel later in the week & asked him what he was working on, he pulled a typescript of “Tambourine Man” from his coat pocket. I was already starting to read Allen Ginsberg & Michael McClure & the rather vaporous surrealism of its text didn’t strike me half as strange as it seems to have hit the older Popular Front folkies already in their 40s.
² On Lewis’ records, most of the roles played by “studio musicians” turned out to be Leon Russell.
³ He has the anti-intellectual’s distrust of theory in all forms.
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But what about the shift up to now? Was it too much? Should it have ended before a reflection, musically on all he has done? I return to Time Out of Mind--Not Dark Yet--but the effect when one chooses, really chooses to do what they do apart from a group that decides. Was there any need for Dylan to go on, for however long it took, to say how much he relies on the elements? Maybe not. Maybe I just wanted him to say it without the direct pressure of anyone else but his time.
One major componant of my nostalgia, not just for "those times" (the Sixties), but of my own spent youth and wasted middle age, is a continuing wonder at how completely the sentiment of those years was abandoned, seemingly never to return. Those who weren't there think of it as an indulgent, undisciplined period of raucous nonsense. But it is still true, in this instance, that you "had to be there" to understand it. That generation--of those born between 1940 and 1950--had a clear sense of identity that cut across racial, class, and cultural lines, and was multi-faceted: political, ethical, sexual, environmental, fashion, art/literature/music. There was a sense of purpose that was quite compelling, and swept up even those who would never march, never experiment, but who still shared that sense of purpose.
Well, we know what happened, don't we. Reagan happened. People learned to love money again. And today, everyone's running scared.
We WEREN'T scared. Or, at least, our fear didn't keep us from trying to change things.
Well, we know what happened, don't we. Reagan happened. People learned to love money again. And today, everyone's running scared.
We WEREN'T scared. Or, at least, our fear didn't keep us from trying to change things.
That generation--of those born between 1940 and 1950--
Hey! I was born in '51 and am a card-carrying member of That Generation. (I often wonder what would have happened if I'd gone to college in NYC instead of LA in '68; the activism would probably have been a lot more literary.)
I too was struck by Joan Baez's mix of emotions; as I told my wife, I wouldn't want anyone I cared about getting close to Dylan, but I'm sure glad he exists.
--languagehat
Hey! I was born in '51 and am a card-carrying member of That Generation. (I often wonder what would have happened if I'd gone to college in NYC instead of LA in '68; the activism would probably have been a lot more literary.)
I too was struck by Joan Baez's mix of emotions; as I told my wife, I wouldn't want anyone I cared about getting close to Dylan, but I'm sure glad he exists.
--languagehat
I had the fortune/misfortune to be born into a small(er) generation (dob 2/7/76), and me & my friends often bemoan the fact that the Boomers seem to control almost everything now (media, gov't, etc.). I wonder how much of the current Dylan-mania is appreciation of his art, how much is nostalgia for an age gone by, its' ideals unrealized...not that I don't like Dylan; I do; but I think that his reputation may diminish as decades go by; my personal hope is that people pay more attention to someone like Ray Davies, whose best work ("Waterloo Sunset", "Sunny Afternoon", the "Village Green" and "Muswell Hillbillies" albums)is, for me, equal to any of Dylan's achievements, but who maintained an anti-Zeitgeist stance and was thus almost ignored; look at Baroque art; Reubens was the big, bad Dylan figue, Ray Davies would've been Rembrandt; took centuries for people to realize Reubens' flaws & Rembrandt's genius..though it is, admittedly, a strained analogy; why doesn't Scorcese make a Kinks movie?
Dylan left Columbia for Asylum for a couple of years in the 7O's, recording Planet Waves and Before the Flood. To punish him they issued an album of outtakes from Self Portrait. And I for one wouldn't trade the "Tin Pan Alley" of the Four Seasons, Del Shannon, The Shirelles, Gene Pitney, Neil Diamond, Lesley Gore, Dion & the Belmonts, The Monkees, Phil Spector, The Beach Boys etc, etc, for the tinny frathouse jam sessions of the San Francisco scene. One of the things that makes Dylan great is that he understands the potency of cheap music.
I've decided that I like Bob Dylan and that he is a necessary part of understanding the Beats. What interests me in him is the focus on the individual -- Kierkegaardian demand that the individual be allowed to speak -- against the general trends of objective history as outlined in Hegel and Marx and the general progressive movement as found in Pete Seeger, etc.
It's hard to know how much formal schooling is really necessary. Shakespeare had little, although we are told that their grammar schools were much better than our own. Corso knew the best minds of his time, and Creeley wrote to me that Corso was indeed the best-read poet that he had known.
We didn't see anything of Dylan's upbringing -- who were his parents? I met a man from Hibbing who informed me that Dylan's mom and dad were the only Jews in town and that they ran a corner grocery store.
But then Ralph Nader's father had a similar blue-collar background but was immensely well-read.
I don't know if Ron has a B.A. either. I am not sure that they mean anything. They are an opportunity of course but there is also the local library and smart friends. I think in the long run I learned much more from smart friends than from any school situation.
Except of course at Naropa, which really was an amazing feast of Bohemian intellect.
It's hard to know how much formal schooling is really necessary. Shakespeare had little, although we are told that their grammar schools were much better than our own. Corso knew the best minds of his time, and Creeley wrote to me that Corso was indeed the best-read poet that he had known.
We didn't see anything of Dylan's upbringing -- who were his parents? I met a man from Hibbing who informed me that Dylan's mom and dad were the only Jews in town and that they ran a corner grocery store.
But then Ralph Nader's father had a similar blue-collar background but was immensely well-read.
I don't know if Ron has a B.A. either. I am not sure that they mean anything. They are an opportunity of course but there is also the local library and smart friends. I think in the long run I learned much more from smart friends than from any school situation.
Except of course at Naropa, which really was an amazing feast of Bohemian intellect.
Ah, if I had world enough and time. It’s odd to find you “reading” the movie in terms of plot, it’s odd that “receiving the poem (or whatever) is foregrounded as a Spicerian notion (he just one in a long list), but just to begin your description of Mr Tambourine Man” is “rather vaporous” (your footnote! Maybe no big deal but I follow the example of Nabokov) misses exactly what is there – that is the undercutting of the usual sentiments
To dance beneath the diamond sky
With one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea
Circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate
Driven deep beneath the waves.
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.
Exactly explodes the notion that this is a gaseous sentiment concerned with living in the moment, dancing as a carefree gypsy etc The simultaneous presenting/undercutting really) of that romantic image is remarkable. The last line should give it away. The placement of “driven” just there should also and the prettiness of the convention of “diamond” skies is made questionable as is the zaniness etc of “circus” sands. This passage is typical of his best songs not for its implications in the usual vapors but just for the tension between that pretty picture and Fate and memory returning. In other words it does what the best poetry does and resists all those tyrannies that prevent what is hardly ever able to be said (exactly in poetry) from getting said. Reading it as the usual vapors just implicates that reading in the usual. It demands that attention be paid again after that first hearing.
It also manages to avoid a merely literary irony – both sides have force and what results from the implication of both sides at one time is remarkable. It manages to present a way of saying that is popular (pop culture raggle taggle gypsies oh) and take ALL THAT beyond to a stranger and a much more interesting place. What is extraordinary about Dylan’s best songs is just this and the measure of their excellence is just how much of what (let me say it this way) merely literary poetry ignores or offers no access to – that is the place where poetry lives as something that means something because if offers meanings and ways of apprehension that point beyond the usual stance and have something to say about existence in a suffering world.. Intellectual? The word loses its force and interest when contrasted with this achievement. It does nothing for remarks about Dylan’s lack of learning to be presented as bearing on much except the usual interest in biography. The songs somehow (and how and why is fascinating) contain worlds. Just this passage quoted, for example, does a quietus make for whole categories of sentiment passed off as art. And there’s much more.
And I don’t think this has been noticed before anywhere. The last line of Melville’s poem here. Old Bob maybe reading Billy Budd hence “I am sleepy and there is no place I’m going to.”
BILLY IN THE DARBIES
Good of the Chaplain to enter Lone Bay
And down on his marrow-bones here and pray
For the likes just o' me, Billy Budd.--But look:
Through the port comes the moon-shine astray!
It tips the guard's cutlas and silvers this nook;
But 'twill die in the dawning of Billy's last day.
A jewel-block they'll make of me to-morrow,
Pendant pearl from the yard-arm-end
Like the ear-drop I gave to Bristol Molly--
O, 'tis me, not the sentence they'll suspend.
Ay, Ay, Ay, all is up; and I must up to
Early in the morning, aloft from alow.
On an empty stomach, now, never it would do.
They'll give me a nibble--bit o' biscuit ere I go.
Sure, a messmate will reach me the last parting cup;
But, turning heads away from the hoist and the belay,
Heaven knows who will have the running of me up!
No pipe to those halyards .--But aren't it all sham?
A blur's in my eyes; it is dreaming that I am.
A hatchet to my hawser? all adrift to go?
The drum roll to grog, and Billy never know?
But Donald he has promised to stand by the plank;
So I'll shake a friendly hand ere I sink.
But -- no! It is dead then I'll be, come to think.
I remember Taff the Welshman when he sank.
And his cheek it was like the budding pink.
But me they'll lash me in hammock, drop me deep.
Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I'll dream fast asleep.
I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there?
Just ease this darbies at the wrist, and roll me over fair,
I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.
To dance beneath the diamond sky
With one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea
Circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate
Driven deep beneath the waves.
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.
Exactly explodes the notion that this is a gaseous sentiment concerned with living in the moment, dancing as a carefree gypsy etc The simultaneous presenting/undercutting really) of that romantic image is remarkable. The last line should give it away. The placement of “driven” just there should also and the prettiness of the convention of “diamond” skies is made questionable as is the zaniness etc of “circus” sands. This passage is typical of his best songs not for its implications in the usual vapors but just for the tension between that pretty picture and Fate and memory returning. In other words it does what the best poetry does and resists all those tyrannies that prevent what is hardly ever able to be said (exactly in poetry) from getting said. Reading it as the usual vapors just implicates that reading in the usual. It demands that attention be paid again after that first hearing.
It also manages to avoid a merely literary irony – both sides have force and what results from the implication of both sides at one time is remarkable. It manages to present a way of saying that is popular (pop culture raggle taggle gypsies oh) and take ALL THAT beyond to a stranger and a much more interesting place. What is extraordinary about Dylan’s best songs is just this and the measure of their excellence is just how much of what (let me say it this way) merely literary poetry ignores or offers no access to – that is the place where poetry lives as something that means something because if offers meanings and ways of apprehension that point beyond the usual stance and have something to say about existence in a suffering world.. Intellectual? The word loses its force and interest when contrasted with this achievement. It does nothing for remarks about Dylan’s lack of learning to be presented as bearing on much except the usual interest in biography. The songs somehow (and how and why is fascinating) contain worlds. Just this passage quoted, for example, does a quietus make for whole categories of sentiment passed off as art. And there’s much more.
And I don’t think this has been noticed before anywhere. The last line of Melville’s poem here. Old Bob maybe reading Billy Budd hence “I am sleepy and there is no place I’m going to.”
BILLY IN THE DARBIES
Good of the Chaplain to enter Lone Bay
And down on his marrow-bones here and pray
For the likes just o' me, Billy Budd.--But look:
Through the port comes the moon-shine astray!
It tips the guard's cutlas and silvers this nook;
But 'twill die in the dawning of Billy's last day.
A jewel-block they'll make of me to-morrow,
Pendant pearl from the yard-arm-end
Like the ear-drop I gave to Bristol Molly--
O, 'tis me, not the sentence they'll suspend.
Ay, Ay, Ay, all is up; and I must up to
Early in the morning, aloft from alow.
On an empty stomach, now, never it would do.
They'll give me a nibble--bit o' biscuit ere I go.
Sure, a messmate will reach me the last parting cup;
But, turning heads away from the hoist and the belay,
Heaven knows who will have the running of me up!
No pipe to those halyards .--But aren't it all sham?
A blur's in my eyes; it is dreaming that I am.
A hatchet to my hawser? all adrift to go?
The drum roll to grog, and Billy never know?
But Donald he has promised to stand by the plank;
So I'll shake a friendly hand ere I sink.
But -- no! It is dead then I'll be, come to think.
I remember Taff the Welshman when he sank.
And his cheek it was like the budding pink.
But me they'll lash me in hammock, drop me deep.
Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I'll dream fast asleep.
I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there?
Just ease this darbies at the wrist, and roll me over fair,
I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.
I was glad to see that the footage Scorcese has to work with included the press conference that Dylan gave in, I think, late 1965 or early 1966, when he and the Hawks played San Francisco. (I don't remember any booing that night, just the awesome accomplishment of "Visons of Johanna," played solo with consummate artistry and then gone in the air until "Blonde on Blonde" was released a very long time after.) I remembered how liberating it was then to watch him smile to himself and deftly deconstruct every idiot question and cut through the vapors of media fog with sly, spontaneous wit. I was 15 and didn't understand the fuss over electric guitars at all. (I also loved the sequence in the first segment that juxtaposes "Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat" with comments about the influence of Woody Guthrie on Dylan's songwriting.) Now irreverent rockstars are a dime a dozen: a programmed layer of the new fog that hangs over everything and routinely deconstructs itself with bland, mechanical precision. But then the gesture felt pure and clean: this skinny 20-something jittery-looking kid had found a way out and didn't need to look back or explain himself, just stand in his shoes and go on his instincts and try to let that be enough to get him through.
All a very long time ago. "Look out kid, you gotta stay hid." But an event, or a distinct moment of one, and like Badiou says, you better be faithful to the ones you get if you're lucky enough to recognize them when they happen. In other words, "Take what you have gathered from coincidence." And yes, hope that you do so "with one hand waving free."
All a very long time ago. "Look out kid, you gotta stay hid." But an event, or a distinct moment of one, and like Badiou says, you better be faithful to the ones you get if you're lucky enough to recognize them when they happen. In other words, "Take what you have gathered from coincidence." And yes, hope that you do so "with one hand waving free."
"I wonder how much of the current Dylan-mania is appreciation of his art, how much is nostalgia for an age gone by"
Only a few appreciate art in any case -- with the colder eye. The key is to look at what is there and see how all the usual is passed by -- including nostalgia for the sixties. This nostalgia is odd in any case. Separate it from the nostalgia occasioned that one was once young and ask around or try to recover actual memories with all their terrors and I'll bet many a man I know wouldn't think nostalgia the mot juste. I remember murders and the draft and wars and the rumours of war and little access to the reality of that by many and, on the other side, little access to any other way of being.
And then the general terror of nuclear war which is difficult to imagine I bet for those not experiencing it. Hard rain. And everyday forgetting, of course but then inkling of the grotesque reality. Tinged with comedy in retrospect but what was really there and felt then? I remember the Cuban Missile Crises...being 15...thought the end possible...and there stuck in Catholic school watching as good old father Schneider would pause his lecture on how the Immaculate Conception was not the same as thwe Virgin Birth (and I forget why now -- maybe Kirby could help) to look out the window to see if the missles were coming -- as if they could be seen.
And then the draft and knowing in Basic just the facts that the government could do what it wanted with you.
Interesting times -- "nostalgia" for some... something else for many others.
Only a few appreciate art in any case -- with the colder eye. The key is to look at what is there and see how all the usual is passed by -- including nostalgia for the sixties. This nostalgia is odd in any case. Separate it from the nostalgia occasioned that one was once young and ask around or try to recover actual memories with all their terrors and I'll bet many a man I know wouldn't think nostalgia the mot juste. I remember murders and the draft and wars and the rumours of war and little access to the reality of that by many and, on the other side, little access to any other way of being.
And then the general terror of nuclear war which is difficult to imagine I bet for those not experiencing it. Hard rain. And everyday forgetting, of course but then inkling of the grotesque reality. Tinged with comedy in retrospect but what was really there and felt then? I remember the Cuban Missile Crises...being 15...thought the end possible...and there stuck in Catholic school watching as good old father Schneider would pause his lecture on how the Immaculate Conception was not the same as thwe Virgin Birth (and I forget why now -- maybe Kirby could help) to look out the window to see if the missles were coming -- as if they could be seen.
And then the draft and knowing in Basic just the facts that the government could do what it wanted with you.
Interesting times -- "nostalgia" for some... something else for many others.
The sixties were intense times. I personally don't think nostalgia is the factor. I lived them. I saw the good, the bad, and the ugly. I saw times when the dollar wasn't god and passion underlined our art, song and protest. I wouldn't have missed living through those days for anything.
By the way, I discovered that this DVD is sold at Amazon, for anyone who missed it and would like to see it.
Dylan as New American? Maybe as a Beat. Corso is the best analogue, as someone mentioned. Romantic surrealist balladeer, with the Romantic allegiance to scandalizing the bourgeoisie and effacing traces of middle class identity.
Also -- Dylan's effacement of his Jewish background has a long history in showbizbizbizbiz. From this angle, Streisand's unapologetic Jewishness may have been a more radical stance.
Not to say Dylan didn't write a lot of great songs & didn't greatly influence the way people thought about songwriting. He did. Big time. Huge. But aside from his influence, and a dozen or 2 songs I'd keep, I'll take Woody Guthrie. And Streisand.
Also -- Dylan's effacement of his Jewish background has a long history in showbizbizbizbiz. From this angle, Streisand's unapologetic Jewishness may have been a more radical stance.
Not to say Dylan didn't write a lot of great songs & didn't greatly influence the way people thought about songwriting. He did. Big time. Huge. But aside from his influence, and a dozen or 2 songs I'd keep, I'll take Woody Guthrie. And Streisand.
I was just reading the Dylan sections of the Barry Miles ‘Ginsberg’ bio and I’ll post some quotes:
Allen Ginsberg, after his first meeting with Dylan in December 1963 when Dylan invited him to fly to Chicago with him: “I thought he was just a folksinger, and I was also afraid I might become his slave or something, his mascot.” This is after Ginsberg’s reportedly tearful first listening of “Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” discussed in the documentary.
Michael McClure: “One some level Dylan’s politics were like first strike capability politics. If the Chinese are building the hydrogen bomb, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go in there and take it out. It’s macho politics. It’s young man’s politics, and it’s not incompatible with ‘Blowing in the Wind.’ Dylan is not a bleeding heart liberal... I heard him bare his heart a couple of times and my blood ran a little cold, but it was nothing worse than Kennedy.”
Allen Ginsberg, on playing “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” and “Gates of Eden” to Ezra Pound in Rapallo, Liguria on October 22, 1967: “Sat there all along, I drunk, he impassive, earnest, attentive, asmile.”
Allen Ginsberg, on Dylan saying during the 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue that he would take care of him when he was dying: “The next morning he was glum and he didn’t remember. And I went up thinking that he was going to take care of me for the rest of my life! I didn’t realize that his munificence was engorged with snow.”
__________________
Those Gerald R. Ford years are a great Dylan phase: Planet Waves (1974), Blood on the Tracks (1975), Desire (1976). Planet Waves is better musically than lyrically, but not without its great lines; Desire is where Dylan is at his most receptive to the Ginsberg influence and Ginsberg’s methods for receptiveness itself. Idiot Wind from Blood is best heard in its slow version on the Biograph compilation.
Allen Ginsberg, after his first meeting with Dylan in December 1963 when Dylan invited him to fly to Chicago with him: “I thought he was just a folksinger, and I was also afraid I might become his slave or something, his mascot.” This is after Ginsberg’s reportedly tearful first listening of “Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” discussed in the documentary.
Michael McClure: “One some level Dylan’s politics were like first strike capability politics. If the Chinese are building the hydrogen bomb, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go in there and take it out. It’s macho politics. It’s young man’s politics, and it’s not incompatible with ‘Blowing in the Wind.’ Dylan is not a bleeding heart liberal... I heard him bare his heart a couple of times and my blood ran a little cold, but it was nothing worse than Kennedy.”
Allen Ginsberg, on playing “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” and “Gates of Eden” to Ezra Pound in Rapallo, Liguria on October 22, 1967: “Sat there all along, I drunk, he impassive, earnest, attentive, asmile.”
Allen Ginsberg, on Dylan saying during the 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue that he would take care of him when he was dying: “The next morning he was glum and he didn’t remember. And I went up thinking that he was going to take care of me for the rest of my life! I didn’t realize that his munificence was engorged with snow.”
__________________
Those Gerald R. Ford years are a great Dylan phase: Planet Waves (1974), Blood on the Tracks (1975), Desire (1976). Planet Waves is better musically than lyrically, but not without its great lines; Desire is where Dylan is at his most receptive to the Ginsberg influence and Ginsberg’s methods for receptiveness itself. Idiot Wind from Blood is best heard in its slow version on the Biograph compilation.
I think Dylan's "lack of learning" IS of more than "biographical" interest, since his fierce distrust of erudition (such as in the liner notes of Bringing It All Back Home, where there is a sentence something like "I'd rather model harmonica holders than talk about Aztec anthropology, English literature, or the history of the United Nations") echoed in a lot of our minds, causing searing doubt about any of our intellectual endeavors. Because of powerful sentiments like this, from D. and others, many of us felt forced to compromise, carrying on with intellectual activity, but stopping short of the full investigations we might have
pursued.
Dylan's feelings about learning seem to have something to with his particular religious feelings about/attraction to the Void ("you've not seen nothing*/like the mighty Quinn"; "don't ask me nothing 'bout nothing*/'cause I just might tell you the truth".
_______________
(i.e., Nothing)
______________
Finally, though (and I may indeed be all Dylaned out), let me say that the chorus of "Tombstone Blues" seems to me to mock the particular sort of anti-intellectualism of mainstream American squares. He's "on the street with the tombstone blues", i.e. conjuring with the spirits of the dead that haunt him, including Beethoven and Bessie Smith and Paul Revere, as the verses reveal, while "mama's in the fact'ry/she ain't got no shoes" and dad's in "the alley/looking for food"--which I think represents SPIRITUAL destitution and ignorance--I don't think the "narrator" sounds mean enough to leave his parents literarly without shoes and food. :)
PS--Oh, beware Dylan's changing/elegantizing of his own lyrics. On the record--Highway 61--one does hear that pa is "looking for food" and so it does say in some people's transcriptions you can find on the net, but the official version of the line is now "looking for the fuse".
pursued.
Dylan's feelings about learning seem to have something to with his particular religious feelings about/attraction to the Void ("you've not seen nothing*/like the mighty Quinn"; "don't ask me nothing 'bout nothing*/'cause I just might tell you the truth".
_______________
(i.e., Nothing)
______________
Finally, though (and I may indeed be all Dylaned out), let me say that the chorus of "Tombstone Blues" seems to me to mock the particular sort of anti-intellectualism of mainstream American squares. He's "on the street with the tombstone blues", i.e. conjuring with the spirits of the dead that haunt him, including Beethoven and Bessie Smith and Paul Revere, as the verses reveal, while "mama's in the fact'ry/she ain't got no shoes" and dad's in "the alley/looking for food"--which I think represents SPIRITUAL destitution and ignorance--I don't think the "narrator" sounds mean enough to leave his parents literarly without shoes and food. :)
PS--Oh, beware Dylan's changing/elegantizing of his own lyrics. On the record--Highway 61--one does hear that pa is "looking for food" and so it does say in some people's transcriptions you can find on the net, but the official version of the line is now "looking for the fuse".
The Immaculate Conception is a Catholic concept that refers to the idea that Mary was herself freed from sin by her acceptance of Christ's grace. It's a little bit like Terminator where the mother and the son keep going back and forth in time I suppose but the idea is that for the Catholics Mary must have been sinless in order to be Jesus' mother. That she was free of sin from birth is therefore the principle concept of the Immaculate Conception.
Christ's birth is the Virgin Birth.
These concepts are somewhat foreign to me, since as a Lutheran we believe that everyone except Jesus was a sinner. That includes Mary. Nobody ever becomes a saint in Lutheranism and we don't raise Mary above other women except to notice in her a sublime humility and gratitude for the gift that God had bestowed on her. We don't have saints like they do in the Catholic church and we think that anyone who believes that they are saintly is a double sinner and a hypocrite to boot. We don't believe that people can be reliably good, and we also think that if they do they will become terribly sinful. We have to accept our sinful nature in humility and not try to be perfect. Zen monks and many other religions think that we can with a few decades of study or something become nice and perfect. Lutherans generally laugh to themselves about this. Luther especially resented the claim of hierarchy in the Catholic church where Bishops and Popes rise above natural fact, and the Pope himself becomes fallible.
Luther thought this was nonsense. He didn't think that anybody could ever do anything without it being corrupted by self-interest and some kind of stench of sin. We still have to try and help others, etc., but it doesn't make us saints. Nothing in fact can make us saints. Even when we do manage to do something decent immediately the sin of pride horns in on us and makes us into self-righteous jerks that go around bragging about it... One of the things I object to in the Beat tradition (I find it marvelously ridiculous) is the constant idea of saintliness, and how they were hip "angels," and stuff. I used to think they were just kidding, and maybe this was a kind of humor, but now I realize more and more that as Catholics (Kerouac and Corso were raised as Catholic at least) they might have really believed this kind of thing. I don't think that Burroughs ever used this language. I think he did see the fallen nature of people, and how hard it was to get over the addiction to this fallen nature. I think his family were Protestants, maybe Calvinists. Ginsberg is constantly trying to expand the notion of holiness. He calls cockroaches and things like that holy. He goes on and on in a list in Howl as to what is holy. Just about everything. Even the penis, as I recall! Lutherans give this role of perfection to one man, and we see everything else as tainted.
As I read Dylan's Christian lyrics I am wondering what denomination he might have belonged to... he grew up on the Iron Range in Minnesota which means he might have known Lutherans as Minnesota is the only state that is predominantly Lutheran, but the Iron Range had a lot of Italians and Eastern Europeans who had come to work in the mines. I suppose somewhere on the web is a breakdown of churches in Hibbing by membership and maybe there is somewhere in the archives of religious institutions in Minnesota a breakdown of those institutions as they would have been in the 40s and 50s as he was growing up and thus I could at least get a probability.
Did he attend a church in his Christian phase? Does anybody know this? I don't have any of the biographies and I understand that this isn't the top concern for most of the people who like his work and who would like to separate the wheat from the chaff by separating him from this phase but perhaps there is an index in one of those biographies that would provide me with a handy reference. I'm not sure if he did attend a church at all. He may like Kierkegaard have regarded churches as a hindrance to finding God. Where was he living during this phase? I understood he was in Woodstock for some time after the motorcycle crash -- but I don't have the timeline down very clearly -- is this when he became Christian? There are all kinds of churches in Woodstock. There is a small pretty Lutheran one right on the main street next to the bakery.
Christ's birth is the Virgin Birth.
These concepts are somewhat foreign to me, since as a Lutheran we believe that everyone except Jesus was a sinner. That includes Mary. Nobody ever becomes a saint in Lutheranism and we don't raise Mary above other women except to notice in her a sublime humility and gratitude for the gift that God had bestowed on her. We don't have saints like they do in the Catholic church and we think that anyone who believes that they are saintly is a double sinner and a hypocrite to boot. We don't believe that people can be reliably good, and we also think that if they do they will become terribly sinful. We have to accept our sinful nature in humility and not try to be perfect. Zen monks and many other religions think that we can with a few decades of study or something become nice and perfect. Lutherans generally laugh to themselves about this. Luther especially resented the claim of hierarchy in the Catholic church where Bishops and Popes rise above natural fact, and the Pope himself becomes fallible.
Luther thought this was nonsense. He didn't think that anybody could ever do anything without it being corrupted by self-interest and some kind of stench of sin. We still have to try and help others, etc., but it doesn't make us saints. Nothing in fact can make us saints. Even when we do manage to do something decent immediately the sin of pride horns in on us and makes us into self-righteous jerks that go around bragging about it... One of the things I object to in the Beat tradition (I find it marvelously ridiculous) is the constant idea of saintliness, and how they were hip "angels," and stuff. I used to think they were just kidding, and maybe this was a kind of humor, but now I realize more and more that as Catholics (Kerouac and Corso were raised as Catholic at least) they might have really believed this kind of thing. I don't think that Burroughs ever used this language. I think he did see the fallen nature of people, and how hard it was to get over the addiction to this fallen nature. I think his family were Protestants, maybe Calvinists. Ginsberg is constantly trying to expand the notion of holiness. He calls cockroaches and things like that holy. He goes on and on in a list in Howl as to what is holy. Just about everything. Even the penis, as I recall! Lutherans give this role of perfection to one man, and we see everything else as tainted.
As I read Dylan's Christian lyrics I am wondering what denomination he might have belonged to... he grew up on the Iron Range in Minnesota which means he might have known Lutherans as Minnesota is the only state that is predominantly Lutheran, but the Iron Range had a lot of Italians and Eastern Europeans who had come to work in the mines. I suppose somewhere on the web is a breakdown of churches in Hibbing by membership and maybe there is somewhere in the archives of religious institutions in Minnesota a breakdown of those institutions as they would have been in the 40s and 50s as he was growing up and thus I could at least get a probability.
Did he attend a church in his Christian phase? Does anybody know this? I don't have any of the biographies and I understand that this isn't the top concern for most of the people who like his work and who would like to separate the wheat from the chaff by separating him from this phase but perhaps there is an index in one of those biographies that would provide me with a handy reference. I'm not sure if he did attend a church at all. He may like Kierkegaard have regarded churches as a hindrance to finding God. Where was he living during this phase? I understood he was in Woodstock for some time after the motorcycle crash -- but I don't have the timeline down very clearly -- is this when he became Christian? There are all kinds of churches in Woodstock. There is a small pretty Lutheran one right on the main street next to the bakery.
I meant to say that the Pope becoming infallible is considered ridiculous by Luther. I wrote fallible.
In general Lutherans are Augustinian, and Catholics are Thomists.
But as Ron said perhaps that kind of theoretical distinction between Christian denominations wouldn't have appealed to Dylan as he wasn't interested in theory so perhaps he never really studied theology in that sense.
But the differences are tremendous, and they lead to different paradigms just as the difference between an anarchist basing an action on Kropotkin and an anarchist basing on action on Bakunin will have totally different modes, even though they share a belief system of sorts.
In general Lutherans are Augustinian, and Catholics are Thomists.
But as Ron said perhaps that kind of theoretical distinction between Christian denominations wouldn't have appealed to Dylan as he wasn't interested in theory so perhaps he never really studied theology in that sense.
But the differences are tremendous, and they lead to different paradigms just as the difference between an anarchist basing an action on Kropotkin and an anarchist basing on action on Bakunin will have totally different modes, even though they share a belief system of sorts.
K/ The Christian period began in 1979, with the album Slow Train Coming. Robert Zimmerman's Christianity gradually petered out, it's hard to say exactly when this period ended.
In the late 90s , two albums of traditional folk music (he even sings "Froggy Went A' Courtin'") with beautiful acoustic guitar seem to have put him where he needs to be, as he then created two great albums of original material, Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft.
Right after the motorcycle accident came John Wesley Harding, with its much more chastened mood than the previous Blonde On Blonde.
I'm feeling sorry for Elini Sikleanos, Rodrigo Toscano and Rachel Blau du Plessis, about whom people haven't been leaving comments.
In the late 90s , two albums of traditional folk music (he even sings "Froggy Went A' Courtin'") with beautiful acoustic guitar seem to have put him where he needs to be, as he then created two great albums of original material, Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft.
Right after the motorcycle accident came John Wesley Harding, with its much more chastened mood than the previous Blonde On Blonde.
I'm feeling sorry for Elini Sikleanos, Rodrigo Toscano and Rachel Blau du Plessis, about whom people haven't been leaving comments.
I'm with Stephen: more time has been spent here (by me, too) on Dylan than on these poets, and even more than on the arguments around Katrina. But maybe it's just that more people have heard of Dylan, and Katrina...
In any case, my copy of "Drafts," vol.1, is on its way by air mail, and I'll finish "Partisans" in the woods in a few minutes and try to write more on it soon.
And, Kirby, Dylan was into some kind of Evangelical Christianity during that phase; I can't remember if there was a particular church, and I don't remember a particular event being cited. It didn't come from Hibbing, in any case. I think he was a "revelations" kinda Xian.
I don't have a television, so I'll have to see the documentary on my laptop once it shows up in the local video store...
And one should read Pete Seeger's own comments on the Dylan/Seeger relation. Some of the legend is just legend, if Pete's to be believed.
In any case, my copy of "Drafts," vol.1, is on its way by air mail, and I'll finish "Partisans" in the woods in a few minutes and try to write more on it soon.
And, Kirby, Dylan was into some kind of Evangelical Christianity during that phase; I can't remember if there was a particular church, and I don't remember a particular event being cited. It didn't come from Hibbing, in any case. I think he was a "revelations" kinda Xian.
I don't have a television, so I'll have to see the documentary on my laptop once it shows up in the local video store...
And one should read Pete Seeger's own comments on the Dylan/Seeger relation. Some of the legend is just legend, if Pete's to be believed.
Pete Seeger has a way of embellishing memory too.
For years he bragged on how the Weavers' renditions of "plain folk" songs "So Long It's Been Good to Know Ya" and "Goodnight Irene" got to be Top of the Pops hits, until he remembered that Sinatra arranger Gordon Jenkins gussied the hit versions up with studio orchestras.
The Weavers also stole the original copyright of "Wimoweh" from Solomon Linda, the very poor South African singer who wrote it. Seeger felt bad about it when he learned they hadn't stolen from "anonymous" (as was the Weavers' regular practice, copyrighting un-copyrighted material under the plausible Anglo collective pseudonym "Paul Campbell") but from a living person, but he never made amends, and that copyright has been worth several million dollars, thanks to the later hit version and Disney movie.
For years he bragged on how the Weavers' renditions of "plain folk" songs "So Long It's Been Good to Know Ya" and "Goodnight Irene" got to be Top of the Pops hits, until he remembered that Sinatra arranger Gordon Jenkins gussied the hit versions up with studio orchestras.
The Weavers also stole the original copyright of "Wimoweh" from Solomon Linda, the very poor South African singer who wrote it. Seeger felt bad about it when he learned they hadn't stolen from "anonymous" (as was the Weavers' regular practice, copyrighting un-copyrighted material under the plausible Anglo collective pseudonym "Paul Campbell") but from a living person, but he never made amends, and that copyright has been worth several million dollars, thanks to the later hit version and Disney movie.
Yes, people are often more familiar with pop culture than the great NE American poets of our time, yes it’s easier to consume a compact disc than an objectivist-influenced book of poetry, but the primary appeal of posting about Dylan rather than on DuPlessis, Toscano, or Sikelianos is that we know there’s no way in hell Dylan is going to read this.
Missing from this & the previous discussion is much sense of Dylan as a song writer, as a musician. Which I'm sure he primarily is to himself as well as to the world. As 'receiver' he's played and replayed thousands of songs; as 'shape-shifter' he's given them new forms which bear uncanny resemblances to their originals. As for the man, I think he figured out real early how celebrities get devoured and decided on a strategy of elusiveness which seems to have worked fine so far. Oh, and as for name changing: Ethel Merman was another Zimmerman, she just dropped off the 'zim'.
Why so much here? What there is there?
I am post avant autistic. I can't help it. I'd comment but I'd be stuck outside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues again.
I am post avant autistic. I can't help it. I'd comment but I'd be stuck outside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues again.
I once read that the number of people who read new novels by unknowns is a total of about 20,000. And that of those about 200 act as gatekeepers deciding which ones are good and bad. The number for poetry must be even smaller.
Pop music has a much larger audience.
I have heard of all three or four of the poets mentioned as being in competition with Bob Dylan and have even corresponded with two of them at some length, but I haven't read very much of their poetry.
I read a lot of theology, ancient and modern, as well as ancient and contemporary philosophy. What little time I have left often goes into reading contemporary fiction, and I read a lot of French and am trying to get into Finnish literature.
I admire the people like Ron who does read every chapbook coming down the pike and tries to sort it out. I'm guessing he's one of about 100 people who are doing this in this country.
And anyway, there's a lot more at stake in Dylan. He's a landmark for the entire culture. I read an article in the Weekly Standard the other day by a man who was angry at the way academia has gone, and his argument was that the Beats and Bob Dylan have so significantly warped the culture that we'll never get it back. I'll try to find the link and post it. At any rate, Dylan and co. changed the world. I don't think print media will have that effect again. Few books reach the 100,000 mark that any old movie hits on the first weekend.
Baudelaire argued true, mass media has a more immediate effect, but my poems will be around for hundreds of years. True, too.
But that's not true for every poet.
We don't even know if the Beats themselves will last that long.
Pop music has a much larger audience.
I have heard of all three or four of the poets mentioned as being in competition with Bob Dylan and have even corresponded with two of them at some length, but I haven't read very much of their poetry.
I read a lot of theology, ancient and modern, as well as ancient and contemporary philosophy. What little time I have left often goes into reading contemporary fiction, and I read a lot of French and am trying to get into Finnish literature.
I admire the people like Ron who does read every chapbook coming down the pike and tries to sort it out. I'm guessing he's one of about 100 people who are doing this in this country.
And anyway, there's a lot more at stake in Dylan. He's a landmark for the entire culture. I read an article in the Weekly Standard the other day by a man who was angry at the way academia has gone, and his argument was that the Beats and Bob Dylan have so significantly warped the culture that we'll never get it back. I'll try to find the link and post it. At any rate, Dylan and co. changed the world. I don't think print media will have that effect again. Few books reach the 100,000 mark that any old movie hits on the first weekend.
Baudelaire argued true, mass media has a more immediate effect, but my poems will be around for hundreds of years. True, too.
But that's not true for every poet.
We don't even know if the Beats themselves will last that long.
If you want to read what I took to be a center-left or center-right (not sure) article about academia and the place of the Beats in it, go to
www.weeklystandard.com
then go to left hand column
features
click The Left University
I was surprised to see such a large place given to the Beats. It wasn't my experience in Graduate School that very many knew or admired the Beats. I don't think any of the women faculty knew or admired the Beats. The only faculty member who knew their work was Steven Shaviro who is now at Wayne State. Out of some 80 professors he was the only one who had read Ginsberg. His favorite was Burroughs (my least favorite).
Steve was much more interested in poststructuralism (esp. Bataille and Blanchot)
So there was no one who really specialized in Beat literature. No one at all knew Corso's work except cursorily.
Perhaps at other schools there are more Beat specialists but my feeling is that there are more Miltonists than Beat specialists, more Toni Morrison specialists. More Shakespeareans. Of the 6000 colleges and universities in this country I would guess that there are maybe 100-500 scholars who really know the work of the Beats with any depth and maybe that number is too high.
It also may be different in creative writing programs. I've never been in a creative writing program. Do they read Ginsberg? do they study Bob Dylan? Is joanne Kyger's work well known in Iowa city?
www.weeklystandard.com
then go to left hand column
features
click The Left University
I was surprised to see such a large place given to the Beats. It wasn't my experience in Graduate School that very many knew or admired the Beats. I don't think any of the women faculty knew or admired the Beats. The only faculty member who knew their work was Steven Shaviro who is now at Wayne State. Out of some 80 professors he was the only one who had read Ginsberg. His favorite was Burroughs (my least favorite).
Steve was much more interested in poststructuralism (esp. Bataille and Blanchot)
So there was no one who really specialized in Beat literature. No one at all knew Corso's work except cursorily.
Perhaps at other schools there are more Beat specialists but my feeling is that there are more Miltonists than Beat specialists, more Toni Morrison specialists. More Shakespeareans. Of the 6000 colleges and universities in this country I would guess that there are maybe 100-500 scholars who really know the work of the Beats with any depth and maybe that number is too high.
It also may be different in creative writing programs. I've never been in a creative writing program. Do they read Ginsberg? do they study Bob Dylan? Is joanne Kyger's work well known in Iowa city?
Supposedly, Dylan's transformation toward becoming a Christian began when he heard the actual voice of God...Many agnostics and atheists point to the idea that he may have gone temporarily insane. I've also read another theory, which was that Dylan fell in love with one of his back-up singers, a black woman, and her Christianity influenced his own beliefs...For a period of time, Dylan was especially interested in dating black women...they had a power that he found intriguing (and they weren't gushing over him as if he were some god). My experience with Universities (I've only attended one) is that the Beats are rather well known. How well-regarded they are is another matter...generally, it depends upon the age and aesthetic of the professor...and, in general, creative writing professors tend to be younger and more liberal than their literary counterparts. I myself took a Beat Generation Writers class, which was taught by one of the CW profs.
My understanding is that professors these days tend to belong to one of two camps: they either lionize the Beats or condemn them. They are not, however, ignored.
My understanding is that professors these days tend to belong to one of two camps: they either lionize the Beats or condemn them. They are not, however, ignored.
So in 1990 at a great land grant university in a galaxy far away there were about 40 professors of English and American literature.
Profs interested in 20th century poetry -- three or four. What was meant by 20th century poetry? Ending more or less when Berryman jumped (and this was the University where he jumped (he didn't hit the water).
Kirby, please stop reading hysterical and fatuous screeds about how the Beats etc ruined America. Lay down your weary tune lay down lay down that song you strum.
Thanks
Profs interested in 20th century poetry -- three or four. What was meant by 20th century poetry? Ending more or less when Berryman jumped (and this was the University where he jumped (he didn't hit the water).
Kirby, please stop reading hysterical and fatuous screeds about how the Beats etc ruined America. Lay down your weary tune lay down lay down that song you strum.
Thanks
Actually it's not my song. In my book on Corso and my book on Codrescu I am quite enthusiastic about these writers.
It was a song sung instead by someone in the Weekly Standard.
I rather like surrealism and the Beats. I just want to provide it with a bigger engine. The surrealists and Beats both rejected Marx. Both considered anarchism. I think Lutheranism is the ticket.
That's MY song. The Calvinist crickets have another song entirely. I find theirs too depressing, too.
It was a song sung instead by someone in the Weekly Standard.
I rather like surrealism and the Beats. I just want to provide it with a bigger engine. The surrealists and Beats both rejected Marx. Both considered anarchism. I think Lutheranism is the ticket.
That's MY song. The Calvinist crickets have another song entirely. I find theirs too depressing, too.
Kirby,
We’ve already discussed your assertions on the politics of Surrealism and if you had any respect for this forum you wouldn’t repeat the same crap. This comments section should not disintegrate into strident arguments about assertions by biographers who know they are wrong but for whatever reason try to say the same thing over and over looking for gullible people to believe them, or to bait people... I don’t know which and I don’t care.
As for your master plan for Lutheran Surrealism, I wish you luck and if you strike paydirt you may want to try “orange apples” or “feline mice” and declare yourself the Grand Liberator of Previously Unused Oxymorons. Ibsen told the truth, which is why you try to pretend he doesn’t exist to prove your idiotic theory of Lutherans not writing anything.
We’ve already discussed your assertions on the politics of Surrealism and if you had any respect for this forum you wouldn’t repeat the same crap. This comments section should not disintegrate into strident arguments about assertions by biographers who know they are wrong but for whatever reason try to say the same thing over and over looking for gullible people to believe them, or to bait people... I don’t know which and I don’t care.
As for your master plan for Lutheran Surrealism, I wish you luck and if you strike paydirt you may want to try “orange apples” or “feline mice” and declare yourself the Grand Liberator of Previously Unused Oxymorons. Ibsen told the truth, which is why you try to pretend he doesn’t exist to prove your idiotic theory of Lutherans not writing anything.
The inkwell hit a neoconservative crouched in the corner lying about social security. Or an innocent Calvinist bystander. Or a guilty Calvinist bystander. Or the unborn ghost of Max Weber. Or Phosphor, trying to read his own Bible by his own light. Or a hanged, drawn and quartered peasant. Or the wall, which was predestined to become a popular album by Pink Floyd.
(The trick to multiple choice tests is if they don't subtract for wrong answers, then you should just go ahead and guess. Which is like saying that the devil is real but the Pope isn't, so the soul is the socialist part of the body [the part in despair; the part that doesn't exist].)
[This post automatically deleted for maximum optimism of the intelligence, maximum pessimism of the will.]
(The trick to multiple choice tests is if they don't subtract for wrong answers, then you should just go ahead and guess. Which is like saying that the devil is real but the Pope isn't, so the soul is the socialist part of the body [the part in despair; the part that doesn't exist].)
[This post automatically deleted for maximum optimism of the intelligence, maximum pessimism of the will.]
When did I say that Lutherans don't write anything?
Luther's shelves consist of four four-foot-long shelves. It would take a life-time to get through just those. But on top of it you have at least a hundred theologians whose Lutheran scribblings run into the ten and twenty volume arena. I particularly like Thielicke and Tillich.
I think that what I may have said is that American Lutherans tend not to be known for their poetry. Read that previous sentence four times until it goes in. I don't think we have a single famous poet. We do have some famous novelists. John Updike is the most famous. Rabbit, Run makes fun of the Beatnik sensibility and is his most famous novel. It also features two or three Lutheran pastors and their competing sensibilities. Fascinating book.
In the Scandinavian countries where almost everyone is Lutheran there is of course a larger Lutheran literature.
I have no idea what Ian Keenan meant by my supposedly saying that Lutherans don't write anything.
We have at least twenty journals and they are filled quarterly.
Bob Dylan's amazing Slow Train Coming could be Lutheran. He makes fun of fundamentalist Christians in the album. And Mark Knopfler's lead guitar -- Jesus. It's much better than listening to Dire Straits because you don't have to listen to the insipid lyrics where musicianship is endlessly praised and there is no other message. At any rate I will have to do more research on this area in Bob Dylan's life myself. No one really knows anything about anything any more, nor are they even curious.
As for Lutheran Surrealism, I don't want converts. I don't see how anybody else could arrive at my position in an honest fashion. It's descriptive of where I am. There are no application forms, and if there were, I would reject everyone. I would probably even reject myself if I were to apply.
It's not that kind of movement that is meant to gain adherents. We are an anomaly.
Luther's shelves consist of four four-foot-long shelves. It would take a life-time to get through just those. But on top of it you have at least a hundred theologians whose Lutheran scribblings run into the ten and twenty volume arena. I particularly like Thielicke and Tillich.
I think that what I may have said is that American Lutherans tend not to be known for their poetry. Read that previous sentence four times until it goes in. I don't think we have a single famous poet. We do have some famous novelists. John Updike is the most famous. Rabbit, Run makes fun of the Beatnik sensibility and is his most famous novel. It also features two or three Lutheran pastors and their competing sensibilities. Fascinating book.
In the Scandinavian countries where almost everyone is Lutheran there is of course a larger Lutheran literature.
I have no idea what Ian Keenan meant by my supposedly saying that Lutherans don't write anything.
We have at least twenty journals and they are filled quarterly.
Bob Dylan's amazing Slow Train Coming could be Lutheran. He makes fun of fundamentalist Christians in the album. And Mark Knopfler's lead guitar -- Jesus. It's much better than listening to Dire Straits because you don't have to listen to the insipid lyrics where musicianship is endlessly praised and there is no other message. At any rate I will have to do more research on this area in Bob Dylan's life myself. No one really knows anything about anything any more, nor are they even curious.
As for Lutheran Surrealism, I don't want converts. I don't see how anybody else could arrive at my position in an honest fashion. It's descriptive of where I am. There are no application forms, and if there were, I would reject everyone. I would probably even reject myself if I were to apply.
It's not that kind of movement that is meant to gain adherents. We are an anomaly.
Two words: Anselm Hollo.
If you are hung up on 'practicing', I agree that 'practicing' anythings go to the verse-cosmology center over the weekend to have their verse-cosmology fix taken care of by the others, and so are increasingly unproductive and lacking in curiosity.
Again, sorry for the strident tone, if the Jesuits have you from age six to ten, as they say...
If you are hung up on 'practicing', I agree that 'practicing' anythings go to the verse-cosmology center over the weekend to have their verse-cosmology fix taken care of by the others, and so are increasingly unproductive and lacking in curiosity.
Again, sorry for the strident tone, if the Jesuits have you from age six to ten, as they say...
I wrote what I think may be the only academic essay on Anselm Hollo in my book Andrei Codrescu & The Myth of America. Anselm liked it I believe.
Anselm was raised as a Lutheran in Helsinki, but he doesn't go to church and hasn't for decades. At least he hasn't gone regularly. There is of course always some coal or two that is still burning and in his writing one does see touches of something that may be Lutheran. The burning honesty, the clarity, the simplicity, the refusal to be pedantic or high-falutin. All these are Lutheran qualities, but one can get confused because these are qualities that one finds throughout Scandinavia (which remains 90% and more Lutheran). One could even see his abundant humor within that framework. There's a huge theoretical background on Lutheran humor.
But Anselm's quite openly sympathetic to communism or at least socialism.
True Lutherans see communism as a legitimation of Cain's murder of Abel. Nothing more, and nothing less than a legitimation of a lethal assault on a brother due to jealousy that the brother has more possessions.
If Anselm would join my movement I would probably make a special exemption for him, but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't. He's too independent. Thank heavens, too, because he would outshine me, but he wouldn't because he just isn't Lutheran enough. I don't think he'd like to define himself this way. He's teaching at a Buddhist college and is ecumenical. Probably closer to the Unitarians at this point at least in theory.
But I did write the chapter on him in my book. Codrescu thinks very highly of Anselm and sees him as an erudite older brother and in a chapter where I try to sketch out Codrescu's closest poetic friendships (Investigative Poets) I show links of a mutual aesthetic of sorts between AC and AH.
They both seemed to tacitly agree on my appraisal, so I guess it stands, but I do think there should be more work on Anselm. His deep roots in Finnish literature, and so on, remain to be sketched in by other lovers of his poetry.
As for me I'm right now trying to see if Dylan would fit as a Lutheran surrealist. Perhaps I could tempt him to join, or at least sign an endorsement.
Anselm was raised as a Lutheran in Helsinki, but he doesn't go to church and hasn't for decades. At least he hasn't gone regularly. There is of course always some coal or two that is still burning and in his writing one does see touches of something that may be Lutheran. The burning honesty, the clarity, the simplicity, the refusal to be pedantic or high-falutin. All these are Lutheran qualities, but one can get confused because these are qualities that one finds throughout Scandinavia (which remains 90% and more Lutheran). One could even see his abundant humor within that framework. There's a huge theoretical background on Lutheran humor.
But Anselm's quite openly sympathetic to communism or at least socialism.
True Lutherans see communism as a legitimation of Cain's murder of Abel. Nothing more, and nothing less than a legitimation of a lethal assault on a brother due to jealousy that the brother has more possessions.
If Anselm would join my movement I would probably make a special exemption for him, but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't. He's too independent. Thank heavens, too, because he would outshine me, but he wouldn't because he just isn't Lutheran enough. I don't think he'd like to define himself this way. He's teaching at a Buddhist college and is ecumenical. Probably closer to the Unitarians at this point at least in theory.
But I did write the chapter on him in my book. Codrescu thinks very highly of Anselm and sees him as an erudite older brother and in a chapter where I try to sketch out Codrescu's closest poetic friendships (Investigative Poets) I show links of a mutual aesthetic of sorts between AC and AH.
They both seemed to tacitly agree on my appraisal, so I guess it stands, but I do think there should be more work on Anselm. His deep roots in Finnish literature, and so on, remain to be sketched in by other lovers of his poetry.
As for me I'm right now trying to see if Dylan would fit as a Lutheran surrealist. Perhaps I could tempt him to join, or at least sign an endorsement.
I hesitate to say that a bio of anyone is ‘sorely overdue’ on a Language poetry blog, the ironic ethos appearing to be, as in Barrett Watten (‘Mode Z’):
Could we have those trees cleared out of the way?
And the houses, volcanoes, empires? The natural
panorama is false, the shadow it casts are so many
useless platitudes. Everything is suspect. Even
clouds of the same sky are the same. Close the door
a voluntary death. There is one color, not any.
Prove to me now that you have finally undermined
your heroes. In fits of distraction the walls cover
themselves with portraits. Types are not men. Admit
that your studies are over. Limit yourself to your
memoirs. Identity is only natural. Now become
the person in your life. Start writing autobiograpy.
..but a Hollo biography is sorely overdue. If it has to be you please look both ways before you formulate a thesis.
I am against bios but reading them’s kept me out of trouble lately for the most part...
Could we have those trees cleared out of the way?
And the houses, volcanoes, empires? The natural
panorama is false, the shadow it casts are so many
useless platitudes. Everything is suspect. Even
clouds of the same sky are the same. Close the door
a voluntary death. There is one color, not any.
Prove to me now that you have finally undermined
your heroes. In fits of distraction the walls cover
themselves with portraits. Types are not men. Admit
that your studies are over. Limit yourself to your
memoirs. Identity is only natural. Now become
the person in your life. Start writing autobiograpy.
..but a Hollo biography is sorely overdue. If it has to be you please look both ways before you formulate a thesis.
I am against bios but reading them’s kept me out of trouble lately for the most part...
It won't be me. Hollo himself did a pretty good job in Caws and Causeries pp. 94-134 in a piece entitled Anselm Hollo 1934-.
Interestingly in terms of the discussion regarding theory and anti-theory, he signed my copy, with the phrase, "No theories!"
I think if you had to try to pin down his aesthetics I would try to use a phrase along the lines rather of Lutheran Objectivism.
My fear is that when someone closes out theory that they are actually still being theoretical but are being used by the theory rather than consciously using theory.
This is one reason why I think the LANGUAGE poets generally have been a good thing for poetry. It had played off the unconscious for far too long. The only problem is that Karl Marx got them by the throat, and Henry Kissinger got them all into knots, to paraphrase a line from Dylan's Slow Train Coming.
In terms of Hollo I think the best person to approach the problem would probably be a Finn with excellent English. Hollo is regarded as a kind of hero in Finland even though he hasn't lived there since he was about 20.
Codrescu has something of the same status in Romania.
Another reason that they are interesting to compare.
Interestingly in terms of the discussion regarding theory and anti-theory, he signed my copy, with the phrase, "No theories!"
I think if you had to try to pin down his aesthetics I would try to use a phrase along the lines rather of Lutheran Objectivism.
My fear is that when someone closes out theory that they are actually still being theoretical but are being used by the theory rather than consciously using theory.
This is one reason why I think the LANGUAGE poets generally have been a good thing for poetry. It had played off the unconscious for far too long. The only problem is that Karl Marx got them by the throat, and Henry Kissinger got them all into knots, to paraphrase a line from Dylan's Slow Train Coming.
In terms of Hollo I think the best person to approach the problem would probably be a Finn with excellent English. Hollo is regarded as a kind of hero in Finland even though he hasn't lived there since he was about 20.
Codrescu has something of the same status in Romania.
Another reason that they are interesting to compare.
I especially like the opening of Caws and Causeries, and the autobio does do the job for now: “Everything my parents enthused about – J.A. from a humanistic-Platonic viewpoint, Amy from a Nietzchean ‘will to change’ vantage – that smacked of heroics, idealism, reverence, for some abstruse ‘virtue’ or another, was deeply suspect to me.”
Not covering Hollo will free you up for “Protestants Can’t Write: Actually, What I Mean Is, American Lutherans Who Attend Services and Share My Political And Theological Views Aren’t Famous Poets,” Kirby Olson, London: Routledge, 2006.
Not covering Hollo will free you up for “Protestants Can’t Write: Actually, What I Mean Is, American Lutherans Who Attend Services and Share My Political And Theological Views Aren’t Famous Poets,” Kirby Olson, London: Routledge, 2006.
In the end, it all comes down to Woody Guthrie. Woody Guthrie who once wanted to become a priest, and who ended up doing some powerful preaching with a guitar in his hand, and an incredible compassion in his heart. Is it a surprise that his greatest disciple eventually became a Christian?
Thanks for this thoughtful post, Ron. Once again, I'm gratified when I click on your name.
Thanks for this thoughtful post, Ron. Once again, I'm gratified when I click on your name.
The motorcycle accident took place in Woodstock in 1966. Shortly thereafter John Wesley Harding was released in 1967. Already then you get very Christian songs such as I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine --
This period lasts much longer than Joe Green will allow.
It lasts at least until 1986 when Dylan gave a concert in Sydney when he said that everybody has a hero and he has one too, here's a song about mine, and then he played In the Garden, off the album Saved.
Many think the best album musically is Slow Train Coming in which all the musicians were Christian. His major confidante of those years was a woman named Helena Springs who was a Christian (is it her that the song Covenant Woman is about?).
She taught him how to pray.
At any rate 1966-1986 is twenty years and probably his best music is in that period.
Some other rockers who had a Christian phase include Van Morrison with Into the Music, and Patti Smith with her album Wave.
I've only done a little research on this -- some twenty minutes or so, but Joe Green is way out to lunch on this as he usually is on everything, but this time he's way wide of the mark. You find Christian songs on Shot of Love, and on Oh Mercy, etc. It's all over the place.
I doubt if he converted at his motorcycle accident. He probably just decided to make known the true source of his inspiration.
Of course the PBS documentary ends just before the Christian period begins. And not one word about it is permitted.
It's like how the New York Times edited anything to do with Christianity out of the fall of the Soviet Union and its East block colonies during the events of 1989. Even the president of Czechoslovakia said it was a miracle to finally be rid of the communists, but this remark was edited out of the NYT transcript.
Dylan said at one point in the late 70s that one thing he really enjoyed about Christianity was to no longer have to believe in man. It is a strange relief indeed.
This period lasts much longer than Joe Green will allow.
It lasts at least until 1986 when Dylan gave a concert in Sydney when he said that everybody has a hero and he has one too, here's a song about mine, and then he played In the Garden, off the album Saved.
Many think the best album musically is Slow Train Coming in which all the musicians were Christian. His major confidante of those years was a woman named Helena Springs who was a Christian (is it her that the song Covenant Woman is about?).
She taught him how to pray.
At any rate 1966-1986 is twenty years and probably his best music is in that period.
Some other rockers who had a Christian phase include Van Morrison with Into the Music, and Patti Smith with her album Wave.
I've only done a little research on this -- some twenty minutes or so, but Joe Green is way out to lunch on this as he usually is on everything, but this time he's way wide of the mark. You find Christian songs on Shot of Love, and on Oh Mercy, etc. It's all over the place.
I doubt if he converted at his motorcycle accident. He probably just decided to make known the true source of his inspiration.
Of course the PBS documentary ends just before the Christian period begins. And not one word about it is permitted.
It's like how the New York Times edited anything to do with Christianity out of the fall of the Soviet Union and its East block colonies during the events of 1989. Even the president of Czechoslovakia said it was a miracle to finally be rid of the communists, but this remark was edited out of the NYT transcript.
Dylan said at one point in the late 70s that one thing he really enjoyed about Christianity was to no longer have to believe in man. It is a strange relief indeed.
It seems like quite a stretch to say that Dylan's Christian phase began in 1966. There really is no evidence to support this, and saying that one song gives credence to this view is a bit much. I think if you look at the evidence objectively, you'd really have to say that he became a Christian in the late '70s. The imagery in his mid-70s albums has a lot more paganism in it than it does Christianity. So, I think if we want to be honest and clear, we say Dylan's 'Christian period' began in the late seventies and twittered out sometime in the mid/late eighties...definitely Not his best years musically.
Your claim that Dylan's Christian period began in the late 60s still boggles me. What evidence do you have for this assertion? There is obviously a biblical influence on some of the late 60s songs...but Dylan always had that as influence. It wasn't part of his belief system, or a central, focused aspect of his songwriting, until the late seventies.
Once again, it seems that you have fallen prey to altering the data to fit your assertions instead of looking at the truth of the matter. You obviously have some theory that the mass media try to keep Christianity out of the spotlight (especially, perhaps, 'liberal' outlets like the New York Times and PBS). Therefore, you attempt to make some connection between Scorcese's decision to the end the film at 1966 with his pbs-driven desire to stay away from Dylan's Christian period. But it ain't true.
Your claim that Dylan's Christian period began in the late 60s still boggles me. What evidence do you have for this assertion? There is obviously a biblical influence on some of the late 60s songs...but Dylan always had that as influence. It wasn't part of his belief system, or a central, focused aspect of his songwriting, until the late seventies.
Once again, it seems that you have fallen prey to altering the data to fit your assertions instead of looking at the truth of the matter. You obviously have some theory that the mass media try to keep Christianity out of the spotlight (especially, perhaps, 'liberal' outlets like the New York Times and PBS). Therefore, you attempt to make some connection between Scorcese's decision to the end the film at 1966 with his pbs-driven desire to stay away from Dylan's Christian period. But it ain't true.
1965:
Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."
I know, I know -- it's the wrong volume. But clearly Dylan had been thinking about the Bible for some time even then. This, after all, was a kid who tried to get into West Point (the mind boggles, tho apparently his did not).
Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."
I know, I know -- it's the wrong volume. But clearly Dylan had been thinking about the Bible for some time even then. This, after all, was a kid who tried to get into West Point (the mind boggles, tho apparently his did not).
Watchtower and St. Augustine and other songs in 1967 right after the motorcyle accident are very Christian. But even lines like "the last shall be first" which I think is in The Times They Are A -Changing is clearly straight out of the Bible.
I ordered a book on this so in about two weeks when nobody is any longer interested in this topic I will have become an expert.
All Dylan's lyrics are on-line at a place called
Bobdylan.com
But I have been unable to copypaste into Ron's blog.
Even in the year 2000 (I read an interview this afternoon) he was talking about the important of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
I suppose in those two or three years in the late 70s and early 80s he decided to hit people over the head with his faith, but you don't have to look very hard to see it elsewhere.
He did afterall grow up Jewish. We don't know very much about that period unfortunately but the Jews and the Christians at least at this point in time do not see any separation between their faiths. At least in our church and most of the others I've been to the Bible includes the Old Testament. I know a lot of orthodox Jewish people and they are very comfortable with Christianity.
And Zimmy was clearly very comfortable with Christians.
It's really quite striking, and even more striking that it was entirely omitted from the documentary.
He is a very multifaceted fellow. I had never heard the West Point story. Is that in Chronicles?
I ordered a book on this so in about two weeks when nobody is any longer interested in this topic I will have become an expert.
All Dylan's lyrics are on-line at a place called
Bobdylan.com
But I have been unable to copypaste into Ron's blog.
Even in the year 2000 (I read an interview this afternoon) he was talking about the important of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
I suppose in those two or three years in the late 70s and early 80s he decided to hit people over the head with his faith, but you don't have to look very hard to see it elsewhere.
He did afterall grow up Jewish. We don't know very much about that period unfortunately but the Jews and the Christians at least at this point in time do not see any separation between their faiths. At least in our church and most of the others I've been to the Bible includes the Old Testament. I know a lot of orthodox Jewish people and they are very comfortable with Christianity.
And Zimmy was clearly very comfortable with Christians.
It's really quite striking, and even more striking that it was entirely omitted from the documentary.
He is a very multifaceted fellow. I had never heard the West Point story. Is that in Chronicles?
That is in both Chronicles & No Direction Home. In the book, he also mentions that his favorite politician in the 1960s was Barry Goldwater.
Being influenced By a certain faith is much different than following that faith, or believing in it. Talking about such things with relation to Dylan is always difficult, because he was constantly posturing, but everything that I've seen/read of his interviews and statements pre late-70s was pretty ambiguous or agnostic on the faith issue. As far as lyrically, you can at best say that before the late 70s he may or may not have been Christian, but definitely denounced those who "defend what they cannot see with a killer's mind, security." I would say that Dylan uses biblical sentiments and language when they suite his ideas and purposes (the first being last, the slow being fast, you find out when you reach the top, you're on the bottom. It's not about faith in Jesus, but, rather, about acknowledgement of the transitory, changing nature of the culture, and that all who hold themselves up on pedestals will fall [even those who hold themselves up on the pedestal of not holding themselves up on pedestals]). And, sure, maybe those are Christian Ideas, but having ideas that line up with Christian belief systems isn't the same as believing in Christ. And he also had ideas during those times which directly contradicted Christian beliefs...like 'I don't know if there's a God.'
Lastly, lets remember Dylan's genius...In 64 or 65, a cute girl asked him if he read the bible, and he said 'I've only skimmed it...' And, even though his lyrics were by then full of bibilican imagery, I believe. Bob gets more from skimming the Bible than pastor so and so studying it for 50 years.
Lastly, if you read the stories of why Bob started making albums that'hit people over the head' with his faith, you'll note the fact that it was a Conversion experience for the Bob-meister. Therefore, in the late 70's he converted To Christianity, from, one would assume, some form of Non-Christianity.
Bottom Line: Kirby claiming Bob for Christianity is just like the leftists and Jews and agnostics and Atheists and revolutionaries and car mechanics claiming him for themselves.
Lastly, lets remember Dylan's genius...In 64 or 65, a cute girl asked him if he read the bible, and he said 'I've only skimmed it...' And, even though his lyrics were by then full of bibilican imagery, I believe. Bob gets more from skimming the Bible than pastor so and so studying it for 50 years.
Lastly, if you read the stories of why Bob started making albums that'hit people over the head' with his faith, you'll note the fact that it was a Conversion experience for the Bob-meister. Therefore, in the late 70's he converted To Christianity, from, one would assume, some form of Non-Christianity.
Bottom Line: Kirby claiming Bob for Christianity is just like the leftists and Jews and agnostics and Atheists and revolutionaries and car mechanics claiming him for themselves.
I'm only a beginner when it comes to the Bob-meister. I'm only saying that you can see deep influences from the Book all over the place. You can't see the same thing in the work of the Rolling Stones, for example. I don't think the car mechanics could have such a strong case. The Jews would certainly have a stronger case and clearly he was involved with some kind of Lubovitch Jewish group because he went on their telethon in the late 80s I think it was. Leftists can certainly lay some claim to him (christians and leftists have a lot in common and to some degree leftism is a secular version of Christianity even to the extent that Marx was raised as Lutheran, and Proudhon remained Christian, etc. Agnostics would have a case, too. I ordered a thousand page book published in 2000 in which some geek tracks many of Dylan's phrases to the Old and the New Testaments. He also seems to have a lot of fun in misleading journalists.
I don't think he's led a Christian life. I'm not sure how many times he was married or how many women he's been with, or the drugs he's done, etc. So I wouldn't claim him as a mainline Protestant stalwart with a nice neat yard and a revolver.
He just appears to be more into the Judeo-Christian system than into some pagan system as you claimed yesterday. Does he ever have a single line that seems to come out of classical Roman or Greek mythology (pure paganism) and hwich seems to support the notion that he backs Zeus as his principal god? does he have any songs that would line up with Wicca (neo-paganism)?
I don't really listen a lot to rock music. My CD collection contains about 12 items, and my CD player is somewhat broken due to the baby having shoved something inside the turntable if that's what it's still called. But since he intersects so well with the Beats I feel I should try to do my homework on Dylan, and intend to put my shoulder to the deal.
He's not a Lutheran. We are not into this kind of enthusiasm. I listened to Saved the other day and didn't like the music and felt the Christianity was scary and unbalanced. You have to read a lot of theology to be a decent Lutheran as there are lots of paradoxes. We're not enthusiasts. But the music on Slow Train Coming was just marvelous, and the sentiments expressed were sharper and more ironic. The bright guitar background of Mark Knopfler in Precious Angel is precise and yet delirious.
I don't think he's led a Christian life. I'm not sure how many times he was married or how many women he's been with, or the drugs he's done, etc. So I wouldn't claim him as a mainline Protestant stalwart with a nice neat yard and a revolver.
He just appears to be more into the Judeo-Christian system than into some pagan system as you claimed yesterday. Does he ever have a single line that seems to come out of classical Roman or Greek mythology (pure paganism) and hwich seems to support the notion that he backs Zeus as his principal god? does he have any songs that would line up with Wicca (neo-paganism)?
I don't really listen a lot to rock music. My CD collection contains about 12 items, and my CD player is somewhat broken due to the baby having shoved something inside the turntable if that's what it's still called. But since he intersects so well with the Beats I feel I should try to do my homework on Dylan, and intend to put my shoulder to the deal.
He's not a Lutheran. We are not into this kind of enthusiasm. I listened to Saved the other day and didn't like the music and felt the Christianity was scary and unbalanced. You have to read a lot of theology to be a decent Lutheran as there are lots of paradoxes. We're not enthusiasts. But the music on Slow Train Coming was just marvelous, and the sentiments expressed were sharper and more ironic. The bright guitar background of Mark Knopfler in Precious Angel is precise and yet delirious.
From the Oct. 6 NY Times
October 6, 2005
Harold Leventhal, Promoter of Folk Music, Dies at 86
By MARGALIT FOX
Harold Leventhal, an internationally renowned folk music promoter who in 1963 presented an unkempt 21-year-old named Bob Dylan in his first major concert-hall appearance, died on Tuesday at New York University Medical Center. He was 86 and lived in Manhattan.
The death was confirmed by Nora Guthrie, Woody Guthrie's daughter and the director of the Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives, of which Mr. Leventhal was a founder and trustee. Mr. Leventhal had been Woody Guthrie's business manager and later his executor.
If, at any time during the last 50 years, you wanted to hire a folksinger, especially a famous folksinger, Harold Leventhal was the man to call. Mr. Leventhal, who began his career in the 1930's as a song plugger for Irving Berlin, was by the early 1950's the Sol Hurok of America's flourishing folk-music revival. He remained in the role until the close of the 20th century, weathering historical onslaughts from the cold war to rock 'n' roll.
Besides handling Mr. Dylan and Guthrie, Mr. Leventhal presided over a stable of artists that at various times included Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte; Theodore Bikel; Oscar Brand; Johnny Cash; Judy Collins; Arlo Guthrie; Jim Kweskin; the Mamas and the Papas; Holly Near; the New Lost City Ramblers; Phil Ochs; Odetta; Tom Paxton; Peter, Paul and Mary; Jean Ritchie; Martha Schlamme; Earl Scruggs; the Weavers; and Neil Young.
He also introduced American audiences to foreign artists then largely unknown in this country, among them Jacques Brel, Miriam Makeba, Nana Mouskouri, Jean Redpath and Ravi Shankar.
"With all of the history that he'd had with the Weavers, he really was a connection between my dad's era and the world of the late 60's," Arlo Guthrie said in a telephone interview last night.
Mr. Leventhal produced several movies relating to the folk-music world, including "Alice's Restaurant" (1969); "Bound for Glory" (1976), a film biography of Woody Guthrie starring David Carradine; and "Wasn't That a Time!" (1982), a documentary about the Weavers' celebrated reunion in 1980.
In 2003 Mr. Leventhal was honored with a Carnegie Hall concert featuring an all-star lineup of folk performers. The concert became the basis of a documentary film, "Isn't This a Time!" (2004), which is scheduled to open in New York on Dec. 19.
Mr. Leventhal was also widely, if tacitly, acknowledged to have been the inspiration for Irving Steinbloom, the folk impresario whose memorial concert sets in motion the plot of the 2003 film comedy "A Mighty Wind."
Harold Leventhal was born on May 24, 1919, in Ellenville, N.Y., and grew up on the Lower East Side and in the Bronx. In the late 1930's he went to work for Berlin, haunting New York nightclubs to pitch his songs to the likes of Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore and Peggy Lee.
During World War II, Mr. Leventhal served in the Army Signal Corps, stationed in India. There, he came to know Jawaharlal Nehru and, through him, gained an audience with Gandhi. On the appointed day, Gandhi greeted Corporal Leventhal with a burning question:
"The first thing he wanted to know was how Paul Robeson was," Mr. Leventhal told The New York Times in 1998.
After the war, Mr. Leventhal returned to New York, where the Weavers were singing "Goodnight, Irene" and "Tzena, Tzena" in Greenwich Village coffeehouses. Falling under the spell of those songs, Mr. Leventhal began managing the group. A pragmatist, he did not immediately give up his day job at his brother's company, Youthcraft Foundations, a maker of girdles.
By 1952, the Weavers, a highly public casualty of the McCarthy blacklist, had been forced to disband. Intent on reuniting them, Mr. Leventhal booked Carnegie Hall for Christmas Eve 1955. He told each of the Weavers that the other three had already agreed to a reunion.
The concert was a spectacular success, leading to invitations to perform in other cities. The trouble was, out-of-town promoters refused to touch the group. But as Mr. Leventhal knew, the Weavers had a cadre of ardent, far-flung fans.
"He practically wrote a manual for them on how to produce a concert: This is how you rent a hall; this is when you take out the ads," Fred Hellerman, a former member of the Weavers, said last night. "He led them by the hand and made them into concert promoters."
On April 12, 1963, Mr. Leventhal presented Mr. Dylan at Town Hall in New York, in his first appearance on a big-city concert stage. He was also the longtime producer of the Thanksgiving folk concert at Carnegie Hall, which traditionally featured Mr. Seeger and Arlo Guthrie.
Mr. Leventhal had been prescient enough to give the younger Mr. Guthrie his first break - as his office boy.
"I wasn't very reliable," Arlo Guthrie recalled yesterday. "People like Pete Seeger would show up there, obviously needing somebody to accompany him on the guitar while he went over some new songs. All of the office work just got left."
Mr. Leventhal is survived by his wife, the former Natalie Buxbaum; two daughters, Debra Leventhal-Nuyen of Los Angeles and Judy, of Manhattan; and four grandchildren.
His honors include a Grammy Award in 1989 as a producer of the album "Folkways: A Vision Shared - A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly" (Columbia Records). "Bound for Glory" received two Academy Awards, for music and cinematography.
Though Mr. Leventhal occasionally managed performers in other musical genres, he remained to the end of his life an unreconstructed folkie. In an interview with The Times in 1998, he spoke of having been approached by a rock group, but was hard pressed to remember which.
"A trio," Mr. Leventhal said. "I can't recall the name. Stills was one of them."
October 6, 2005
Harold Leventhal, Promoter of Folk Music, Dies at 86
By MARGALIT FOX
Harold Leventhal, an internationally renowned folk music promoter who in 1963 presented an unkempt 21-year-old named Bob Dylan in his first major concert-hall appearance, died on Tuesday at New York University Medical Center. He was 86 and lived in Manhattan.
The death was confirmed by Nora Guthrie, Woody Guthrie's daughter and the director of the Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives, of which Mr. Leventhal was a founder and trustee. Mr. Leventhal had been Woody Guthrie's business manager and later his executor.
If, at any time during the last 50 years, you wanted to hire a folksinger, especially a famous folksinger, Harold Leventhal was the man to call. Mr. Leventhal, who began his career in the 1930's as a song plugger for Irving Berlin, was by the early 1950's the Sol Hurok of America's flourishing folk-music revival. He remained in the role until the close of the 20th century, weathering historical onslaughts from the cold war to rock 'n' roll.
Besides handling Mr. Dylan and Guthrie, Mr. Leventhal presided over a stable of artists that at various times included Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte; Theodore Bikel; Oscar Brand; Johnny Cash; Judy Collins; Arlo Guthrie; Jim Kweskin; the Mamas and the Papas; Holly Near; the New Lost City Ramblers; Phil Ochs; Odetta; Tom Paxton; Peter, Paul and Mary; Jean Ritchie; Martha Schlamme; Earl Scruggs; the Weavers; and Neil Young.
He also introduced American audiences to foreign artists then largely unknown in this country, among them Jacques Brel, Miriam Makeba, Nana Mouskouri, Jean Redpath and Ravi Shankar.
"With all of the history that he'd had with the Weavers, he really was a connection between my dad's era and the world of the late 60's," Arlo Guthrie said in a telephone interview last night.
Mr. Leventhal produced several movies relating to the folk-music world, including "Alice's Restaurant" (1969); "Bound for Glory" (1976), a film biography of Woody Guthrie starring David Carradine; and "Wasn't That a Time!" (1982), a documentary about the Weavers' celebrated reunion in 1980.
In 2003 Mr. Leventhal was honored with a Carnegie Hall concert featuring an all-star lineup of folk performers. The concert became the basis of a documentary film, "Isn't This a Time!" (2004), which is scheduled to open in New York on Dec. 19.
Mr. Leventhal was also widely, if tacitly, acknowledged to have been the inspiration for Irving Steinbloom, the folk impresario whose memorial concert sets in motion the plot of the 2003 film comedy "A Mighty Wind."
Harold Leventhal was born on May 24, 1919, in Ellenville, N.Y., and grew up on the Lower East Side and in the Bronx. In the late 1930's he went to work for Berlin, haunting New York nightclubs to pitch his songs to the likes of Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore and Peggy Lee.
During World War II, Mr. Leventhal served in the Army Signal Corps, stationed in India. There, he came to know Jawaharlal Nehru and, through him, gained an audience with Gandhi. On the appointed day, Gandhi greeted Corporal Leventhal with a burning question:
"The first thing he wanted to know was how Paul Robeson was," Mr. Leventhal told The New York Times in 1998.
After the war, Mr. Leventhal returned to New York, where the Weavers were singing "Goodnight, Irene" and "Tzena, Tzena" in Greenwich Village coffeehouses. Falling under the spell of those songs, Mr. Leventhal began managing the group. A pragmatist, he did not immediately give up his day job at his brother's company, Youthcraft Foundations, a maker of girdles.
By 1952, the Weavers, a highly public casualty of the McCarthy blacklist, had been forced to disband. Intent on reuniting them, Mr. Leventhal booked Carnegie Hall for Christmas Eve 1955. He told each of the Weavers that the other three had already agreed to a reunion.
The concert was a spectacular success, leading to invitations to perform in other cities. The trouble was, out-of-town promoters refused to touch the group. But as Mr. Leventhal knew, the Weavers had a cadre of ardent, far-flung fans.
"He practically wrote a manual for them on how to produce a concert: This is how you rent a hall; this is when you take out the ads," Fred Hellerman, a former member of the Weavers, said last night. "He led them by the hand and made them into concert promoters."
On April 12, 1963, Mr. Leventhal presented Mr. Dylan at Town Hall in New York, in his first appearance on a big-city concert stage. He was also the longtime producer of the Thanksgiving folk concert at Carnegie Hall, which traditionally featured Mr. Seeger and Arlo Guthrie.
Mr. Leventhal had been prescient enough to give the younger Mr. Guthrie his first break - as his office boy.
"I wasn't very reliable," Arlo Guthrie recalled yesterday. "People like Pete Seeger would show up there, obviously needing somebody to accompany him on the guitar while he went over some new songs. All of the office work just got left."
Mr. Leventhal is survived by his wife, the former Natalie Buxbaum; two daughters, Debra Leventhal-Nuyen of Los Angeles and Judy, of Manhattan; and four grandchildren.
His honors include a Grammy Award in 1989 as a producer of the album "Folkways: A Vision Shared - A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly" (Columbia Records). "Bound for Glory" received two Academy Awards, for music and cinematography.
Though Mr. Leventhal occasionally managed performers in other musical genres, he remained to the end of his life an unreconstructed folkie. In an interview with The Times in 1998, he spoke of having been approached by a rock group, but was hard pressed to remember which.
"A trio," Mr. Leventhal said. "I can't recall the name. Stills was one of them."
As for the paganism, I was referring specifically to the mid-70s, and mostly in terms of imagery taken from Tarot cards, which I assume can be deemed 'pagan'...but perhaps not. In any case, I wasn't talking about Grecco-Roman mythology. My statement was based on my general assumption about the nature of some of his imagery in the mid-70s (the one-eyed undertaker, jack of hearts, etc.) and from having read, somewhere sometime, an interview with Dylan in reference to the tarot imagery in his mid-70s work, and he said something along the lines of 'that was something I got into for a while, something Sarah taught me, but I didn't get too dep into it.'
There's a quote from a taraoh card on the back of the album 'Desire,' and Street Legal is well known for having a good deal of directly tarot-iffic imagery. One can argue that Dylan's relationship with the tarot was somewhat similar to his relationship with the Bible...he used it as a source of inspiration/imagery throughout his career, but had a specific period of time in which it affected his writing more directly and significantly. While Dylan was never as much a believer and proselytizer for the Tarot, his focus on it peaked in the mid-70s. For Christianity, his focus peaked in the late 70s-mid 80s.
So, there you have it. I think we've come to agree, sir Kirby. I shouldn't have used the word 'pagan' though, since it's a term that has a multitude of meanings and connotations.
There's a quote from a taraoh card on the back of the album 'Desire,' and Street Legal is well known for having a good deal of directly tarot-iffic imagery. One can argue that Dylan's relationship with the tarot was somewhat similar to his relationship with the Bible...he used it as a source of inspiration/imagery throughout his career, but had a specific period of time in which it affected his writing more directly and significantly. While Dylan was never as much a believer and proselytizer for the Tarot, his focus on it peaked in the mid-70s. For Christianity, his focus peaked in the late 70s-mid 80s.
So, there you have it. I think we've come to agree, sir Kirby. I shouldn't have used the word 'pagan' though, since it's a term that has a multitude of meanings and connotations.
There is another character that fits into the avatn-garde surrealist Christian tarot-reading set. Alejandro Jodorowsky. He made really strange LSD Christian films (in the 70s I think). I saw them and didn't understand them at all but I did file his name under Possibly Important. Five years ago when I was in Paris he was giving tarot readings for 200 francs a pop at a restaurant in an odd area of Paris where I had never been. It was hard to get to that place but I went anyways. I went although it took me an hour because I had to change metros three times but the line was so long it went around the block.
I read a couple of his books -- a novel called L'Homme Pendu -- straight out of Tarot, and another book where he was writing about Christianity and how it was all the magic the west needed (this one was self-published and I've never seen it on-line in any of the French bookstores and unfortunately it belonged to a friend, and I've never owned it), and another book called The Sacred Trickster -- this last was quite silly, it was basically about how to be a trickster/charlatan and get away with it, and yet another one -- very poor -- in which he practised the Sufi art of philosophizing about jokes.
I don't know the background of Tarot. Who invented it?
In an interview in 1982 Dylan also denounces Tarot as he says it gets you thinking about things other than those things you should be thinking about (which he doesn't enumerate).
I think interest in the Tarot came up in the seventies when Jung was such a huge influence. People had taken an inward turn. Witchcraft was in. Now when people smoked pot they lit incense and candles and the whole thing was very sickly. This was also the era of glam rock and Marc Bolan and seeming mysterious. Women tried to look like witches, men like warlocks.
I'm not sure if Dylan possesses any deeper truth. If you're actually around him, would it be like being around a person who has wisdom or would it be like being around a rock star? I more or less hate rock stars. I wouldn't want to know any of them for any reason. Probably the only artists I would like even less would be actors. But I don't mind watching them on TV.
I read a couple of his books -- a novel called L'Homme Pendu -- straight out of Tarot, and another book where he was writing about Christianity and how it was all the magic the west needed (this one was self-published and I've never seen it on-line in any of the French bookstores and unfortunately it belonged to a friend, and I've never owned it), and another book called The Sacred Trickster -- this last was quite silly, it was basically about how to be a trickster/charlatan and get away with it, and yet another one -- very poor -- in which he practised the Sufi art of philosophizing about jokes.
I don't know the background of Tarot. Who invented it?
In an interview in 1982 Dylan also denounces Tarot as he says it gets you thinking about things other than those things you should be thinking about (which he doesn't enumerate).
I think interest in the Tarot came up in the seventies when Jung was such a huge influence. People had taken an inward turn. Witchcraft was in. Now when people smoked pot they lit incense and candles and the whole thing was very sickly. This was also the era of glam rock and Marc Bolan and seeming mysterious. Women tried to look like witches, men like warlocks.
I'm not sure if Dylan possesses any deeper truth. If you're actually around him, would it be like being around a person who has wisdom or would it be like being around a rock star? I more or less hate rock stars. I wouldn't want to know any of them for any reason. Probably the only artists I would like even less would be actors. But I don't mind watching them on TV.
Wow now that was quite a ride. Oh hahaha.
Really now, I suggest we change the topic to Cat Stevens....
Oh dear. I'm almost wetting myself.
So, Bob was a Xtian eh? Or Jewish or something like that. I do know that he tubed in the Salt River when I was just a wee tot...perhaps that was his John the Baptist phase...
The really good part about this is us Islamic types come out totally innocent of all the literary affairs. One wonders though...really one wonders about that darn covenant. What was up with that? I've been trying forever to find out which covenant was broken and what it meant to the schisms that we see so perfectly portrayed here which seem to have caused way too much literary friction..right up until we get the witches, warlocks and sufi jokes:
A man is robbed and stands to accuse the thief to the judge.
The judge exclaims, "You are right, he had no right to thieve your property! Give him something like 40 lashes, etc."
The accused responds by declaring that he swears by God he didn't steal from the man (who was a well known gambling hall owner)because the man had rigged the roulette wheel and caused him (sic) the thief to lose all his money and he then stole the man's wallet or something, etc., and ought not to be punished, eye for an eye/tooth thing, etc. The judge agrees and says, "You are also right by God!"
The bailiff gets really hot under the collar and says to the judge, "They can't both be right!"
And the sufic scholar cum judge shouts, "By God you are right!"
How it is really and it doesn't matter...but if the covenant had been recognized (from what I understand of that particular covenant) you folks wouldn't be debating this in the first place.
Although I must admit, Dylan is a better poet than Cat.
Really now, I suggest we change the topic to Cat Stevens....
Oh dear. I'm almost wetting myself.
So, Bob was a Xtian eh? Or Jewish or something like that. I do know that he tubed in the Salt River when I was just a wee tot...perhaps that was his John the Baptist phase...
The really good part about this is us Islamic types come out totally innocent of all the literary affairs. One wonders though...really one wonders about that darn covenant. What was up with that? I've been trying forever to find out which covenant was broken and what it meant to the schisms that we see so perfectly portrayed here which seem to have caused way too much literary friction..right up until we get the witches, warlocks and sufi jokes:
A man is robbed and stands to accuse the thief to the judge.
The judge exclaims, "You are right, he had no right to thieve your property! Give him something like 40 lashes, etc."
The accused responds by declaring that he swears by God he didn't steal from the man (who was a well known gambling hall owner)because the man had rigged the roulette wheel and caused him (sic) the thief to lose all his money and he then stole the man's wallet or something, etc., and ought not to be punished, eye for an eye/tooth thing, etc. The judge agrees and says, "You are also right by God!"
The bailiff gets really hot under the collar and says to the judge, "They can't both be right!"
And the sufic scholar cum judge shouts, "By God you are right!"
How it is really and it doesn't matter...but if the covenant had been recognized (from what I understand of that particular covenant) you folks wouldn't be debating this in the first place.
Although I must admit, Dylan is a better poet than Cat.
Oh and someone mentioned sorting out Kirby? (is it)re: Immaculate Conception versus Virgin Birth...I think Lon mentioned it (but not Ron for sure).
The immaculate conception was not particularly semantically related to the actual 'cleanliness' of the Virgin (or lack thereof and hence the 'sin') but to the same kind of creationary act as constituted the Kreb's cycle manifestation of another well known person in the 'line' and his name was Adam (which incidentally sounds just like the word for 'bone' in Arabic). Now, this is supported by references in the Koran to something called "Nutfal" and loosely translated means 'a drop' although some link it with a 'dirty disgusting drop of liquid or dispicable fluid' which would in turn support the idea that sin or cleanliness is related to the male emmissions. But I prefer the clean drop of nutfal because when my mother in law asks if I want a nutfal of cream in my coffee I prefer it to be pasteurized dairy product as opposed to despicable fluid.
So, to make an incredibly long Biblical tale incredibly longer and more complex...this means that when Adam and Esau (Jesus) are mentioned in the Koran it is always together because they are the same type of thing. Cloned, hybrids..whatever.
What is more important about the treason involved in this is...the marriage of nuns to Christ (what on earth this has to do with either Cat or Bob is beyond me..never mind Shroe's cat) in which a virginal convent type is literally married to this suffering male who is hanging on a cross in his skivvies with INRI nailed over his head and some thorns thrown in to boot! Somehow or another it has translated to this oddball addiction to women's virginities in which it is misconstrued as a 'man's' possession and even, belonging in some cases to the church itself.
Geez. As far as a Virgin Birth I would just refer that to the Wittgenstein office of illogical semantics and then if that didn't do the trick I'd send it to the Minister of Silly Walks for final decision.
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The immaculate conception was not particularly semantically related to the actual 'cleanliness' of the Virgin (or lack thereof and hence the 'sin') but to the same kind of creationary act as constituted the Kreb's cycle manifestation of another well known person in the 'line' and his name was Adam (which incidentally sounds just like the word for 'bone' in Arabic). Now, this is supported by references in the Koran to something called "Nutfal" and loosely translated means 'a drop' although some link it with a 'dirty disgusting drop of liquid or dispicable fluid' which would in turn support the idea that sin or cleanliness is related to the male emmissions. But I prefer the clean drop of nutfal because when my mother in law asks if I want a nutfal of cream in my coffee I prefer it to be pasteurized dairy product as opposed to despicable fluid.
So, to make an incredibly long Biblical tale incredibly longer and more complex...this means that when Adam and Esau (Jesus) are mentioned in the Koran it is always together because they are the same type of thing. Cloned, hybrids..whatever.
What is more important about the treason involved in this is...the marriage of nuns to Christ (what on earth this has to do with either Cat or Bob is beyond me..never mind Shroe's cat) in which a virginal convent type is literally married to this suffering male who is hanging on a cross in his skivvies with INRI nailed over his head and some thorns thrown in to boot! Somehow or another it has translated to this oddball addiction to women's virginities in which it is misconstrued as a 'man's' possession and even, belonging in some cases to the church itself.
Geez. As far as a Virgin Birth I would just refer that to the Wittgenstein office of illogical semantics and then if that didn't do the trick I'd send it to the Minister of Silly Walks for final decision.
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