Commentary on Songs

“There Must Be Some Kind of Way Out of Here”

And there is a way out of here, to my “main page”: www.hyoomik.com, where you will find sundry fascinating things that may alternately annoy, delight, and bore you.

Links to particular things

• How I Became Familiar with the Work of Bob Dylan [new prefatory remarks added November 2009]
• Beauty and Transcendence
• RightWingBob.Com
• Analogy—my “methodology” in writing about this stuff.
• Response to a Critic Who Says that Bob Dylan is Not a Poet—addendum added January 22, 2008.
• Hypnosis and Poetry
• Preliminary Thoughts on the First Line of «Shelter From The Storm»
• The Novel Arthur Mervyn and Shelter from the Storn
• Dreams
• The Leading Actor in the Costume of a Monk
• Blown Out on the Trail—a Robert Frost Connection
• Dylan Thomas and “Creature Void of Form”
• “A Shelter in the Time of Storm”—a hymn by Vernon J. Charlesworth.
• Kelligrews Soiree and two Songwriters called Johny Burke——only tenuous Dylan connections, for the reader to fill in.
• Just Walkin’—all sorts of biblical references. Added Dec. 28/2007
• Cash—Dylan—two songs like echoes. Added Jan 4/2008
• Shannon Doherty and “Thunder on the Mountain”. Added Shrove Tuesday, 2008.
• The Man in Black and Luke the Drifter. Added Ash Wednesday, 2008.
• ECHOES OF JEROME—some echoes of St. Jerome (from his letters) in the works of Dylan, Dion, and Ralph Stanley. Started in March 2009.
• Random and Impermanent and Impertinent Thoughts # 1 (started in 2008 perhaps)
• Random thoughts #2(started in March 2009).
• Neko Case and B. Dylan: “Motherless, Fatherless”
• Sting and Robert Burns
• Carly Simon and Martial

This page started out as a commentary on the work of Bob Dylan. It has grown to include commentary on other song writers and their work. I enjoy recognizing links between various works of art, between lyrics, styles and so forth. Since starting this, I have discovered the music of Ralph Stanley, Blind Willy Nelson, and many others. I have re-appreciated Ovid, Vergil, Thomas Moore, Stephen Foster, John Lee Hooker, and many others. I have started to learn Hebrew and read the Old Testament. I have discovered Ken Nordine, and a marvelous Canadian classical-rapper called Kristen Cudmore (the group “Language Arts” from Vancouver), contemporary artists of the spoken word. As this page evolved, it is just as much about these other interests as about Dylan’s work. But it all stems from an unrelenting curiosity about the work of Dylan.

I don’t profess to know what Dylan’s songs mean, any more than I could interpret someone else’s dreams. I don’t think that even Bob Dylan himself knows to the end what his songs mean. The songs have moods, scenarios, but they are not linear expositions of some one point per song. Dylan in an early interview told them, “of course, I can’t tell you what the songs mean”. Most likely, that is not “can’t” as in “it would not suit my plan…”, but rather as in “I am really unable to tell you, since I don’t know myself”. I think that he might say that the general mood of a song, or a particular verse refers to something or is inspired by something, but not a whole song. But then, Edgar Allan Poe could not adequately explain the rational process whereby he assembled his stuff. It is one thing to write verses, another thing to match them with music, another thing to put them together in a song.

The poet laureates such as Tennyson and Sir Walter Scott, it seems, would put in copious notes if they thought their readers might not understand some obscure reference. Which is why, perhaps, someone might want to make a page such as this (one of perhaps thousands that do the same thing). We do wish that the author himself would tell us more about the places and people in each song.

I am not an expert. No vast collection of music. I may have read a book about Bob Dylan around 1974, but that is all.

I recently read a blog article called “Bob Dylan Is Not a Poet” at http://ted-burke.blogspot.com/search/label/Bob%20Dylan. This critic, who very much appreciates Bob Dylan’s work, says he is not a poet because his work does not stand up on the printed page as well as some others, like Leonard Cohen, who in his mind is a better poet. First of all, Leonard Cohen sings like a Dylan wannabe. Second, his work is boring and narcissistic. It smacks of a feeling of superiority and contempt for everyone else. Dylan, even when he sings about himself, somehow transcends himself with sympathy for the human situation. Such a sympathy, which was professed by Walt Whitman, is very much part of what makes a writer a true poet. No matter how pretty the words, without a feeling for the human situation, there is no poetry. But that is not the main point. The author’s main point is that songwriting and poetry are two separate things. As he writes: “You are able to read Shakespeare to the fullest potential without an accompanying melody, just as you are with E.A. Poe and other poets one can cite.” Again: “The poet's musical sense, the rhythmic properties and other euphonious qualities, are derived from the words and their knowing combinations alone.” Right there is a contradiction. He does not know what a word is. A word on a page does not have a sound. It is a pale representation of a sound. And I disagree, poets, the best poets have always had some beat, some sound, some song in mind when they put words on paper. Perhaps if poetry were written in Chinese pictograms, so they could be recited differently in each Chinese dialect, or if they consisted of octagonal stop signs, diamond yield signs, so such. But a written word simply represents a spoken word, and a word can be spoken in many different ways.

Ezra Pound would recite his poetry with a drum. You can say that you can appreciate the poem as it is on paper, but you cannot say that the performance of “The Seafarer” is simply a proper and derivative interpretation of what is on paper. Listen to Ezra Pound here: http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Pound.html.

The art of putting words to rhythms and beats is called prosody. You can read a very complete guide to prosody here: http://www.trobar.org/prosody/. There is a guide to the whole business of poetic meter (or metre). (That author too scoffs at the idea that Dylan is a poet.) But as Ezra Pound emphatically says, the whole business of prosody is the work of academicians who try to codify some of the techniques that truly talented people have used. (Ezra Pound, “The ABC of Reading”) Prosody, basically, is the codified art of how to speak poetry, and speaking poetry is actually what poetry is. A Beethoven Symphony is not a Symphony as letters on paper, but when someone plays it, or at least when deaf old Beethoven listens to it in the resonant caverns of his imagination. Now, back to the main point, just as in any speech you can do all sorts of things with your voice, even without thinking about it, you can in poetry. So, prosody is not simply distilled rules derived by cranky pedants from truly great bards, but it is whatever pertains to speaking poetry. There are all sorts of things between ordinary speech and what we call song. There are all sorts of ways you can use words to get what is in your mind to anothers. So here is my response to the one who says Dylan is not a poet, as was left in his comment box:

To this I do object,
Though my objection you will surely reject,
Poetry existed before writing, as in Homer's time,
Always with prosody and meter, not always with rhyme,
and still does, in Kazakhstan,
and places in the Balkan's, where the poet sings,
long works unwritten about ancient things.
As for "Shelter from the Storm" you will understand the story,
if you read the poets called Fedeli d'Amore,
If sound recordings existed in the fourteenth century,
Dante would be listen'd to, not read as he is today.
As a saint said, the letter kills,
but the spirit (which is breath) gives life, and it does still.
The true poet has also his own prosody,
the natural extension of which is melody.
And Cohen, even his printed words are boring.
If I were reading him,
you could hear me snoring.

Finally, one thing that demonstrates that Dylan is a poet is the fact that he puts the same words of the same songs to completely different melodies and meters. If you are familiar with the songs, check out some of the versions of live performances on Youtube. So, the words are independent of a fixed studio version of a song, and indeed, because each time a word is spoken, it is a different word, because it is a different event. To which I can add this. I have tried to play “All Along the Watchtower”, but I don’t have the album anymore. My brother says it sounds like “All Around the Mulberry Bush”, which is also a very interesting composition with all sorts of history.

And I can recite many passages from Shakespeare where he tells us that it is important how something is said. When you watch television, do you think that reading the transcripts is just as good? No. And Shakespeare was a playwright, not someone who engraved words into stone monuments. It is just lucky that any printed works survived, but “the play is the thing”.

To summarize. Song is species of poetry, so to be a song-writer is to be a poet. All songs are poems, even if not all poems are songs in a strict sense.

Addendum. Robert Burns tells us about the relation between song and poetry in his work. “In my fifteenth autumn, my partner [in harvesting] was a bewitching creature, a year younger than myself. Among her love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly, and it was her favourite reel to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. Thus with me began love and poetry.”.

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold.
http://www.poetseers.org/nobel_prize_for_literature/wislawa_szymborska/library/three_oddest_words/

As Dylan sings in “Shelter from the Storm”: “Beauty walks on razor’s edge”. Poetry, when approached properly, is like watching a tight rope walker. You must be in constant suspense about the next thing that he will do. Will he pull off the next step? There is an effable quality to Dylan’s work that is like watching a tight-rope walker, in that no matter how often you listen to something, you are always in suspense about what will happen next.

Anyways, I have an old friend, over 80, I mean he is not an old friend in the sense that we go way back, because I am just over 50, but rather, a friend who is old. He has an interest in hypnotism, actually a trained an practicing hypnotist, and the first to warn people not to dabble in it. One day he asks me about “iambic pentameter” because that is supposed to be hypnotic. Well, Shakespeare’s Sonnets are written in iambic pentameter. So, I “googled” this, and came up with a writing about a psychologist called Erickson, at this site: http://www.hypnos.co.uk/hypnomag/whitlark.htm. The article is called “Poetry as Hypnosis: An Ericksonian Approach to «Song of the Open Road»” By James Whitlark, Ph.D., and Lynn Whitlark. The authors mention that playing around with the expected meter can have hypnotic effect, but best read the article. Here is an example of a line of iambic pentameter: ”because, because, because, because of love“—it has ten syllables, and the stress falls on every second one). Now think, how many times in Dylan’s delivery is a word delivered with unexpected timing? The author’s analyze Whitman, how he uses ambiguity, paradoxes, piles of negations, and suggestions.

Now the astute reader may recall this Dylan song, “She Belongs to Me”. It has the following line: “She's a hypnotist collector, You are a walking antique.” No matter how many times you listen, the words are unexpected and paradoxical. You puzzle how to put them together in meanings, because there is more than one way. For example, “You start out standing, proud to steal her anything she sees”. Your brain is still trying to figure out if he really means “start outstanding” (or maybe, you star outstanding), when the next riddle comes in, “proud to steal”. Who can be proud of being a thief? Your mind is still wrapping itself around that, when you are faced with “steal her”. You do not yet know if “her” means what or whom you are stealing (the direct object), or for whom you are stealing. Which is no big deal, except you have already been confused twice in this sentence. Then “anything” answers the question but in real time your rational processes have already been short-circuited by the previous ambiguities. And perhaps, there is a comma or period, like this. “You start out, standing proud to steal her. Anything she sees.” Of course, this last bit is somewhat far-fetched, but remember, your brain is already throwing out sparks, and perhaps “Anything she sees” means, “She sees everything”, or perhaps it is to be parsed like this: “You are proud to steal her anything. She sees you will start out standing…”. It is a strange song.

The main point in the article about hypnosis is that the poet-hypnotist uses all sorts of techniques to disorient the reader, in order to slip in a punchline which may be a suggestion. My tentative conclusion is that good songwriting always has a hypnotic quality. Erickson’s observations on the hypnotic qualities of poetry were not prescriptive (as in, “Use my rules of hypnosis to write a song that will hypnotize people”) but descriptive (as in, “if you examine well-crafted songs you will find things like the techniques of the hypnotist”).

The complete lyrics for this song can be found here: http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/lyrics/hailcolumbia.htm. Other “echoes” in that anthem are the phrases “And when the storm of war was gone”, and “Behold the chief who now commands, Once more to serve his country stands. The rock on which the storm will break, The rock on which the storm will break”. This anthem was written for George Washington’s Inauguration, so perhaps this line sets the scene or mood as the American Revolution.

The novel “Arthur Mervyn” can be found at: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18508/18508-h/18508-h.htm.

Another possible source, echo, or ambiance, for the first few lines is the novel “Arthur Mervyn”. The novel is set in the year 1793. Indeed, maybe more. The protagonist is a country lad who has to leave home for the city, where he is locked in a dark room and escapes without his shoes or money, to give the appearance that he is still there. He then becomes implicated with a killer and seeks shelter at a farm. Meanwhile the yellow fever wreaks havoc. Dylan’s first line continues “I came in out of the wilderness a creature void of form”. Mervyn does come from the wilderness. Here he is described as void of form:

“As to me, I was wax in her hand. Without design and without effort, I was always of that form she wished me to assume.”

The same novel has the image of a fugitive who is in mud, (“the road was full of mud”) in the following words:

I landed in a spot incommoded with mud and reeds. I sunk knee-deep into the former, and was exhausted by the fatigue of extricating myself. At length I recovered firm ground, and threw myself on the turf to repair my wasted strength, and to reflect on the measures which my future welfare enjoined me to pursue. […] I was dropping with wet, and shivering with the cold. I was destitute of habitation and friend. I had neither money nor any valuable thing in my possession. I moved forward mechanically and at random. Where I landed was at no great distance from the verge of the town. In a short time I discovered the glimmering of a distant lamp. To this I directed my steps”.

The hero of the story at a certain point is sick with the yellow fever (of 1793) and is taken in by a man, who first makes sure his wife approves, because there is some risk to his whole family. His wife insists, and the sick man says: “I received your protection when I was friendless and forlorn.”

At one point, he enters the city of Malverton to rescue a man called Wallace, who is probably among those stricken with yellow fever with no one to care for him. He finds the man on his deathbed, but another figure appears in the room: “One eye, a scar upon his cheek, a tawny skin, a form grotesquely misproportioned, brawny as Hercules, and habited in livery, composed, as it were, the parts of one view.” This figure beats him unconscious, and when our hero regains consciousness he is about to be nailed into a coffin. And this too closely recalls the line in “Shelter from the Storm” about “the one-eyed undertaker” But our hero breaks his bonds, and the next figure to appear is a Quaker clergyman, who wants to take him to a hospital, thinking him to be afflicted with yellow fever. And this clergyman would be the “preacher” who “rides on hard nails”.

Arthur Mervyn, the hero, is suspected of being in league with the villain, and his opponent says: “Some intelligence has lately been received, which has enabled us to place our hounds upon his scent. He may double and skulk; but, if he does not fall into our toils at last, he will have the agility and cunning, as well as the malignity, of devils”. The verse in “Shelter from the Storm” about the man pursued: “I was burned out from exhaustion, blown out from the trail, hunted in the bushes, buried in the hail, hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn …” comes to mind, but even more, the mention of the hounddogs in “Meet Me in the Morning”: “We’ve even outrun the houndogs …”.

In a ride through the woods in winter, Arthur Mervyn and the girl Eliza are blown off the trail: “While busy in conversing with her, a blast of irresistible force twisted off the highest branch of a tree before us. It fell in the midst of the road, at the distance of a few feet from her horse's head. Terrified by this accident, the horse started from the path, and, rushing into the wood, in a moment threw himself and his rider on the ground, by encountering the rugged stock of an oak.”

Another connection to this novel (and surely to many gothic novels) is Dylan’s line “And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured, I will always do my best by her, on that I give my word”. That line applies to Arthur Mervyn many times over in the novel. He meets a woman in a predicament, left with no money, friends or home, and sets off on an expedition to find them help, on the way becomes entangled in another situation, must rescue another woman, must go find someone to help. He does it at least three times.

Dreams

• Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream
• Bob Dylan’s Dream
• Had a Dream About You, Baby
• I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine
• Series of Dreams
  and some other songs refer to dreams, though not in the title:
• Talking World War III Blues
• When You Gonna Wake Up
• Ballad in Plain D
• Clean-Cut Kid
• Heartland
• Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie
• Every Grain of Sand
• Too Much of Nothing
• To Ramona
• Señor
• Romance in Durango
• Time Passes Slowly
• Hard Times in New York Town
• Walk Out In the Rain
• Dear Landlord
• New Morning
• Never Gonna Be the Same Again
• Under Your Spell
• Tryin' to Get to Heaven
• Something’s Burning Baby
• I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)
• Gates of Eden
• I and I
• Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum
• Dignity
• Jokerman
• Wedding Song
• Mmiissiisssiippi (Canadians can’t spell)
• No Time to Think
• I Shall Be Free No. 10
• Mr. Tambourine Man
• Where Are You Tonight?
• It’s Alright Ma (I Am Only Bleeding)
• Highlands

The Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic State: Salvador Dali’s Waking Dreams

Salvador Dali wrote a book called “50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship”, in which a chapter is called “The Secret of Sleeping While Awake”. The technique he describes was used by Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Edison, and I have read that it was used by some ancient Greeks. Salvador says that the technique is used by Capuchin monks for a different purpose. Dali would take an afternoon nap in a chair. He would hold a key, and under the key was a metal bowl. As soon as he fell asleep, at that very instant the key would drop, and he would recall very clearly all the things that went through his imagination up to that moment, which if he had fallen asleep would have been lost to memory. (The Capuchin monks use this technique for the purpose simply of not following asleep during meditation). The state leading up to sleep is called the hypnogogic state. Sometimes when someone wakes up from sleep, he does not become fully awake, but half-asleep and experiences what is around him in a dream-like way.

Leonardo da Vinci also mentions looking at random things, like stains on walls or clouds, to see images of horses, battles, human figures, and so derive inspiration for paintings. (In his Treatise on Painting).

For now, I will say this about dreams, and later provide texts. Some dreams are random. Engineers who build neural networks, which are computer networks that learn in a way analogous to the brain, find that the neural networks must periodically spend time giving random output, or they become inflexible (perhaps like a person who becomes paranoid, which is the inflexible response to reality, when not sleeping enought). Other dreams seem to be an extension of our waking meditations. For example, if all day I am mixing paints or solving some problem, I will think about these things when asleep. Finally, some dreams come from God (or they could come from some other lesser spirit, and not necessarily a good one). All the ancient authors held this opinion. Hippocrates thought that dreams have diagnostic value, because our sleeping mind is sometimes aware of problems in the body before our waking mind knows.

From the very titles of the songs, Bob Dylan seems to be pretty explicit about dreams. He pays great attention to them, records them, uses dreams to sort out things. From my own experience, if I spend a couple hours in a day reading something intently, when I awake in the middle of the night, I am in my mind muttering some verses and thinking about them.

How much attention should be paid to dreams? We are warned in the Bible that many have been led astray by empty dreams, but other passages tell us to heed our dreams. So, the conclusion is, think about dreams, try to understand them, but do not be carried away to superstitious extremes. Not everything in a dream is prophetic or even meaningful. I remember a story concerning a tribe of native North Americans. One man had a dream concerning jumping into an icy river, and the others took this as a sign that they should all jump in a river and drown, and that is what they did.

This concerns the song: Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts.

The line is:

As the leading actor hurried by in the costume of a monk.
There was no actor anywhere better than the Jack of Hearts.

This connection is a long shot. Perhaps even the author himself would say that these connections I see are nothing. But even then, when you read a lot, and think a lot, and dream a lot, you cannot trace back the echoes of everything that comes in your imagination. I see a connection here to Longfellow’s Long Poem, “The Golden Legend”, which can be found at http://www.online-literature.com/henry_longfellow/golden-legend/. This poem is actually a short book, like his “Hiawatha” and “Evangeline”. The story is roughly this. A King is sick. The devil disguised as a doctor tells him he can only be cured if finds a young maiden who will give up her life for him (probably by committing suicide). A young maiden comes who is willing to give up her life for him to be healthy again. They go on a pilgrimage. The devil keeps popping in and out in various disguises, and in one instance he is disguised as a Carmelite monk. Eventually the King is cured anyways by a miracle, and marries the maiden, and the devil is foiled. But of the devil it could be said “There was no actor anywhere better than …”.

The Longfellow poem is filled with descriptions of performances, plays, and so is the song.

Lucifer appears in several instances disguised as a monk, and in other disguises. Here is one such line:

“Lucifer (as a Friar in the procession). Here am I, too, in the pious band,
In the garb of a barefooted Carmelite dressed!
The soles of my feet are as hard and tanned
As the conscience of old Pope Hildebrand,”

Longfellow wrote “The Arsenal at Springfield”, which expresses similar sentiments of longing for peace as does “Blowing in the Wind”. I am not claiming derivation, because the expectation of peace is found very strongly in the Book of Isaiah. It is natural enough, it is like wanting to get over a cold when you are sick. Anyways, some of Longfellow’s verses:

Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth, bestowed on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals or forts:
…
Down the dark future, through long generations,
The echoing sounds grow fainter, and then cease;
And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations, I hear once more the voice of Christ say, “Peace”!

Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals The blast of War’s great organ shakes the skies!
But beautiful as songs of the immortals,
The holy melodies of love arise.

And not directly connected with Dylan, I see a Longfellow-Robert Frost connection, with Longfellow’s “A Gleam of Sunshine” anticipating Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”:

This is the place. Stand still my steed,
Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
The forms that once have been
…
Here runs the highway to the town,
There the green lane descends …

To hear Robert Frost himself reading this poem, and to read the words, visit: http://robertfrostoutloud.com/TheDeathOfTheHiredMan.html

I have been familiar for a long time with a Newfie (Newfoundland) song called “Kelligrew’s Soiree”, which reminds me in general, though not in particular details, of “Lily and the Jack of Hearts” (and may remind you of other songs too). Both songs describe a bustling scene with colorful characters and lots of action. “Kelligrew’s Soiree” has a list of foods that were at the spree, and many characters., and you can read the words here:
http://www.explorenewfoundlandandlabrador.com/newfoundland-music/kelligrews.htm

Here’s a typical verse that illustrates the spirit of the Kelligrew Soiree. Sort of a shopping list, don’t you think? Next time you go shopping, pick up some of this stuff:

There was birch rine, tar twine, cherry wine and turpentine,
Jowls and cavalances, ginger beer and tea;
Pig's feet, cat's meat, dumplings boiled up in a sheet,
Dandelion and crackie's teeth at the Kelligrews' Soiree.

Johny Burke Songwriter—Two by the Same Name.

And thereupon with surprise have I learned that Kelligrew’s Soiree” was not an anonymous folk song. Indeed, a folk song, but it was written by Johny Burke (1851 - 1930) a Newfoundland songwriter and musician nicknamed the ”Bard of Prescott Street”. His work was much recorded in his time, and his lyrics are all very humorous. They paint various scenarios, that might remind one of the sort of thing portrayed in “Lily and the Jack of Hearts”. At the same time, I discovered that there was another Johny Burke songwriter, and I even know one or more of his songs too! Johny Burke of California (1904–1964) wrote “Pennies from Heaven”, which I know, and a whole lot of other fine things. He often worked with other songwriters, and his work was much recorded by Sinatra. What are the odds? Two top song-writers with the same name at the same time.

Johny Burke the Newfoundlander made money back in those times selling broadsheets. His lyrics refer to known characters, and Newfoundland in general, and St. John’s in particular, is still a place where everyone knows everyone else. A collection of his lyrics can be found at:
http://www.wtv-zone.com/phyrst/audio/nfld/aburke.htm

Now Johny Burke the Newfie is truly in the pantheon of songwriters. First of all, Johny Burke is dead. Second of all, his work has been listed as a folksong without credits to his name. How? Because his songs are taught by one person to another, to another, everyone knows them after a century (in Newfoundland anyways). If your song is bigger than you are, you have arrived up there where Dante is.

The other Johny Burke worked in Tin Pan Alley. He was a pianist and lyricist, and worked for the Irving Berlin company. He wrote over 400 songs, and once was the writer of five out of ten hit parade songs at the same time. Burke wrote “Pennies from Heaven” especially for Bing Crosby, and other songs too, tailoring them to Bing Crosby’s conversational style of singing, and Bing Crosby, who described Burke as a “one hundred and forty five pound leprachaun”, said that he was “one of the best things that ever happened to me”. (refer to www.riverwalkjazz.org).

Just Walking

But the rest of it. Saint Herman of Alaska is a saint of the Orthodox Church, the first “American” saint. You can read about him here: http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/herman.htm. Among his deeds, he started a school in Alaska to take care of orphans. He was extremely ascetic, told the future, and other stuff.

About twisters. “Category 7: End of the World” was preceded in 1996 by “Twister”. Never saw it, but a few miles from where I live in *******, people were watching “Twister” at a drive-in, when a tornado came and took away the screen.

Now my little theory about the song-writing process here is that it is sort of like the “Seinfeld Process”, the episode where George Constanza and Jerry Seinfeld are peddling their show to NBC, something like “You wake up, have a coffee, read a paper. That’s a show. A show about nothing”. I recall something Alan Ginsberg wrote where the work was apparently that. You take a walk, you see a puking cat, you sit in a restaurant etc. etc. You make up a lot of verses to a melody. You do it enough and something emerges.

There was a time when Bob Dylan quite intensely used his concerts as occasions for preaching. I think it was around 1979, 1980. I do not wish to explore the exact nature of the dogmas he held, or the intensity with which he held them, etc. Nor am I familiar with the music all that much, except perhaps “You have to serve someone/somebody” because it was on the radio at a time when I had a radio, or something like that. But Johny Cash and Hank Williams are two singers whom Dylan openly admires. Cash and Dylan were personal friends, and admired each other. Dylan has often played Hank’s songs, and is working to finish off some of Hank’s unfinished songs. Anyways, Johny Cash cultivated the persona of the “man in black”, which he explains in the song, http://www.metrolyrics.com/man-in-black-lyrics-johnny-cash.html. Here are two verses:

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he's a victim of the times.

I wear the black for those who never read,
Or listened to the words that Jesus said,
About the road to happiness through love and charity,
Why, you'd think He's talking straight to you and me.

Hank Williams had a persona called “Luke the Drifter”, through whom he delivered quasi-sermons, or morality tales, delivered in a speaking voice, which (links) can be found at http://www.poetspath.com/exhibits/troubadours_hank.html. Here is an except:

…I'll hear your voice I'll see your smile
Though blindly I may grope
The memory of your helping hand,
Will buoy me on with hope
Beyond the sunset
Oh blissful morning
When with our savior,
Heaven is begun
Earth's toiling ended,
Oh glorious dawning Beyond the sunset
When day is done.
Should you go first and I remain,
To finish with the scroll
No lessening shadows shall ever creep in
To make this life seem droll

In recent developments, Dr. William McGonagall, senior inquisitor for the SETI project at Oxford University, reported that SETI has received some very strong signals from the vicinity of globular star cluster M13. Fourier analysis revealed that it could be interpreted as an audio signal. By using a distributed computer network, which was invented by a hacker in St. Petersburg, Russia, which placed a program on the computers of people who visited a certain website that featured pictures of certain ladies, it was soon determined that the audio signal contained some previously unheard Bob Dylan songs. In order to decode the songs, McGonagall has requested the services of the Russian hacker in order to harness all the unused bandwidth once again of all those who visit a certain website, but the hacker was busy shutting down all the computers in a former Soviet satellite country and could not be reached. And after that, he is going to accept the post of CEO in a major Russian oil company, and once again, will be too busy. If you wish to contribute unused bandwidth to this project, please contact Dr. William McGonagall at: http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/.

Something I have wondered lately about Dylan’s singing is this. Now, one plays the harmonica by exhaling and inhaling. It is also possible to sing while inhaling. Has he experimented with this in any recorded music? Any answers? Some singers, I have heard, maybe Bing Crosby, could sing without taking a breath. Was that the secret? If you continue singing while inhaling, you can go on forever (until you need to sleep).

Today, the Feast of the Epiphany, I attended a francophone Church (a Catholic Church where the Mass is in French). When we sang the “Agneau de Dieu” (Lamb of God), I found the tune vaguely familiar. Then I recognized it, “Blowing in the Wind”, but modified here and there to fit the words. Anyways, according to Wikipedia, Bob Dylan got the tune from an old slave song, “No More Auction Block for Me”. I don’t know it, so I wonder what the original sounded like.

As of Ash Wednesday, 2008, this page uses the word “think” 43 times, and the word “feel” 5 times.

The first Christian to ever write a song in recorded history was the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the song is called the Magnificat and is found in the Gospel of Luke. Since it is sung every single day by monks, priests, and nuns, and has also been set to music by great composers, that would make it easily the most sung song in history. There are many songs in the Old Testament apart from the psalms, and certainly they are still sung. For example, Jonah sang while in the belly of the whale (great acoustics there). Possibly the first song in the Bible is the Song of Moses in Exodus chapter 15.

Dylan has published about 600 songs, and has probably written many times that number. But can anyone beat the record of Sri Tallapaka Annamacharya, who in his lifetime has written 32,000 songs, and sung them all “in the Indian carnatic tradition”. Read about him here: http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v3/news.php?id=312820. More about Sri Tallapaka Annamacharya on: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annamacharya.

It occurred to me that the 1965 song “Its All Over Now, Baby Blue" is about a child that died, and more specifically a child that was killed by its parent. I am sure that there are other things, but this rings true. First of all, I would like to digress. Jean Francois Millet painted the “Angelus”. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Millet at Wikipedia. The painting seems to be of a man and a woman with heads bowed in prayer in a field while a distant bell tolls to call people to pray the Angelus. Salvador Dali suspected that the painting showed the two parents preparing to bury a small coffin, but the artist painted over the coffin. Later x-ray analysis proved him right. Anyways, find the lyrics to “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” here: http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/babyblue.html. He sings:

Yonder stands your orphan with his gun,
Crying like a fire in the sun.
Look out the saints are comin' through
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

The expression “your orphan” would be a reversal. The parent is alive, the child is dead. Also, the child is angry, as he has a gun. Also, he is invisible, like a fire in the sun would be obscured. The child is among the saints. He is dead, it’s all over. He could be stillborn, a “blue baby” who is not getting enough oxygen.

That is about it, except “This sky, too, is folding under you” recalls a passage from Isaiah:

And all the host of the heavens shall pine away, and the heavens shall be folded together as a book: and all their host shall fall down as the leaf falleth from the vine, and from the fig tree. (Isaiah 34:4, Douay-Rheims version.)

And then there is the line, “Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you.”. Perhaps the next line is about a ghost, who indeed will follow, to contradict the prior line: “The vagabond who's rapping at your door|Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.”

In the years the followed, there were many films about malevolent and powerful children, out to take revenge on the adult world. For example, Stephen King’s “Children of the Corn”. There was a film, I do not know what it was, that had babies with jagged teeth jumping out of dark shadows and killing people. I think that films of that genre are a kind of sub-conscious cinematic reactions to the repercussions of Roe vs. Wade. Because if you believe in ghosts, that decision left armies of them behind.

I was reading about Dylan’s episode of Theme Time Radio Hour, the episode on the theme of “Joe”, and his comments on the Myth of Sisyphus. I was reading that at rightwingbob.com But first, last night (April Fool’s Day no less), I was sitting in McDonalds because Tim Horton’s is closed for renovations, and I kept hearing the music of my youth: Dylan, then Neil Young, then Pink Floyd, and so forth. It was surprising, and no ads. I cried out “waitress!”, because it was funny, they do not wait on tables, and because they automatically give me a senior’s discount, so I figure I might as well earn it by acting a little disoriented. I asked what radio station was playing, and she said it was the McDonalds’ proprietary satellite radio station. Anyways, my thought is that perhaps “Like a Rolling Stone” is really a play on what should mean “Like Rolling a Stone”, and the song refers to the myth of Sisyphus. Not very likely, but worth meditating upon. And hearing that song through the ambient noise, one thing stood out, that Dylan's voice is sliding up and down the scale like a trombone. Musician’s call it ”glissando“. And there is a line in “Thunder on the Mountain”: “Today's the day, gonna grab my trombone and blow”.

I think that a phrase that could uniquely describe Dylan’s music and writing is “unusual prosody”. Prosody consists in all the elements or features of the spoken word, apart from the words themselves with their meanings. It is the intonation, the rhythm, and so forth. Music, then, is just a subspecies of prosody. I don’t want to be too diagnostic here, but if you Google the phrase “unusual prosody”, you may gain further insights.

Some serious scholars have serious things to say at journal.oraltradition.org. Volume 22, no. 1, has an article by Richard Thomas, called “The Classical Dylan”, and there are other articles. Anyways, I learned that Dylan was an enthusiast for Latin as a youth (something, I suppose, that would be known to me if I had read “Chronicles”). Richard Thomas finds some very direct and striking borrowings in Dylan from the Latin poets Vergil and Ovid. He hits some nails on their heads with his article.

However, Richard Thomas says something rather naive:

But Dylan himself is also a rhapsode who has performed his enormous corpus with powers of memory that seem Homeric in scope over the last 45 years. In a memorable threeconcert stand at the Boston Orpheum on April 15-17, 2005, he sang 40 different songs, repeating only one

Forty songs!!!! Like Homer! Well, any professional performing musician knows many more than forty songs. And if the musician is the one who wrote the songs, it is not surprising at all. After all, if it is one’s profession, one works at it. If Richard Thomas is a professor, then he gives 40 hours of lectures per semester, and those 40 hours are only the tip of the iceberg of what he could impart. Look at how much Homer composed, and he was blind, so he could not write things down to aid his memory. … Still, all in all, Richard Thomas’ article is excellent.

At rightwingbob.com, we find that Daniel Radosh has written a new book about Christian pop culture. A quote surprises me:

If you count these, there is probably no greater Christian rock song—and few greater rock songs, period—than “Shelter From the Storm,” which uses explicit Gospel imagery to paint a harrowing portrait of sinful man separated from God and in search of redemption.

Of course, I have written above about biblical echoes in that song. I think it is a great song, but I don’t understand it as explicitly Christian. Except perhaps in the sense of the saying—anima naturaliter christiana—the human soul is naturally Christian—that we can say spiritual elements in all sorts of places. And I don’t think that it is a rock song at all. It reminds me of something I read in an autobiography of Menachem Begin, who definitely had very strong loyalty to his Jewish people and heritage. When he was in a Russian prison, there was a hole where the guards could look in, and he said it was called the “Judas hole”, and that was so named “after the man who betrayed Our Lord” (I read the book long ago, and that is not a verbatim quote, but more or less what I remember). The thing is, that while formally there is a big insurmountable wall now between Christianity and Judaism, individuals are another matter. The statement of Begin would seem to be a profession of Christianity, stronger than anything in the Dylan song, but on that account can we say that Begin was a Christian? Who knows? It is hard to pin down what “Christian” means.

Another point, it that the very first lines suggest reincarnation, not a Christian doctrine—“It was in another lifetime”. Suggest, not state, because it could be providing a setting for the song in the distant past when things were much different.

One thing that appears throughout Dylan’s work is the expression of ambivalent emotions. If we remain purely on the plane of logic, things are either true or false, they exist or do not exist. However, in the world of emotions, we can feel love and hatred, like and dislike for the same thing or person, maybe in rapid succession, maybe even simultaneously. The ambivalence of emotions was something that Erich Fromm wrote about somewhere, how emotions are unlike logic. As you probably know, Erich Fromm started out with training to be a hotdog vendor at the “Frankfurt School”, but he started dispensing advice with his buns, and became a psychiatrist. Anways, the examples of ambivalent emotions are Dylan’s writing are everywhere, and when I get some time, I will present just a few.

A little storm in a teapot has arisen over Dylan’s comments on Obama, his apparent support. Not very interesting to me is Obama. But there is this little comment within his comment:

“You should always take the best from the past, leave the worst back there and go forward into the future … ”

State super vias et videte
et interrogate de semitis antiquis, quae sit bona
et ambulate in ea,
et invenietis refrigerium animabus vestris

Stop over the ways and look
and ask about the old paths, which one is good
and walk in it
and you will find refreshment for your souls. (Jeremiah 6:16)

Just a comment, nowhere else to leave it. Microsoft Word’s spell-check accepts the word “overpopulation”, but not the word “underpopulation”.

It is probably frustrating to people who come here looking for new stuff, but I insert additions and changes all over the place often.

My friend Gord gave me a book he picked up in Arkansas, a book of songs. I played the “Wayfaring stranger”, and a part seemed so familiar. The melody of the Peter Townsend song (of the Who) called “Behind Blue Eyes", the verse that goes:

But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free

The verse with exactly the same melody in “Wayfaring Stranger” is:

I’m going there to see my Father
I’m going there no more to roam

Ancient Roman lawyers actually delivered their speeches in what today would be called rap music. The rhetorician Quintillian is pretty clear about this. Timing, intonation, and all those things were very important to the orator. He had to practise the timing and other elements, than make it look natural and easy as if it were spontaneous. Quintillian even tells us that some orators in the courts actually went so far as to sing, actually sing, and he wondered why they didn’t bring along flutes and other instruments. From that comment, we can tell that the usual way of speaking was very rhythmical, more than ordinary speech, but somewhat short of regular singing. He also says: “No one finds his own singing hideous”—nam nec cuiquam sunt iniucunda quae cantant ipsi.

QUAE TAMEN INDE SEGES?
TERRAE QUIS FRUCTUS APERTAE?
QUIS DABIT HISTORICO QUANTUM DARET ACTA LEGENTI?
(Juvenal, Satire VII, 103–104)

Which, translated, is: “What harvest will you gather, what fruit, from the tilling of your land? Who will give to an historian as much as he gives to the man who reads out the news?”. The whole Satire VII is about how poets do not get recognized. The poet might bring the house down, but nevertheless is starving. And historians are like poets. And the connection is in the line: “Businessmen they drink my wine, proud men (or ploughmen) dig my earth. None of them all along the line, know what any of it is worth“. It might make more sense if one reads the entire Satire VII. Which is in English at http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/juvenal_satires_07.htm, and in Latin at: http://www.curculio.org/Juvenal/s07.html.

Of course, that is not a definitive theory about what the song is all about. I suspect the true meaning of the song is connected with the fact that Batman was running on TV in the late 1960s.

A line from Juvenal, which should perhaps be quoted above in the area dedicated to dreams:

…AERE MINUTO
QUALICUMQUE VOLES IUDAEI SOMNIA VENDUNT
(Juvenal, Satire VI, 546–547)

Which, translated, might mean: “for a small bronze coin, the Jews sell you whatever sort of dreams you want”. This seems to mean the interpretation of dreams. The interpretation of dreams appears in Dylan songs occasionally, as in the “Gates of Eden”:

At dawn my lover comes to me
And tells me of her dreams
With no attempts to shovel the glimpse
Into the ditch of what each one means

At this time, by which I mean now, Leonardo de Cohen’s song “Hallejuah” is one the top of the charts in Britain, twice, himself singing, and a cover. But it is just typical Cohen, expressing the same old sentiment, the proverb “Omne animal post coitum triste”—every animal is sad or depressed after intercourse. Well, he may be sad and depressed, and he may not like his partner very much after that, but please, do not make us listen to your depression every time we listen to the radio. The other typical element in the song is that he expresses superiority and contempt for the “you”. To tell the truth, and why this song is mentioned here, is that when I first heard it, I thought that it was a song that Dylan might have written but rejected and maybe let out to someone under another name. There are biblical allusions, as in a Dylan song, but in a Dylan song they are subtle and, may I say, respectful. In this song, the biblical stuff, including the word ”Hallelujah“, is poured on like molasses.

A subsequent reflection. It is human to categorize. To put complicated and numerous stuff into boxes. Well, I class songsters into several. One class holds those who go all introspective, and sing about how they feel. These find songs a way of therapy, but it apparently does not work, because they keep working out their feelings album after album. I put there Leonard Cohen, Bruce Coburn, Joni Mitchell, and probably half of the strummers out there. To whom all I say, I don’t care about how you feel about how you feel. Belly-button music. Navel-gazing. In a way, Amy Winehouse might fit into this, singing very publicly about private problems. But she brings something more to it. She reminds me more of Billy Holiday, maybe with a little middle-class angst, but not too much.

A closely aligned class are the politicos. Give us a kneejerk (usually leftist) take on what is happening in the world. Throw in a little anger and blame against “them”. John Lennon fell into this. Bruce Springsteen does this. Neil Young is another. Sinead O'Connor, Madonna. And now you have so many feigning outrage at the perpetrators of global warming. And recently, a young well-publicized up and coming songstress in my city of _ _ _ _ _ was in the paper saying she does not want to write sappy songs, but songs against the injustice in the world. But, it says, do not sit in judgement unless you are ready and able to do something about it. I would be impressed if someone sang a song, knowing that they could be thrown in the Gulag for it, and sang anyway.

So who are the good songsters (writers and singers)? Of course, goes without saying the Dylan is. But up there I include Stan Rogers (RIP), Gordon Lightfoot, Stomping Tom Connors, Tom Waits, Hank Williams (RIP). They write songs about real things, things that really touch their lives and the lives of their listeners. They write on noble and tragic themes. From past centuries, Carolan, Thomas Moore, Stephen Foster, and Anonymous Bosch.

Maybe another box is simply entertainment, like Jon Hendricks.

So, the point is that Dylan has some introspection in his songs, some politics, some entertainment, but he does not go overboard. His unworthy imitators (the first two boxes) take one or another element, or sometimes even singing off-key and off-time, and make it the be-all and end-all. (And by the way, to the morons, he does not sing off key at all, anymore than a good trombone player. The control over sliding tones is quite there.) You put some ketchup on fries, you don't put fries in a bowl of ketchup.

Like the lady with Alzheimer’said: “You don’t need to know where you are to be there”.

And the British boiler-maker, you know, the short guy who talks fast and has his wits about him, asked: “What did the nuclear scientist have for lunch?” Answer: “Fission chips”. But not before we came up with other answers: radishes, split peas ….

It is logically impossible to say “I am wrong”, as in, wrong in thinking something is true.Because the moment you know that your opinion is wrong, you already have stopped holding it to be true. You can only say, meaningfully “I was wrong”.

And hypnosis. It seems that a lot of hypnosis is stuff that comes naturally to door to door salesman and pickpockets, or that a lot of them are studying Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Some examples. A salesman comes to the door. I am on my guard. No one is going to con me. There is an ambulance at another house. I am looking curiously. He says, “I was just over there. Your neighbor had a breathing problem.” And he hands me the contract (gas at a fixed price, locked in for five years, or something) at the same time and says non-chalantly “sign here.” And I do. I regret it for five years.

And a young fellow comes up to the door. He starts “Would you agree that change is a good thing?” That is supposed to work all the time. That guy on television is always talking about change and hope. But I say “No.” I am thinking, losing a leg is a change. Divorce is a change. Death is a change. Well, he covered his mouth and lowered his head, because that made him laugh, but he did not want to show it. Then the next pitch: “You know your neighbors, J___ and S___ S___ donated to W____ V____”. Which got me mad. It is none of his business to tell me what the neighbors did. So at that point I cut off communications. The thing is, that if someone came and said, I am collecting money for W___ V___, or some other charitable cause, I would say yes or no based on whether I had money to give. But do not use “pacing” statements. (“Pacing” is the hypnotist’s use of obvious true statements to build a rapport leading to a suggestion, like “The time is now … we are here in this place … ===> when you vote for me tomorrow …).

So, I am thinking of counter-techniques of covert confusion. So when someone bothersome comes to the door, I may ask: “Would you be happy to accept ten dollars and leave?” Maybe he says something, maybe not. Then I say, “Just a minute … Just stand here a minute, then go the next house”, and close the door. Most likely he will take the suggestion. Very unlikely he will knock, because then you tell him he is not getting any money. If he presses on with the sales-pitch, he has been defused, because you have already messed with the idea of accepting a sum of money.

And what if a hypnotist makes you forget your name? Well, you say: “I don’t need to know who I am to be here”. But be prepared beforehand with this answer.

(Winter 2009) It is a cold snap now in many places. My furnace (boiler) seemed to be not working. For three days I consulted with “experts” everywhere, and considered plunking down half a year’s pay for a new heating system. But the answer was simple. The thermostat has a thing (inside it on mine) called an anticipator. It can have a long setting for a long cycle, so the furnace heats up to a maximum temperature, then when it reaches a pump pumps the heat, then it waits before it tries again. Problem was that it was waiting possibly two or three hours. I asked it for 70 degrees Fahrenheit (about 20 Celsius) but with all that hemming and hawing I got less than 50. I was peering into complicated things inside the furnace, tapping, touching, but finally I found an adjustment inside the thermostat. In microscopic letters it indicated "longer cycle" and an arrow. I set it to a shorter cycle and immediately I could hear the flame in the furnace/boiler kick in. I imagine that people all over the continent are having the same problem, with the same solution. And the “Dylan connection”? Well, “the pump don’t work, cuz the vandal stole the handle” “When Quinn the Eskimo comes, he’ll adjust the thermostat”.

Obama was in awe gyrated today. I have a suggestion for him. The Old Testament laws included a year of Jubilee, a year in which all debts were cancelled. Now, of course, this could not be done with regard to debts to other nations, unless they consented, but think of this. If every American who owed money to another American simply had the debt wiped out, it would be like a clean slate. So what if some corporate entities disappeared. A corporate entity is a fiction anyways, and another would soon rise in its place. Dare, if you will, to think this through. Tomorrow, at ten o’clock, all debts cancelled. Some adjustments would be acquired. For example if you owe money to a corporation that is only 50 per cent American-owned, only 50 per-cent of your debt disappears. But still, this is the best idea yet. (Oh yes, and this would include money owed to, and money owed by, the Government).

I saw the part of the in-awe-gyration where the oath of office was being administered. I was struck by what I heard. The administrator prompted “…that I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully…”. Mr. Obama said (interrupting the flow of the administrator’s words, throwing him off balance—an expert hypnotist does the same thing by interrupting an autonomous habitual action like a handshake), “That I will EXECUTE …”. And then the the administrator of the oath repeated what he said but changed the order of the words, and especially, changed the phrase “to the United States” to “of the United States”. The hesitation may have been due to President-elect Obama’s perception that the administrator had messed up the words. But in effect, he said (perhaps chillingly) “I will execute”. The Dylan connection? Maybe this. “The executioner’s hand is always well hidden”. Or this: “Socialism, hypnotism, patriotism, materialism./Fools making laws for the breaking of jaws/And the sound of the keys as they clink But there's no time to think.”

THE FOURTH VERSE OF “SHELTER FROM THE STORM“. “Suddenly I turned around, and she was standing there, with silver bracelets on her wrists, and flowers in her hair”. At one point, Bob Dylan recorded “Blue Moon” by Richard Rogers (1934). It is interesting, because he uses a crooning voice that is very good, and a complete departure from his usual raspy delivery. And his rendition of the song should forever silence those who say that he sings or chants as he does because he is incapable of doing otherwise. Anyways, I see a parallel to the line in “Blue Moon” that goes: “And then there suddenly appeared before me, the only one my arms will every hold. I heard somebody whisper please adore me, and when looked, the moon had turned to gold …”.

I see a connection between everything and each thing in particular. So here’s another one. Dylan’s song “Isis” and Robert Service’s “Cremation of Sam McGee”. Both involve two men on a quest for riches in the cold arctic. One dies, and the other has to take care of the body.

Hi Tina! Anyways, a reflection on folk music. Folk music can be presented as the opposite of professional music. The professional musician might be a virtuoso. He spends all his time trying to play difficult things. Think of so-called “guitar gods”, who play really fast. The folk musician, as I see it, wants to play beautiful music, but not excessively showy. Sometimes the professional musicians are playing things that impress other musicians, but apart from that do not have any beauty. You don’t walk away humming a tune. And now a word from Aristotle (in the Politics, almost at the end). Everyone should learn music, and how to play an instrument, but not too much, just enough to appreciate music, and participate in music socially, because the best part of life is when you have come back from the Trojan War and are sitting in a banquet hall, listening to a minstrel, enjoying music. Whereas the virtuoso musician is departing from this simple thing.

Which brings me back to this. I am sure that Dylan has worked harder on his music that anyone else out there. Yet, for all that, he doesn’t produce “virtuoso” music. No intricate changing time signatures, no convoluted jazz chords. His vocal timing is incredible, but he makes a great effort to make it sound spontaneous. Whenever he finds himself going down the rutted road of virtuoso music, he pulls back and goes in another direction (perhaps in “Street Legal” some of the rhyme schemes and metrics go in a virtuoso direction, showing off a complex scheme to the detriment of plain old music, but that is an exception, in my shaky opinion). So, whatever it is, an ordinary listener who can pick up a guitar can enter into the music. Plain old music. Plain old songs.

I found a CD of the “Wallflowers” (Jakob Dylan) at the used stuff store. It was called “Bringing Down the Horse”. The son has the same gift for turning a phrase as the father. The music is certainly not a knock-off of the father’s, but there are plenty of allusions and homages. For example, in the song “Three Marlenas”, the first three chords had me expecting to hear “If Not for You”. I find that I can let Jakob’s music flow while I work (translating books, which requires lots of attention). Once in a while I pause and listen more closely. I cannot “use” Bob’s music while I am working, because every moment is full of too much drama and emphasis. It demands complete attention.

I was just reading www.rightwingbob.com, and he quotes some verses that Bobdylan added to the song “Gonna Change My Way of Thinking”. The new verse goes like this:

Jesus is coming
He’s coming back to gather his jewels
Jesus is coming
He’s coming back to gather his jewels
Well, we live by the golden rule
Whoever got the gold rules.

Hank Williams, as you probably know, wrote a song called “When God Comes and Gathers His Jewels”. Here are the words:

The ceremony was over, A lad stood alone in tears
For he had just said goodbye to the one he loved for years
WHEN GOD COMES AND GATHERS HIS JEWELS, All His treasure of diamonds and gold,
you’ll meet her up, Up in heaven so fair,
WHEN GOD COMES AND GATHERS HIS JEWELS.
He stood all alone with his head bowed down
As though his heart would break.
The parson came over and took his hand
And to him these words he did say.
WHEN GOD COMES AND GATHERS HIS JEWELS, All His treasure of diamonds and gold,
you’ll meet her up, Up in heaven so fair,
WHEN GOD COMES AND GATHERS HIS JEWELS.
Each night when the pale moon is shinging
You can see this lad all alone
With his eyes lifted toward heaven
He’s repeating these words he was told:
WHEN GOD COMES AND GATHERS HIS JEWELS
All His treasure of diamonds and gold,
I’ll meet her up there,
Up in heaven so fair,
WHEN GOD COMES AND GATHERS HIS JEWELS.

(March 2008) Since guitars have to do with Bob Dylan, let me tell you something. I bought a classical guitar, good price, probably used by a teacher at the store because the lower three strings were a little worn (the top three strings are nylon, the lower three metal). So I put on two new metal strings, an A and a D. But the D string would simply not tune right. The intonation was way off. When you play a harmonic (light touch with the finger) and the mid-point, it should be the same note as the fret-note there. But now. So my brother was visiting. I says to him “You play a stringed instrument—what could explain this?”. And he said “Maybe the string is not of equal thickness all the way, which would affect the intonation”. And indeed. The part of the string by the bridge was thicker, with an extra bit of winding. So I looped it in and out, so that the thicker part was all behind the bridge. And it has perfect intonation now. So guitar-players take heed from my tale. Don’t throw away your guitar, put the strings on with due consideration.

The Great American Poet John Berryman was teaching at the University of Minnesota roughly from 1955 to 1965. In 1964 he won the Pullitzer Prize for “Dream Songs”. These poems frequently mention a character called Mr. Bones. In 1965, Dylan wrote “Ballad of a Thin Man”, with the repeated name of Mr. Jones. I wonder if the two crossed paths? There certainly would have been mutual awareness, even if they did not. And John Berryman was close to Dylan Thomas, and was just outside the hospital room when Dylan Thomas died.

Some of the letters of St. Jerome may be found at: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001022.htm

Now this is off the beaten track, or not? My dear friend Joe, who died, and was the most humble and profound scholar, left me some books. Among them selected letters of St. Jerome. Now this is the story of St. Jerome. The entire Christian world in the late 300s used either the Greek Old Testament Septuagint Bible, or a translation of the Greek Old Testament into Latin. It was the style that Latin had to be written elegantly. Everybody studied to be a rhetorician. It was not uncommon, if someone were going to write on anything, to render it into poetic meter and with “noble” words. Cicero was one esteemed model of language, with long convoluted sentences, and a certain beauty of language.

The Bible, on the other hand, is the opposite, both Old and New Testament. The things are said very directly, with short words that mean a lot. As Saint Paul said, “The Word of God is a Two-Edged Sword that Cleaves Between the Flesh and the Bone”. Yet translators would sacrifice that earthiness of language for what was deemed elegant in their own. St. Jerome did two great things. First, he found a Jewish scholar and learned Hebrew. Second, when he translated very carefully into Latin, he very much respected the character of how things were expressed. He translated into everyday Latin language, the way down-to-earth people talk. For this reason, his translation of the Bible is called the “VULGATE”, which is like our word “vulgar”, in ordinary language of the ordinary people. It was a vast improvement over the Septuagint, where if you go verse by verse you sometimes wonder if it is the same book. The Vulgate may still have some lapses in translation, but in the whole the language is concise and forceful. As far as is possible, and it is never completely possible, the Vulgate follows the Hebrew scriptures word for word.

St. Jerome had a “conversion” to vulgarity, and it was very radical. He dreamed that he was accused by Christ and flogged, because of his love of Cicero’s work with its elegant style. “Are you a Christian or a Ciceronian”? And his rejection of high style was complete. I do not think that anyone every before him actually made it a virtue to use ordinary speech, not in the Greco-Roman world. Everyone knew about the hypnotic effects of finely crafted language and played the game. But Jerome indeed was like Bob Dylan. As far as I know, Bob Dylan only writes words in a literary “Ciceronian” style on one album, and that is “Street Legal”. What I mean, you find words and ways of putting them together that might occur often in books with style, but no one would talk that way. My only fear is that Dylan might read this, and since he is a contrarian, might decide to go all Ciceronian on us on his next album.

Other St. Jerome connections. The long-time singer Dion has sung a song about St. Jerome called “The Thunderer” with most of the words credited to a poet called Phyllis McGinly. Also, as I read through Jerome’s letters, I come across lost of phrases that lead directly to the songs of all-time Bluegrass Musicman Ralph Stanley (with whom Dylan recorded at least one song, “Lonesome River”). Now, I don’t know which songs Stanley wrote or which he picked up from the tradition. But compare the words from “Troublesome Waters” to St. Jerome.

Out on the high seas, there's dangers untold
There's an awful sea monster troubling my soul
While under the water there's an unseen hand
Guiding my boat to that better land

And St. Jerome:

Though the sea be now as smooth and smiling as a pond, though the huge monsters back be scarcely ruffled by a breath of air, yet that huge plain contains mountains within it. There is danger in its depths, the foe is lurking there. Stow your tackle, reef your sails, and let the cross which the yard-arm makes be fasted on your front. That stillness means a tempest. Licet in morem stagni fusum aequor adrideat, licet vix simma iacentis elementi spiritu terga crispentur, magnus hic campus montes habet, intus inclusum est periculum, intus est hostis. Expedite rudentes, vale suspendite. Crux antemnae figatur a frontibus: tranquillitas ista tempestas est. (Jerome, Letter XIV, 6).

Here is another Stanley-Jerome connection, from Stanley’s song “Looking for the Stone”:

My father found a stone, that was hewn from the mountain, Lord
My father found a stone, that came rolling down from heaven (/babylon)
My father found a stone that was hewn
It was tearing down the kingdom of this world, oh yeah
Tearing down the kingdom of this world

And from St. Jerome:

In another passage He is foretold to be “a stone cut out of the mountain without hands” (Daniel ii, 45), the prophet thereby signifying that He will be born a virgin of a virgin. Qui et in alio loco lapis praedicatur de monte sine manibus significante propheta virginum nasciturum de virgine (Jerome letter xxii.18).

And Ralph Stanley did a song called “TWO COATS”:

Two coats were before me
An old and a new
I could have either
so, what must I do?

One coat was ugly
and terribly torn
The other a new one
Had never been worn.

The old coat was earthly
and not fit to wear
I thought of it often
and shed many a tear

Then there was a clean one
presented to view
I laid off the old coat
and put on the new

I'll tell you the best thing
I ever did do
I laid off the old coat
and put on the new

And here is St. Jerome:

Let those stitch themselves coats who have lost that raiment which was woven from the top in one piece, and delight in the cries of infants lamenting that they were born as soon as they see the light of day. Consuant tunicas, qui inconsutam desursum tunicam perdiderunt, quos vagitus delectat infantum in ipso lucis exordio fletu lugente, quod nati sunt. (Jerome, letter xxii.18).

And the last also reminds me of from “Shelter from the Storm” “I heard new born babies wailing like a morning dove”.

And so, Tania, when you bring your cases before the courts, Cicero is fine before a judge, but Jerome is better before a jury.

A further thought Jerome-Dylan thought. I have thought that the song “I Dreamed I Saw Saint Augustine” might be better suited to the dream (except it was much more than a dream) that Jerome had, for he came back to the world of the living with tears in his eyes. To recount the most important part:

I was asked [in my vision] to state my condition and replied that I was a Christian. He who presided said: “You are telling lies; you are a Ciceronian, not a Christian. For where your treasure is, there will your heart also be.—Interrogatus condicionem Christianum me esse respondi: et ille, qui residebat, “Mentiris” ait, “Ciceronianus es, non Christianus; ubi thesaurus tuus, ibi et cor tuum.” (Jerome Letter xxii, 30).

Jerome writes that prior to this vision he used to fast, yet only to read Cicero afterward. He gave up everything, but could not give up his library. When he would read the prophets, their language seemed barbarous and harsh in comparison with the pagans, but “with my blind eyes I could not see the light: but I attributed the fault not to my eyes but to the sun”—Si quando in memet reversus prophetam legere coepissem, sermo horrebat incultus, et quia lumen caecis oculis non videbam, non oculorum putabam culpam esse, sed solis. Afterwards, he swore never to read pagan authors.

Anyways, here is the link to the lyrics to Dylan’s I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine. Now, Augustine and Jerome were contemporaries, knew each other, and although friends they sometimes had heated arguments in their letters. Jerome awoke from his vision with real bruises. He had actually been on his sickbed or deathbed. His eyes were full of tears. So that is why I am reminded of Jerome when I read Dylans words:

Oh, I awoke in anger,
So alone and terrified,
I put my fingers against the glass
And bowed my head and cried.

I don’t anywhere near have all Dylan albums. I bought “Empire Burlesque” a while ago, for the song “Dark Eyes”, after I saw it on Youtube. You see, it is not a loss to have free stuff out there, it leads people to buy stuff. First off, as a Canadian, “Empire Burlesque” might be something they would name a peeler parlour in the old days in Canada, when we still thought of ourselves as part of the British Empire, upon which the Sun never set. Anyways, there’s the song “When Night Comes Falling From the Sky”.

The song seems to be sung by a ghost who peeks through windows at his widow. He comes visiting at twilight. His widow is burning his letters. He is in eternity, and would like some help being released. Which might be like prayers for someone in purgatory.

Mostly what I do is make connections, which might only mean chance similarity. Anyways, one echo of the chorus “When the night comes falling from the sky” is found in Vergil, Aeneid, II, verse 5–10.

…ET IAM NOX UMIDA CAELO
PRAECIPITAT SUADENTQUE CADENTIA SIDERA SOMNOS.
And now the damp night’s falling from the sky
And dropping stars argue we should sleep.

Another is from an old cowboy song, from a book that Gord gave or lent to me. The feeling is the same, and the Dylan song refers to cowboyland (“It was on the northern border of Texas that I crossed the line”). Anyways, this song does not even list an author:

When the Curtains of Night are pinned back by the stars
And the beautiful moon sweeps the sky
When the soft evening breeze wafts the sleepy clouds by,
I’ll remember you, Love, in my prayers.
When the Curtains of Night are pinned back by the stars
And the Dewdrops of heaven kiss the rose,
When the birds of the daytime seek evening’s repose
I’ll remember you, Love, in my prayers.

Now the locus classicus in the Bible for the practice of praying for the dead is in the Book of Machabees II, chapter 12 (quoting here from the Douay-Rheims translation):

And they found under the coats of the slain, some of the donaries of the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbiddeth to the Jews: so that all plainly saw, that for this cause they were slain.
Then they all blessed the just judgment of the Lord, who had discovered the things that were hidden.
And so betaking themselves to prayers, they besought him, that the sin which had been committed might be forgotten. But the most valiant Judas exhorted the people to keep themselves from sin, forasmuch as they saw before their eyes what had happened, because of the sins of those that were slain.
And making a gathering, he sent twelve thousand drachms of silver to Jerusalem for sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead, thinking well and religiously concerning the resurrection.
(For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should rise again, it would have seemed superfluous and vain to pray for the dead,)
And because he considered that they who had fallen asleep with godliness, had great grace laid up for them.
It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.

Back to the song. I say the singer is a ghost because he says “I can see through your walls and I know you’re hurting”. He died in Texas: “It was on the northern border of Texas where I crossed the line”. He is already in eternity, and his widow thinks that he does not exist, except only as a memory: “For all eternity I think I will remember, that icy wind that’s howling in your eye. You will seek me and you’ll find me in the wasteland of your mind, when the night comes falling from the sky”. He asks for her prayers but does not expect it, because she does not believe in the next world: “This time I’m asking for freedom, freedom from a world that you deny, and you’ll give it to me now, I’ll take it anyhow, when the night comes falling from the sky”.

Is it only me, or are there a lot of musical echoes between “Lay, Lady, Lay”, and “It’s a Wonderful World”, the song most famously sung by Louis Armstrong?

I was investigating about the Book of Ecclesiaticus in the Bible (not Ecclesiastes). The book is sometimes called “Sirach”. The Catholic and Orthodox Church accept it as canonical. It was rejected as canonical, though still somehow respected as good, by the rabbis around the year 100 AD. The reason, it was only around in a Greek version, and their criterion was that canonical scripture had to be written in Hebrew. However, in the last 100 years or so, archaeologists have recovered about two thirds of the text in Hebrew, some parts at Massada, others in Egypt. The Greek and Hebrew texts basically match. The traditional story was that this book was translated in Greek from Hebrew, its author was a scribe in Jerusalem, and it was written and translated around 180 BC. The Dylan connection? I see big echoes from this book in the song “Shelter from the Storm”, and I have written about that above.

(April 2, 2009)
I write not in a mind to denigrate
The greatness of his Bobness, not at all.
The borrowing and echoes that I find
Are good and put together with such skill.
And here’s an echo that I heard today:
And as above, O Reader, you have seen
The melody and chords of “Lady, Lay”
They echo “What a wondrous world”
That Louis Armstrong sang back in the day,
so “Lay, Lady Lay” match the phrase,
of “I see Trees of Green, Red Roses too”.
Today I found another parallel:
“The Colours of the Rainbow… in the Sky”
Are sweetly echoed in Bob Dylan’s song:
“The colors in your mind”, and yet each song
Stands on its own, and each is truly great.

(May 5, 2009). I have found some more parallels between Dylan and Virgil. To recapitulate, it is my position that much of Dylan’s artistry is because he learned Latin in high school, and belonged to the Latin club. He was certainly equipped to absorb the techniques of Latin poetry.

In the song “Dark Eyes”, I seem to hear a rhythm or meter used by the poet Horace.

The song “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” can be matched to the following lines by Vergil:

ARMA AMENS CAPIO NEC SAT RATIONIS INARMIS
SED GLOMERARE MANUM BELLO ET CONCURRERE IN ACREM
CUM SOCIIS ARDENT ANIMI, FUROR IRAQUE MENTEM
PRAECIPITANT, PULCHRUMQUE MORI SUCCURIT IN ARMIS
(which means) Frantic I seize arms; yet little purpose there is in arms, and my heart burns to muster a force for battle and hasten with my comrades to the citadel. Rage and wrath drive my soul headlong and I think how glorious it is to die in arms. (Aeneid II, Loeb translation)

The hero Aeneas sees Troy burning all around him. He longs to pick up weapons and fight, and he does, but says to himself “I can’t use them anymore”. Then his mother, the goddess Venus, appears to him:

ASPICE NAMQUE OMNEM, QUAE NUNC OBDUCTA TUENTI
MORTALIS HEBETAT VISUS TIBI ET UMIDA CIRCUM
CALIGAT, NUBEM ERIPIAM; TUNE QUAE PARENTIS
IUSSA TIME NEU PRAECEPTIS PARERE RECUSA
(which means) Behold, for all the cloud, which now drawn over they sight, dulls they mortal vision and with dark pall enshrines thee, I will tear away. (Aeneid II) Loeb translation).

So, a dark cloud has come down and dulled his vision, that is, he cannot think clearly. His job is to leave and start up the nation again elsewhere, in Italy, and to start Rome. Anyways, three elements of the Dylan song are present here, (1) the laying down of useless arms (futility of armed conflict), (2) momma, (3) a dark cloud.

In “TOGETHER THROUGH LIFE”, there is the song “IT’S ALL GOOD”. The song lists things that go wrong, disasters, heartbreaks, and every verse ends with the phrase “It’s all good!”. I think Right Wing Bob already pointed this out, but it is a biblical thought. Or, he is making fun of people who say “It’s all good” to much, because there is just a soupcon of sarcasm in the voice there.

Anyways, my attention was drawn once to this passage from the Prophet Amos: “Shall the trumpet sound in a city, and the people not be afraid? Shall there be evil in a city, which the Lord hath not done?” (Amos 3:6), and “… And I will set my eyes upon them for evil, and not for good.” (Amos 9:4). The point is this. God is good. He creates things and then sees that they are good. Evil is an absence. But the point is this. We call good those things we find pleasant, convenient to us, fitting our invented purposes. However, on a wider perspective, the world is governed by Divine Providence, and even misfortunes that procede from the twisted will of men are ultimately good, that is, they are willed by the Good God.

Album: TOGETHER THROUGH LIFE; Song: I FEEL A CHANGE COMIN’s ON. I hear a little echo here of Longfellow’s “Evangeline” in the Dylan line: “And i see my baby comin’/she's walking with the village priest”. I know, that’s a long shot, but generally I find Longfellow and Dylan to be in harmony with each other. About which I wrote above somewhere.

At some point I am going to start a separate page about ANAPESTS. These are three syllable words or phrases (or poetic feet) where the strongest accent is on the third syllable. The most famous anapest in Bob Dylan’s songs is in “Tom Thumbs Blues”, in the line: “When you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue”, where the last syllable of Av-e-NUE is really hammered out. It is something the Bard does rather often, and it gives a slightly French atmosphere to the work, maybe somewhat Cajun. Well, I live on an avenue, and we usually swing our punches and stomp our feet on the first syllable.

Now, in English, accents can shift, but if the singer puts the syllable on a strong beat like the first or third beat out of four, then we may call it an anapest. Now, it is a tricky business, and some of my fractions of thousands of readers may say that some of these are dactyls, or amphimacers, but they sound like anapests to me. So, to get started, let’s see how many anapests we can find in the new Dylan Album:

Now, for reasons that I have since forgot, I wanted anapests, lost of anapests, and it seemed like there were so few. So I read the entire dictionary, and tried to find every single one. Here is a sampling:

guillotine, Halloween, Gretna green, limousine, magazine
gaucherie, guarantee, guarani, garnishee, libelee
grenadier, fusilier, fusileer, bucanneer, racketeer, gazeteer, gondolier
fusillade, gasconade, lemonade, promenade, masquerade, marinade
Chimpanzee, deep blue sea
gardyloo, rendez-vous, Kangaroo
gardemanger
franctireur
Japanese, journalese, legalese, Johnsonese
statuesque, Lincolnesque
legionnaire, laissez-faire
leatherette, serviette, launderette, cigarette, majorette, maisonette, marquisette
mayonnaise, just a phase, lyonnaise
introduce, mass-produce
violin, mandolin, mortal sin, just begin
Mary Jane, feel my pain, just explain
sex-appeal, manchineel

(May 2009). Anyways, I came across a fleeting Dylan-reference on Southpark. It was unmistakable, because two cameo characters called “Dylan” and “Sarah” appear, a farming couple. Read the transcript here: www.twiztv.com

(June 2009). Not much in the way of new discoveries. Just a little ranting. When I must get up early on a Sunday morning, my radio alarm is set to the CBC. Whatever show it is, the playlist, it almost entirely consists of Bob-Dylan imitators of the sort I don't like. Let me enumerate. (1) Use a simple chord structure; (2) mix in vagueness and disconnection in the lyrics; (3) try to make the voice edgy, but in a predictable and boring way; (4) etc.

There is one thing I understand. And it is this. It is a mystery how one verse of a song is connected to the rest. How does the Bard decide? However, if you take a single verse or unit of a couple verses, those verses are crafted with extreme care. There is more poetry and hard work crammed into one verse of a Bob Dylan song than in the entire life-time and career of any of his witless imitators. That is why verses quickly become memes that are repeated and repeated everywhere. Now, the inferior song-writers think they can pull off the same trick by simply imitating the disconnection between one verse and the next. It is known, that when Dylan has put together an album and was working in the studio, he might move a lyric from one song to another. So, that means that a particular song is like a collage of pictures, each one standing on its own. What the inferior song-writers do not do is labor over each verse, turn it over and over, change the order, until it is exact. I imagine many think they can pull it off by getting stoned and spontaneously spouting something. But Ezra Pound took a year to perfect the following short poem:

The apparition of these faces in a crowd
Petals on a wet, black bough

(The above short poem, by the way, reminds me of a line from a Dylan song, “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven”: namely: «People on the platforms/ Waiting for the trains/ I can hear their hearts a-beatin'/ Like pendulums swinging on chains») Ezra Pound had an inspiration but it took so much time to flesh it out. So, six months to write two lines. I am sure he worked on lots of other stuff in the meantime, but there you go. Now, it is said that Dylan met Leonard Cohen in Paris, and Cohen asked Dylan how long it took to write a certain very good song, maybe “Every Grain of Sand”, and he said about twenty minutes. Cohen flabbergastedly said that it took him a very long time, which he specified, to write “Hallelujah” (or some other song). However, let us understand what Bob Dylan probably had to mean. One learns thousands of songs, stores them in a memory that is organized in ways that the dull cannot imagine. One labours to come with individual verses. Books become full. One plays music before thousands of people every second day, year after year. To “write a song”, is to pull a lot of pre-existing pieces together. When I look at “Every Grain of Sand”, I can be sure that those lines did not assemble themselves into one song without prodigious preparation. Somewhere out there there is a video of the young Dylan reading some signs on a store front. He reads some words on the sign, then turns away from the signs and faces the camera, repeats the words, then starts jumbling them in new ways. Obviously having fun, giggling while he does it. This redigestion of the words all around him seems to be a standing technique in the writing of songs. It is not plagiarism (as someone today thought I was saying when I demonstrated how “Lay Lady Lay” is so close (and yet so far) from “What a Wonderful World”. It is like a cow ruminating. A cow eats grass. The grass goes into the first stomach. Then the cow chews the grass again after it has been soften up by the first digestion, then swallows it again. So, the Bard keeps his ears and eyes open. He contemplates it, digests it, brings it up and speaks it, digests that, and in this way after much contemplation produces something original and delightful, but somehow connected with the food of thought. Now, I forget exactly who provided this metaphor. I think a monk spiritual writer, who compared the meditation of a monk to the rumination of a cow, commenting on a psalm that makes this comparison, perhaps “I will meditate with my lips”. So, the final song may come together in a very short time, but it is the product of long meditation. Which reminds one of the following line from a song I like, “Ain’t Talkin’”:

The whole world is filled with speculation
The whole wide world which people say is round
They will tear your mind away from contemplation
They will jump on your misfortune when you're down

Probably I said this above, but at the moment, I see the poet-lyricist Thomas Moore (1779–1852) as a parallel to Dylan. Moore, who is Ireland’s national bard, as Robbie Burns is Scotland’s, was and is respected in the world of “serious poetry”, and he was Lord Byron’s literary executor. However, no matter how “serious” he wrote, he never strayed too far from popular or folk songs. I could imagine him scrubbing certain lines because they were too academic, and too far removed from the way people normally talk, sing, or feel. Moore wrote and published many songs, or poems, that were set to traditional Irish melodies. Plenty we still sing today. Moore was renowned for his performances, which he continued until disabled by a stroke late in life. I am guessing that means that he must have still been performing maybe at the age of 80, something he loved to do.

Lately been discovering Johny Mercer. He is known as a lyricist, namely, all the Johny Mercer songs I have seen on paper have credits to composers such as Mancini. But on emusic.com I found an hour-long track of Johny Mercer talking, singing, and playing the piano. Anyways, as a lyricist he had several features that Dylan has. First, he had an ear for the American language. He never gets too far away from the language of the people. He was from the South, and he draws on the dialects, and there are hints of the world and work of Mark Twain (“…my huckleberry friend…”) and Stephen Foster. Second, his lyrics are always witty, never sappy, and the humor is often tinged with darkness, like a film noir. He could slip in wit (“the Firth of Forth, or the Fourth of Firth”) and move on before you knew what hit you. Third, his lyrics had homages to the “serious” literary world outside of popular music. For example, in “Glowworm”, he slips in the phrase “forest primeval”, taken directly from Longfellow’s “Evangeline”. Serious literary reference, but “Evangeline” is probably standard high-school reading in the United States. I think I found one homage to that poem in Dylan’s latest album, but I’ll have to think about that more. Anyways, if you appreciate Dylan as a lyricist, you will appreciate Johny Mercer.

Now to restate. I find all sorts of references, or homages, to great authors in Dylan’s songs. This does not in the least mean that I think that such references are plagiarism. There was a time that you could not get an audience unless what you wrote consisted mostly of references to earlier classical literature (Homer, Vergil, the Sacred Scripture). Now, that song in “Blood on the Tracks”, called “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”. It’s not much to go on, but I sense an echo of Vergil. Dylan sings: “Flowers on the hillside, bloomin’ crazy, Crickets talkin’ back and forth in rhyme”. Vergil (Eclogue II) writes:

To woods and hills pour forth his artless strains.
”Cruel Alexis, heed you naught my songs?
Have you no pity? you’ll drive me to my death.
Now even the cattle court the cooling shade
And the green lizard hides him in the thorn:
Now for tired mowers, with the fierce heat spent,
Pounds Thestilis her mess of savoury herbs,
Wild thyme and garlic. I, with none beside,
Save hoarse cicalas shrilling through the brake,
Still track your footprints 'neath the broiling sun.

A “Cicala” is a Cicada, but it is not a big leap from a Cicada to a Cricket. We have the hillside there. And the situation described in Eclogue II is “kind of like Verlaine and Rimbaud”. The references to plants “purple clover, queen anne’s lace” in Dylan find lots of echoes in Vergil. I am aware that there are references to American folk songs as well in there, but that just makes it all the better. Sometimes I wonder whether, if the Bard were to find all this guesswork and associating that is done here, would it seem annoying? Oh well. If you pose riddles to people, what do you expect?

I think I ranted above about the witless. Definitely Dylan is not witless, but witty in the best sense. He has his wits about him. And I sense the same thing in Neko Case. I sense witlessness sometimes in singers and television personalities who, being brainwashed themselves, repeat political platitudes and get laughs. For example, David Letterman is sometimes witless, sometimes a little witty. But, of the whole bunch of talk show people, Craig Ferguson is the best. He always has his wits about him. He is totally immersed in the moment, but at the same time has a distance to what he is doing that is a little cynical at times. He can throw away the script with no problem. His jokes are often very daring, more daring than Letterman (his boss), or anyone else. However, I cannot recall him every making easy points by making fun of religion, or people’s beliefs, or their patriotism. He is a funny man, but a serious man. Now, this is something that I want to see, is that Dylan would appear on the Craig Ferguson show. So, both of you, make my day.

Craig Ferguson has mentioned Dylan once or twice. He said that Dylan has a voice like an outboard motor, then quickly expressed his admiration. Ferguson, I understand, was a musician in the world of punk rock for a while.

Another thing. I have listened to the Theme Time Radio Hour or whatever its called. I am not going to get digital satellite subscription radio. Not because it is not good, but because radio goes with driving a car, or otherwise sitting in one spot at a set time, and I can drive but don’t have a car. It involves setting aside a chunk of time to be in one spot, but that does not suit the way I work. Recordings of the Theme Time are available here and there on the Internet. But that makes me feel guilty. Dylan, Sirius, and the artists he plays all deserve to be remunerated. So, please make MP3s available of those radio hours so I can buy them, listen at my leisure, and feel good that I am doing the right things. Maybe each hour can be packaged as an album with several tracks. But if you do this, don’t cut out the commentary for the sake of the songs.

On a completely unrelated note. The famous song of World-War Two, “There’ll be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover” was written by Americans for the British. The problem with the song is that bluebirds are not native to England. Nonetheless, there are many Britons who want to make that song the British National Anthem. It is one of the best songs every written, and deserves it, despite the dearth of bluebirds.

Again, about Craig Ferguson. A funny man to be sure, but with an edge of seriousness that the others in his trade would never display. For example, last night (July 28, 2009) he was interviewing a female journalist working in Afghanistan. She spoke of how journalists were being targeted. Craig commented how the “bad guys” always try to shut down the free press, like “Stalin”, and “Mao, the Chinese Communists”. That is refreshing, that someone actually and matter-of-factly knows to call good good and call evil evil.

Back to Dylan’s work. I have a feeling the lyrics to his songs as posted on Bobdylan.com are transcribed by someone, or they are playing mind-games. I got the lyrics for “Tangled Up in Blue”. There is this verse: ”I lived with them on Montague Street … In a basement down the stairs, … There was music in the cafes at night And revolution in the air.“. The thing is that I always heared “I lived with Emma—”. So, cafés, revolution, Montague Street (Brooklyn). Makes me think of Emma Goldman, anarchist. There are other departures in the lyrics from what I actually hear. (I am not the only one to wonder about an Emma-Goldman-connection here, as I discovered when I was Geugling the Veb). So, if there is a historical setting for the song, it might be around 1890 or 1900.

Another one. Take it or leave it. I see some themes from Homer’s Odyssey in “Like a Rolling Stone”. The Big Clue is “the mystery tramp”, because when Ulysses returned home, he came in the disguise of a beggar. For years in his wanderings he had “no direction home”. When he came home, his wife and son were dealing with suitor’s who were drinking and comsuming his wealth in constant parties, and so the song says “all the pretty people, drinking, thinking they’ve got it made, exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things”. But when Ulysses takes his revenge, there is no compromise, “he’s not selling any alibis”. Of course, it is impossible to make everything fit nicely to this theory. But if one were going to make a stage play of Ulysses, this song would go well with the scenes of Ulysses’ return.

(September 2009) I do believe that I ruminated above on the song: “Ain’t Talking’… ”. Well, here is some grass hay to be chewed. Take the following verse:

Well, it’s bright in the heavens and the wheels are flyin’
Fame and honor never seem to fade
The fire gone out but the light is never dyin’
Who says I can't get heavenly aid?

I was reminded of some scholastic theology I came across, by Saint Thomas Aquinas as he commented on the psalms:

quia in die judicii virtute divina ignis dividetur, quia ardor sine luce erit in igne involvente reprobos. ignis splendens sine ardore erit ad gloriam electorum. … [which roughly translates as] Because in the day of judgement, by the divine power, the fire will be divided, because burning heat without light will be in the fire that enfolds the wicked. Shining fire without heat will be for the glory of the chosen ones.

This commentary goes with the verse: “The voice of the Lord heweth out flames of fire” (Ps. 28, or Ps. 29, depending on how they are divided up). In turn Thomas recalls Job 31 verse 12: “For it is a fire that consumeth unto destruction, and would root out all mine increase.” and the commentary of Basil the Great upon that text.

Now, I am eagerly waiting for the new Christmas Album by Bob Dylan, due out in October. I have a small wish, that for one song at least he might use the voice that he used in singing “Blue Moon”. And that when they go out Christmas carolling, they knock on the doors in my neighborhood. (a little later …). I just discovered, though rightwingbob.com samples of the upcoming Christmas Album. And my above wishes (mutatis mutandis) are fulfilled. Bob Dylan is singing the songs straight. Albeit, it is the voice of one who smokes a cigar once and a while, but that is just fine with me. It just proves, to all the detractors, that HE CAN SING, and he can sing better than you can! He once said, as a youth, that he could hold a note longer than Caruso. It wasn’t a joke.

Now, to plug and promote another artist or group that I really like: http://language-arts.net/. Kristen Cudmore is the core of “Language Arts”. She combines some rapid-fire and crisp lyrics that are very intriguing and witty in the best sense, and some classical guitar riffs. You will find various links to music on the site.

(October 2009) Just ordered “Chrismas in the Heart”, and Kristen Cudmore’s latest album with the band “Language Arts”—the album is “Where Were You in the Wild?”. Ooh! It is so pleasant to wait with anticipation by the mail-box for CDs! The wait will be a little longer, because the Language Arts album does not released until almost the end of the month.

Anyhow, you did not come here to find out what albums I ordered. I mentioned above the Irish poet-bard-songwriter of the 1800s, Thomas Moore. I found a parallel, a homage if you will, between Dylan’s “When the Deal Goes Down” and Thomas Moore’s hit of the early 1800s (still sung) “Bendemeer’s Stream”. First, the text of the Thomas Moore song:

There's a bower of roses by BENDEMEER's stream,
And the nightingale sings round it all the day long;
In the time of my childhood 'twas like a sweet dream,
To sit in the roses and hear the bird's song.

That bower and its music, I never forget,
But oft when alone in the bloom of the year
I think--is the nightingale singing there yet?
Are the roses still bright by the calm BENDEMEER?

No, the roses soon withered that hung o'er the wave,
But some blossoms were gathered while freshly they shone.
And a dew was distilled from their flowers that gave
All the fragrance of summer when summer was gone.

Thus memory draws from delight ere it dies
An essence that breathes of it many a year;
Thus bright to my soul, as 'twas then to my eyes,
Is that bower on the banks of the calm BENDEMEER!

And here is the Dylan words from “When the Deal Goes Down”:

Well, I picked up a rose and it poked through my clothes
I followed the winding stream
I heard the deafening noise, I felt transient joys
I know they're not what they seem
In this earthly domain, full of disappointment and pain
You'll never see me frown
I owe my heart to you, and that's sayin' it true
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down

The roses, the winding stream, the passing of time, nostalgia, a promise of loyalty and love. Thomas Moore’s song “Bendemeer’s Stream” actually was part of a book-long poem called ”Lallah Rookh“, which was a love story, so the song has a context. I don’t know how the song migrated out of the book, but before I found it in the book, I thought there must be some beautiful stream called Bendemeer in Ireland. Actually, I think it is Persia.

O-k. Now I have finally had my chance to listen to one complete track of “Christmas in the Heart”, and I listened to the last one, “Little Town of Bethlehem”. I had been to the Royal Legion, where there is an open mike, and they play real old country music. I had a couple of barley sandwiches. And I applauded for everything, because it was all so good. So, when I listened (alone) later to this track, my reaction was to want to applaud loudly. As the attentive reader (all two or three) will note, I wished that Dylan would use the same voice on some tracks as when he sung “Blue Moon”—classic crooning. It was there! And the notes and timing were respected. But there was more. There was also something at moments from Louis Armstrong, from Blind Willie Johnson (one of my faves), all in one. I won’t sit down and listen to this album all at once. I want to listen maybe to a track a day. It is like fine liquor, you don’t guzzle a whole bottle all at once.

(Weeks later). Actually, I haven’t listened to the rest yet. My brother is coming on Christmas Eve. I am going to try and find some Chartreuse. And we will sit down and listen to it, and maybe sing along. And then go to Midnight Mass, or maybe we will listen after. And then drink the Chartreuse. Anyways, I’ve been thinking—maybe an adult can believe in Santa Claus. After all, the saints in heaven, as we experience, have specialized tasks or specialties. Saint Anthony really does help in finding lost articles. Saint Jude really does help in seemingly hopeless cases. I could tell you stories. So, why not Saint Nicholas, or Saint Valentine? So, Saint Nicholas pray for us.