I'm absolutely not saying that all creative works need to have everything laid out clear, but rather that there needs to be a two-way line of communication between the artist and the reader. The sum of themes, settings, details, language, etc needs to add up to something that tells me something about myself and something about the artist.
Sorry, but I do need to unpack this a little. What you're describing isn't what I understand as a two-way line of communication. To me, a two-way line of communication is where the artist tells you something, and you tell the artist something. I didn't see how that was possible.
That's why I was confused. I understand you more clearly now.
Heh. She's actually pretty good, except she's playing the original Hendrix leads note-for-note, but too quickly and rote, because she's at that point not hearing the backing structure, or something. But she actually plays workable rhythm, and is solid (but again rote) with some fills -- again rushes others a bit as if just trying to get through them. Can she lock in with a band? She sings in tune.
Her left-right coordination is good.
Also, her breasts are large, which I don't care about. I like 'em pretty, with hairy legs.
The transition awkwardness, I think, is the result of playing the lead parts with no backing. It's both hard to play leads without another part as a time reference and hard to listen to without the rhythm section to put the lead into context.
She's got a lot of videos up going back several years. A lot of Hendrix. She's actually pretty good and has a great voice, but I don't think she plays professionally. (Studied finance, apparently.) I think on some of the covers she might be wearing earphones which helps with the timing thing.
Sorry, but I do need to unpack this a little. What you're describing isn't what I understand as a two-way line of communication. To me, a two-way line of communication is where the artist tells you something, and you tell the artist something. I didn't see how that was possible.
That's why I was confused. I understand you more clearly now.
Ah, I considered the "teaching" as a hypothetical conversation with the artist.
I borrowed the idea from more general thoughts on decontextualizing literature - I think it was Bart Ehrman who mused over whether we could easily decontextualize the teachings of Jesus the Apocalyptic preacher and apply them as moral maxims today. His wife, a professor of Medieval English literature or somesuch argued that the two-way aspect was necessary - if we want to learn from the teachings of Jesus today, we must let him speak to us from his context and tell us something about us and our time, but we must also "speak back to him" about his place and the role of his teachings in his own society, from what we know of him and have learnt from his views, ourselves, our time and context. Only in that hypothetical dialectic, the view asserts, can the inherent value of a moral teaching or philosophical insight be assessed.
It's a view I endorse and consider widely applicable.
Your key to empathy here is to realize that the "joker" in All Along the Watchtower is none other than Dylan himself, and his alienation speaks to yours, Mr. TubbaBlubba nice person with the high IQ and the inexplicable interest in fashion glaven in fact the mutual interest in constructions of personae almost suggests an instinctive rivalry
Your key to empathy here is to realize that the "joker" in All Along the Watchtower is none other than Dylan himself, and his alienation speaks to yours, Mr. TubbaBlubba nice person with the high IQ and the inexplicable interest in fashion glaven in fact the mutual interest in constructions of personae almost suggests an instinctive rivalry
Isn't it a running joke that Dylan always plays AATW just because the phrase "There must be somewhere out of here, there's too much confusion, I can't get no relief" expresses his feelings during live performances?
I do kind of like the idea of Dylan having that insight when first writing the song, thinking "screw it, nothing to do about it" and just throwing the second half together as something "Dylanesque" without particular meaning.
It's a very meta take on it, but it is a bit more endearing than sheer laziness.
Your key to empathy here is to realize that the "joker" in All Along the Watchtower is none other than Dylan himself, and his alienation speaks to yours, Mr. TubbaBlubba nice person with the high IQ and the inexplicable interest in fashion glaven in fact the mutual interest in constructions of personae almost suggests an instinctive rivalry
Some guy called Per Westgard of the Nobel Academy has called Bob Dylan "impolite and arrogant" for failing to acknowledge the fact that he has been awarded a Nobel Prize. I find such a pronouncement to itself be impolite and arrogant. Bob Dylan did not ask for the award and I think it is impolite and arrogant of Per Westgard to imply that Dylan has a duty to answer to him and his fellow academics. Seriously, who is the one suffering most from arrogance?
I absolutely hope that Dylan does not acknowledge the Nobel Awards Committee at all.
Well, I am sure that in the Sixties he was given to being impolite and arrogant. But that was the beginning of an era of youthful attitude, and given that he was a successful rock star in his early twenties surrounded by booze, drugs and lots and lots of beautiful, available women, then in those circumstances show me someone who isn't impolite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him.
But he's 75 years old now, and while I daresay it would be possible to find times in which he has been impolite or arrogant since then, I think it would be ungenerous to think of those things defining him.
It's possible that he cultivates an air of mystique by being sullen all the time and uncommunicative with people who turn up to his shows. He has a lot of fans who have the same kind of devotion to him as the more unhinged Star Trek obsessives. Are they being taken for a ride in the same way that a lot of people claim to get meaning from writers such as Foucault or Nietzsche whose impenetrable prose often draws people in wondering if they can unlock some kind of secret riddle that doesn't really exist? Are his appearances at Awards shows where he looks bored or says weird things indicative of his arrogant desire to appear better than everyone else?
Instead, I think it is quite likely that he is genuinely uncomfortable with the limelight. I think that he really doesn't know what to say when somebody talks to him about how much of a brilliant messiah he is. But at the same time, I think he knows that people like what he does, and I think he enjoys making music. If he wanted to he could just stay at home, but he tours the world for something like 100 nights a year. He doesn't do it because he needs the money (unlike Leonard Cohen). Isn't it possible that he does it because he knows people want to hear him sing live?
As for the Nobel Prize Academy. Presumably they expected him to care otherwise they wouldn't have awarded him the prize. But expecting him to care is different from demanding he ought to care.
I don't know, really. I think he's conflicted with disdain for overdevoted fans, yet being incredibly easily slighted from any kind of criticism. My feeling is that he does have a messianic complex and feeds that by touring, but that he thinks his most devoted fans worship him for the wrong reasons. Maybe he both feels the fans should see it's all about the music and not about him, but still feels superior for "getting it" in a way nobody else does. I can't say I really get him.
And say what you will about Leonard Cohen touring due to needing money (the tour was amazing, by the way, and far beyond what I expected from an 80-year old Cohen, the way he danced, fell on his knees, the sheer stamina...), he LOVES his audience no matter what. He loves hearing what people think about him and his songs, he self-deprecates, he's humble and accepting. He even loves that people still want to hear Hallelujah despite being a bit sick of it himself.
Okay, maybe I shouldn't be too harsh on Nietzsche. Actually, I chose him and Foucault because these are writers I like to go back to to try and figure out as if they are a riddle. I keep in mind that some of their writings that confuse me might do so by design, and that trying to understand such writing is necessarily an exercise in futility.
When I read Nietzsche, I think of myself as basically a nice reasonable guy who needs a little shaking up. It's a little jolt of what-if.
What if I had grown up immersed in Protestant Christianity and German culture, and was about twice as smart as I am, and about twice as sick, and four times as lonely? What if my father figure was Wagner, and I actually had a close relationship with him -- instead of a pallid distant relationship with, say, Gunther Schuller?
I don't know, really. I think he's conflicted with disdain for overdevoted fans, yet being incredibly easily slighted from any kind of criticism. My feeling is that he does have a messianic complex and feeds that by touring, but that he thinks his most devoted fans worship him for the wrong reasons. Maybe he both feels the fans should see it's all about the music and not about him, but still feels superior for "getting it" in a way nobody else does. I can't say I really get him.
And say what you will about Leonard Cohen touring due to needing money (the tour was amazing, by the way, and far beyond what I expected from an 80-year old Cohen, the way he danced, fell on his knees, the sheer stamina...), he LOVES his audience no matter what. He loves hearing what people think about him and his songs, he self-deprecates, he's humble and accepting. He even loves that people still want to hear Hallelujah despite being a bit sick of it himself.
Well, I very much like Leonard Cohen for his music and also for the person that I think he is. Dylan is publicly cold and aloof, whereas Cohen comes across as warm and considerate of others. But I tend to think that in Dylan's case he is prone to anxiety.
Oddly enough, the only one I've really actually read on the list is Heidegger (just Parmenides). He is of course very irksome apart from being a Holocaust-endorsing Nazi (though I love the German and Greek languages myself I don't think they're unique...) and my German isn't good enough to read such a book so I had to read a very literal translation. While I find his overall thesis on compound words and etymology shaping reality beyond absurd (and by the way Martin, did the Jews bring the HOLO-caust or the holo-CAUST upon themselves?) his writing contains some nuggets of, in my opinion, very profound insight on the nature of philosophy and experience.
But reading most of it, and sorry for the following crude imagery, I just imagined Heidegger sitting naked in on the floor in a room surrounded by mirrors, using one hand to write and the other to masturbate.
I suppose I can see a parallel with Dylan. Regardless of that, as for Heidegger, I think that he would have benefitted endlessly from accepting that writing clearly and pedagogically and using arguments that are as clear and simple as possible is an utmost virtue, not a sin. He possessed brilliance, but in my view chose not to exercise it.
Nietzsche I've actually been meaning to read (from what I have seen I agree with you that he is clear) but I figured I should read Kant first and probably learn German well enough for both.
That's one reading of him that may be true. I don't know either.
Well, I very much like Leonard Cohen for his music and also for the person that I think he is. Dylan is publicly cold and aloof, whereas Cohen comes across as warm and considerate of others. But I tend to think that in Dylan's case he is prone to anxiety.
Yeah, I think your take on Dylan as anxious could be correct. Maybe with a lean toward what some call "sensitive-introvert narcissism" (Richard Nixon is sometimes taken as a cardinal example). That is, an immense need to be admired combined with sensitivity to rather than disregard for criticism, grudge-keeping and introversion; rather than the more well-known boastful "bully-type" narcissist (Trump, LBJ).
Yeah, I think your take on Dylan as anxious could be correct. Maybe with a lean toward what some call "sensitive-introvert narcissism" (Richard Nixon is sometimes taken as a cardinal example). That is, an immense need to be admired combined with sensitivity to rather than disregard for criticism, grudge-keeping and introversion; rather than the more well-known boastful "bully-type" narcissist (Trump, LBJ).
I think if Leonard Cohen had won this award instead of Dylan, there would have been a few raised eyebrows but a general acknowledgment that even if it was a slightly strange choice to give it to someone better known as a songwriter that at least it was a better choice than someone like ... ha ha ... Bob Dylan! Only the Dylan fanatics would have disagreed, and most people would accept that Leonard Cohen could at least do with the cash.
I was referring to a specific line: a watchtower is not a road or a path, and you don't really do things along it.
I think the bit about princes in the watchtower is some biblical imagery or something.
The most well-known feature of the piece is its feeling of unfinishedness - it's just a setup; there just isn't enough material there to really justify an interpretation. Many Dylan fans take this as brilliance - I take it as Dylan not even trying anymore, knowing the fans would take it on faith.
I'm not sure if you are aware of this, but there seems to be a commonly cited criticism among Dylanologists by a guy called Dave Van Ronk:
That whole artistic mystique is one of the great traps of this business, because down that road lies unintelligibility. Dylan has a lot to answer for there, because after a while he discovered that he could get away with anything—he was Bob Dylan and people would take whatever he wrote on faith. So he could do something like "All Along the Watchtower," which is simply a mistake from the title on down: a watchtower is not a road or a wall, and you can't go along it.
Yeah, I think your take on Dylan as anxious could be correct. Maybe with a lean toward what some call "sensitive-introvert narcissism" (Richard Nixon is sometimes taken as a cardinal example). That is, an immense need to be admired combined with sensitivity to rather than disregard for criticism, grudge-keeping and introversion; rather than the more well-known boastful "bully-type" narcissist (Trump, LBJ).
I think if Leonard Cohen had won this award instead of Dylan, there would have been a few raised eyebrows but a general acknowledgment that even if it was a slightly strange choice to give it to someone better known as a songwriter that at least it was a better choice than someone like ... ha ha ... Bob Dylan! Only the Dylan fanatics would have disagreed, and most people would accept that Leonard Cohen could at least do with the cash.
Probably. Well, Cohen might have objected a little and spent his speech on making fun of himself, telling silly anecdotes.
It's possible that he was on the table, but perhaps the Academy didn't find Cohen's poetic expressions novel enough. His varying combinations of depression, self-deprecation, apocalyptic visions, the ever-present interweaving of romance and faith, religious rituals and sex, stories that may be occasionally enigmatic but almost always clear* in (often colloquial) language and theme... they are distinct and often great.
I don't know, Cohen is my favourite poet, and his word choices are hypnotically euphonic, but is his poetry novel and inventive? Some might say no.
*Apart from the endearingly silly Jazz Police, the one song of his I find a bit too impenetrable to be great poetry on the face of it is the early Master Song. I always enjoyed it for its hypnotic quality, but was annoyed by the fact that it's clear in setting (a strange triangle drama that represents something else) and has enough interwoven details, specific symbolism and wordplay and structure that it's unlikely to just be a mysterious story he made up on the fly. I thought a lot about it over the years, figuring it must be something pretty personal inspiring it. The one character we get details about is The Master whom the woman grows obsessed with. I decided to take the line "a German Shepherd to walk" to be deliberate hinting at The Master's relation to WWII/Holocaust/etc. First I thought the Woman in the story might be a Jewess who turns away from Judaism (the Narrator, Cohen) after the Holocaust, turning to the Christ-like Master instead, but some of that made no sense, because for example the Master "never made her explain or talk... about who had a word and who had a rock..." i.e. Christian scriptural controversies, specifically catholic/Protestant ones. Why would the Narrator care?
So I figured, what if the narrator is not Cohen or something he'd be an apt symbol for, but instead Christianity, maybe Catholicism specifically, and he's taking that POV to try to understand something. That led me to the only interpretation that ever clicked for me:
The Master is a numberless man in a chair, just come back from the war. He hands the core of the fruit of knowledge, locked away by the narrator, to the woman, previously a devoted Christian; but Christianity is somehow sick and she treats the Master as a christ-like figure, her devotion illustrated as a physically intimate relationship. He gives her a "German Shepherd to walk... never once makes her explain or talk..." about details of Christian dogma. So if we take German Shepherd in a semiliteral mixed-metaphor sort of way, it could be the idea of a German Christ who doesn't care about details or dogma, just endless devotion even when he fails. Together they rise above all that would "drive the crowd from the stands" in his aeroplane. The "final wisps of pain" are erased by "an ape with angel glands" - a merely human, an ape with a soul - using the "music of rubber bands" - speech.
After this, the woman is endlessly devoted to and aroused by her Master, in an animalistic way that the narrator, oppressed and imprisoned by the Master, finds repulsive and unbecoming. But we find out that the Narrator once "loved your master perfectly", taught him everything, sent her to him, to teach them both something new - he was taught how she'd return to the narrator, "no matter what [the Master] said, no matter what [the woman] would do.
We get a repeat of the first verse except the narrator is now sure she was told the things he keeps lockef away. He doubts her when she said "he took [her] travelling" and she comes back with wine and bread.
My conclusion: If it isn't totally obvious from my description, the master is none other than Hitler; the Woman represents the German people, or maybe specifically the Bavarian Catholics/Christians who were his popular base. The core of the fruit is perhaps the capacity for destruction by humanity, or even the depth of Bavaria's centuries-old toxic antisemitism. He gives the people the idea of a Führer to worship as the traditional alliance between Bavarian Catholic politicians and Prussian protestant military nobles is weakening; thus the Narrator being "sick in bed". Hitler eventually obtains absolute power with the reluctant support of both traditional power bases, becoming a Golden String that the people hangs from. He oppresses the Church - the bed of snow -, which remains ambivalently accepting but also one of the few institutions that resist takeover by the NSDAP. And Hitler himself was raised a Catholic, dearly loved by his mother, and he was ultimately given power by the Zentrum-Himdenburg alliance.
And so after the war, supposedly having been "taken travelling" by Hitler, not caring to speak of the hardly-secret genocide that so many ordinary people enabled and participated in, they return to the Narrator, their Catholic or generally Christian faith and political dealings, who is apathetically cynical about having set it all in motion.
Nobody comes out looking very good in all of this, and that I think may be part of the reason for why Cohen made it largely obscure, and it speaks from a first-person he tries to understand but cannot identify with and does not want to be identified with. Other reasons would be the personal nature of it, and the memory of the painful experience he must have had realizing the implications of the war he grew up hearing about. Certainly it fits with his later often cynical or fatalist allusions to the Holocaust
This interpretation of course took a lot of work and I have no idea if it's right. There could be many others, more abstract things. Maybe it really is stream-of-consciousness. Maybe the narrative is a mixture of several events. But this is how I understand it and what unlocks its true ability to move me.
I also, however, think that it is too obscure to be great poetry, as nuch as I, a fan, have enjoyed tryimg to see through it.
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