Bob Dylan played yesterday, April 10th, in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), Vietnam. He delivered a set list that was in keeping with the kinds of shows he’s been doing the last couple of years. Reportedly, the venue was “half-empty” (or, as one may prefer to think, half-full) but this didn’t prevent Bob from delivering a relatively rare second encore, with the song Forever Young. This is the full list of songs he played: Continue reading “Bob Dylan in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam”
Bob Dylan’s song “Spirit on the Water” from his album Modern Times has been mentioned a few times on this website. It’s difficult for this listener to hear the tune any other way but as a kind of playful love song to God, or perhaps more interestingly as a playful dialogue between the creature and the Creator. I don’t think there’s any need (and at any rate this writer doesn’t have the appetite) to go down line by line and impose a rigorous interpretation. Each time I hear the song I hear something a little different, and that’s one of the great joys of Dylan’s work, after all.
One verse that has gotten close attention here previously, however, is the penultimate verse, the lyric of which goes like this:
I wanna be with you in paradise
And it seems so unfair
I can’t go to paradise no more
I killed a man back there
This gets one thinking just because it seems wrong, or seems like a puzzle demanding to be solved. On the face of it, if the singer is talking about joining God in heaven, then why is he saying that it’s impossible for him to do it, due to the killing of a man? It is biblically pretty much beyond question that even murder does not put one beyond God’s capacity for mercy and for love (though far be it from my intention here to unduly promote the behavior). And how could the singer have killed a man in paradise, anyway?
Well, some time back, a reader named Kim wrote and suggested a really neat way of hearing this verse. She suggested that Bob might be referring to an actual Earthly place named Paradise, e.g., Paradise, Texas (pop. 459). This opens up a new and amusing interpretation; basically, this involves hearing it as a pun which the singer is making to his Creator. He’s saying, “I want to be with you in paradise,” as if making a straightforward prayer, and then comically mourning the fact that he can’t go back to Paradise (the town) because he shot a man there — something that maybe only God knows; i.e., it’s like a private joke between them. Of-course, I’m destroying all possible humor in it by spelling it out, but it fits both because we know how much Dylan loves even the silliest-seeming puns and because we also know how he enjoys Western motifs.
So that’s one way of understanding the verse.
However, another reader, recently coming across the post where that idea was discussed, suggests an alternative understanding. Thanks to Kent for his e-mail:
I saw elsewhere on your site where one reader proposed the idea that the line: “I can’t go to paradise no more; I killed a man back there…” Was referring to Paradise as a town, perhaps in Paradise, TX, etc…
May I also make another proposal: Is it possible that in said line, “Paradise” could be referring to the fleshly desires of the old man, aka sinful nature, and Mr. Dylan is saying that it seems unfair, but he can’t go to “paradise” no more (returning to the sinful nature) because he “killed a man back there,” meaning he put to death the misdeeds of his own body when he became “crucified with the Messiah,” upon his salvation through Him?
That’s a fascinating idea. I honestly think that something like it has flitted through my own mind on listening to the song, but I never stopped to put it into words for myself. The reference would be to the New Testament, and St. Paul in Romans, chapter 6. Here’s part of where he writes on the concept of “dying with Christ” beginning at verse 6 (ESV):
We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
So, with this in mind, when the singer refers to the fact that he “killed a man back there,” he’s actually referring to the death of that self which was enslaved to sin. This is very interesting and resonant indeed. The idea of paradise as a metaphor for that life enslaved to sin is not as obvious, but, on the other hand, total indulgence of one’s sinful desires can appear like a temptation of paradise. And who on this Earth isn’t sometimes guilty of mistaking paradise for that home across the road?
At a minimum, it’s another fruitful area of reflection to throw into the mix. It’s an illustration of how even the problematic or difficult-to-interpret lines in some of Dylan’s songs of faith can make their contribution simply by compelling one to ponder what they might mean.
Some might say that’s giving way too much leeway to a songwriter who is not getting across his point with sufficient clarity — but around these parts, we just call it a normal day.
There’s an exceptional article on Dylan — in particular latter day Dylan — written by Robert Roper, in an online magazine called Obit today. Thanks a lot to Karen for the link. It’s called Bob Dylan: Together Through Life.
While the Baby Boomers were busy building their ordinary lives, buying vacation homes and packing their IRA’s with ready dough, then getting foreclosed on a lot of those houses and seeing a third of the value of their pensions disappear overnight, Dylan was off somewhere shaking his head, sucking an eye-tooth, pulling at that mean little moustache he wears these days. He’s not surprised. Bad news is to be expected. Life is about harm, the collapse of hope; and then, at the very end, that unavoidable date with the Reaper. Whoopee! Thanks a lot, Bob! We needed to hear that.
Actually, many of us did, and do. When Dylan says it, it stays said. The credibility he enjoys is enormous among a certain demographic; he is the most honored American songwriter of our time, and by virtue of the prominence of American cultural product in the world, the most honored and influential songwriter on earth. Among Americans and Europeans and South Americans and Russians and South Africans and Israelis and Norwegians he enjoys the status that two centuries ago was accorded the preeminent poets – he is the Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth of our time, our Emerson, Dickinson, and Whitman, and our Auden and Neruda and Mandelstam to boot. He has fulfilled for nearly 50 years the classic functions of the seminal poet, that is, to register his times in vivid and memorable words, and to prophesy.
It’s appropriate that an unusually perceptive article about Bob would appear in a publication that is devoted (I take it) to death, from various angles. The way in which Dylan’s work has always faced up to “death’s honesty” is arguably the single most distinguishing characteristic of it, in the context of the last fifty years of pop culture. That alone has qualified it to be called prophetic.
Of-course, one can in a certain sense “face” death’s honesty and come up with nihilism — and many have done just that and still do — but another distinguishing characteristic of Dylan’s work is that this is not his conclusion. It’s not the taste left on one’s lips after consuming his songs. He once joked back in some 1960s interview that all his songs end with: “Good luck, hope you make it.” In actuality, they do. “Everything’s collapsing, the world is depraved, you can’t trust anyone, you’re gonna die … hope you make it!” The question is what making it really means.
Let’s get back to some positivity around here. There have been many appreciative reviews of Christmas in the Heart, and here’s a smattering of those.
From U.S. Catholic and John Christman (yes, that’s his name, folks): Bob Dylan puts the mystery back in Christmas.
For some it’s a perplexing mess: traditional instruments, back-up singers who seem to have recently stepped out of a studio session with Patsy Cline, mention of former presidents “Nixon, Bush and Clinton” with reindeers Donner and Blitzen, and finally, Bob Dylan sings in Latin. But some may find delight where others find confusion. But when Dylan sings “Winter Wonderland” it is certainly a musical landscape filled with bizarre and strange wonders.
But with this album, Dylan has given us a little of the mystery that lies at the heart of Christmas. Childhood memories of Christmas, for many, do recall a sense of wonder. Dylan’s unexpected handling of Christmas music can remind us of the unexpected that resides at the heart of Christmas: the Incarnation. That mystery continues to perplex and delight.
This is not to say that I think Dylan intended this mystery as the central focus of his Christmas album. But, the gift of mystery or a true surprise at Christmas can be wonderful for those whose lives are burdened by hardships and the relentless mundane routine of Christmas festivities. Something new that strikes of mystery is welcome. I, for my part, had to wipe the tears from my eyes as I laughed whole heartedly at Dylan’s curious renditions.
From Detroit’s Metro Times, Bill Holdship gives us: Croakin’ around the Christmas tree.
One probably imagines blindly that a vocalist like Dylan should never croon “Do You Hear What I Hear?” or “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” — but neither rendition is at all bad, and they’re even actually kinda touching. There are parts of “Little Drummer Boy,” where he harmonizes with the choir, that are actually quite beautiful. And when he verbally croaks (literally) on other parts of the album, a true fan might simply think, “Well, that’s Bob!” and be kinda touched by that as well. He’s never been a traditional “singer,” but he’s almost always been able to “sell” a song.
[…]What almost no one mentions about this album, though, is its great production, once again by Dylan under his “Jack Frost” pseudonym. Musically, it sounds just like those albums baby boomers of a certain age certainly, but I’d imagine most Americans in general, grew up hearing every year around this time, right down to the female backing singers. You could almost substitute Bob’s voice with Andy Williams’; that’s how authentic it sounds. Bottom line: You may very well hate this album, especially if you’re not a fan of Christmas music or Bob Dylan. But if you are a fan, you may think that — even though it’s one of the most inconsequential albums of Dylan’s career — it’s still pretty damn good … and a total hoot on top of it all.
From Douglas Newman in Houston’s Culture Map, we have: Isn’t it ironic? Dylan surprises again with holiday CD.
Surreal? That’s an understatement. A colossal miscalculation on par with the “Self Portrait” debacle of 1970? Not even close. While it certainly confirms his Colbert-sized testicles and a penchant for sly humor, more than anything else it solidifies his standing as a master stylist whose interpretive skills nearly match his songwriting acumen.
Once I got over the initial shock of hearing Dylan in such a warm and fuzzy setting, I soon realized that his haggard croak and simple arrangements added new life to these old chestnuts. “Silver Bells” is rendered as a stately waltz with an underpinning of pedal steel and Dylan’s overly-deliberate delivery. “Little Drummer Boy” marches along at a mellow pace, nudged forward by a haunting guitar reverb and steady drum roll, all of which is layered beneath Dylan’s vocal and the harmonies of a female back up singer. You can almost envision this song sitting alongside some of the darker tracks on “Oh Mercy” or “Time Out of Mind.”
I like how both of the reviewers above give props to Dylan’s production and to the musicians and vocalists on the album. Too many articles I’ve seen (written by people who’ve never made records themselves) have been dismissive of these elements, as if making the album sound like it does was effortless for all involved. No: it only sounds effortless.
From Cross Rhythms, Darren Hirst says a lot including this:
The first track, “Here Comes Santa Claus”, tells us a lot about where this album is going. The backing vocalists and Dylan’s lead vocal are hopelessly at odds. The backing vocalists sound like they’ve stepped out of another era. Imagine a pre-second world war vocal group who have not aged and who have not been effected by any musical ideas that have washed up on the world’s shores since that time. That is what you have here. Dylan, by contrast, sounds every bit of his 68 years and every bit an old blues singer who has been on the road for ever. There is a line on Dylan’s previous album about him having the blood of the land in his voice. You can hear here what he means by that sentiment. He sounds as old as the earth.
Also the childishness of the song, a real appreciation of the sentimentality of the holidays and the true meaning of Christmas come face-to-face in another clash of ideas: “Peace on earth will come to all/If we just follow the light/Let’s give thanks to the Lord above/.Because Santa Claus comes tonight.” On one hand, it might seem ridiculous but on the other it might actually work. I think it might depend on how much you like Christmas songs and how much you can tolerate Dylan’s voice.
That sense of three things coming together is all over this album – right down to its design.
We could go on forever here. And certainly, for every positive and appreciative review you can find a completely flummoxed and negative one, but that’s to be expected. I think all in all Dylan ought to be pretty happy with the press.
Currently in the U.S. charts Billboard has it at number 1 … in the category of “Folk Albums;” number 21 in “Holiday Albums” (where it originally entered at number 1); number 24 under “Rock Albums,” and number 95 overall on the main album chart.
With some gift copies that I have yet to buy (and I know I’m not alone), I would expect its sales are going to pick up further towards December 25th …
Just as there is no distance in the performances on Christmas In The Heart, there is little to wonder about in the conversation Bob Dylan has with Bill Flanagan, published by the North American Street Newspaper Association.
BF: You really give a heroic performance of O’ LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM The way you do it reminds me a little of an Irish rebel song. There’s something almost defiant in the way you sing, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” I don’t want to put you on the spot, but you sure deliver that song like a true believer.
BD: Well, I am a true believer.
BF: You know, some people will think that Bob Dylan doing a Christmas album is meant to be ironic or a put-on. This sounds to me like one of the most sincere records you’ve ever made. Did anybody at your record company or management resist the idea?
BD: No it was my record company who compelled me to do it.BF: Why now?
BD: Well, it just came my way now, at this time. Actually, I don’t think I would have been experienced enough earlier anyway.BF: Some critics don’t seem to know what to make of this record. Bloomberg news said, “Some of the songs sound ironic. Does he really mean have yourself a Merry Little Christmas?” Is there any ironic content in these songs?
[…]
BD: No not at all. Critics like that are on the outside looking in. They are definitely not fans or the audience that I play to. They would have no gut level understanding of me and my work, what I can and can’t do – the scope of it all. Even at this point in time they still don’t know what to make of me.BF: The Chicago Tribune felt this record needed more irreverence. Doesn’t that miss the point?
[…]
BD: Well sure it does, that’s an irresponsible statement anyway. Isn’t there enough irreverence in the world? Who would need more? Especially at Christmas time.BF: Why did you pick Feeding America, Crisis UK and The World Food Program to give the proceeds of this record to?
BD: Because they get food straight to the people. No military organization, no bureaucracy, no governments to deal with.
[…]BF: Do you have a favorite Christmas album?
BD: Maybe the Louvin Brothers. I like all the religious Christmas albums. The ones in Latin. The songs I sang as a kid.
BF: A lot of people like the secular ones.
BD: Religion isn’t meant for everybody.
Read it all, of-course.
It’s past time to look at an additional smattering of reviews of Bob Dylan’s Christmas In The Heart.
Ken Tucker at WBUR says:
As is consistent with current Dylan, the album operates as a further exploration of American popular song in all its forms, no matter how uncool. In the same spirit as his satellite radio show, Christmas in the Heart contains some put-ons, some sincerity, some goofy humor and some deep dives into the mystery of what it means to celebrate the birth of Christ in both Latin and the language of kitsch.
The Salt Lake Tribune gives it a “D”, calls it “ill-conceived,” and goes on:
Dylan’s voice is a unique, interesting, compelling instrument used to best effect on his own bluesy, harrowing work. But it is, and never should be, comforting, as it strives to be here.
Further evidence of the decline of the practice of proofreading in the major media. I take it that the writer means to say that Dylan’s voice is not and never should be, comforting. As for the sentiment itself, it’s ridiculous of-course. Dylan’s voice has never been one-dimensional, and neither has his work — it’s a false dichotomy he’s attempting to create, between that which is comforting and that which is — what? — disturbing, I suppose. You can be stirred in many complex ways by Dylan’s songs and by his performances. To say that Dylan on this album is striving to be merely “comforting” with his voice is absurd. In fact it’s the unconventional and subversive nature of his singing that gives Dylan’s versions of these songs their unique quality.
A very spirited defense of Dylan’s album against various critics is that of Ian Bell in the Herald Scotland. (I’d missed this, thanks to David B. for sending me the link.)
Bob Dylan Makes Fun Record Shock. Having spent time being mistaken for Woody Guthrie, or Rimbaud, or late Picasso, or Whitman, Frost and Kerouac, you too might feel in need of a break, or even a Christmas album. So here’s more trivia: Dylan’s nom de plume/guerre when he these days produces his own albums is “Jack Frost”. You would almost think he saw Christmas In The Heart coming.
Now he sings Cahn & Holt’s “The Christmas Blues” like a man building his own bar, drink by drink. He sings a truly weird thing called “Christmas Island” (with gratuitous “aloha”) as though Ry Cooder is waiting to be invented. He sings some Latin on “Adeste Fideles”, which is funny, and claims the “arrangement” too, which is funnier.
But when the talk turns to Americana, national identity, and the sense of cultural origin and roots, someone had to say: “There has to be a Christmas record”. It’s the poetry of the mundane and heartfelt. If it also includes a saucy Betty Page nostalgia pin-up and a Leonard Freed sax-playing Santa photograph in the package, so much the better. Dylan is utterly, as William Carlos Williams had it, in the American grain. Corny, corny at Christmas, corny to make you smile, is entirely American.
Sean Wilentz (who of-course is the “BobDylan.com Historian-in-Residence”) astutely examines many of the echoes, influences and resonances audible on Christmas In The Heart.
But the most salient thing about Christmas in the Heart is how much of it consists of hits written and originally recorded in the 1940s and early 1950s—the years of Dylan’s boyhood when these songs formed a perennial American December soundscape, even for a Jewish kid. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” first appeared in the film Meet Me in St. Louis in 1944, as sung by Judy Garland. Other standards on the album come from the same era: “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)” (1944) later made famous by Nat King Cole; the Andrews Sisters’ “Christmas Island” (1946); Autry’s and, later, Presley’s “Here Comes Santa Claus” (1947); and Dean Martin’s “The Christmas Blues” (1953).
It is also striking that, much as Charley Patton’s shade presides over Dylan’s superb album of 2001, Love and Theft, the benign spirit of Bing Crosby haunts Christmas in the Heart. This is not entirely surprising: After Crosby recorded “White Christmas” in 1942, he practically owned the franchise on making popular recordings of Christmas music. Still, it cannot be coincidental that, of all the Christmas material available to him, Dylan has included three of the songs most closely identified with Crosby—“I’ll Be Home for Christmas” (1943), “Silver Bells” (1952), and “Do You Hear What I Hear?” (1962)—as well as other songs that were successful for Crosby, including “Here Comes Santa Claus” (written in 1947, recorded by Crosby with the Andrews Sisters in 1949), “The Christmas Song” (recorded by Crosby in 1947), and “Winter Wonderland” (written in 1934 and recorded by Crosby in 1962). In all, 13 of the 15 songs on Christmas in the Heart, including all of the carols, were also recorded by Crosby.
And there are so many reviews out there — I know I’m missing a lot of good ones, not to mention a lot of good bad ones. But even I don’t have the appetite for reading this quantity of stuff about one record. It’s a lot more rewarding and fun to listen to it. Indeed, it’s sheer pleasure for me (temporarily putting aside the too-loud mastering of the CD), and it’s really hard to erase the smile off my face from the opening notes of Here Comes Santa Claus to that great and final amen. There’s more I want to write about how I believe the album works in a way that’s quite distinct from most other Christmas albums, but that’s for another day.
Bob Dylan’s Christmas album, entitled Christmas In the Heart,
More details at BobDylan.com, including this:
Bob Dylan commented, “It’s a tragedy that more than 35 million people in this country alone — 12 million of those children – often go to bed hungry and wake up each morning unsure of where their next meal is coming from. I join the good people of Feeding America in the hope that our efforts can bring some food security to people in need during this holiday season.”
Christmas In The Heart will be the 47th album from Bob Dylan, and follows his worldwide chart-topping Together Through Life, released earlier this year. Songs performed by Dylan on this new album include, “Here Comes Santa Claus,” “Winter Wonderland,” “Little Drummer Boy” and “Must Be Santa.”
The phrase “Christmas in the heart” can’t help but bring to mind the words of the reformed Ebenezer Scrooge from Charles Dickens’ famous story, when he promises, “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”
However, there is also a quote attributed to a man named William T. Ellis, which includes Dylan’s title more precisely: “It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.”
And there are more famous quotations on the subject of Christmas with mentions of the heart, not so surprisingly. Washington Irving said, “Christmas is the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.”
And George Matthew Adams wrote, “Let us remember that the Christmas heart is a giving heart, a wide open heart that thinks of others first. The birth of the baby Jesus stands as the most significant event in all history, because it has meant the pouring into a sick world the healing medicine of love which has transformed all manner of hearts for almost two thousand years… Underneath all the bulging bundles is this beating Christmas heart.”
In any case, Bob Dylan’s gesture is honoring all of the above sentiments. Bless you, Bob.
I wonder if I’m fascinated by 1980s’ Bob Dylan solely because that’s when I got into his music (first purchased album: Infidels
And so the recently-released DVD called Bob Dylan: 1978-1989 – Both Ends of the Rainbow
Unlike some recent Dylan-centered films released on DVD, this one does feature actual Bob Dylan music, including some video clips and audio (e.g. a little bit of Dylan on “Saturday Night Live” in 1979). And some of the audio clips which don’t have original video are put to strikingly well-chosen visuals, I must say. But to me the real meat of the project resides in the interviews with various musicians and recording professionals who worked in the studio with Bob Dylan during the years covered. It is the anecdotes and insights of these people, who were actually there, which give the viewer something new. And, to a person, if I recall correctly, all of these individuals offer reminiscences which are warm and positive — nary a meanspirited jibe in the lot. For example, Chuck Plotkin and Toby Scott (producer and engineer respectively on Shot of Love
And so on. Guitarist Ted Perlman tells us a lot on Empire Burlesque
So that’s one angle on this film, dwelling upon the positive.
The flip side, unfortunately, is a terrible rogues gallery of writers and critics (speaking as one myself, although for some reason I’m not in the film) who keep popping their heads up and bloviating in generally well-worn, dull and irritating ways. Like the proverbial stopped clock, they can’t help but be correct on some occasions, but it’s usually just a coincidence. There are perhaps about ten different critics who keep appearing and telling us how it was and what we oughta think about Bob’s work of that decade. Some of them are regurgitating clichés that they themselves are responsible for launching as far back as thirty years ago — especially when it comes to the gospel music. I was going to name names here and specify certain rubbish, but my better angel is clamping down. Readers are at least warned. I will give a positive shout-out to Scott Warmuth who appears (briefly) and makes a worthy contribution.
So, the film would be ideal if one could technologically filter out the critics and just stick with the musicians, producers and engineers and the various old footage and audio. The voice-over narration is inoffensive, as I recall. Of-course, if an editorial decision had been made to devote far more time to the interviews with the musicians and recording people, versus the critics, then the film would be better to begin with.
The DVD box is accompanied by an extra CD featuring “The Dylan Gospel Interviews”; this is about an hour’s worth of various taped question and answer sessions with Dylan during that gospel period, and it’s introduced unobstrusively enough by Derek Barker. These recordings have circulated among collectors before, and at a guess I would think that all of these interviews have been transcribed and published in various places, but it’s unquestionably a very interesting item for fans who are into that stage of Dylan’s career.
You can purchase the DVD via Amazon
Former President Jimmy Carter (who once described himself as a born-again Christian) is reported to have given up his affection for the music of Bob Dylan when Bob himself became “born-again” (I know Bob disputes the term but that’s a whole other kettle of hair-splitting).
The report is in a new book about Jimmy Carter by Kevin Mattson, and it was written about in the New York Post (thanks to readers who e-mailed me).
Mattson characterizes Dylan’s path of conversion in a gossipy way that I would not personally endorse, but here’s what the NY Post says about what he writes:
“Recently divorced, [Dylan] slept around with groupies and indulged in drugs while touring and recording his live album ‘At Budokan.’ Some labeled him a washed-up relic of the ’60s who recycled old material. Others called Dylan’s 1978 performances ‘The Alimony Tour.’ ”
It was under these conditions that Dylan converted to Christianity and released his controversial LP “Slow Train Coming,” with its signature number “Gotta Serve Somebody,” preaching against “foreign oil controlling American soil” and “sheiks running around like kings.”
Dylan’s born-again recording session “nailed the coffin shut” on his ’60s activist roots, and alienated him from Carter, according to Mattson, a professor of contemporary history at Ohio University. “The hippie rock star had pushed rock ‘n’ roll from celebrating love and drugs to providing apocalyptic warnings about decadence,” he writes. “Jimmy Carter’s favorite rock musician now refused to sing the songs the president most enjoyed . . . [those] written before Dylan found Jesus.”
Calls placed to Dylan’s camp were not returned.
Carter’s reported change of heart about Dylan is believable enough — hey, a whole lot of people rejected Dylan after Slow Train and Saved — but Mattson’s mistakes in his characterization of Dylan’s pre-gospel music (“celebrating love and drugs”), along with his general tone, don’t help his overall credibility level that much. Still, the irony attendant in the idea of Jimmy Carter hating Dylan’s gospel music is hard to resist. Carter has a curious habit of rejecting other peoples’ way of trying to walk with Christ as being illegitimate. He attacked President George W. Bush with his statement: “I worship Christ who was the prince of peace, not pre-emptive war.”
Carter has never gotten over his rejection by the voters in 1980, and I happen to think that his long history of bitterness distinguishes him among all other ex-presidents, regardless of what’s on his iPod.
The headline from Haaretz describes the results of a survey conducted in Israel: ‘1 in 4 Israelis would consider leaving country if Iran gets nukes’.
Some 23 percent of Israelis would consider leaving the country if Iran obtains a nuclear weapon, according to a poll conducted on behalf of the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Some 85 percent of respondents said they feared the Islamic Republic would obtain an atomic bomb, 57 percent believed the new U.S. initiative to engage in dialogue with Tehran would fail and 41 percent believed Israel should strike Iran’s nuclear installations without waiting to see whether or how the talks develop.
“The findings are worrying because they reflect an exaggerated and unnecessary fear,” Prof. David Menashri, the head of the Center, said.
It’s nice that the professor thinks it to be an exaggerated fear, and it’s also completely irrelevant, of-course. Put a fear of imminent annihilation over people, and over their children, and they will react. Many will be stoic, of-course. But many will vote with their feet. It’s just human nature.
Back in December, when rockets were flying from Gaza into southern Israel, and the world was condemning the Israelis for finally taking tough military action against Hamas, I wrote the following in this space:
Hamas’s strategy of firing missiles into southern Israel cannot be understood in isolation. Although in isolation it is bad enough. No country on earth can tolerate these kinds of open attacks against its citizens and long remain a nation at all. But Hamas in the south is acting with a strategy similar to Hezbollah in the north. Both receive support from the Iranians, who are themselves pursuing a nuclear weapon and talking publicly of wiping Israel off the map. Theirs can be seen as a three-pronged strategy for the destruction of Israel without ever having to fight the Israeli Defense Forces in one enormous battle. It is a war of attrition, of threat and of fear. Israeli residents in the south of that tiny country must evacuate their homes under threat of Hamas missiles, just as residents of the north had to in 2006 as Hezbollah’s rockets were launched over the border (and just as they might have to again at any time). The mere fact that Iran is pursuing an atomic bomb and talking about the destruction of Israel puts a threat of doom over the heads of all Israelis. Imagine how magnified that will be once Iran actually achieves the bomb, or announces that it has achieved it. Imagine trying to raise a family when enemy missiles, with ever-increasing range and lethality, are closing in from the south and from the north, and when a nation that openly wishes your family’s death achieves the practical capability to cause it. Imagine trying to carry on a business — trying to carry on anything at all. The Iranian strategy, with the enthusiastic support of Hamas and Hezbollah, is to simply make life in Israel untenable for a critical mass of Jews, who will then either go somewhere else (those that have somewhere else to go) or give up the fight. A conventional war of nations and of armies, of the kind that Israel has won repeatedly in its history since 1948, is therefore avoided. Or, at the least, postponed until Israel is much more weakened and demoralized.
It is not an outlandish strategy. It is a very practical one, and it is one that is being pursued with some effect.
Israel simply cannot afford the kind of crisis in confidence over her future that the fact of an Iranian nuclear bomb would create, most of all among her own citizens. That is why Israel will act against Iran before the day that Ahmadinejad can stand up and credibly say, “Our glorious Islamic Republic now has the ultimate weapon and we cannot be touched.” The consequences of Israeli military action against Iran may well include difficulties for everyone else, but the circumstances permit Netanyahu — or any Israeli leader — no other choice.
That is, unless President Obama’s sweet overtures achieve their purpose of getting the Iranian regime to reverse course and demonstrably renounce its pursuit of nuclear energy and weapons. The hour is getting late.
I want to continue looking at some noteworthy things that came out of the Douglas Brinkley/Bob Dylan Rolling Stone interview, both the print version and the online outtakes (which are now gone but not forgotten).
There is this from the print article on Bob Dylan’s taste in movies: Continue reading “Bob Dylan and John Ford: More on the Douglas Brinkley / Rolling Stone interview”
I think it’s actually too much to look at every interesting bit of Bob Dylan’s 2009 Rolling Stone interview all at once, so let’s do it piecemeal. One of the most amusing parts is what may go down in Dylan-lore (whatever that is) as “The Sarkozy Incident.” Bob Dylan was performing in Paris on April 7th while Douglas Brinkley was tagging along to conduct his interview, and so we get a glimpse at something that may happen much more often than we know, i.e., a political leader heading backstage at a Dylan show for an audience with the man himself. The story of what went down when President Nicolas Sarkozy (the conservative French leader) and his wife Carla Bruni met Dylan is conveyed in different parts in the print interview and the online outtakes. And here’s the gist:
[from the print article][from the online outtakes]After the show, the Sarkozys wander backstage, anxious to meet Dylan. The French president is attired in a black turtleneck and jeans. In a single swooping motion, Sarkozy seizes Dylan’s hand, welcoming him to France. “It was like looking at my mirror image,” Dylan tells me later, about the encounter. “I can see why he’s the head of France. He’s genuine and warm and extremely likable. I asked Sarkozy, ‘Do you think the whole global thing is over?’ I knew they just had a big G-20 meeting and they maybe were discussing that. I didn’t think he’d tell me, but I asked him anyway.”
[again from the print article]Q: I want to just follow-up on that globalization talk you had with Sarkozy [after his April 7th show in Paris].
Dylan: Yeah, I ask him, I said, “With all these bailouts and stimulus packages, all these bailouts throughout the country. I’m just wondering whether globalism is dead in the tracks? Ya know, is it over?” He doesn’t say yes, he didn’t say no.
Q: Bob, he is a politician…
Dylan: Yeah!
Q: But what intrigued me was you saying that we must get back to being the United States.
Dylan: Oh, and he could get back to being France.
Q: Boy, you’re an individualist, aren’t you? Does globalism therefore get oppressive to you? The global Internet? Global economics? Are you missing what some critics call the older, weirder America?
Dylan: I never thought the older America was weird in any way whatsoever. Where do people come up with that stuff? To call it that? What’s the old weird America? The depression? Or Teddy Roosevelt? What’s old and weird? Well, musically, no. Musically we play a form of American music and that’s not gonna go away. Whatever happens in the world won’t affect that whatsoever. But you know globalism is, I would think, about getting rid of boundaries, nationalities. You’re a part of one big world, no? It might take people awhile to get used to that. I don’t like the trend.
When President Sarkozy, looking to make small talk, asked Dylan, “Where do you live?” the quick response was a few simple words: “Right here….No. I’m just joking. I’m from the Lone Star State.” (Dylan ended by giving Sarkozy a Texas-style belt buckle as a gift.)
So, to summarize: Sarkozy and his wife got backstage to meet Bob Dylan. Bob asks Sarkozy point-blank if “globalism is dead,” and tells him that Americans need to get back to being the United States, and then he can get back to being France. Sarkozy gives no quotable answer on this, but at some point asks Dylan where he lives, to which Bob responds, “The Lone Star state,” and then gifts Sarkozy with a “Texas-style” belt buckle. (There’s no word, by the way, on whether Carla Bruni thanked Bob for writing “You Belong To Me” for her.)
After you quit cracking up over all this, what do you say about it? Firstly: Bob Dylan is a heckuva-lot better at choosing meaningful gifts for foreign world leaders than our currrent president. No dumb DVDs from the Bard of Hibbing, but instead a real and concrete piece of Americana. I never imagined, by the way, that among the many burdens of being Bob Dylan was having to meet foreign leaders and give them gifts, but then I guess there’s so much I don’t know.
So what about this globalism stuff? The chutzpah of Bob in just coming out and asking such a question of Nicolas Sarkozy is of-course hilarious—but then what has he got to lose?
Those of us who’ve followed Dylan closely over the years won’t be too surprised by his attitude towards the idea of One Big Happy World, but the directness in his remarks here is noteworthy.
You can go back to Slow Train Coming for his disgust at “Sheiks walkin’ around like kings, wearing fancy jewels and nose rings / Deciding America’s future from Amsterdam and Paris.” And “Union Sundown” takes the issue on from another angle.
At the Live Aid show in 1985, which was to raise money for people starving in Ethiopia, Bob Dylan showed up, but famously (or notoriously as some may think) used the stage to plead the case for small American farmers who were going bankrupt.
And about a month after September 11th, 2001, Dylan made a remark from the stage, responding to something Madonna had recently said from the same stage:
“I know Madonna was here a few weeks ago telling everybody to think global – and I know a whole bunch of you are doing that – I want to try and tell you: rethink it!” (Staples Arena 10-19-2001.)
On his “Theme Time Radio Hour” show—the one with the theme of “Blood”—Dylan at one point said this:
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Those are the words of noted politician and clock collector, Thomas Jefferson.
Of-course TJ said that in the days before we were all citizens of the world, in a global environment, when it was still possible to be a patriot in deed and not just in words. Another example of how the future confuses us. Which is why we stick with our credo: Predicting the past is our way to the future.
There are other examples, but I’m too lazy right now to dig around for all of them. Certainly, his 2003 film Masked and Anonymous presents a nightmarish vision of a future America, where borders have been thrown askew and ethnic rivalries fuel perpetual violence.
Bob Dylan is an American (not to mention a proud Texan!). He likes it that way, and clearly thinks that America stands for something worthwhile, or at the very least it used to. I think that his skepticism of globalization also has roots in the biblical prophecy of a one-world-government headed by the Antichrist. People may pooh-pooh that as they choose, but there is no shortage of evidence that Dylan takes his Bible very seriously indeed.
Now, let’s be straight here, and face the fact that this globalization thing cuts across the usual political divisions. On the left, there is that kind of “think global” feel-goodism — the idea that we’re all citizens of the world, in this together, and borders shouldn’t matter, and we’re all just the same etc., etc.. We should believe in “International Law” and we should have “International Courts” to force everyone to get in line. It’s the never-ending push for centralization which is also a core weakness of leftism generally. The global environmentalist movement pushes these themes too, and it also has roots in Marx’s theories about how humanity is divided by class rather than by nationality: the proletariat versus the rich. History has not really borne out these theories, but in each new generation there are those who latch onto it. It’s a brand of utopianism, and it has been very much in ascendance on the world stage in the last couple of decades. We shall see how it shakes out with the current economic crisis (this was effectively the basis of Dylan’s point to Sarkozy).
On the political right (in America), there is a strictly economic globalism: the belief that the nearer we get to truly free trade, no tariffs, no restrictions on the movement of capital, less restrictions on the movement of labor, etc. etc., the better it will be for everyone. Not all brands of American “conservatives” buy into this, but it has been the prevailing view. (I’m no economist myself, but I’ve generally been more impressed by free trade arguments versus protectionist ones.)
It’s safe to say, based on the record, that Dylan is intensely skeptical of both kinds of globalism. For whom is this more of a problem—those who insist on interpreting Dylan in a Leftist framework, or those of us who are (one way or another) conservative-minded Dylan fans? Well, speaking for myself, I have no problem with Dylan’s views on the subject. I think free trade is generally a good thing, but it’s an area where people can disagree amicably. There is clearly a human cost to free trade, in addition to its benefits. On the other hand, I would suggest that Dylan’s rejection of world-citizen-feel-goodism is fundamentally in opposition to leftist modes of thinking.
Which all goes to show that he is not and never has been a political leftist, Q.E.D, game-over, rest in peace. Of-course that old debate is never over, because the media shorthand for Bob Dylan always has him as fundamentally a lefty folk/protest singer and a prince of the “counterculture,” no matter what the evidence to the contrary. It goes on, but with this interview, Dylan has once more demonstrated the untruth of that perpetual caricature.
…
And another slice from this interview with Douglas Brinkley in Rolling Stone (the print article):
Like the dour-faced farmer in Grant Wood’s painting American Gothic, Dylan seems to have the American songbook in one hand and a raised pitchfork in the other, aimed at rock critics, politicians, Wall Street financiers, back-alley thieves, the world wide web – anything that cheapens the spirit of the individual. His nostalgia is more for the Chess Records 1950s than the psychedelic 1960s. He believes that Europe should lose the euro and go back to its old currencies – “I miss the pictures on the old money,” he says. If Dylan had his way, there’d be Sousa bands on Main Street and vinyl albums instead of CDs. Teenagers would go on nature hikes instead of watching YouTube. “It’s peculiar and unnerving in a way to see so many young people walking around with mobile phones and iPods in their ears and so wrapped up in media and video games,” he says. “It robs them of their self-identity. It’s a shame to see them so tuned out to real life. Of course they are free to do that, as if that’s got anything to do with freedom. The cost of liberty is high, and young people should understand that before they start spending their life with all those gadgets.”
…
And, lest we skip over it, there’s also this from the Brinkley interview:
I never thought the older America was weird in any way whatsoever. Where do people come up with that stuff? To call it that? What’s the old weird America? The depression? Or Teddy Roosevelt? What’s old and weird?
The “people” who “come up with that stuff” are, or is, Greil Marcus. He coined the expression — at least as far as I’m aware — in his book “Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes.” The book was even later renamed as “The Old Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan’s Basment Tapes.”
It seems to me that perhaps Bob just delivered an extremely economical review of that book.
…
Addendum 5/1/2009: In the interests of fairness, let me print this response from an anonymous reader, titled “What You (And Dylan) Forgot About”:
From the Anthology of American Folk Music liner notes, in an essay by Greil Marcus entitled “The Old, Weird America”, Greil Marcus himself quotes Dylan (speaking on some critics’ complaints that his lyrics are incomprehensible):
“‘All the authorities who write about what it is and what it should be,'” Dylan said, “when they say keep it simple, [that it] should be easily understood — folk music is the only music where it isn’t simple. It’s weird….I’ve never written anything hard to understand, not in my head anyway, and nothing as far out as some of the old songs.”
So the expression does have a root in Dylan. But perhaps Bob can be excused, as it was an awfully long time ago…
The new Rolling Stone interview with Bob Dylan conducted by author Douglas Brinkley — which consists of varying content in the print magazine versus the online “outtakes” — has a whole bunch of funny and delightful and interesting bits. So much so, that it calls for a mega-post to deal with it, which I’m not up to doing at this moment. But from where we sit we would be remiss if we did not immediately highlight the passage in the print interview where the name of former president George W. Bush comes up.
Dylan talks a lot about the state of Texas in the interview, including about the “independent-thinking people” that he says come from there. Picking it up at one point:
“I think you really have to be a Texan to appreciate the vastness of it and the emptiness of it,” Dylan says. “But I’m an honorary Texan.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Well,” he says, “George Bush, when he was governor, gave me a proclamation that says I’m an honorary Texan [holds hand up in pledge, laughs]. As if anybody needed proof. It’s no small thing. I take it as a high honor. ”
Brinkley goes on to ask Dylan something more (we’re not told the exact question) about George W. Bush:
Almost every American artist has taken a piñata swipe at Bush’s legacy, but Dylan refuses. He instead looks at the Bush years as just another unsurprising incident of dawn-of-man folly [Brinkley’s characterization, of-course –Ed]. “I read history books just like you do,” Dylan says. “None of those guys are immune to the laws of history. They’re going to go up or down, and they’re going to take their people with them. None of us really knew what was happening in the economy. It changed so quickly into a true nightmare of horror. In another day and age, heads would roll. That’s what would happen. The rot would be cut out. As far as blaming everything on the last president, think of it this way: The same folks who had held him in such high regard came to despise him. Isn’t it funny that they’re the very same people who once loved him? People are fickle. Their loyalty can turn at the drop of a hat.”
What he says is plainly true; although, of-course, not all of George W. Bush’s supporters came to despise him. (He has never been held in contempt in this space, and never will be. Disagreements on a few issues do not justify contempt for a man of such character and decency as Dubya.)
As for his being named an honorary Texan by Bush: it makes me feel like a terrible failure that I never heard that this had happened, and so had never mentioned it here. Of-course, it’s not the kind of thing that would get a lot of attention in the media. That’s why Bob Dylan himself had to tell us about it. Belated congratulations to him. A high honor indeed.
Regular readers of the writings in this space might not be unfamiliar with the suggestion that there is a way of listening to a great number of Bob Dylan songs — especially his work of the last couple of decades or so — such as to hear them as a kind of dialogue with Him who we can just call the LORD, ecumenically-speaking, and in the tradition of the Bible in English. My own appreciation of this originally came out of reading the deeply insightful writing, on Bob Dylan’s work, of Ronnie Keohane.
There’s plenty of this to be heard, should you be so inclined, on Dylan’s most recent LP, Modern Times. One example that could hardly escape even the most secular or agnostic of listeners is “Spirit on the Water”.
The first verse goes:
Spirit on the water
Darkness on the face of the deep
I keep thinking about you baby
I can’t hardly sleep
You don’t need a degree in Bible-ology to know that the first lines of this song reflect and reference the first few sentences of the Bible, and of the book of Genesis.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
So, if you take the first verse of the song at face value, the singer is addressing this song to that very Spirit on the water. Taken in that way — as a love song to the Creator — it’s easy to see the meaning and poignancy of verses like this one:
I’d forgotten about you
Then you turned up again
I always knew
That we were meant to be more than friends
There are so many ways in which people can forget the existence, and miss the presence, of the Creator. It’s almost as if there’s a conspiracy to make one forget, even if one happens to believe in the first place. Yet, the persistence of reminders (Then you turned up again) is arguably one of the greatest constants of all. The steady twinkling of a distant star, the sublime strokes of a masterpiece of art, the unasked for kindness of a stranger, the bells of some church in the distance, an inner knowledge that will not be quieted: Then you turned up again.
In certain of the verses of this song, a listener may also wonder if the perspective has changed, and if — instead of the singer addressing his Maker — what we hear is the Creator addressing his creatures:
Sometimes I wonder
Why you can’t treat me right
You do good all day
Then you do wrong all night
You can go through all of the verses of the song in this way, and they resonate one way or another according to this theme.
There is one verse, however, that arguably sounds a jarring note. It doesn’t seem to make any kind of biblical sense or any kind of normal sense. That’s this one:
I wanna be with you in paradise
And it seems so unfair
I can’t go back to paradise no more
I killed a man back there
What’s that about? The singer saying to his God, “I wanna be with you in paradise,” is straightforward enough, we may think. But that he can’t go “back to paradise” because he “killed a man back there”? How is that? Is not the LORD a forgiving God? And how is it that the singer was in paradise before, and killed a man there at all?
Others may have found a way through it, but I never could figure it out. That’s why I’m hugely indebted to reader Kim for sending me the following in an e-mail:
I am probably just stating the obvious, but I will do so anyway: he can’t really just be talking about heaven [in this verse]. I’m thinking he’s also talking about Paradise, TX. Makes sense to me, anyway. What do you think?
Well, I think that it is a pretty brilliant perception, and one that certainly wasn’t obvious to this listener.
Paradise, Texas, had a population of 459 according to the 2000 census (and as reported by Wikipedia).
It is not, however, the only town or city called Paradise in the United States, as a long look at an atlas or another quick visit to Wikipedia would reveal. There are also the following:
Paradise, Arizona
Paradise, California
Paradise, Kansas
Paradise, Kentucky
Paradise, Michigan
Paradise, Montana
Paradise, Nevada
Paradise, Pennsylvania
Paradise, Utah
Paradise, Washington
There are also towns and cities called Paradise in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and England.
You might say that there’s a lot of people out there who really have their own little slice of heaven.
Who can tell to which town or city called Paradise the singer in this song might be referring, if indeed he is referring to a town or city? I don’t personally know how to pick one over the other. But just introducing the idea that it is an actual geographical real-world location to which he is referring changes everything, doesn’t it?
Consider: Bob Dylan loves citing place-names in his songs. We know this. Especially American place names, from Baton-Rouge to Corpus Christi to Boston-town and so many others. You could almost recreate a map of America from his songbook, if all other records were lost. And, for that matter, he also loves foreign place names, from Tangiers to Buenos-Aires to Gibraltar and beyond.
So how does it alter the sense of this verse if the singer is referring to a real town or city called Paradise? Assume, as we do here, that he is addressing the words to God. What the verse then becomes is a four line joke, a gag, a pun — and we also know how much Bob loves his puns — that is directed towards none other than the Creator Himself:
I wanna be with you in paradise
And it seems so unfair
I can’t go back to paradise no more
I killed a man back there
As befitting this sweet song of love, the singer says, and God hears, “I wanna be with you in paradise.” No problem there, God thinks. But then the singer goes on, “it seems so unfair,” because he can’t return to paradise, owing to the fact that he “killed a man back there.” He can’t go back to Paradise, the town, because he killed someone there, and now there are wanted posters on the walls, and a price on his head. (As Mrs. C. observes, it is like a vision from the Old American West, where you have to get of town to evade the sheriff and the crimes you committed in that particular locality. Places with great names like Tombstone.) The singer doesn’t provide us with these details, of-course. But then, after all, the song isn’t addressed to us. The singer is serenading the One who knows all those details already. God knows that this guy singing the song once killed a man in Paradise (Texas, Montana, Nevada — you name it). The joke, the gag, the pun, is on God Himself.
Making a joke to God is kind of audacious. And it can also be understood as a particularly intimate expression of love, can it not? It is only the most devoted who can joke to one another in this way, daringly making light of past transgressions.
Understood in this manner, the affectionate and playful nature of the song is asserting itself all the more in this previously confusing verse. Not every verse is without some mystery, of-course, even within this way of understanding the song, but that is as it should be. Every line doesn’t have to be nailed down and explained away. It is enough that there is nothing that is discordant or contradictory to this sense of the song, and that can be said, I think, if paradise is, after all, just Paradise (with a latitude and a longitude).
And that’s very nice indeed.
Without any of the irony of Bob Dylan’s song from 1983, a writer named Gideon Levy in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz characterizes Israel as a “neighborhood bully” for its military action against Hamas in Gaza.
Once again, Israel’s violent responses, even if there is justification for them, exceed all proportion and cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law and wisdom.
What began yesterday in Gaza is a war crime and the foolishness of a country. History’s bitter irony: A government that went to a futile war two months after its establishment – today nearly everyone acknowledges as much – embarks on another doomed war two months before the end of its term.
[…]Blood will now flow like water. Besieged and impoverished Gaza, the city of refugees, will pay the main price. But blood will also be unnecessarily spilled on our side. In its foolishness, Hamas brought this on itself and on its people, but this does not excuse Israel’s overreaction.
The history of the Middle East is repeating itself with despairing precision. Just the frequency is increasing. If we enjoyed nine years of quiet between the Yom Kippur War and the First Lebanon War, now we launch wars every two years.
Blood will flow like water, the writer tells his readers, and “the history of the Middle East repeats itself.” These things are inarguable, but merely stating them does nothing other than provide a kind of sanctimonious pedestal from which the observer can criticize those taking action.
Does Israel’s response to the persistent rain of rockets and mortars over its southern border “exceed all proportion”? This is the now-familiar theme being pursued by Israel’s critics across the capitals of the world — with the noteworthy and crucial exception, so far, of Washington D.C..
Hamas’s strategy of firing missiles into southern Israel cannot be understood in isolation. Although in isolation it is bad enough. No country on earth can tolerate these kinds of open attacks against its citizens and long remain a nation at all. But Hamas in the south is acting with a strategy similar to Hezbollah in the north. Both receive support from the Iranians, who are themselves pursuing a nuclear weapon and talking publicly of wiping Israel off the map. Theirs can be seen as a three-pronged strategy for the destruction of Israel without ever having to fight the Israeli Defense Forces in one enormous battle. It is a war of attrition, of threat and of fear. Israeli residents in the south of that tiny country must evacuate their homes under threat of Hamas missiles, just as residents of the north had to in 2006 as Hezbollah’s rockets were launched over the border (and just as they might have to again at any time). The mere fact that Iran is pursuing an atomic bomb and talking about the destruction of Israel puts a threat of doom over the heads of all Israelis. Imagine how magnified that will be once Iran actually achieves the bomb, or announces that it has achieved it. Imagine trying to raise a family when enemy missiles, with ever-increasing range and lethality, are closing in from the south and from the north, and when a nation that openly wishes your family’s death achieves the practical capability to cause it. Imagine trying to carry on a business — trying to carry on anything at all. The Iranian strategy, with the enthusiastic support of Hamas and Hezbollah, is to simply make life in Israel untenable for a critical mass of Jews, who will then either go somewhere else (those that have somewhere else to go) or give up the fight. A conventional war of nations and of armies, of the kind that Israel has won repeatedly in its history since 1948, is therefore avoided. Or, at the least, postponed until Israel is much more weakened and demoralized.
It is not an outlandish strategy. It is a very practical one, and it is one that is being pursued with some effect. If you wonder how a people’s confidence and will to fight can be broken down by literally interminable threats and violence, just read Mr. Levy’s column again.
Now, considering that Hamas’s missiles are part of an overall strategy for the total destruction of Israel, one has to ask the question: What is a “proportional response” to those who are attempting to destroy your country?
A response reflecting a natural will to live and to fight would be a response which defeats that enemy. The Israelis in the south need to be assured that their nation has the capability of defending them from these attacks, or else they simply have no reason to stay. The Israelis in the north are surely watching, and all Israelis are watching — even those who, like Mr. Levy, seem to have already given up the will to fight.
Though his use of the term “neighborhood bully” in his column seems to echo Bob Dylan’s song (from his album Infidels), I myself would guess that Mr. Levy has never heard Dylan’s Neighborhood Bully. In reality, it is Dylan’s song that is actually a response — albeit 25 years ahead of schedule — to Mr. Levy’s column, and to similar sentiments with which Israelis (uniquely among nations of the earth) need to contend day after day and year after year. Running out the clock, time standing still. It sure is a funny thing.
…
The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He’s criticized and condemned for being alive.
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin,
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He’s the neighborhood bully.
…
Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace,
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease.
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly.
To hurt one they would weep.
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep.
He’s the neighborhood bully.
In the Canadian newspaper London Free Press, James Reaney writes on Bob Dylan’s recent show in London, Ontario. Guitarist Paul James (with whom Dylan has history) replaced Stu and Denny for the first several tunes. Reaney regrets that photographers were not allowed: “So you’ll have to take my word that Dylan was wearing a big white cowboy hat and a black suit with red trim that made him look like a bellhop in a wild west hotel.” That’s an interesting way of describing Bob, although I can’t imagine it’s quite the effect he’s going for. Reaney also writes this:
This reviewer has decided to accept Dylan’s decision to play around with his famous words. When he wants a line to be heard clearly — say, the slashing “I hope that you die” from Masters of War or the self-mocking “You think I’m over the hill” from Spirit on the Water or the menacing “How does it feel?” from Like a Rolling Stone — it could be heard.
“Unintelligible,” Dylan said clearly during the band introductions, one clue that this master artist and joker can be heard when he needs to.
Dylan said “unintelligible”? What’s that about? Well, let’s check the tape, which I happen to have. Click below for Dylan’s band intro and remarks – my transcription of the relevant part is below that.
So, after introducing Denny, Stu and Donnie, Bob says (to the degree that it’s intelligible, of-course):
If you haven’t noticed, there’s a journalist backstage, and he’s asking somebody, “Is he always so unintelligible?” Unintelligible. Does anybody out there think I’m unintelligible? [Pause, indistinct crowd reaction. Bob laughs.] Tell me the truth now!
Pretty funny stuff. The way he rolls that word around, “unintelligible,” sounds a little W.C. Fields-esque to me. In any case, just priceless.
No doubt everyone’s heard it already by now, but for the record, here is an mp3 file of Bob Dylan’s remarks at his gig in Minnesota on election night 2008:
He spoke during his encore, in between playing “Like A Rolling Stone” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.” He introduced his band members and made his fateful comments after naming the bass player and mainstay of his band all these long years, the estimable Tony Garnier. Here is my own scrupulously accurate transcript:
I wanna introduce my band right now. On the guitar, there’s Denny Freeman. Stu Kimball is on the guitar too. Donnie Herron as well, on the violin right now, playin’ on the steel guitar earlier. George Recile’s playin’ on the drums.
Tony Garnier, wearin’ the Obama button — [applause] alright! — Tony likes to think it’s a brand new time right now. An age of light. Me, I was born in 1941 — that’s the year they bombed Pearl Harbor. Well I been livin’ in a world of darkness ever since. But it looks like things are gonna change now …
These remarks have been referred to and partially quoted in a variety of established news outlets since Bob Dylan made them. None of these reports, as far as I’ve seen, included Dylan’s reference to Tony’s Obama button, or his references to what he says is Tony’s belief that “it’s a brand new time now” and “an age of light.” Leaving out this context alters the tone of Dylan’s comments and renders them incomprehensible. As I said the other day, the remarks as reported seemed “completely cockamamie” and “not the Bob Dylan I know.” (Not that I’ve ever met the guy, you understand.)
As opposed to the professional journalists in attendance at the concert who got this thing so wrong, a kind reader of my website who wishes to be known only as John W., and who was also in attendance at that gig, had emailed me a much more accurate rendering of Bob’s remarks, in advance of us being able to hear the audio. His accuracy and fairness in remembering and reporting Bob’s actual words leads me to also give great credence to his overall description of the moment. You may or may not do the same. It is not crucial to understanding what Bob was really saying, but in the absence of a good quality video it helps paint the picture. This is how John characterized it:
What seemed to prompt him to talk to the crowd more than anything was Tony Garnier’s donning of an Obama button. It was Tony’s turn to be introduced and Bob started to chuckle a bit and said something like, “Tony Garnier over there wearing his Obama button (raises his eyebrows)…..Tony thinks it’s gonna be an Age of Light (chuckling)…..Well I was born in 1941, the year they bombed Pearl Harbor. Been living in darkness ever since……Looks like that’s all gonna change now (chuckling a bit).” Then he broke into “Blowin’ In The Wind.”
On the bootlegger’s audio, I don’t detect the sound of Dylan chuckling, but there’s such a thing as a quiet and more visual kind of chuckle and that may be what John was picking up on. It’s far from crucial in any case.
The news reports of Dylan’s remarks that I have seen all portrayed them as being a sincere endorsement by Bob Dylan of the notion that President Barack Obama is going to change everything for the better. I didn’t see any attempt to explain what he meant by saying that he’s been living in a world of darkness since he was born in 1941, the year of the attack on Pearl Harbor. It just makes sense to some people, I guess, to think that Bob Dylan has been miserable in this world since birth but that Barack Obama is going to change all of that. I couldn’t understand it myself. In my original post I put forth just one conceivable explanation (based on Bob’s deep links to the black American experience) but concluded that really only Dylan himself could explain the remarks as reported in the press.
Now, knowing the full context and tone of his words, I no longer think that Dylan needs to explain anything at all. I don’t believe that his actual remarks are even at all mysterious or cryptic. I think that they are crystal clear and they are consistent with how this man and this artist has tried to carry himself throughout the long and crazy years he’s been on this planet. He is being faithful, and we should also remember that it’s not easy to be faithful — it’s not easy for any of us. The dignity of this man is something that is not often pointed out. But he is a man of very great dignity, and this moment on the stage in Minnesota on election night of 2008 — offhand though it may or may not have been — was a moment where he exhibited great dignity as well as respect for his fans and for things more important than fame and wealth.
But lest I choke up too much here, let’s also lighten up, because his remarks were first and foremost jocular ones. When he says that Tony Garnier with his Obama button believes it’s going to be a “brand new time” and “an age of light,” he is clearly needling Tony, but doing it affectionately. I hate to descend to the level of saying “listen to how he says” something, but there are actually people out there who — after hearing the audio — are still taking Dylan’s remarks completely seriously; so for them, please: listen to how he says “an age of light.” Does it sound like something he believes in? Be honest for a moment and have an ear to hear. (But no one can be forced to do so.)
Once it is understood that Dylan is joking around and does not seriously believe that all things will be made new by the incoming U.S. president, then his words about living in a world of darkness for his entire life become comprehensible in the context of what his songs have told us again and again.
This litany will be of necessity very incomplete, but consider: Dylan sings of living in a world of mixed-up confusion, where everything is broken. He’s hung over, hung down, hung up and a million miles from the one he loves. He longs to disappear past the haunted, frightened trees. He looks out with his lady from Desolation Row, and sings a lullaby that goes, “When the cities are on fire with the burning flesh of men, just remember that death is not the end.” He sees the cat in the well, with the wolf looking down. He’s knocking and trying to get to heaven before that door shuts. He wanders around Boston town but his heart is in the Highlands — he can’t see any other way to go. The times are always changing and changing, and yet nothing ever really changes. Don’t conclude that he is without solace, however: he’s liable to stand on the table and propose a toast to the King. He’s using all eight carburetors. The hills and the one he loves have always given him a song.
The world of darkness, in other words, is not something foisted upon Bob by presidents of the United States or by political powers or anyone else in particular. For him (and maybe if we think about it for us too) it is just normality: it is the way things are. The world is a difficult place. Life is hard. People suffer and people die. The truth about anything that is of this world is ever-elusive and leaves one ultimately bereft of comfort.
Now, what I want to know is this: Is the new American president going to fix all that for Bob — all of the above? Is he going to take Bob out of this darkness he’s lived in since 1941? Does anyone think that Bob Dylan believes that, and that’s what he wanted to tell everybody on election night of 2008?
Bob Dylan is neither an idiot nor a crank, though he’s been called both on various occasions. He knew very well, singing to that University of Minnesota audience, how hyped up most of them were for Barack Obama’s election. His remarks were not a slam of Barack Obama, nor an endorsement of John McCain, or anything like that. In his own way, he was kindly alerting those with ears to hear that one should not have such high expectations of a politician or of any fellow human being. There will be no age of light; at least not until the real age of light, and that age will not be instituted by any president of the United States. All presidents, you see, sometimes have to stand naked.
Of-course, most at the gig heard what they were so desperate to hear: that change is a comin’ with Obama, and it’s all gonna be great.They heard “it looks like things are gonna change now” without the irony that the context provides. And Bob, dignified, gave them that respect. He didn’t mock them. Everyone has to come to their own understandings at their own pace. Some will think twice about what he said.
He then sang “Blowin’ in the Wind.” I love the current live arrangement of this song, which Bob and the band have been playing for quite a while. I wrote about it in a previous post here. It is indeed a buoyant and a joyous version. It is a version of the song which conveys — to this listener at any rate — how wonderful a thing it is that the answer is right there blowing in the wind in front of our faces. Thanks, Bob.
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It is better to put trust in the LORD than to put confidence in princes. Psalm 118:9
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Addendum: And one more thing. We all no doubt remember Bob’s quoted remarks in that interview with the U.K. Times last June. As they stood up to end the interview, the interviewer asked him “in a last aside” something about the coming U.S. election.
We don’t know exactly what the question was or what Dylan’s full response was. There is no pretence that we are being provided a complete transcript — it’s not that kind of an article. Dylan is quoted as crediting Barack Obama with “redefining the nature of politics from the ground up” and “redefining what a politician is.” He is quoted as saying that he’s “hopeful that things might change” and that “some things are going to have to.” Our fresh experience of seeing how journalists and newspapers missed the humor and irony of Bob Dylan on stage in Minnesota on election night — and gave us a completely different story — cannot but make me entirely reevaluate whatever I thought I knew about Dylan’s remarks in that interview. They may have been entirely ironic. Or maybe not. He also is quoted as saying, “You can’t expect people to have the virtue of purity when they are poor.” The remarks as quoted are, in the final analysis, incomplete and not fully comprehensible on their own — just like what was quoted in the Minnesota newspapers after the election night gig. So make of those quotes what you will, or, perhaps more wisely, make nothing of them at all.
A few days ago I wrote a little about the newly released song “Red River Shore” from Bob Dylan’s Tell Tale Signs collection.
Perhaps I was going a tad nuts implying that it might be the greatest thing Bob Dylan has ever done. After all, you could certainly argue that there’s nothing radical about the record. It’s not going to set the world upside down, or spark revolution in the streets, or spawn hundreds of imitators in the music biz trying to copy the “Red River Shore” sound. You could hardly imagine a simpler melody, and some might say that Bob Dylan can write a song like this in between rolling out of bed and brushing his teeth. And maybe he can, if the mood is right. Yet, the song and the performance moved me and shook me up in a way that is very rare; all the rarer, in fact, as I get older and bend a little from the weight of believing that I’ve heard it all already. And isn’t it nice to be able to get that excited about something again?
The song is stirring and poignant in direct proportion to the way in which it expresses feelings which are unspeakable. This also makes it difficult to write about, and likewise makes me personally not want to write about it too much.
There is one thing that the mind of the listener probably meditates upon, and goes back and forth about, when listening to the song, and that is the question of just who this girl is—the girl from the Red River shore. Of-course any given listener can believe that she is just a girl—some variation of an unrequited human love for whom the singer is pining. And there ain’t nothing wrong with that.
However, without wanting to speak too much to what perhaps can’t or shouldn’t be said outside of the song itself, I will say that it has crossed my mind, while listening to this song, that the girl from the Red River shore is perhaps the same “she” for this singer as the “she” of “Shelter from the Storm” is for the singer of that song. And I offer this not by way of trying to define an end to the meaning of the song, but rather to open up its possibilities (as if that’s even necessary).
In that song from Blood on the Tracks, the singer is by turns nurtured and comforted by this female figure; he is then alienated from her through his own failing ( “I took too much for granted, got my signals crossed”), and is finally left meditating at once optimistically and hopelessly on the ultimate possibility of truly knowing her or uniting with her.
Well, I’m livin’ in a foreign country but I’m bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor’s edge, someday I’ll make it mine.
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born.
“Come in,” she said,
“I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”
“[W]hen God and her were born.” It’s one of those great lines: an imponderable line that you cannot help but ponder and ponder. It’s a poetic jump that takes the feeling of the song beyond normal expression. It sounds a little bit like some kind of secret key—like a Rosetta Stone line. But it defies being completely nailed down, and so its magic survives.
Taken in any kind of literal sense, it’s a big thing to say that someone or something has been around as long as God himself. You might be really hung up on an ex-girlfriend or boyfriend, but when you get into that kind of thinking then you’re going somewhere else entirely.
Now, the parallel with the girl from the Red River shore can perhaps be seen most clearly, likewise, in the final verse of that song. After singing about the “man full of sorrow and strife” (Is 53), whom — the singer has heard — used to be able to literally raise the dead, he sings:
Well I don’t know what kind of language he used
Or if they do that kind of thing anymore
Sometimes I think nobody ever saw me here at all
‘Cept the girl from the Red River shore
Well, when he sings about this man who used to raise the dead, we know—any listener knows, regardless of his or her own faith or lack thereof—that this singer is (just like that earlier singer) invoking none other than God himself. If this man he heard about actually did used to do that, then he was, at least in some inscrutable sense, God. Yet the singer then puts the girl from the Red River shore on a level beyond anyone else he’s ever known, and potentially beyond even that Man, when he indicates that she may have been the only one who ever actually saw him on this earth—the only one whose acknowledgment of his existence proved that he actually did exist. That is a heavy honor indeed, and quite a heavy burden for any girl from the Red River shore to bear.
Perhaps it’s worth summarizing some of the qualities of this figure—if it is one figure—this “she” who promised shelter from the storm, and this girl from the Red River shore.
Back when he was just a “creature void of form,” she was there for him. And then when he needed a “place where it’s always safe and warm,” she was there. Later, she walked up to him “so gracefully and took [his] crown of thorns.” She was there again when the entire world seemed to just pose a question that was “hopeless and forlorn.” This mysterious girl was the only one he ever wanted to want him—the one with whom he wishes he “could have spent every hour of [his] life.” He is a stranger in the land in which he is duty-bound to live, but she—and the hills—give him a song with which to get by. Although many saw them together at one time, when he goes back to inquire with them no one even knows what he’s talking about. Each day he lives is “just another day away” from that girl from the Red River shore.
So, she is the very source of song itself. From her comes comfort, protection and wisdom, at those times when he needs it most desperately. Yet she is somehow invisible to the world, and, although she has touched him, she remains just out of his reach: unattainable.
While she is an eternal presence for him, she is in some sense distinct from that other presumed eternal presence; i.e., God.
I don’t know necessarily what you might call such a being (if you’re not calling her the girl from the Red River shore). However, it cannot but strike me that, for Christians, there is actually a specific name that can be applied to a figure who meets all of these criteria. Indeed, it was that aforementioned man full of sorrow and strife who gave the figure a name, as in Luke 11:13:
If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?
The Holy Spirit is believed, by Christians, to be at once God and a distinct person—in a sense that I’m distinctly unqualified to plumb. This is part of that theological mystery called the Holy Trinity, where God is believed by Christians to be at once Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But, relevant here, it does mean that the Holy Spirit is as old as—or, if you like, was born at the same time as—God, because the Holy Spirit is God, while still being in a real way the Holy Spirit. Interesting, no?
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Now, am I saying that “Red River Shore” is “Bob Dylan’s song about the Holy Spirit”? By no means would I blandly state that. The heartbreak, the longing, the love and the mystery that inhabits “Red River Shore” can’t and shouldn’t be labeled, solved and neatly filed away like a doctrine. And we know that the writer of “Shelter from the Storm” is unlikely to have been self-consciously writing about a specifically Christian concept like the Holy Spirit. I’d also tend to believe that in his greatest songs, Bob Dylan is not deliberately writing about anything at all. When things are happening at that level, the song is always in some way expressing itself. I believe that he’s made much this point himself in interviews over the years.
Yet, it is one measure of the greatness of this song that amongst all of the various ways in which it works and holds true is also this quasi-theological sense. Pretty astounding.
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Is it the greatest song that Bob Dylan has ever done, as I breathlessly intimated it might be a few days ago? Who the hell knows? But I can say without hesitation that it’s the greatest song by anybody that this listener has heard in a long, long time.
At his blog, Yisrael Medad reproduces an article that was published in 1987 in an Israeli publication. Written by an apparent long-time friend of Bob Dylan’s named Tuvia Ariel, it is entitled “Rambling on Dylan,” and that about describes it, although it is an interesting rambling.
Excerpt:
I remember calling Bob in the late days of October or early November 1973. “We need you here in Israel,” I told him collect. “But you got the war won,” he said. “You don’t need me.” Not to fight, I told him, and before I could say another word, that I wanted him to come and sing in the hospitals for the wounded, before I could even make a sound he said “eh” and I knew that if I had told him that the Jews needed him to fight in their army, needed Zimmerman the Jew, he would have come. Bob Dylan the Entertainer couldn’t make it. “I’m making a movie right now and I can’t get away.” “I promise you,” I said, “the movie will bomb.” The movie bombed.
And while on the subject of proofs of God’s existence … happy birthday to the state of Israel.
Now his holiest books have been trampled upon,
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on.
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth,
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health.What’s anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin’, they say.
He just likes to cause war.
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed,
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed.What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers?
Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill,
Running out the clock, time standing still.
There’s a piece by Paul J. Cella at Redstate called “The irony of Bob Dylan.” It’s largely a reaction to a review of Chronicles written by Jim Kunstler. I guess it comes as a surprise to me that it is still a surprise to some others that Dylan, in Chronicles, names Barry Goldwater (R-Az) as his “favorite politician” around the period of 1961/62. But then it shouldn’t surprise me: his reference to Goldwater didn’t get the kind of attention it warranted in most of the reviews and publicity surrounding that memoir, probably because a whole lot of people didn’t know what the hell to make of it. A reminder of what exactly it was (from page 283 of the original hardcover):
There was no point arguing with Dave (Van Ronk), not intellectually anyway. I had a primitive way of looking at things and I liked country fair politics. My favorite politician was Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who reminded me of Tom Mix, and there wasn’t any way to explain that to anybody. I wasn’t that comfortable with all the psycho polemic babble.
Tom Mix was a star of silent westerns. Barry Goldwater of-course was the iconic Republican who wrote “The Conscience Of A Conservative” and was a formative influence on Ronald Reagan. Dylan was writing about the 1961/62 era.
Anyway, towards the end of his piece, Cella says the following:
Given that the counterculture of the Sixties, which tried to set up Dylan as its spokesman or poet-laureate, has conquered and is even now solidifying its preeminence in our society, there is a special and marvelous irony to note.
All the sneering revolt that churns through the great anthems of Dylan’s best work, “Like a Rolling Stone” being perhaps the most well-known exemplar; all the defiance, the fury of impudence; all the challenge thrown vaguely at some contemptible oppressor —
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.How does it feel?
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?— all this may be justly hurled with equal passion against the generation, now leading our country toward ruin, which wanted it as its slogan, and which unjustly hurled it against the basically sound social order preceding it.
And Bob Dylan himself may have even meant it that way.
Well, it might be tempting to hear the song as put-down of the then-emerging 60s generation, and you could probably take that interpretation a long way if you wanted to. But I personally would resist that temptation. I think the song works most profoundly as, ultimately, a reflection on the singer’s self. And this particular singer did happen to be breaking out and breaking through on an artistic level at the time that had to be both terrifying and exhilarating — two emotions that balance each other exquisitely in the song, I think. Of-course the song doesn’t have be nailed down, and maybe a lot of its power comes from the fact that it can’t be. I do think, though, that it is very often fruitful to look at songs where Dylan appears to be criticizing and taking apart someone other as potentially being reflections on the self instead. I find it difficult to hear, for example, “Just Like A Woman” or “Sweetheart Like You” other than in this way. (And let Todd Haynes make of that what he will.)
