Last night was a bit surreal. Sandy was headed off to a dinner that followed a conference on Old Norse that she had been attending here at Aarhus University. I was going to walk out with her and rent a movie to watch. By the time I discovered that I had left my keys and cell phone in the apartment she was on her bus and gone. Fortunately, I had a wallet, a warm coat, hat and gloves. So I decided to walk downtown, get dinner and see a movie.
I went to see "I'm Not There," which is sort of about Bob Dylan, played by five different people. Interesting idea. Dylan has seemed like a lot of different people over his lifetime, more even that the rest of us. I remember going though several personas myself from 16-25, but Dylan always seemed to be out ahead putting on identities and taking them off.
That was not really what was so interesting about him, however. It really was his music and words. He created some songs that were just dazzling as music and poetry, even though my good wife, the poet, doesn't agree. And in a way, whether the poetry was technically any good also doesn't really matter, some of it simply expressed things that the rest of us had a hard time saying as well. After my first marriage broke up, "If you see her, say hello," from Blood on the Tracks was both melancholy and therapeutic in the way that a good sad song about busted romance can be when life is imitating art.
Even though he is not particularly famous as a singer or instrumentalist, he also created an electric rock sound in Highway 61 Revisted and Blonde on Blonde that I really like just as a wall of sound. One of my favorites was Just Like Tom Thumbs Blues, shown here with Dylan playing with the Band on tour in England, although the studio cut on Highway 61 is better.
I also really like this cut from Blonde on Blonde, called Visions of Joanna, which back in the late 1960s seemed like a good take on confused love. This is also from the 1966 tour. Both clips are from the Dylan biopic No Direction Home by Martin Scorsese. A good place to start for understanding Wee Bob.
Friday, November 23, 2007
I'm not there
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Although I'm hardly an expert in the field, I've made the claim that Dylan is the premiere poet of the 20th century. His songs, if you just look at the lyrics, stand up for their imagery and wording with much of the poetry to which I've been exposed. Perhaps the additional need to fit them to music forces a flow to them as well that some poets do not find necessary.
Blood on the Tracks was driven by Dylan's relationship difficulties of the time. Many of his songs from that era speak of love, many hopefully of an idealized love. I think I like the sharper ones better, like Absolutely Sweet Marie, that look back and ask, why didn't I know you were a loser? Or Simple Twist of Fate which once helped me wallow in my own loserness.
It's all certainly at the other end of the spectrum from (IIRC) Steve Allen reading the lyrics to Surfin Bird (Papa Oom Mow Mow) as poetry.
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