dagblog - Comments for "Dylan's Nobel and the State of American Literature"

Find me an angel who flies

PeraclesPlease — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 19:22:45 +0000

In reply to Peracles, you broke the mold.

Find me an angel who flies from Montgomery... or Little Rock, even Topeka.

Peracles, you broke the mold.

Oxy Mora — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 17:50:19 +0000

In reply to Sometimes I'm very humbled by

Peracles, you broke the mold.

I think my good health today is partly due to my rude awakening and subsequent struggles, like spending down my assets and working with my hands. And some choral singing mixed in.

Gotta go, some lady in Arkansas is inquiring about my environmental services.

Sometimes I'm very humbled by

PeraclesPlease — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 16:48:11 +0000

In reply to Peracles, thanks, truly, and

Sometimes I'm very humbled by the anonymity and my lack of knowledge of who I'm talking to at any moment. And then other times, I'm off and bounding with my je ne give a fuck pas nature. My neighbor came home to find his wife in bed with another woman in our rather conservative southern climes, sometime mid-60's, as just one story of how things could easily go off a cliff. He recovered, she recovered, though not together, probably in the end no one was hurt, or not too badly, as we explored these new possibilities.

One of the core tenets of liberalism is that we don't understand enough about each other, or even ourselves dagnabbit, so we will provide the trappings and freedom to evolve without too much pain to each other. We keep hoping for that simple respect from others, but it's hard to find. Glad A Cappella did you good, sorry about the harsh intro to Beatles & Dylan - maybe the reprise is a little more salubrious....

Peracles, thanks, truly, and

Oxy Mora — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 15:54:24 +0000

In reply to Let's just say it's a 1-time

Peracles, thanks, truly, and as usual, your scope and eloquence reach me.

Never having focused on his lyrics, in print, as poetry, I am struck as much by the structure as the sentiment, given the iambic pent. And the rhyming. And this is the now nexus of lyrics and literature, and even politics?

Well, politics maybe, did we learn something---reach them where they live, sell them on the actual product later.

In 1965 I was raising a family in Connecticut, commuting to NYC and during the week flying across the country. The office ethic was to get the smallest size Brooks Brother brief case which would still hold a clean shirt and tooth brush. No song there.

I didn't even "get" the Beatles till 20 years later when a nude psycho therapy group in Beverly Hills opened my eyes. Of course my wife had "gotten" both the Beatles, and ( just this moment realized it), Dylan, and was already merrily out the door having an affair with a sailor.

Sometimes I myself am struck by my own journey---from the stories of Harlan County, and relatives who worked at the Polar Bar' plant (known on Wall St. as the P. Lorillard tobacco Co.) to singing perhaps the greatest a cappella choral work of all time, by Randall Thompson, at the Mariinsky and Ely Cathedral.

Native cadence speech and internal rhyming" recently at Ethel's cafe:

"Now, hon, you're late again I'll dock yer pay

Pick up the choc-late milk and waffle plate."

The lyrics to an eternal choral work:

"Allelujah"

So many immortals make their

A Guy Called LULU — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 14:33:19 +0000

In reply to As for Lightfoot, his Early

What a year, so many immortals make their last bow to mortality.

As for Lightfoot, his Early

Lurker — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 13:37:13 +0000

In reply to Oops, also Steppenwolf. I'll

As for Lightfoot, his Early Morning Rain has been covered by at least 13 other artists, including the Dead. That's What You Get for Loving Me has also been widely covered, including by Elvis.

Dion and Bieber were not big

Lurker — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 10:58:46 +0000

In reply to Oops, also Steppenwolf. I'll

Dion and Bieber were not big in the 60s-70s. I'll take Paul Anka and The McGarrigles instead.

It's no surprise that there are more American singer/songwriters, the surprise is just how many Canadians make the list. Your names total about 50. The Canadians have reached 13, so far. Americans outnumber English Canadians by more than 10 to 1.

Let's just say it's a 1-time

PeraclesPlease — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 07:52:34 +0000

In reply to Fascinating blog and

Let's just say it's a 1-time acknowledgment to the poetical genius of some "musicians", that indeed this is serious literature too. While the committee digs out obscure names and books from various countries, for 50 years there's been no acknowledgment of the words that have most shaped our lives, daily. If I say "the girl with kaleidoscope eyes", a billion or more people's eyes will flash in recognition. And even that line is post-Dylan, when Lennon had to up his game to be a real poet. Listen to the Byrds do Dylan and they're doing songs. Listen to Dylan do his own songs and he's doing words.

"Princess on a steeple and all the pretty people drinking thinking they got it made..." he's rapping in 1965. His 6 minute song/poem excoriates the status quo and devastates the 3-minute "she loves you yeah yeah yeah" rule for radio play. go on to Subterranean Homesick Blues Again and it's a real treat, an onslaught of words, including the most famous, "...you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"

Listen to the sparse seemingly eternal 11-minute Desolation Row for a packed house at Royal Albert Hall, and you can't escape the feeling they're there for one of the largest poetry readings ever. or to steal the punchline from another joke, "you ain't comin' here for the music, is ya?" - certainly not the harmonica.

Dylan is the uniting figure for archivists, the study of literature in tandem with lyrics, folk movements, all that stuff English teachers and lit majors demanded. he never quite managed hat "serious novel" though, which is good - he didn't need to write a novel to be serious - poetry aka lyrics was serious enough. it changed our world. sure, Howl and the beats changed poetry too - isn't that what it's all about?

[And then there's the personal for me, where Dylan rises up to make another failed relationship all better, put a bandaid on it, a shrink in time of dire need:

"I once loved a woman/a child I am told/I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul"

followed by:

"I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind/you could have done better but I don't mind/you just kinda wasted my precious time, but don't think twice, it's alright" -

that magical poignant moment of stoic sadness and how-did-we-get-it-all-wrong and faked "I don't care" like when the proud flower says goodbye to the Little Prince on Astéroïde B six-cent douze. I never asked for Dylan - he just kind of appears.

And you might look closer at the possible allusions in these dark political hours we face now:

Well the railman offered 2 cures, and then said jump on in

The one was Texas medicine, the other was railroad gin

And like a fool I mixed them

And it strangled up my mind

Now people just get uglier

And I have no sense of time

Awww mama, can this really be the end

To be stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again

Somehow we're face to face with our failings, trying to figure out our mistakes or sins again, the length of our perdition, our never-ending road, defeat valiantly clutched from the jaws of victory... And if you look at the lyrics just right, like squinting into the sun, it's like a mini-cut of life out of La Strada or Fellini or Truffaut from the golden age or Faulkner from his best years - "built a fire on main street and shot it full of holes" - the circus, the insanity, the hustle and bustle]

Out of curiosity, I wondered what Garcia-Marquez thought re: his magical surrealism (didn't realize he'd died 2 years ago), and Ruben Blades noted that Gabo would have approved - they'd discussed it many times, and Garcia-Marquez had even filled such a literary poem into a song with this idea, " Gente despertando bajo dictaduras " - people waking under dictatorship, like my feelings and songs towards the desaperacidos and the generals of the Junta - but thought that it would have been more powerful if they'd had Dylan share the award with another poet-singer such as Brazilian Chico Buarque. Here is the Spanish version of this Facebook analysis - you can run it through Google if you like. Adios to the Generation of the Boom.

Fascinating blog and

Oxy Mora — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 02:39:05 +0000

In reply to Dylan's Nobel and the State of American Literature

iFascinating blog and discussion among the bro's, worth a second cup of coffee, brother can you spare a dime?

I can't say I was a fan of Dylan, just wasn't my time. Also, not a high brow myself, but having sung the great choral works, including on stage in London with a rock star like Dmitri Hvorostovsky whose baritone voice can melt ice or slice through steel, the rasping of a pop star actually doesn't thrill me.

On the other hand, the award will interest me in his poetry, which I had never thought of reading on its own merit.

I can't help but think that the award is a capitulation, even granting the international "stature" as a criterion. Can't see how it leads to "serious art" except that upheavals in social and political spheres are thought by some to inspire good art, so given what may lie ahead perhaps the award is a benediction to a period of artistic underachievement. Below is a list of great art that is "about" politics.

Uh, I'll get back to you on that.

And most likely, I am still depressed by this election. Actually everything about our politics is relevant to art, just not art about our politics.

And here's you the great

quinn esq — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 00:16:40 +0000

In reply to The Guess Who and Rush, and

And here's you the great defender of women, then putting Canada down.

Joni. #1 amongst them all.

Now, some are post-70's, but you get my drift.

Then kd lang.

Alanis.

Shania.

Avril Lavigne.

Feist.

Margot Timmins and the Cowboy Junkies.

Sarah MacLachlan.

Celine.

Emile Haines from Metric.

Nelly Furtado.

And Holly Cole and Loreena McKennit and Diana Krall and others I find unlistenable.

But look. For the men, the Tragically Hip.

Which, for anybody who does not know their story right now, or their music, well... go chase it down.