Dylan Today

I don’t know if anyone is still reading this, now that class is done…but if you are, look up the video of Bob Dylan singing “Must Be Santa” on YouTube.  Just to see what he’s up to these days…

I’m Not There

I thought I would start a post dedicated to some discussion of I’m Not There. I thought that the movie fit really well in some ways with what we’ve been learning in class. For example, we talked a lot about Bob Dylan’s many different personalities, and this movie had six different actors playing him, which I thought was a very clever way of capturing Bob Dylan’s ‘essence.’ I thought that the movie kinda lost it’s momentum to some extent in the second half. I thought that it kinda felt like the movie was gonna be over soon for the last hour of the movie, mostly, I think, because they had to wrap up six different stories.

The Overall Opinion On The Beats

Ok so, I’ve been wondering about something. What’s you guys’ true opinion on the beats. I read a couple of other blogs and one guy that supposedly was around during the Beats striving time said he felt that the Beats were frauds. He basically said that these guys just gave the idea of freedom but they weren’t really free in their real lives what do you think? Do you guys think it’s an accusation or is there some truth to that????

Knowing Dylan and Woody Guthrie

I know this post is a little delayed, but I’ve been thinking about what we were talking about the other day in class, namely having the ability to really know someone through their songs.  We were talking about how Dylan says that you can really know the “real” Woody Guthrie through Guthrie’s songs.  Though I do often see Dylan as a hypocrite (when he says not to care but he does, etc.), I don’t really think that he’s in the wrong in this case.  Since Guthrie and Dylan are obviously different people, I think  that it’s possible that it is possible to know Guthrie through his songs (though this really is just conjecture because I haven’t actually heard any of Guthrie’s songs).  It’s possible that Guthrie puts more of who he really is into writing his songs; Dylan is always adamant that he doesn’t want anyone to know who he really is, and therefore his songs are less of a window into his soul..

 

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this, I haven’t really thought it out, but hopefully you’ll understand the general gist that’s I’m trying to explain…

I is Another

Dylan is very critical of himself, I believe this is part of why he is so good. He reevaluates himself all the time to make his music better, it is evident in Chronicles and in his interviews. In the playboy interview he is speaking of his career and how he was thinking of quiting singing and says, “I was playing a lot of songs I didn’t want to play. I was singing words I didn’t really want to sing,” and then goes on to say, “It’s very tiring having other people tell you how much they dig you if you yourself don’t dig you.” We were talking in class today about why Dylan doesn’t like people to idolize him or think they know him through his songs, yet he thinks he knows Woodie Guthrie through his songs. I think Dylan doesn’t like all of his songs, some songs don’t say what he wanted to say, or don’t come from the heart, and that is why he tells people they can’t know him from listening to his songs. It’s not that he doesn’t have pride in his music, he just doesn’t want every song he sings to define him, because how can everything one says be exactly what one is?

Maybe this is why he liked the saying from Rimbaud “I is someone else” or “I is another.” Maybe his songs are another? His songs are another not in a bad way, but just not a representation of himself.

Hunk of Butter

Dylan’s comment in the playboy interview (page 105) about dedicating yourself to a cause was dead on. Basically he said that the protest singers were dedicating themselves to “the cause” instead of to what the cause actually was (ex. non-violence). It is not that he is against being non-violent, he just does not believe in causes. I thought that the hunk of butter analogy explained my personal philosophy on protests and politics perfectly.

Dylan Song Covers

I was thinking in class today about how the fact that so many of Dylan’s songs have been covered in the years since he first sang them.  Many of Dylan’s songs have been given different melodies, and most of them have jumped genres.  I think that this really talks about the universality of Dylan’s lyrics.  Dylan said that his songs can be stripped of their melody and they are still important, but it seems that they can also be given entirely new melodies while still retaining their original power.

“America”

When I first read the poem “America” I thought it was very powerful and moving.  I registered it as strong and forceful, but I was very disappointed at Ginsberg’s reading of it.  I thought that the poem lost so much of its meaning when Ginsberg read it like it was supposed to be funny.  I never thought it was meant to be funny; still dont.  I dont know, but I was very disappointed and disenchanted with Ginsberg at that particular moment in time.

Addiction

I think of the relationship between Sal and Dean as more of an addiction than a true friendship.  In the beginning Sal knows that he’s being conned, but he goes along with it because he knows that at least it will make his life more interesting.  Then their relationship gets worse and worse, but Sal hangs on.  It takes Sal hitting rock bottom, being left behind in Mexico with dysentery, for him to realize the true extent of their friendship, and for him to “get clean”.  The interesting thing is that Sal doesn’t go along with Dean at the end of the book.  It shows that Sal has changed, and that he now knows just how bad it had been, and how he doesn’t want to go back there.

Dean

I feel like Dean runs around all his life looking for what he can’t have. When he has Marylou he wants Camille, when he gets her he leaves her for someone else. His dad wasn’t in his life so he wants to reconnect with him and find his sister who he never got to be around. When Victor shows them his son they all say how beautiful the kid is and wish they had sons like him, yet Dean has children that he has run out on. When Sal is around Dean leaves him but when they aren’t together he wants his friend back and misses him. I think he wastes his whole life chasing what he feels like he can’t have even though most of what he’s wishing for is right there for him.