Speaking of our brothers up north particularly, Canada:
Not as bad as Stalin
Snip:
Michael Ignatieff, who plans to become Prime Minister of Canada!) defends the United States against Pinter’s charges by playing – get this! – the Stalin card.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 12 2005 21:03 utc | 4

& tommorrow morning they will summarily excute one of their own – tookie williams
ô yes when you kill in great numbers it is called foreign policy & you get to teach at yale or georgetown
perhaps arnold will learn what a hot time in the old town means

Posted by: r’giap | Dec 12 2005 21:26 utc | 6

& even thinking of these people i become a painting by edvard munch
anything like this?

Posted by: dan of steele | Dec 12 2005 22:00 utc | 8

WTF ???
WTF?????? OK, I’M GOING FOR A WALK…GEEZ.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 13 2005 1:47 utc | 10

actually, I think it was Niall Ferguson playing the Stalin card. Iggy, gets an honourable mention and is still deserving of r’giap’s scorn.

Posted by: gmac | Dec 13 2005 2:15 utc | 12

$cam, if you’ve ever traveled in indonesia and seen ‘esche’ first hand, imagine the much more powerful look of death! there are more things
on heaven and earth, mr. poindexter, than are
dreamed of in your puerile psycho-philosophy.
G’iap, yesterday’s placard on a disheveled bum,
standing outside the grocery store in the snow:
“it’s OK to help.” america breaths esche-death.
in 2 weeks, bush will ask for $100b more death,
then congress will adjourn with its kickbacks.

Posted by: Loose Shanks | Dec 13 2005 3:13 utc | 14

& yes there is a direct line between the men borne in violence like tookie williams & the dulles brothers deciding world(s) fate(s) & not giving a flying fuck how many people their policies murdered or henry jissinger in the oval office telling nixon that he would not allow the allende govt to exist even if its people were stupid enough to elet & of course the vilence which is every second breath of that monster, cheney
‘it’s o k to help’ is probably the direct antithesis of the american dream
& theodor would love to have your observation on the racist ‘riots’ in sydney

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 13 2005 3:35 utc | 16

gylangirl,
you are right, the US has no monopoly on craziness, its just on a bigger scale. European govts can be sanctimonious and hypocritical, the british supine and hypocritical, and where I live, in Australia, simply craven. r’giap asks about the ‘riots’ in Sydney. This is the ugly face of Australia’s allegedly successful ‘multiculturalism’. The “Leb’s” are self-denoted sons of Lebanese immigrants from the 1970s and 1980s. Like the kids in the French Banlieu’s, they comprise a segregated ethnic tribe that has been cut off from the mainstream of our debt-driven wealthly ‘aspirationals’. Not just the Lebanese, but the East Africans who drive the taxis, the Egyptians, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, or anyone who looks like the kind of guy who plants bombs in the popular imagination. The white anglo kids are driving it, egged on by neo-nazis; high on pills and beer, and resentful at their mcDonald’s jobs. The “Leb’s” have it much worse due to institutional racism. Howard and the cowardly opposition leader agree that it is nothing to do with ‘race’, simply ‘criminal behaviour’ by drunken louts. Not obvious if it has any momentum or will fizzle out soon. Personally I hope it rages on. The psuedo-peace of the smug and dreary suburbs that run for hundreds of miles could do with a shake-up, as do the politcal class that ignores its pressure-points.

Posted by: theodor | Dec 13 2005 4:50 utc | 18

I won’t comment on this recent press conference in Pakistan, but would enjoy hearing how others react after reading it through.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Dec 13 2005 16:19 utc | 20

@Hannah
The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan is full of it.
“We support Musharaf because he will implement democracy.” when he clearly does not. Then again he moves against him. Does he have anything straigt?
If those journalist write like they ask, the articles will be a desaster for the ambassador.
Also note that there is exactly NO timelimit for U.S. troops in Pakistan.
For OBL being in command or not, there is no way to know and it is irrelevant. OBL did not command 9/11. He does not need to command. He is a “philosophical guidance” for some and may get asked for advice if available.

Posted by: b | Dec 13 2005 17:44 utc | 22

See how concerned we are with human rights and torture: U.S. Envoy Says Detainee Abuse Was Worse Than Described

Mr. Khalilzad was asked about two Iraqi detention facilities from which some detainees had been transferred to the hospital, and to comment on remarks from some Iraqi interior ministry officials characterizing the handling of the detainees as slapping. Mr. Khalilzad said he has received reports that pointed to more extreme treatment.
In an investigation that followed the discovery in November of the first detention center, called Jadriya, “it was determined that over 100 of them were abused,” he said, according to a transcript of his remarks released later. He said that close to 170 people had been held there.

After installing those forces and paying them this is quite some chuzpah.

Posted by: b | Dec 13 2005 21:59 utc | 24

on day as dark as these – wonderful gifts arrive – i must be the last person to have seen the martin scorcese documentary on bob dylan
what a wonderful & sobre work
ginsber, very interesting when he talks of the respiration of this man – the wonder of human breath. i found the documentary literally breathtaking
i had not wanted to see it expecting either to be cold or demeaning or reductive or a whole series of things – what is was was a series of dreams very connected to our realities
& i got to see a photograph of my adored cisco houston
wonderful songs, wonderful work
in days as dark as these it is necessary to be reminded of the implacability of creation
to any who have not seen it i envy you & plant to watch it again – it’s good for my health

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 14 2005 3:10 utc | 26

I watched the scorcese-dylan doc and thought it was overweening homage. Here is dylan, whose jadedness was used, let’s face it, strategically by him in order to construct a “dylan myth”–an aloof hipness so persistently contrived, you’d think scorcese would confront him about the “product” known as “dylan.” Instead, scorcese gives us more homily; as if to say: we are so grateful, Bob, for your contempt. Thank you.
He’s no ornette coleman.

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 14 2005 3:47 utc | 28

I mean: there’s your “cultural milgnancy”

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 14 2005 3:50 utc | 30

Is it a Police State yet, daddy? Is the Pentagon spying on Americans?
Secret database obtained by NBC News tracks ‘suspicious’ domestic groups

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 14 2005 4:14 utc | 32

@Uncle – CIFA, TALON, etc.
The Pentagon is definitly doing some domestic spying
Military Identity Confusion
CIFA: The Pentagon’s COINTELPRO

Posted by: b | Dec 14 2005 8:24 utc | 34

John Sugg’s Website hosts a worthwhile
report on the aftermath of the Al Arian trial.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Dec 14 2005 9:44 utc | 36

slothrop, annie, anna missed: I saw the first part of the documentary r’giap refers to; I also read Bob D’s first memoir, and saw him in concert recently. Absolutely loved hearing again and again his recent album Love and Theft, that is like a primer course in American music.
Loved seeing the lovable Allen Ginsberg perched on a stool talking about the man and the time.
Was amazed by Dylan’s beauty and youth and fantastic melodic voice in the black-and-white historical footage. That guy could really sing.
I am too young to have grown up with his songs, or too provincial. But in response to anna missed, the only other artist who “used celebrity as effectivly to such effect” or at least an other, is John Lennon (and his partner Yoko). “All we are saying, is give peace a chance.” He also promoted being a househusband as a valid role that also validate the role he mirrored, that of housewife.
There are a few figures that have transformed my image of what it is to be a man and to see a different view of our world, including Bill Burroughs, David Bowie (challenging gender and celebrity and poetry and performance), in my (haha) maturity the writers here and our antecedents such as Buckminster Fuller, Noam Chomsky and many others — the Velvet Underground, Andy Warhol. All these found a way to express into popular culture and through that channel found me and you, we found them.
Lennon was informed and transformed by Dylan and vice versa I’m sure.
The tone of praise I’ve heard for Dylan made me open my ears to his music and resonates with me like the feelings I have for my own artist muses, the early Rolling Stones and Neil Young and those others above — he was really quite something and states in his biography “Volume One,” that all he wanted to do was write and sing the songs that he was inspired by, the folk songs, people songs that told true stories.
Thanks rememberinggiap for reminding me of this wonderful film. There is a trove of celulloid of the beats and the later artists that has just begun to be revealed. Ginsberg and Burroughs may be the greatest comedy duo ever, if the footage ever resurfaces.

Posted by: jonku | Dec 14 2005 12:25 utc | 38

& let me be clearer
bob dylanis probably the greatest lyricist in the english language since wm blake & john milton
his undertandinf of ‘national’ character is unparalleled in the english manhuahe since hakespeare & marlowe
it is impossible, i say impossible – not to hear the natioal character & the profoundest beauty & pain of interpretation in
the lonesome death of hattie carrol
& as missed suggests his greatest gift, far further than the prattle of hanshan about zeitgeiest schluck – is that his ‘escotericism’ – has allowed the other – multitutde other in multitude generations – to hear their own stories in his songs & realise they are not alone
what amazes me consistently about bob dylan is his generosity & the very high demands he has placed on ‘song’ – there are very few with his encylopedic knowledge of the american songbook & there are even fewer capable of reaching down to our hearts without fogging our brains
slothrop, look at your rothko, look at your arsehile gorky & listen to those songs again

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 14 2005 14:05 utc | 40

Dylan is making his way into the literary canon. As I understand the process, a few yale english profs give a green light, and the zeitgeist obeys. The scxorcese doc is a contribution to dylan’s apotheosis–and now we must speak of his art as one would of faulklner’s, with assiduous reverence. It’s all sort of the literary equivilent of the nba ‘isolation’ offense, when the star posts up and all the bigs stand above the 3 pt. arc, waiting for the play to end.
Give me charles gale or the buzzcocks. no. better: that repeatable, sublime moment when, in an otherwise mediocre album–keith jarrett’s ‘eyes of the heart’–dewey redman ends a long dolorous piano solo (the second song I think) with a single aching squonk, as if the world has fallen apart by the sheer boredom of pain, and reassembled with such beauty by one badly played note.
and for that, no yale professor will ever notice. no bourgeois worship for genius possible. hooray.

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 14 2005 16:28 utc | 42

Live: PATRIOT Act: Watch the house Action right NOW!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 14 2005 17:56 utc | 44

“Television is altering the meaning of “being informed” by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation… Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information – misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information – information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing.”: Neil Postman
I remember taking a Lit-Crit class in college twenty years ago and learning Alexander Pope’s chestnut that Poetry should “instruct and delight”, and being told there was nothing more that literature could accomplish. Now it seems exceedingly clear to me in this Brave New World in which we find ourselves that most of what we read, hear and see has the very opposite intention, namely to “mislead and incite”…
************************************************
Here is dylan, whose jadedness was used, let’s face it, strategically by him in order to construct a “dylan myth”–an aloof hipness so persistently contrived, you’d think scorcese would confront him about the “product” known as “dylan.” Instead, scorcese gives us more homily; as if to say: we are so grateful, Bob, for your contempt. Thank you.
I agree with slothrop here, very articulate. The only way I have been able to approach Dylan is to separate the man from the art. After all how else to understand Ted Williams, a baseball player who transformed hitting into an art, perhaps the best batter ever; and yet, as a man he was narrow-minded, venal, bigoted, viscious, and raised a near-psychopath of a son. So too with Brother Bob. He could be viscious, cold-hearted, venal, dishonest, deceitful, and display many other base human aspects. Not surprising for a very young kid thrust into the endless display of public persona that stardom is.
In the Scorcese piece, Dylan displays little care or remorse about his past actions. There is no desire to use this rare public forum to address or make amends for past wrongs; rather surprising for a man who has been in and out of practically every orthodox religion and New Age cult for the past twenty years, searching for some morsel of eternal truth that he could hang his masterful hat on. What one does sense is the conscious creation of the next Dylan myth–or, at the very least, a first step towards the conscious shaping of his final legacy. Instead of atonement, one finds Dylan’s inner “Lakoff” reframing every isssue and event to his best advantage. There is no art, great or otherwise, without manipulation of representation, for no art is an exact simulacron of reality, and sadly we find that there is no “Dylan”, the spectacle or media myth, without manipulation of representation. We, as fans, may want it; but it simply doesn’t exist.
Whoever stated above that Dylan was not ambitious, and did not seek fame, was wrong. Dylan was exceedingly ambitious: Yes there were Stars in his childhood, and yes he WANTED, aspired, to be one with all his heart and soul. One doesn’t find many famous people without this passion, because there are too many little decisions to be made along the way of how to allocate the limited resource of one’s time. Should one take time to comfort one of the inummerable troubled souls one meets on the way up, or should one marshall one’s energy to learn, achieve or create something? (Scorcese, to his credit, includes a good deal of footage revealing Dylan’s unquenchable thirst and unparallelled education in the English world’s folk heritage; an education that truly made him a master of his craft, and helped him outstrip his contemporaries.) Seen in this light, it becomes clear that the lust for stardom is a lust to transcend or escape the limits of time and place; the endless pedestrian demands, and importunings, of community.
This lust for stardom is a pathology borne of the alienation of capitalist society, which Dylan was profoundly aware of. The search for something more was borne of the emptiness of “America”, a land of Manifest Destiny, and of the American Dream–which his immigrant Jewish parents aspired after, and outwardly achieved. The reality of Hibbing, Minnesota during Dylan’s childhood, as touched upon by Scorcese, was one of sheer industrial ecocide: This was no pastoral wilderness; the land was ravaged by the huge open pit mines of the Mesabi Iron Range. It was a vast landscape which literally bubbled with social ferment: miners, unions, company towns, life short and cheap with accidental death and injury without recompense. What sort of dream is this? His parents, Northern relatives of Mencken’s “booboisie”, might have led relatively insecure personal lives, but as a class, the Small Business Owner was at the height of its influence and prestige in American society. It was the best of times, despite the fact that it might have seemed the worst of times.
But Capitalism never stands still. Scorcese “forgot” to mention that a mere lifetime, fifty to 100 years before Dylan’s appearance on this frenetic scene, the last of the Indian Wars were being fought amidst this same landscape. Ta-oya-te-duta (Little Crow), Big Eagle, and the four divisions of Santee Sioux were being lied to, stolen from, starved, executed en masse for false crimes, made war upon with vastly superior weaponry, and rounded up and penned into “reservations” that were every bit as bad as the concentration camps of the Nazis. Finally, the surviving bands of woodland Indians were simply driven west into the desert, without horses or means of sustenance before the ever increasing hordes of White settlers flooding into the area.
A mere generation later, these White settlers were now poor farmers, eking out a marginal existence in a land not wholly conducive to family farming, neglected by the same government that had previously spared no expense in military life or armament to settle them there. This suffering expanse of the Northern Midwest became a font to the greatest flowering of progressive politics this country has seen–first with the Progressive Party and William Jennings Bryan, and later with Minnesota’s own Farmer-Labor Party, which conjoined the interests of these two vast, and hitherto largely ignored, constituencies.
The next generation was that of Dylan’s boyhood. And what has become of the area since? The remaining Indians were shunted off to a dozen reservations, mainly in the north and west of the state, with a land area about twice that of Metropolitan Minneapolis-St.Paul, where about 17,000 live today. The great mines of the Mesabi Iron Range lay largely abandoned and shuttered, depleted or undercut by cheaper competition in the Third World. The former boom towns are slowly depopulating ghost towns, and the area around where Dylan grew up is now principally known as the site where the last great hope of Liberal politics in America, Paul Wellstone, and his family, perished in a suspicious plane crash near Eveleth, about 10 miles from Hibbing. The once much ridiculed class of small business owners, that produced the likes of a Dylan, has been decimated by the invasion of Walmarts and other rapacious big-box dinosaurs; its former members struggling to earn $7/hr., without benefits, as stockers and greeters.
Perhaps all of this history is irrelevant–Scorcese seems to think it is. Perhaps Dylan is a “Star”, and “Stars” no longer have to trouble their precious minds with such troubled narratives, but are now free to reminisce about performances at the “Kettle of Fish”, or Gerdes’ “Folk City”, or the “Bitter End” (all places I knew well from my childhood in the Village), and Who stole Who’s song, and Who said what about Whom, and Who screwed Who. It certainly makes for far more entertaining fare; and far more acceptable to PBS’s corporate sponsors.
But, getting back to Dylan, if he had a desire for something more meaningful than the baseness of his childhood in Hibbing, Minnesota, something more real and truthful, than I suggest it is in the fight for social justice; for humanity and enduring values over base greed and transience. And, I would submit to you that if there is a reason why Dylan’s music remains awe-inspiringly great and relevant today, it is because of the very strength and veracity of this connection to the people of his past and their travails, and because of the deep connection to his background–a connection completely mystified by both Scorcese and Dylan.
To hear Dylan in the Scorcese treatment almost sneeringly contemptuous of resistance, social justice, the heart and soul of his music, is to hear a man who is so lost inside, and so twisted by 40 odd years of “spectacle-ation” (a word I have constructed to differentiate the existential alienation Debord so preciently depicts from the tired travails of mere celebrity), that he no longer knows his own truth. All of Dylan’s, “I’m not really an activist, I just write what I write, you can’t analyze it,” crap only demeans and belittles himself and his own acheivements. It is no different than Ty Cobb cursing “Niggers.” The music still speaks, but the narrator is mute. Dylan either has no insight worth sharing about his art, and its relationship to himself, or he simply chooses not to share it. Either way the result both diminishes Dylan’s stature and is uninteresting at the same time.
Now, it is always difficult to adequately chart the influences and path of development of an artist, but it can be done; and while many artists are, at best, neutral about this deconstruction of their art, it is the rare artist, like Dylan, who actively seek to subvert it. There have been several excellent documentaries made about Bob Marley and the work of Clement “Sir Coxsone” Dodd in shaping the distinctive sound of his music in his studios in Jamaica. Marley, himself, was eloquent when talking about his influences, and why he cared about his people, and social justice. All of this in no way detracts from the artistry or impact of Marley’s music. But with Dylan, one senses, as he refers in the film to the “tricks” he has learned to help shape his lyrics, that he is not generous enough of spirit or open enough of soul to reveal himself, and become a teacher to the next generation.
Again, Scorcese proved as incapable of capturing the Personal Dylan as the Public. In truth, no one who currently knows him well on a personal basis was willing to speak out. We are left with only the reminiscences of Joan Baez, in which her honesty and personal growth stand in direct contrast to Dylan’s snake-like evasiveness. Baez is engaging, but much of what she has to talk about is forty years past, and we are not given anything more current to sink our teeth into.
Perhaps Scorcese was most successful in capturing the dizzying world of stardom. The lies that being a “star” demands of constantly contructing your own reality in public for the gaping maw that calls itself the “Press” were aptly captured by Scorcese–I mean how many idiotic questions could the press ask, and could they even aspire to descend to a lower, more irrelevant level? But by the same token, one could accuse Scorcese of simply perpetuating, and glorifying, the myth of “Stardom”, not looking into or analyzing its destructiveness, its lies, or as slothrop so aptly puts it: the “product” known as “dylan.”
Stardom is the pure creation of modern media, plain and simple; no media, no star. Abraham Lincoln and George Washington were not Stars, Kennedy was. Stardom is a direct expression of the empty hollowness of modern media. Stardom is a direct expression of the empty hollowness of modern life. Stardom is a direct expression of the empty hollowness of public discourse. Stardom is Spectacle. Spectacle is confusing symbol for object, effect for cause, Dylan for justice.
Propaganda has come a long way since the pioneering work of Edward Bernays, and now more than ever we must constantly ask ourselves the question, “Does this ‘instruct and delight’, or ‘mislead and incite?'” as we face the bewildering mass of images that media throws our way. Watching Scorcese’s treatment we must ask ourselves, have we learned more about Dylan or ‘the “product” known as “dylan?”‘
I am reminded of an off-hand statement by Noam Chomsky. He was talking about people who have interviewed him, but he made clear that the lesson could be generalized to interviews with any public figure. He said that interviewers are always looking for a “secret”, a psychological insight for why the subject is as he is. “Did his mother beat him, was his father distant, was he traumatized by flunking preliminary algebra; why did the subject behave as he did? Chomsky stated that it is simply beyond the bounds of civilized public discourse to suggest that the subject was simply motivated by a sense of social justice, by treating others as we would be treated ourselves. There is simply too much sublimated violence and domination in what we term “civilization” today to accept justice and generousity and goodness on its own terms. It is too much of a threat to the system.
Sadly, we see neither Scorcese, nor Dylan threatening the system today.

Posted by: Malooga | Dec 14 2005 21:35 utc | 46

malooga
that is a very considered response & i would like the time for a considered reply because i think you are wrongheaded on dylan & incorrect in your reading of scorcese here
but i ‘know’ for example communists of the generation of izzy young, and leventhal etc & they were giants who walked this earth – they paid the price for their commitment in both tragedy & farce – the terrible tragedy of the talented paul robeson is an epitome of that tragedy
but is see no treason in the action of dylan, i see a a larger commitment in not being ‘robert zimmerman’ – bob did what neruda demanded that when to speak of self he hoped to speak of geography – this dylan does
i see none of the sneering contempt that you & slothrop are able to discern – on the contrary i was touched by his softness
but i want to write a considered response to you because this last post malooga is a substantial gift that i hope i have the talent to transform into a more ‘sympathetic’ reading of both dylan & the film. i think it is important
it is a tough time here at the moment but i will try my best to deliver something by next week but meanwhile can i suggest again another listen to ‘the lonesome death of hattie carrol’

Posted by: r’giap | Dec 14 2005 23:50 utc | 48

Debs:
in the spirit of this ongoing discussion, what I’ve heard is that capitalism’s need for a certain level of unemployment to keep wages down is surely different in different regions; and also the varying “social safety net” between the US and for example Germany is another factor in your analysis.
But we’re all under the yoke of the managing and owning classes — as it has always been.
Debs, I enjoy your language, experience and humor and regret the acrimony that came up recently. As a Canadian who lived in the US for years, I’m well aware of the issues that can arise — for example, just watch what happens when an American who isn’t from New York, Boston, Philadelphia or Chicago tries to talk to a Canuck about hockey.
For that matter, even people from the original NHL cities aren’t necessarily welcome to comment in discussions about our national sport. And likewise Canadians who have access to US news and stories aren’t so welcome to comment on US politics — one thing is we don’t vote there.
But I know you know that already.
I’ve just returned from vacation and I’m posting like mad to try and catch up — great to be back.

Posted by: jonku | Dec 15 2005 0:32 utc | 50

malooga. incredible post.
i’m not sure when you were mentioning dylans ambition, or that he did in fact seek fame, you may have been referencing my comment the press was something no one could have anticipated, now stars crave it, but there was no precidence for his kind of stardome then.
although i think dylan is an great talent i am not so sure he makes a great ‘product’ because of many of the reasons you state. he has not used his stardom in any activist way to better humanity and seems to remain for the most part illusive. expecting more may be asking more than he wants to be. as any star he has become a product, but to claim he strategically set out to create a myth is where i part ways w/slothrops statement. i certainly agree dylan has always been ambitious yet who could ever have anticipated the degree of influence. where did he seek out any american icon status, and isn’t that status the eventuality of his artisry and not the result of clever marketing, unlike someone such as britney spears. where did he ever want us inside his brain, requiring of him some interpretation, in fact he has hardly given us a morsel. i didn’t find the documentary revealing in this way. does he owe us this? because his art is social in nature does that make him a hypocrite to shy away from activism. can he only be an artist? has he given enough of himself?
Dylan either has no insight worth sharing about his art, and its relationship to himself, or he simply chooses not to share it. Either way the result both diminishes Dylan’s stature and is uninteresting at the same time.
this may diminish his stature for you, but for me it does not diminish his art. that is what he is offering, not his person. perhaps he doesn’t care that his stature as a product, myth or man for that matter is lessened by his silences. i prefer my art unfiltered. good art you experience and requires no explanation. his art is literal anyway and full of insight, why should he give us words about his words if he doesn’t want to. to create a better ‘myth’ for his product to have more value? maybe the inner struggle to find meaning in his life out trumps his need to memoralize his art w/explanation or activism.

Posted by: annie | Dec 15 2005 1:37 utc | 52

A few comments about my previous post:
Obviously, this being a blog, I wrote it as quickly as possible while upholding my standards of readability and joy of language. Re-reading it there are several things I would change or re-emphasize.
What I want to make most clear is that this was perhaps my most complex post ever to this blog. It was not simply a critique of Dylan and Scorcese’s treatment of him.
It was more of a symphony, interweaving various different themes that have been resonating lately in my mind. Among them:
* Dylan, and his conventional role as an artist of our times.
* Separating the man from the work.
* The role of history in shaping Dylan’s oevre
* Scorcese’s treatment of him.
* The role of the artist in society.
* The role of history in general, and American in specific, in defining what we do or do not expect from our artists.
* The role of media in postmodern society in shaping our views and expectations and how the public judges/accepts/interacts with the media.
* The pathologizing of social justice and dissent.
* Long-term historical changes in American society.
* The role of the visionary in art (implicitly comparing Marley and Dylan.
helpful suplementary reading: Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle(on the web at Ken Knabb’s wonderful site)
John Berger Ways of Seeing.
That all said, let me state categorically that I DO see Dylan as the single greatest musical artist, that I am aware of (don’t know other societies as well) in my time. I think his vocals are often demeaned and underrated by people who are unfamiliar with folk tradition, and his lyrics are occaisionally over-rated by those unfamiliar with the English Poetic Canon; but that the effect of the two combined is simply sublime.
Like any genius, Dylan has produced significant amounts of crap.
Yes, Dylan does have the right to stand by his principle, and he also has the right to change those priciples as often as he wants–something he has well availed himself of.
As far as Dylan’s larger commitment in not being ‘robert zimmerman’, I suppose in contextualizing and grounding his work historically (in a way I have never seen done before, by the way, though I’m sure my approach is not original) the way I have, that I am arguing that Dylan is, and always will be Robert Zimmerman, though of course he has grown and incorporated many other influences.
And clearly I am arguing that Dylan qua Dylan is neither as interesting nor as important as the legacy of his work. (Perhaps it is good that Scorcese did not load his work up with endless footage of Dylan discussing his involvment in the “Jews for Jesus” cult, and how it affected his work–I don’t think it would have quite the elan of listening to Marley discuss Rastafarianism.)
Finally, I would like to consciously note, even if most people picked it up subliminally, that in coining the phrase ‘the “product” known as “dylan.”‘, slothrup was mimicking the other famous artist from Minnesota, namely, “the artist formerly known as Prince”, or whatever the symbol he uses now.
r-giap,
I love arguing with you. You are a worthy adversary. I learn a lot from you.

Posted by: Malooga | Dec 15 2005 2:20 utc | 54

& i learn from you, greatly, malooga.
& the things you touched on are of capital importance. your beautiful & hard description of hibbing & the larger hibbing. the role of the class of father abe’s in the fifties especially has not been sd in quite the way you spoke it
& i suppose for me as poet being brought up on the teats of both maïakovski & nazim hikmet – all my lfe i have been haunted by interior symbolic orders, responsibility, community, exemplarity, & the research for invention – to always move towards the specuative – to take whatver knowns exist in your work & to drag them down to the ground to see if they can survive that & in so surviving have at least earnt the merit to be communicated
i do not know if bob dylan is a good man but i know he knows what goodness is
& i want to say i am finding, from what you are saying , & what jonku annie & slothrop, a richness that can sometimes nly be found at the moonofalabama

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 15 2005 2:43 utc | 56

Debs-
I don’t buy any economic statistics put out by this government. This country’s completely hollowed out. Thirty years ago I made $18/hr. as a temp during the summer, loading trucks for Tropicana. You couldn’t make that money today, and colleges are up 500%, housing 300%. Once there was a proud and prosperous blue-collar middle class. Today it is gone. Wages and benefits are replaced by cronyism and theft as people struggle to survive.
I live in Boston; things are still good here. Lots of jobs for those skilled and young and willing to work for what I made twenty years ago. But go thirty miles west and you might as well be in Appalachia. No one has any teeth, and the landscape is a hodgepodge of shutterd factories and “Deer Hunter” type bars. Can’t explain anymore, but it is apparaent when you see it.

Posted by: Malooga | Dec 15 2005 4:20 utc | 58

She also recalls Dylan showing her a new song and saying that, in 20 years, silly people would be discussing its true meaning when the truth was, he had no idea himself.
This is the issue in a nutshell. A bigger person would admit that he didn’t know the exact meaning of his song, but would not have to demean his audience by calling them “silly.” Dylan never missed an opportunity to demean anyone: past lovers, his critics, his audience, other musicians, anyone.
Yes, his music soars. I admit that. I grew up to it, sang it, believed in it, practically inhaled it. I could write a hagiography of Dylan and my memories, just as I have of Lennon and Ginsburg in the past on this blog.
annie writes, “this may diminish his stature for you, but for me it does not diminish his art. that is what he is offering, not his person. perhaps he doesn’t care that his stature as a product, myth or man for that matter is lessened by his silences.”
Ah, but that was what he was offering us on the Scorcese film; not his art, per se, but his commentary, his embellishment of the product, man and myth. And this is what so poorly disappoints. His art holds up like a well aged Cabernet Sauvignon. But he,sadly, has nothing to add to it.
r’giap, you are right the film was about only his first five years, and you are right Susy, Joan and Dave had nothing bad to say to him. But isn’t that the same as defending America’s torture policy on the grounds that we are better than Stalin? In the past Joan has said many bitter things about Bob, and in print, Dave’s version of Dylan’s theft of “The House of the Rising Sun” was not quite as generous. We are talking forty years ago. They have all had a chance to get over their sense of betrayal and portray themselves as magnanimous.
I had a girlfriend who once went out with Dylan (When she was living next door to Timothy Leary in Millbrook). She said he was the most self-involved holier-than-thou stink-ass she ever met. She said a lot more than that, but I won’t get into it.
Look, we just passed the twenty-fifth aniversary of John Lennon’s death, and many of us talked about him on this blog. (Perhaps Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Bob Marley compose the holy trinity, the inner pantheon of popular social justice musicians. Marley, by the way, went farthest in laying his life on the line for his beliefs) Democracy Now and others played extensive interviews with John. He had his problems. But he didn’t stink of sanctimony. He spoke honestly about his early pain, the exact nature and causes of it, and what he struggled to overcome. Dylan does not come across as one who has overcome his inner pain. John talks explicitly about what he tried to achieve in the songs he composed: “Give Peace a Chance”, “Imagine”, and “Working Man’s Hero.” Could anyone imagine John calling his audience silly or stupid for attempting to understand them?
Dylan was all about being a star. While Pete Seeger was giving of himself generously to promote causes he believed in, Dylan was putting others down. I agree Seeger is not a musician of Dylan’s stature, but he is nothing to sniff at either.
Same goes for Utah Phillips; devoted his life to his music and his struggle for justice, giving benefits to promote what he beieved in. (By the way, you can find excellent interviews with these two giants on radio4all.org)
r-giap, You may not know these people as humans because you are on the other side of the Atlantic, but many of us know them here. When I was 12, Pete Seeger came down and played for free at my summer camp one evening, simply for the hell of it! Both of them played endless benefits for Pacifica Radio over the years.
Maybe Dylan didn’t believe in the Mega-Rock benefits as being of much use. That’s fine, I don’t either. But giving your time to local causes it ‘s what its about. Look, he wrote movingly about Reuben Carter, so you know his heart was there. Sometimes the rest of him seemed to refuse to follow.

Posted by: Malooga | Dec 15 2005 5:16 utc | 60

cronaím thú

Posted by: Anousha | Dec 15 2005 7:25 utc | 62

Dylan does not come across as one who has overcome his inner pain.
well, he’s not dead yet. maybe his time will come. maybe his soul searching will pan out. i agree with much of what you say malooga and thank you for flushing it out. i don’t put the man on a pedestal only his art. he is a fluke of nature and possibly has serious maturity issues. it would have been ideal had he been a champion of the peace movement or a leader in social justice, but that was not his fate. i cannot judge him because i don’t know him.
what if shakespear was an asshole?

Posted by: annie | Dec 15 2005 7:50 utc | 64

Annie all the evidence suggests that shakespeare was ‘difficult’ to say the least but as far as one can tell from this distance he didn’t treat his audience with the contempt and mendacity dylan oozes.
Many people consider dylan a great artist even though I may not I do respect many of the people that hold that view never-the-less I am certain that his name won’t be a household word in 500 years time as Shakespeare’s is now.
I would equate his work with somone like Salvador Dali in that it is interesting, well executed and appears much more than it actually is. This is chiefly because of both artists’ reliance on the unsubtle, and any sophistication is in trickery much more than in art.
I apologise to Dylan fans who find that much too harsh because I recognise that they see a lot more in the man than I can.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 15 2005 9:58 utc | 66

i am writing this post between workshops & thursday night is my 5 hours at the mens shelter – it will be difficult & at this time of year – melancholic beyond words
simply want to see – i want us to go back to the work – the songs
i want to speak of two albums that are defining moments in culture, american or otherwise, i am speaking of john wesley harding’ & ‘street legal’
i also want to mention that whether we are speaking of a melville, hawthorne, faulkner, dos passos, dreiser, bishop, plath, lowell, krassner, pollock, o’keefe, rothko or sususan sontag, gore vidal – that we are speaking of people who are not particularly pleasant as people & if their ouevre was to be judged by their ‘personality’ – there wouldn’t be much to read, to look at & to wonder
of course their work is more than their ‘personality’
i want to say something – when i was 17 – i was regarded proudly by my communist party as the young stalin & at that moment it was cause for pride, when i left that party the first words that were said to me by an old comrade was ‘that we groomed you – we groomed you’ – their was a hurt that willl never dissapear from that moment & i understood well their exigences – i was bright, charismatic, exceptionally young & a highly respected people within the party & with all our ‘front’ groups – they were for all intents & purposes – my family. to lose them which is what happened was a hurt i had to cover in self abuse that took me to death’s door more than once
but i knew from both painters & singer that i worked with – that the ‘communist’ artist had to work through their solitude to the community & try not to see the community as either succour or refuge. that that community demanded the best the most advanced tools you are capable of creating
walter benjamin has also spoken well of this
this meant in practical terms – destroying the dialectic while that might sound pleasant in words – the daily reality of that was terrifying. but i knew words & ideas had to be tested even by desecration before you communicated them to the other. that the community needed that sharpest & most refined tools
dylan taught me that & if you like my desire to work within communites for most of my artistic life has as much been shaped by the songs of victor jara & bob dylan as it has been by karl marx’s german ideology of v i lenins ‘what is to be done’
for what it did was to test my love & affinity with the people & gave birth to an exemplarity that resonated with experience others shared
i know i am being too elliptic but i wanted to share something with you at this moment

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 15 2005 15:43 utc | 68

She also recalls Dylan showing her a new song and saying that, in 20 years, silly people would be discussing its true meaning when the truth was, he had no idea himself.
Many ‘great’ artists have made argument. They work from intuition, feeling, creative hubris, and cannot themselves analyse their own works.
They don’t wish others to do it either. It is out there, for people to see, feel, understand, appreciate or otherwise react to, is all.
The ultimate horror is ‘deconstruction’ or ‘symbolic analysis’, etc. Sam Beckett often made the point that his works were – what they were on the surface – and that interpretation was boring and vain – Watt and his food was Watt and so What. The symbolism (or whatever) is not contrived so shouldn’t be treated as such. S.B. called the thesis writers and their supervisors ‘scribblers’ (if memory serves.)
Why did Chagall (whom I don’t like) paint angels in the sky? This is a stupid question.
Bob Dylan knew things in his guts, things that are very relevant to today. I’m not surprised discussion turns to him.
— Ach, I admire him, but have less knowledge than many on this board, no doubt his career was difficult and self-serving in some -many?- ways.

Posted by: Noisette | Dec 15 2005 18:09 utc | 70

My take on Dylan — and Joplin: Those aren’t blues, they’re tantrums.
the whinging of privileged little shits – adumbrations of boomer solipisism.

Posted by: eftsoons | Dec 15 2005 20:40 utc | 72

Uncle, they are on http://bbc.co.uk/6music — a few “hits” they are currently playing:
’16 Military Wives’ by The Decembrists: (“… and the anchor persons on TV, go “lad-di-da, di-da-di la-di-da … because America can’t say no …”
‘Area’ by The Futureheads: “… you’re the area disgrace, your area’s in ruins …” (a song about “you have to stay in a hotel, because your area’s in ruins … “)
‘It’s Simple, We Don’t Want to Kill’ by Devendra Banhart
These are good pop songs with a strong message of protest and dismay.
Good radio, good music.

Posted by: jonku | Dec 15 2005 20:44 utc | 74

@DiD – your economy post and unemployment statistics
The U.S. unemployment data is not really compareable to international data. The German unemployment statistics does include discouraged workers. These are those not activly looking for a job but receiving some sort of benefit. The usually cited U.S. data does not include such persons.
You have to look at the “U-6” numbers for a reasonable comparison, not the “U-3″n numbers. See here.
“U-6” is currently at 8.7%. More explanation on the differences is here.
I would also suggest to look at the real wages development over time. (That should be compared to a “real capital
gains” time series, but I fail to find one. Maybe because the tax implications are quite hard to evaluate.)
Given that Bush has lowered taxes on dividends and other capital gains my best guess is that there is for the nation in whole a move from work related income to capital income.
There once was a consensus base in Germany that productivity gains should be shared. If better work and better machines result in more output, the benefit should go 50:50 to workers and capital. I don´t know if that was ever the consensus for the U.S. In Germany ther is a hard fight to keep that consensus up. Unfortunatly the workers seem to lose.

Posted by: b | Dec 15 2005 23:00 utc | 76

r`giap – that report is nice for the meme “The troops need to stay in Iraq”.
I guess that´s all what it is about.

Posted by: b | Dec 15 2005 23:11 utc | 78

b
yes i think that is true. & what i understand too that every issue – including the ‘iranian’ one need to be treated with the distance that you customarily use
nothing can be taken at face value
& it is important at our level of communication to be very careful of the traps that most media make into making anyone on the state department enemy, our
i await eagerly the next demonisation will be the indigene leader morales in bolivia who will most likely become president. knowing bolivia’s critical importance to the empire – i think first the demonisation will follow :
a) morales has had no experience of govt thereofre everything will fall apart (as if it isn’t already falling apart)
b) morales is in the pay of the cocaine trafficants (as if all bolvian govts of the last 20 years have been innocent of this)
c) that morales is the new fidel, the new ortega, the new chavez, the new allende
d) that morales offers his country as a sanctuary to al quaeda ( with their current grip on plausibility – they could plausibly say that)
i think they will try to assasinate morales & if they should even try to do that the rest of latin america will fall about them
bolivia is critical to the u s
but it is also critical to all the americas

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 15 2005 23:28 utc | 80

r’giap,
re your perplexity about the attacks of Wikipedia–have a look at this
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5055388
The journal Nature did a survey and found out that it is no more or less accurate than Britanicca

Posted by: theodor | Dec 16 2005 1:43 utc | 82

The coolest thing about wikipedia.

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 16 2005 2:14 utc | 84

of course their work is more than their ‘personality’

Which is why the best part of Scorcese was the concert footage.
Thanks for your lovely posts r’giap.
Would you like to comment on the role of Georges Brassens for someone who is not from France?

Posted by: Malooga | Dec 16 2005 2:43 utc | 86

Back to Bob-
I am amazed at Dylan inking a deal for xm sat radio! And its gonna be a hoot to hear him as a DJ! I mean seriously. (Though not enough to subscribe to the next way of milking a few bucks out of people’s pockets.) But the article forgets to mention how much he is being paid for this. He seems to have inherited a good case of Capitalist fever in the past few years–also licensing a number of his songs for insipid TV commercials.
This whole satelite thing is interesting to watch. Destroy one medium, and move on to the next. Except that the model has changed: Now instead of the corporatists having to pay to buy their audience, the audience is forced to pay to buy the corporatists! And the programming will be wholly corporate in nature; we are not talking community radio here. News will be controlled, and, if the experiment works, ads will creep back in. A lot of my friends in Radio are very excited by this; I am far more sceptical.
Where has jj been?

Posted by: Malooga | Dec 16 2005 3:22 utc | 88

Destroy one medium, and move on to the next. Except that the model has changed: Now instead of the corporatists having to pay to buy their audience, the audience is forced to pay to buy the corporatists!
No. Certainly not. music/film via ‘satellite’ is commodified as usual: content is copyrighted, access is leased, audiences are segmented and sold to advertizers.

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 16 2005 3:40 utc | 90

r’giap
I was 7 when he went electric…

Posted by: theodor | Dec 16 2005 4:22 utc | 92