I'll look into the Shelton book since you recommend it, but I don't think it will make me see Dylan as anything other than an occasionally amusing entertainer. I particularly used to like it when he sang, blew the harmonica, and strummed the guitar simultaneously. That's about the extent of it. If he'd been able to ride a bicycle at the same time, I'd have been ecstatic.
People find deep meaning in rock lyrics generally by pawing through the heap of disconnected phrases and vague imagery and identifying some hidden significance, perhaps based on biographical fact, perhaps on Hermes Trismegistus. This procedure, in my opinion, is roughly on a par with finding nanothermite in a common pile of dirt. There are a lot of experts writing books about that, and I'm not going to read any of them. I was interested to find that the OK, though decidedly non-revolutionary, current pop star Harry Styles, whom I like up to a point, seems to view his songs as having hidden biographical significance--this approach seems quite widespread and "fans" generally seem to think that way too. So the writing of these things is meant by at least some of the authors to be the easter-egg hunt that "rock critics" and their kind take it to be. But so what? That just limits the actual level of meaning that commercial pop music can ordinarily achieve. Anyone not holding the occult key to a song can always speculate about the it, although in the case of "old Dixie" nobody seems to have come up with anything to pin the alleged driving-down event to. Maybe it refers to one of the Bandsmen's suddenly wilting in a sexual situation with a particular person whose name we may hope to discover. Who knows? This kind of hidden meaning isn't on a par with actual poetry--although in some cases, as in the song "Strange Fruit" an "occult" meaning can be very deep and tremendously important. I think that's quite different, however. I don't give a damn who the "sad-eyed lady of the lowlands" was--bores the hell out of me and is IMO another kettle of fish altogether. The thing that set me off on this was a cross-posting here to a piece on Cosmonaut recommending "revolutionary sobriety." I hold no brief for or against Cosmonaut , with which I am only glancingly familiar and find strange, but I see a worthwhile point there--so much of "Sixties" so-called "culture" revolved around the idealization of the intoxicated state--being "always drunk" to quote Baudelaire--which could mean being drunk on poetry, music, "the arts" (depressing phrase), or just "high on life" like Pat Boone. This ties neatly into the mass of addictions promoted by capitalism, one of which is the addiction to popular music, but also to "the arts" in the hoity-toity sense as well as records, books, and shows--anything that can be monetized and consumed and converted into ego-armor. Maybe the left should step away from the arts altogether, at least to some extent, and try to achieve a sober, disciplined perspective without leaning on the pleasure of art consumption at every turn. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#393): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/393 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/76186108/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES<br />#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.<br />#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.<br />#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
