DYLAN'S
DIFFERENT, All RIGHT
Why has it been the
rule that so many...all...other performers, singers, musicians who
work with and know Bob Dylan say, “He's a very private person”
when asked to talk about him?
My take on it is
that what he is about, has always been about, is so alien to others,
even ones who do what appears to be the same work as he does, that
they can only express it as, he's different. That much is
clear to them. Among the paid commentators, and critics, who
philosophize, disgrace, and criticize all fears, some try to go
deeper and settle on reporting that he was able in the space of a
performance to enter into a song and live through it and that is what
the audience who got him saw and heard and felt, and to an extent
it's true, but, the real power of Dylan, the private person, lies in
the fact he is singing what he lives all day in the hope you, the
listener, will also know you are what he is telling you you ought not
be...do not have to be, and that telling is not in the music nor the
words of the song but from the core of it, making use of music and
lyrics, live, onstage, to arouse his audiences- arouse us on our own
behalf….for example, the early Dylan, known as the folksinger, sang
a song entitled No More Auction Block For Me. For many it is a
disagreeable noise that goes right past them and does not apply to
them, they believe. For the rest it is heard as a song calling on
white people to recognize the plight of black slaves and rise up to
the cause of abolition. A very few realize this singer knows about
real freedom and knows we, the white folks, do not have it, but
could, and just as the black person who has thrown off his chains
sings, we could sing. Dylan never served the music business. All
those others did...and do still. In closing, is it not so that the
slaveholder is as much a slave as the ones he believes to be his
human property? Have you never watched a dog train its master on a
walk in a city park? Or, watched a child train a parent? An employee
train an employer? For Heaven's sake, have you never realized even
for a moment how much you serve your cell phone? Your watch? To me,
Dylan sings that none of these relationships are real, just a waste
of precious time.
Dylan is a true
friend. Oscar Wilde said, “A true friend will stab you in the
front.” I sometimes miss my true friend. I miss the gifts sent my
way. The music. The images. The messages from a secret heart
cavern. I thought these things this morning early while watching dawn
break in an imperceptible motion of lights. Decided to tell you.
Please stab me some more.
