Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Strange new respect

....for Bob Dylan.

I'm on another "Phibian you're going on the road..." moments this week; so posting will be not-that-often as I try to stay on the down-low. And don't make fun of my spelling or grammer, I don't have the connectivity or programs to do that, and you will just have to deal with my learning disability.

After superior performance of duties, I ran into part of of Martin Scorsese's documentary
No Direction Home about Bob Dylan. I saw about 80% of it, and lost over and hour of extra sleep because I could not stop watching it.

So much of what I thought I knew about BD was, just, wrong. I swallowed hook-line-and-sinker the counter-culture crap about how ".. he is all ours. Not only was he a leftist - but a Socialists/Communist if you knew him like we do...."

That is not what I came away with - OK, he wasn't dating Goldwater Girls in the 1960s, and he is way to the Left of where I am, but his politics isn't what makes this man what I consider, now, a perfect example of America.
He was lucid in the interview, more than anything I have seen in the last couple of decades. He was firm, clear, and humble. OK, as humble as someone like BD can/should be. He gave credit to others, and didn't make everything about him.

BD knew what he wanted to do, and he went out to do it the best he could, they way he wanted to do it. He had no problem borrowing what better people had or were doing and trying to do it better, or at least his way. When he got bored, he went another direction regarless what others said or wanted him to do.

Without comment, MS did something that kept me laughing. He let others singers, "poets," and other "counter culture" types who worked with, ran into, or claimed close association with BD make complete asses out of themselves by stating BD mythology as fact (why named Dylan), overemotionalize his songs and their meaning, or overstep the political meaning of his songs.

I will probably miss Part 2, but that might be for the better - especially if they go into the drug problems (I assume that story is out there), but even that turns out OK, as BD seems very cleaned up now. Running out of time here, go see Part 2 if you can.

Let's us end with one more note about his politics; he is a man of the Left, but he is not a Leftist. He is not owned by ideology - and you know what. He and the Communists he hung out with were right in the 1960s WRT Civil Rights. They bled and led from the front to make this nation live up to its ideals. Sure, some of them had other motives, but I believe BD was the real thing.

What opened my eyes to him, was a recording of an interview with the nasty Communist Studs Terkel(sp)(and I don't care). ST tried to make it known that "Hard Rain" was "Atomic Rain." BD cut him off VERY short. In a subtly way, he said -- "Its about a hard rain. Hard rain, that's it."


BD, I'm proud that you are an American. Well done, wish I knew you better years ago.

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