Bob-frikkin-Dylan?

[peter]

Nobel prize for literature? You gotta be kidding me! I mean to say, the man is a genius - a giant in the annals of music history (Blood on the Tracks ferchrissakes) but the Nobel prize for Literature. Perhaps they thought he could do with the money.

[JIkj fjds j]

Bob Dylan had also been awarded Man of Letters by St.Andrews University. As did Stephen Donaldson. Whatever it means I see this as good news.

[peter]

I don't by any means know all of Dylan's work - but does he write stand-alone poetry or prose? Does his work in terms of song-lyric writing qualify him for a literature prize - the literature prize - when heard, divorced from his music?

[JIkj fjds j]

Does his work qualify him for the prize? Obviously yes, as they've given it to him. I don't understand your beef, Bob Dylan is cool and one of kind.
Lit is lit, written in a book or sung in a song.

Rod Stewart was given a Knighthood this week. Now Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize - the times they are a changin'

All along the Watchtower ... frikkin yeah! ...
Two riders were approaching ... and the wind began to howl - The Runes of the Earth

[peter]

Damn Yeah! I'd forgotten 'All Along the Watchtower'.

(Edit an hour or two later: Go to YouTube and search John Cooper Clarke Beasley Street. Select the version that has a picture of a slum street with a group of children facing the camera - you can't miss it - and immerse yourself in the full length of the clip. This is what Poetry set to music can sound like! )

[Avatar]

I was a bit non-plussed as well to be honest. Haven't looked into it yet though.

--A

[peter]

I have never (for no reason other than the general respect it seems to be held in) considered the Nobel committee might make its decisions on the basis of political or populist demands, and am quite prepared to accept that Dylan's award might be based upon an assessment of literary achievement that I have, for whatever reason, hitherto missed ..........
...........but I'd like to see it.

[JIkj fjds j]

Does his work qualify him for the prize? Obviously yes, as they've given it to him. I don't understand your beef, Bob Dylan is cool and one of kind.
Lit is lit, written in a book or sung in a song.

Rod Stewart was given a Knighthood this week. Now Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize - the times they are a changin'

All along the Watchtower ... frikkin yeah! ...
Two riders were approaching ... and the wind began to howl - The Runes of the Earth

Just as I posted this Saturday morn, I mean a frikkin split second after I hit the post button, my com suddenly went ... FdzzzzzzzzzHggggzzzzzzIbiiizzziiizzziiziiziziziziiziZttttzzzzzzziiiititiiittzzzz.......kchFFFF ... ...
Frikkin sure is a good word to use in times like these. FRIKKIN computers!
Fingers crossed it's only the power supply that got fried, and not the processor.

[peter]

Fingers crossed for you Rune!

[Avatar]

Fascinating, infuriating, enduring: Bob Dylan deserves his Nobel prize

As you will no doubt have noticed, Bob Dylan is the recipient of the 2016 Nobel prize for literature for "having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition"...

...As we also saw last week, the very notion of a popular song, even a Bob Dylan song, being a work of literature remains a contested one. Likewise the notion of the songwriter as poet. It strikes me that the entire history of the Nobel prize for literature has been, until now, a refutation of these upstart notions. The times may indeed be a-changin', but it is difficult to see last week's decision as a precedent: more as an exception...

...Dylan, though, occupies a singular and exalted place in the pop pantheon. He fascinates, he frustrates, but he endures; as does the myth of Dylan, despite all his attempts, to demolish it...

...In 2009, when asked why he didn't do what a lot of other performers of his generation do - play the same songs in the same way night after night - Dylan replied: "I couldn't if I tried. Those guys you are talking about all had conspicuous hits ... mainstream stuff that played into the culture on a pervasive level. My stuff is different from those guys. It's more desperate ... They made perfect records, so they have to play them perfectly exactly the way people remember them. My records were never perfect. So there is no point in trying to duplicate them. Anyway, I'm no mainstream artist."

That much is certain, despite the various attempts by the mainstream or, indeed, the academy, to claim or canonise him - and what is the Nobel prize except the latest attempt to do just that?

However well intentioned the accolade, it will do nothing to alter the fact that Bob Dylan exists in a world of his own, stubbornly out of step with the prevailing culture just as he once singlehandedly defined it. He is not a songwriter in the classic sense, nor a poet in the traditional sense, nor does he create literature in the accepted sense of the word; that, in fact, is the whole point - he has sidestepped these definitions on his singular journey. He's Bob Dylan.

Personally, I've always thought him more poet than singer.

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fools gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proved to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.

Temptation's page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover
That you'd just be
One more person crying.

So don't fear if you hear
A foreign sound to you ear
It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing.

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their marks
Made everything from toy guns that sparks
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the President of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

An' though the rules of the road have been lodged
It's only people's games that you got to dodge
And it's alright, Ma, I can make it.

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

You loose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand without nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despite their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platforms ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God Bless him.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him.

Old lady judges, watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me ?

And if my thought-dreams could been seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.

--A

[peter]

Beyond doubt, the strongest argument in favour of the award I have yet head Av!

[JIkj fjds j]

Fingers crossed for you Rune!

Thanks pete

[peter]

Answering accusations of rudeness and arrogance by a panelist on the Nobel committee for his failure to return calls informing him of his award, Dylan said he had been "lost for words" at the news of his triumph! It remains to be seen if he will remain so, the payment of the $900,000 prize that accompanies the medal being conditional upon his giving a lecture to a selected audience within six months of the announcement.

[Damelon]

To be honest, when I first saw the news, I had to check the dateline on the story to make sure it wasn't April 1.

[Avatar]

Answering accusations of rudeness and arrogance by a panelist on the Nobel committee for his failure to return calls informing him of his award, Dylan said he had been "lost for words" at the news of his triumph! It remains to be seen if he will remain so, the payment of the $900,000 prize that accompanies the medal being conditional upon his giving a lecture to a selected audience within six months of the announcement.

Maybe a private concert will do.

--A

[peter]

....or perhaps a reading of his verse?

Mind you that might be for the best - Dylan is notoriously dismissive of his audiences (I can vouch for this - I've seen him live twice). A report I read described how he often turns his back on them before performing their favourite numbers in such a 'mangled form' as to render them unrecognisable (Clapton had a habit of doing this too - I saw him twice as well). One fan approaching Dylan after a show gushed "You don't know me, but I know you," to which he replied as he turned away "Let's keep it that way."

[Avatar]

Sounds charming.

--A

[peter]

Having a bad day perhaps!

[Avatar]

Haha, maybe, but sounds pretty usual. On the other hand, can't say I necessarily blame him either.

--A

[Menolly]

Answering accusations of rudeness and arrogance by a panelist on the Nobel committee for his failure to return calls informing him of his award, Dylan said he had been "lost for words" at the news of his triumph! It remains to be seen if he will remain so, the payment of the $900,000 prize that accompanies the medal being conditional upon his giving a lecture to a selected audience within six months of the announcement.

Maybe a private concert will do.

--A

I attended a lecture by Stephen Stills of CSNY at the University of Florida, which he attended but did not graduate from. He started by telling us that he was invited six months prior, and figured he had plenty of time to arrange his thoughts. But, he said, time got away from him, so instead we got a very intimate concert interspersed with stories of his time in Gator Town.