New Words For Old

I did my usual stint at the Oxfam Music and Book shop yesterday. Still those pesky customers interrupting me as I listened to my music and read my Kindle. But most remained polite and left me in peace.

I have really been into Bob Dylan recently, mostly his latest stuff, "Modern Times" (2006) and "Tempest" (2012), plus a couple of the officially released bootleg albums, Volume 5 "The Rolling Thunder review", and Volume 8 "Tell Tale Signs", which covers rare and unreleased tracks from the period 1989 to 2006. 

A lot of browsers made comments. The usual "he never could sing" (ha ha ha) but mostly surprise that it was Dylan:-

"bluesy"......."great track"..........."where can I get the album?"

The track that got most attention was "Thunder on the Mountain", and Dylan's vocals on this, at least for me, are brilliant, the way his voice fades and rises at the same time at the concluding word of so many great lines.

I got the pork chops, she got the pie

She ain't no angel and neither am I

Shame on your greed, shame on your wicked schemes

I'll say this, I don;t give a damn about your dreams

.......and....

"Gonna forget about myself for a while, gonna go out and see what others need"

It seems some feel insulted at the thought of Dylan receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature. But looking back through history, a lot of what many now consider great literature was first written for the masses and was often sung. The word "lyric" itself originates and has evolved from Lyre, a musical instrument. 

Whatever, there is a book by Richard F Thomas, "Why Dylan Matters". Mr Thomas, senior professor of Latin at Harvard, gives a course on Dylan every four years, always over subscribed. His book is an eye-opener, tracing Dylan's lyrics back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and more recently, into the deep USA folk traditions. 

Then again, some are saying that Dylan steals his lyrics. But as I see it, there is a vast difference between outright plagiarism and adaptation. Dylan, in his more serious moments and when he is not out to confuse and put us off the track (to protect himself from being put in our own little boxes), gracefully acknowledges those who have provided him with words and ideas to grace his own songs. Surely that is how the world works - or at least, should do. Taking what is there and making it our "own" and passing it on. Even though there is nothing new under the sun. 

"Behold, I make all things new"

Bob Dylan once said:- "There's a moment when all old things become new again" which makes me think of T S Eliot:- "For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice." (Four Quartets, Little Gidding) 

Associating such thoughts with the creative process, we have the assertion of Eliot - again - when he said that "immature poets imitate, mature poets steal......mature poets make the old line new, and make it their own, improve on it...."

So, did Dylan "steal", copy, or did he create anew? Can something really come from nothing or is all a constant transformation? Whatever, it is difficult to find sympathy for the fundamentalists of any creed, seeking to tie salvation itself to the precise repetition and understanding of unchanging words. 

Another great song of Dylan's is "Tempest", a thirteen and a half minute epic, 45 verses, all accompanied by a really beautiful little Irish tune and the voice of one who "never could sing". Repetitive, but it takes me into another world - or better, transforms this one. The sinking of the Titanic. "Stolen" of course from the poem of James T Fields who died in 1881, who included the following in his very own poem "The Tempest":- 

But his little daughter whispered

As she took his icy hand, 

"Isn't God upon the ocean, 

Just the same as on the land?

The ship that was the subject of James Field's poem rode out a storm and anchored safely, so Dylan obviously never stole the ending; but then again, how could he have done - we all know the story of the Titanic!

The watchman he lay dreaming

Of all things that can be 

He dreamed the Titanic was sinking 

Into the deep blue sea.

So ends Dylan's epic. So ends this rather short little blog. I suppose, reading through, it is about our putting things in boxes.

Related Quotes:-

"Jim Dandy smiled

He never learned to swim

Saw the little crippled child

And he gave his seat to him"

(Bob Dylan, from "Tempest")

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then

I'm younger than that now

(Bob Dylan, lines from "My Back Pages")

"Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.........The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn...."

(T. S. Eliot)

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes" 

(Marcel Proust)