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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
But I've never understood the whole "mysterious, mythologizing" thing. I don't get it. I love his music, but there's no mystery there for me.
I do, however, ADORE Todd Haynes and will go see anything he does. Velvet Goldmine is probably my favorite movie EVER--I just find it enthralling from beginning to end.
Darkness at the break of noonShadows 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 fool's gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves 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 your 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 mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
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 lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with 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 fergit
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 despise 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 platform 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 be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.
It hasn't dated even slightly.
...A panty-pandering prostitute! I always thought the guy was a phony--a bargain-basement Woody Guthrie imitator. I think it's obvious, since he made that stupid ad for Victoria's Secret, and authorized the Bank of Montreal to use "Times are a-Changin'", that this sour clown will SELL ANYTHING as long as he gets paid enough...ya know, the guy who groused about propaganda and commercialization. Thank heavens for musicians like Tom Waits, who not only refuses his songs to be used for commercials, but is a genuinely decent human being...Is anyone sick of people wondering what was at the heart of Dylan's (and incidentally, Ronald Reagan's!) "beautiful soul"? Answer: NOTHING!! Just because someone sings, writes or orates in supposedly deep platitudes doesn't mean there's anything substantial at all at the heart of it. Sometimes it's just blather.
Certainly many will disagree with me--but be warned; anyone who tells me about the revelational meaningfulness of Mr. Zimmerman will get one response--
"PANTIES! PANTIES PANTIES!"
Real artists work for money.
Got a problem with that?
Dylan's estoric verse speaks to an earlier time. He was already ancient when he was born. The new art is out front, supraconscious, and topical without feeling ashamed. Some of the work he did in his middle years fits that standard a little better. His score on Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid was nice too. That sort of hookup makes sense for him. Probing backward into the idea of Dylan is a redundant concept.
I'm agnostic in the Dylan-is-God debate, but IIRC the man himself became a "born-again" Christian for awhile before returning to his Jewish roots. Does the movie touch on this aspect of his life at all?
What a banal gripe. "he sold panties" is this decade's "He can't sing" and "He used to be good, but everything he has done since Blonde on Blonde / Blood on the Tracks / Time out of Mind sucks."
One of Dylan's greatest moves was the Victoria's Secret ad. It outed the folkies who were still hoping that he would regain his "integrity" and do as they demanded.
Artists not only work for money, as an earlier poster put it; they act willfully as well.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
Salon headlines in your mailbox
