POST LATE DYLAN 3

Of Tempest and its ghost companion, I've addressed adequately in the previous post. Chances are that these deliberately put aside songs will eventually surface--he may write more in that vein, or upon further consideration and rumination, re-arrange what he's already written--or even just let the idea go altogether! For all his restlessness, Dylan has been known to hold onto an idea for years until it reaches its fullness. But as already stated, Tempest already exemplifies much of his religious thought. Dylan has always been hailed as a mystic poet in some quarters, but if he is one, it's squarely in the Judeo-Christian tradition, specifically, the sects of Protestantism that hold that Man is utterly fallen, utterly incapable of do anything to save himself--utterly reliant upon the grace of God. It would easy to poke a few holes in these beliefs and remind our evangelicals that their Savior would repeatedly tell those he's saved to "Repent, and sin no more!" which of course, suggests effort on our part; but that's for some other forum. It's enough for the matter at hand to acknowledge that these are Dylan's stated beliefs.

And of this problematic beast named Tempest, what more can be said? It is one of his best, but a near-masterpiece, like Infidels before it--flawed, granted, but with all the fresh intensity of full-throttle creativity we've come to expect (demand?) of Dylan. The entire album, lyrically, amounts to a volume onto itself of Bartlett's Quotations; he's in full-wordsmith flight mode here. As songs, most of these stand with many of his absolute best; as an album, however, it is flawed enough to keep it from (to use the current cultural measures) five-star game-changer status. And many of the more insightful reviews (not the Old Guard who automatically accorded it its five-star status, nor the younger generation who grow fidgety over any song that goes over 4 minutes and dismissed out of hand as too boring to sit through) have put their finger on it. The problem lies with the title track and the album's closer "Roll on, John". "John", like "Lenny Bruce" before it, suffers from lyrical clumsiness, and the pastiche method of integrating Lennon lines into the verses falls flat, unlike the same method at work in the Travelin' Wilburys song, "Tweeter and the Monkey Man", where Dylan worked magic with lines and situations from Bruce Springsteen songs. It's still very pretty and haunted, musically, and it can be enjoyed if you let only random words float to the surface (I personally like it a lot, and get through it in this way.)

No, the problem is with the centerpiece and title track of the album, "Tempest". In theory, Dylan really hasn't put a wrong foot here; "Tempest' and "Tin Angel" are Dylan's work in traditional folk ballardy, as such. But "Tin Angel" is a tight, focused murder ballad--brilliantly written and disturbing, and featuring none other than ol' Henry Lee himself--(protagonist of his own ballad, a variant of which Dylan performed on his World Gone Wrong album as "Love Henry".)

"Tempest"on the other hand slogs along, many brilliant verses underscoring Dylan's intent to write about the disaster, about none can comprehend the judgment of God's Hand; but the song itself does not coalesce into anything utterly transcendent. Even "Highlands", on Time Out Of Mind, takes a simple repeating blues riff, and builds an engrossing tale, sustained not only by fresh, inventive phrasing on Dylan's part, but for good measure, he lobs into the middle of this piece a shaggy dog story wherein Dylan trades sexual wisecracks with a combative waitress.

As creative as this "post-late" Dylan is, he does have a tendency to sometimes to not stray too far from the template. When we think on traditional folk ballardy, we can easily imagine serfs of the 14th or 15th  century--farmers, tradesmen, begging peasants--coming at the end of day to the town square for entertainment--to listen to the troubadour come to town to sing of current news, bawdy lyrics, or yet another re-telling of some epic tale. The trouble is, we have a static picture of this--the singer droning on for a half-hour or more--as in "Tempest"-- one verse after another without any variation. I seriously doubt it was that way in reality. Troubadours were performers; they had to keep their audience engrossed (bloodshed in Shakespeare's plays, anyone? He wrote for a paying audience, you know.) Dylan did that in "Highlands"; he didn't in "Tempest". Nor did he on Modern Times re" "Rollin' and Tumblin'"(all the idiots talking about Muddy being "ripped off"--Muddy "ripped off" 1929's "Roll and Tumble Blues"; nobody screaming about "attribution" there)--or, for that matter "Someday Baby"where he chose, for the sake of his album's intention, no doubt, to include a straight reworking of the Muddy Waters version, rather than his own more inventive version, which eventually surfaced on Tell Tale Signs. But those in our entertainment and cultural media will grab at any straw to try and bring him down.

If I were in his shoes, and had enough distance on the work to realize parts weren't working, I'd have ditched "Tempest" and "Roll On John", made "Tin Angel" the closer and renamed the whole album "Scarlet Town"...and the same points would have been made, the same themes expressed, the same outcomes would've been achieved.

I was going to go on about this, but truly, why bother? The mainstream media's job is to contain and simplify and label people and things for the sake of some official place in the history of our fake cultures--witness Dylan's tour of China--50-year-old accusations of being a "sell-out" because he didn't sing "Blowin' in the Wind" or "The Times They Are A-changin"! Unbelivable--Dylan's been so many things since then--and this is all they can use on him.

And the alleged "plagiarism"? Please! I can't believe this idiotic argument is still going on and, worse, will probably continue to go on. For the 17, 894, 943, 125th time, plagiarism is the wholesale taking of someone else's words and ideas and lifting them fully in that context and passing them off as one's own!
This is not what Dylan, or any other artist who works in the framework of traditional materials does! Not Dylan, not T.S. Eliot (another one who was accused of never writing three consecutive lines of his own poetry!), not Shakespeare, not Ovid...God, how far back do I have to go? I presume it is the unfortunate rationalism of personal legalism that has made everybody a law unto themselves, and to be tricked into thinking their paltry, "original" thoughts are somehow equal to a tradition that has, by education and by living example, conveyed the wisdom of the ages--not received, false social wisdom, but personal, active wisdom--life as lived by the greater majority of human beings in their "quiet desperation" (that's Thoreau, y'all!)

Mainstream media seeks to manipulate and quantify that...teach people to march goosing-stepping in unison to the "socially accepted" opinion, and they'll spin any little detail to do so (remember the pronouncements about Tempest having a Latin influence because Dylan liked the sound of a tres--listen, I'll bet it's buried in the mix of "Scarlet Town"! And all out of a popular notion of bringing down the Mighty (I've stopped asked years ago how anyone who works in media can live with themselves!)

And this does extend to that new mutation of communication--the Talkbacker; the losers who were chased out of bars by their friends for endlessness pontification and told to go home! Well, they are home, seated with a bowl of Cheetos, a Coke and an endlessly moving mouse--and better, an anonymous handle to hide behind, so they can be as rude and pompous as they please--they finally are a somebody--and can deliver their ignorant screeds as if it were demonstrable objective fact! (One such annoying scribe wrote some items around Tempest's release--one such title was "Why Dylan's Songs Will Not Stand The Test Of Time"; you're serious, right? They have, and will continue to do so. It's not just that "Blowin' In The Wind" already sounded like it was a thousand years when it was new, but some version of it and other Dylan tunes will still be sung a thousand years from now, even if Dylan himself is forgotten! That's what it means to work in the traditional framework; these songs will endure.)

I was also going to note some half-wit writing this very day in the Ottawa Citizen, dismissing Tempest because she didn't like the sound of his voice, and because she found the words "puerile", without giving any really intelligent reason as to why she thought this; but I weary of this theme. Dylan doesn't need my or anyone else's exegesis. But I do believe the idea of a 4th Dylan period of creativity is a valid one. At least, it seems so to me, and everything from Modern Times and Tell Tale Signs to Tempest affirms it. Let who will receive this, do so.

And just to thumb my nose at accepted opinion one last time, I believe--I think--I know "Love And Theft" is the one Dylan album of this whole latter-day body of work--great as these works are--that is so utterly transcendent as to be almost Ineffable, and is the only one can stand with Blonde On Blonde, Highway 61, The Basement Tapes and Blood On The Tracks at the absolute top of his achievement! Even when he is drawing down and consolidating his life's achievement, he can't help but be head and shoulders above other artists! In "Love..." Dylan takes every lyrical voice he's ever used, from his first album up to Time Out Of Mind, added a touch of "Things Have Changed" as a binding agent, put the whole thing into his creative kiln and fired the thing up to 1965-66, white-hot levels of absolute creativity, and came out with a wholly new language! And this, at an age when others are winding down. It isn't, or shouldn't be,an apples and oranges comparison: there's far more to Dylan's poetic genius than one-eyed midgets shouting the word now, Einstein disguised as Robin Hood sniffing drainpipes, scorpions crawling across circus floors, dancing beneath diamond skies, or ghosts of electricity howling in the bones of faces. So, it's the total Dylan, totally within his musical milieu--the strains of American music--Americana, roots, folk-rock, whatever inadequate label you choose to give it--that has been the life-long substance of his work. Add to that a sequencing of songs unifying the theme suggested by the album's title, that is, the minstrelry of White Americans "stealing" folk and other traditional forms to utilize to their own ends, and you have a perfect representation of how we United States have come by our musical traditions, as Dylan's own methods attest, and as white singers in the mid to late 20th century attempted to redress by acknowledging those forefathers of song. Such are the bloody, crooked ways by which all nations come to their traditions; a notion that goes beyond addressing the forms Dylan and others have absorbed, but to also stand, in Dylan's take, for his theme of human hubris and power-madness (the overriding theme of all Dylan in the last half of his career.) American fundamentalist cracker, Japanese gangster, al-Quida terrorist, and all the kings of the world they serve--in this magnificent album, they are shown as they truly are--all One! Who but Dylan could give us a world this deep, resonant and comprehensive?

And if "Love..." is his last, indisputably, truly great album, his last, absolutely transcendent album, it may not have anything to do with his seemingly unstoppable creativity, as it will with Mortality finally stepping in and calling Dylan "home".  So be it, if that's the case. Dylan's done his job, and can go with no apologies. And for us to make of it what we will, we'll be nothing more than battling egos, drawing lines in the sand, and succeeding in nothing greater than hypnotizing chickens!



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