Belated Birthday Wishes
It was Mr Dylan’s eightieth birthday a couple of weeks ago. It’s been an interlude where I’ve read a few truly wonderful pieces from those who love the man and his work. In particular, I thrilled to the analysis of Mama You Been on My Mind in the essay, ‘Dylan@ 80: Whispering To Himself’ by the great Irish journalist John Waters and sat entranced as I read Professor Richard Thomas’ interview with Samuele Conficoni in the publication Kalporz.
In the shadow of such great minds, I’ve been embarrassed to put pen to paper. I thought it best to leave the marking of the occasion to others and was already thoughts deep in my next piece of writing. However as I lay on the beach this weekend listening to the thundering waves, I felt the movement of that great expansiveness and was shaken free of such self serving cowardice. One should always offer homage to one’s heroes. No matter how threadbare and unpolished such homage may be, when it comes from the heart it is an offering that should be made. And so from the depths of a restless heart, Happy Birthday Mr Dylan!
Saturday in Los Angeles usually involves a considerable amount of driving for me. Yesterday I was heading up La Cienega from the southwest of the city to Melrose Place listening to selected songs from the Bootleg collection, Trouble No More. A live version of one of my favourite songs Watered Down Love came through the speakers. ‘You don’t want a love that’s pure’ sings Dylan and of course, none of us do. We all want our love watered down; we are always trying to pull away from the awesome expression of true open heartedness in order to protect our foul little kingdoms. It’s why we’re still here, trapped in suffering; circling in the mad whirlpool of our own delusions. My own cowardly desire to let such a momentous birthday pass by silently was just a manifestation of this same crippling small heartedness. Put pen to paper indeed I must: Happy Birthday Mr Dylan!
These past eighteen months have been so bereft of any opportunities for live music that I have found myself deliberately remembering song lyrics when I am out and about and playing more music than ever before when I am driving. So many places in Los Angeles are now inextricably linked in my mind with Dylan lyrics that almost every nook and cranny of the city holds the echo of a song. When I drive down Venice Boulevard, which takes you through the heart of the ruin of this place, at sunset with that particular Los Angeles glow I always hear Desolation Row and muse over Einstein’s electric violin. Driving for the simplest of errands on Jefferson Boulevard I hear My Own Version of You; I listened to the song on repeat in those early days of the album release last year when I drove to the store during lockdown. If I’m lucky I’ll catch a glimpse of the shadows of women standing by cypress trees, helped by the fact that Aeneid 2 is still fresh in my mind. I will always think of the album Tempest when I turn onto the street parallel to our home Duquesne Avenue. Whenever I’m driving by the Fairmont Hotel in Santa Monica I smell sweet magnolia and think about slavery ships. Sitting beside the roaring ocean I see another deserted beach while I watch the dogs run free. My experience of Los Angeles would be a pale version of herself without the Dylan dimensions. Happy Birthday Mr Dylan!
Anybody who has spent time with Dylan’s visual art will know that his own love of America, her landscapes and identity is not confined to any particular city. The last time I was able to gaze at his paintings was in London and I was captivated by how he pours the vast restless power of the land he loves onto his canvas with colour and rich texture. I am no expert in any field, but true art, be it visual, musical, verse or prose needs no expert interpretation although its flexibility generously allows for such endeavours. The power of all true art is its ability to speak to us directly; we can connect with its essence at whatever frequency we are tuned to. Dylan’s paintings remind me of the power and potential of America which is so often invisible beneath the crass veneer of her contemporary manifestation. I often muse over the fact, that while both of the American Modernist poets TS Eliot and Ezra Pound, found their homes away from America, Dylan has chosen to stay in the country of his birth. Indeed his visual art speaks of his enduring affection for it. As a stranger in this strange land I breathe a little easier when I remember this. Happy Birthday Mr Dylan!
When I look back to my early days I remember my hero worship of the Dylan of the Don’t Look Back era, which co-existed happily with the Dylan of the 80s and 90s, as that was my contemporary reality. I remember my senior school and a Maths teacher, irate because I had chosen to decorate my textbook with the relevant lyrics (or so I thought) from Tombstone Blues! I remember dreams of an extended English A Level study involving Dylan and Dante. I remember a few years later, when I was in the middle of an Italian heartbreak, my fingertips were blistered and sore from endless hours of playing Boots of Spanish Leather until it felt like a part of me. At whatever point of life I look back to, you can be sure that there will be a Dylan reference or accent lurking close by in the halls of memory. Happy Birthday Mr Dylan!
As I watch a live version of Desolation Row on YouTube from Liverpool 2001, with Charlie and Larry flanking Dylan, I have a sudden sense of timelessness. There is a power playing through him. It’s the same power that must have been there whenever the great troubadours of the past took up their instruments and charmed the courts of princes and kings, or when the old folk singers of days gone by conjured up the demon from House Carpenter or when Homer sang of Odysseus going down into the underworld. It is a power that cannot be bound by our finite realm, it’s greater than any one person, place or culture. It’s the voice of the Muse of course; as Dylan tells us on Rough and Rowdy Ways. Dylan, a mere imperfect mortal, lives in our broken world alongside this power, this mistress who can at times be cruel. He has stayed the course and has written a multitude of songs and performed, reworked and repeformed them in a multitude of ways. We have much to thank the Bard of Hibbing for. Happy Birthday Mr Dylan!
