Laugh, laugh! ..
Today he turned 80, but in fact - 15.
We are the ones who are getting old, he doesn't care.
I don’t know what and by whom John Updike was inspired when he wrote “Rabbit, Run”, but this book (published in 1960) is a prophecy about the coming generation of the lost forever.
And those lost had a prophet.
And he was called Bob Dylan.
Skillfully hiding for the time being both the affection of the heart, and tears in the eyes.
Actually no, he called himself Robert Allen Zimmerman: “You were born in the wrong place, to the wrong parents, and they called you wrong! .. But this is a free country.
And you are free to call yourself what you want! "
A man with a voice like sandpaper.
In the 1960s - fine, almost polished.
Today - rough, peel off the rust.
To shine?
Well, what a shine there ...
To the origins.
And with them the snag is perfect - Dylan never told anyone the truth.
She is in him.
In it, as in the phenomenon of a sudden cultural breakthrough, a universal catastrophe sweeping away civilization.
Campfires were still burning yesterday evening, the smoke brought the smell of dinner, snatches of laughter and idle talk.
In the morning - nothing.
Nothing according to Bradbury, according to his story "There will be a gentle rain" - everyone died, there were only prints of shadows on the walls, but toasts in the house are baked, eggs are fried, children's books are read aloud, the lights are on, the heating is turned on, cleanliness is maintained everywhere.
Just like a cemetery.
On a fine summer day.
He's a poet, this Dylan.
And so inconvenient that even the Pulitzer Prize, which found him in 2008, was awarded to Bob in the special category Pulitzer Prize Special Citations and Awards (in the same category a year earlier, old Ray was also favored): “For his deep influence on popular music and American a culture marked by lyrical compositions of incredible poetic power ”.
He is a poet.
Born on May 24, 1941.
In the Midwest, Minnesota.
What's so special about that?
Oh yes, his paternal grandfather and grandmother once upon a time, in 1905, emigrated to the States from Odessa.
But this, of course, does not mean anything and certainly does not mean anything.
Yes Yes.
A boy with Jewish roots, in a sense from Odessa, a poet and a dreamer, acrimonious and infinitely vulnerable, always and at every convenient occasion enter into quarrels and arguments with the press, invariably bending his line, spitting on the opinion of the crowd ...
Yes Yes.
All this means absolutely nothing.
As a boy, at school, Dylan was inspired by Hank Williams and especially by Woody Guthrie.
This is where the fun begins, the main intrigue of the "Bob Dylan Project".
Woody Guthrie, one of the pillars of American folk and country music, in fact is a convinced red (unless he joined the party), always responding to the troubles of those from whom their voice and property were taken away.
What did he write and sing about (and after all, these songs and Dylan hooked)?
About the farmers in Arkansas and Texas, whose lands were destroyed by dust storms, about the workers of the Midwest, thrown into the street from "unprofitable" enterprises, about the Soviet sniper Lyudmila Pavlyuchenko and that America cynically lies to itself and the world, in every possible way delaying the opening Second front.
Those who did not want to "get involved in the European military conflict for objective reasons", Guthrie condemned especially cruelly - Charles Lindbergh himself, a pilot and national hero of the United States, put a ceremonial photo to the wall.
And, frankly, not in vain - Lindberg did not hesitate to accept the order from Goering in 1938.
While calling to refrain from all military interventions: "America is first and foremost!"
- so said Lindbergh.
Does it remind you of anything?
Follow the thought?
Or did you think that I would just follow the trodden path - I will talk about the albums of Dylan the singer in chronological order?
In 1961, the year after leaving the University of Minnesota, Dylan went to New York.
Here he has agreements for several performances in clubs with covers of Elvis, Little Richard and Buddy Holly, but this is not the main thing - Bob goes to his idol, to Woody Guthrie, who is in a psychiatric clinic with no hope of a cure (Huntington's disease).
Guthrie is visited by many of his fans, trying to make his life easier as soon as possible.
Dylan meets people like himself, with those who are "of the same blood."
The ideas of socialism and equality, the idea that a just society is possible, and indeed the only correct one, whatever one may say, sound here every day.
Everything is saturated with them.
Yes, old man Woody goes into the darkness of ignorance ...
But others remain.
Able to say no.
When too many people around say yes.
Years later, Dylan will say about Woody Guthrie: “The endless expanse of all mankind sounded in his songs ... He managed to become the true voice of the American spirit, to embody it.
And I said to myself - I will become the greatest student of Guthrie. "
He was spotted by John Hammond, the music producer at Columbia Records.
True, it cost him dearly - Dylan's first album, Bob Dylan, sold just over 5 thousand copies, having barely recouped its production costs.
Hammond was strongly advised to send "this nasal, indistinctly singing" youth to hell, and at the same time to break the contract and remove the name from the cover (I don't understand how?).
Hammond said, “Yes!
Sure!
That's right!
Only, please, over my corpse! "
At the same time, Billboard immodestly calls Dylan "one of the most exciting young performers to emerge in pop folk music in recent years ..."
Absurd.
Like everything about Bob.
He's inspired by the reds.
He is bitter and implacable.
Acutely feels the pain of others.
For hours, no, for days, he writes poetry.
His original lyrics are sometimes 10-20 pages long.
It squeezes out and dries out everything that is unnecessary.
What's left?
Approximately the same thing that is known to almost all of us.
Dylan told reporters in the 1990s, “I have a personal contract with the Commander.
With the Main.
I will tour and sing forever. "
Apparently - there is no exact data - the first item in that contract was Blowin 'in the Wind.
Gracefully, because Dylan is a poet, gently, because Dylan is a romantic, sad, because Dylan is a dreamer, he tells us: “Dear ones!
My beloved people!
What an amazing and stinking nothing they turn our shining world into!
How amazing and unbearable ... Who is doing this?
Who dares to do that ?!
We ourselves, my dears, only ourselves ... "
How many years can a mountain exist,
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist,
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin 'in the wind,
The answer is blowin 'in the wind ...
The title track of the 1963 album The Freewheelin 'Bob Dylan.
There are still no answers to the questions asked.
Perhaps we do not want and do not know how to speak with the wind?
In the fall, one Saturday in September 1997, Pope John Paul II attended a rock concert in Bologna (the Italian Eucharistic Congress was held there).
The main character of the scene was Dylan, specially selected and advised by his dad by his press service.
Red Dylan.
Strictly anti-communist John Paul II.
Blowin 'in the Wind sounded too.
And the Pope gave a short sermon based on the lyrics of the song.
He said that only the wind of faith can lead a person to the truth and that there is only one road that each of us needs to pass - the road to Christ.
Then, not wanting to listen to anyone other than Dylan, dad left.
I don’t think that it was easy for dad - he put so much strength, so many words in defense of freedom in dark and red times, but here it is, “freedom of a free society” - and not everyone is happy with it ...
So who did Dylan believe in?
Bob has tried almost everything in his long life.
Not forgetting about Jewish roots, at times he fell into passions for the Christian faith, released one spiritual album after another in the 1970s, urged repentance and retirement from worldly life, sprinkled ashes on his head, reporting on tons of drugs he had eaten (though later from all his he categorically refused words on this topic).
He did not make too long pilgrimages.
I tried to convert friends and studio musicians to one of the faiths (as appropriate).
In a word, he fought with himself and the human fall.
Remembering to return to the world.
1997 was special for Dylan.
In June, he found himself "in the same room with death, in a very small room" - an urgent hospitalization with a dangerous heart infection.
The chances of survival were slim.
“I was sure that I would see Elvis very soon,” he will tell the press a little later.
I didn’t see it.
And in the fall of 1997, he announced that he no longer belongs to any of the existing religions: “The point is this, as far as religion and me are concerned.
This is the absolute truth: I find religiosity and philosophy in music.
I don't find them anywhere else.
Songs like Let Me Rest on a Peaceful Mountain or I Saw the Light are my religion.
I am not a follower of rabbis, preachers, evangelists - all this.
I learned more from the songs than from any of the members of this class.
Songs are my vocabulary.
I only believe in songs. "
Remember John Updike's Rabbit Feather?
He only believed in basketball.
Dylan has done the impossible many times.
From 1963 to 1966, he created an insane mix of folk, country, rock, blues, gospel, ancient poetry, simple poems about love, passion, madness, contradictions, lies and vice.
He seemed to be trying with all his might, but in spite of himself, he tried to break out of folk, to become a rock star.
He played the electric guitar (like the musicians of his tour), infuriating and despondent both his teachers and his fans (he was booed, and more than once, but he continued persistently, at every concert, in every album of those years ...) ...
And he remained true to himself.
Applying the only sure way to end the rat race of success, tranquilizers and touring, he crashed on July 29, 1966 on a Triumph Tiger 100 motorcycle. Right outside his house in Woodstock.
Having broken (allegedly) several cervical vertebrae.
And safely leaving for seclusion for eight long years.
What would you like to listen to? ..
Bringing It All Back Home 1965.
Blonde on Blonde 1966.
1969 Nashville Skyline (title Girl from the North Country with Johnny Cash).
1975 Blood on the Tracks (the absolute quintessence of longing and bitterness of parting, autobiography of love).
2006 Modern Times (a breath of air from the days of the Memphis Sun studio).
Christmas in the Heart of 2009 (time marker, children's tree - a little mockery, but also miracles with faith).
What will all this give you?
Do you understand who Dylan is?
Nobody can understand this.
Although the secret is simple ...
After a terrible and big war, after the atomic bomb and "destruction of tacit agreements", after the collapse of hopes for a bright, painfully wonderful future, there remains only the basketball of Rabbit John Updike - only an acoustic guitar and a harmonica.
Only the opportunity to ask simple and direct questions: “People!
How many more have to die?
How long will all this continue? "
Mama, put my gun to the ground,
I can't shoot them anymore,
There's a long black cloud comin 'down,
I feel like I'm knockin 'on Heaven's door.
... Knock, knock, knockin 'on Heaven's door,
Knock, knock, knockin 'on Heaven's door ...
Yes Yes.
He wrote that too.
Such questions are asked from the penumbra, from the half-light, inherited by the generation of the lost forever, from the half-basement of the “permitted and acceptable”.
Dylan won't tell the truth.
His music won't tell the truth.
But you will become better, if only because it hurts you: a splinter is an extremely unpleasant thing.
You will be hurt, but he is alive, and he is 80, and his voice is sandpaper on glass.
You will be hit, and in the morning again into the squirrel wheel of democracy and progress - and Friday is too far away.
Will hurt you.
He is a poet.
On October 13, 2016, the Nobel Committee announced him a laureate - "for the creation of new poetic expressions in the great American song tradition."
The committee itself seemed to be in sincere amazement at its decision.
As well as the laureate, who refused to come to the award ceremony and generally showed little respect for "the traditions of honoring and rewarding."
Anyone expecting Bob to rush to the checkout, sweeping away the steel rails?
After identifying the three major books of his life?
"Moby Dick" by Herman Melville, "All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque and "Odyssey" by Homer - the eternal hunt for the Providence of God, the eternal expectation of Divine Judgment and the eternal journey to the House of God.
A journey to yourself.
Will the traveler, who travels to himself, turn inside out in front of you ?!
In an essay by Nobel laureate Bob Dylan, there was this: “... Songs are not like literature.
They are supposed to be sung, not read.
Words in Shakespeare's plays were supposed to be enacted on stage.
Likewise, the words of songs should be sung, not read on the page.
And I hope that some of you will have a chance to listen to these words the way they were originally meant to be heard - at a concert or in a recording, or how people listen to songs today.
I will return again to Homer, who said: "Sing in me, Muse, and by me tell a story ..."
In 1962, Dylan recorded the rockabilly piece Mixed-Up Confusion with studio musicians for his second album, The Freewheelin '.
The song was not included in the album, and was later released as a single, but the circulation did not go on sale - the thing was too different from the rest of the material.
So, later Cameron Crowe described that phenomenon of the failed single (the song is simply magical, honestly) as "a breathtaking vision of a folk musician, whose mind wanders towards Elvis and Sun Records ..."
Do not repeat anything.
Experience does not teach us anything.
But Dylan is alive and continues to speak to us in the language of the ancients.
The language of poetry "sun and stars".
All you need is to find his albums.
And yes, Bob Dylan is still not very much a singer.
Many of them sang it more than well.
It's up to you to choose.
You will not lose and you will not win.
After all, one day you will still want to listen to the voice of the person about whom Elvis said: “God ... He writes such songs, such texts!
But here's a voice ... Just like sandpaper ... "
The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast.
The slow one now will later be fast.
And the present now will later be past.
The order is rapidly fadin '.
The first one now
Will later be last.
For the times they are a-changin'...
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