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April 28, 2005

Chris Floyd Talks About Bob Dylan

I've never listened to a lot of Bob Dylan, except for the big hits. But of course I know many people's worldview has been deeply influenced by him. As it turns out, Chris Floyd is one of them. He's written a column about Dylan that will appear in an upcoming anthology and is now on his website:

What I've come to realize over the years is that Dylan's music is not primarily about expressing yourself—it's about losing yourself, escaping the self and all its confusions, corruptions, pettiness and decay. It's about getting to some place far beyond the self, "where nature neither honors nor forgives." Dylan gives himself up to the song, and to the deeper reality it creates in the few charged moments of its existence. We can step through the door he opens to that far place and see what happens.

This reminds me of something I read in Harper's recently—although it's from an article not about music, but painting:

Balthus... said in a 1994 interview that he never wanted to be an "artist," adding, "I have a horror of the word... What I believe is that the people who paint today are not the same people who painted let's say 200 years ago, or 300 years ago... they're all artists today. What I find terrible is that need of expressing oneself. Why express yourself, why not express the universe?

By the way, as of this sentence this website is changing from jokes about politics to weird ruminations about Art.

Posted at April 28, 2005 10:13 PM | TrackBack
Comments

I'm still holding out for more pig stories.

Posted by: mk at April 28, 2005 10:40 PM

Those who can do; those who can't, and are fairly bitter about it, become talking heads on TV; those who want to share in the effluvia of the bitch-goddess fame, but have absolutely no redeeming qualities, write biographical critiques of artists and speculate on their (the artists') intent.

Posted by: cavanaghjam at April 29, 2005 02:17 AM

mk,

I have sent you email with a secret source of oink-itude.

cavanaghjam,

Man, that's kind of harsh. I agree with you up to a point—for instance, I think what you say is true regarding people who make unkind comments about art, even bad art. But I certainly feel there's a place for celebrating and promoting good art.

Or maybe I misunderstood you.

Posted by: Jonathan Schwarz at April 29, 2005 08:57 AM

mk, have you heard this one?

A farmer was taking a pig with one wooden leg on a walk in town one day . . . on a leash. A man stopped the farmer on the sidewalk and tried to satisfy his understandable curiousity by asking, "Why does your pig have one wooden leg?"

"Let me tell you about this pig. This is ONE SPECIAL PIG! About two months ago I spent all day Saturday cleaning out the underbrush in the woods behind my cabin. When I finished at the end of the day, I went back to the cabin, ate dinner, and went to bed. I was so tired that I slept incredibly soundly. The cabin caught fire during the night. I didn't know it, but the pig did! Just before my cabin crashed down upon me in a pile of burning embers, this pig grabbed me and dragged me out of the cabin, saving my life. This is one special pig!!"

"Yes, I can see he's special, but why does he have one wooden leg?" asked the man again.

"Let me tell you something else about this pig. About a month ago, the pig and I were taking a relaxing Sunday drive in my pickup truck. The pig was sitting in the front seat with me. All of a sudden, something made me sneeze violently. I lost control of the truck, ran off the road, and hit a tree head-on. The crash knocked me out cold. The truck caught fire. Just before the pickup exploded in a big ball of fire, the pig once again came to my rescue. He grabbed me and dragged me to safety. This is REALLY a special pig!!!"

Now obviously agitated at not receiving an answer to his seemingly simple question, the man yelled, "OK, so he's special! Why does he have ONE WOODEN LEG?!?!?!"

"Well, good grief, man. A pig that good, you can't eat him all at once!"

Posted by: mistah charley at April 29, 2005 11:11 AM

JS - Perhaps you misunderstood me because I was, as too damnably often, curt and, as result, imprecise. It's not the criticising of art, it's the critique of the artist and the concomitant divining of his/her intent to which I have raised objection. In fact such attempt is given a name [which I forget(Intentionl Fallacy?)], one of the three great Fallacies enumerated in what used to be called the school of New Criticism.

Posted by: cavanaghjam at April 29, 2005 11:49 AM