Another Dylan Portrait

My friends know that from spring to fall I turn my garage into an art studio. They also know that I am a Dylan fan. This here is a portrait of Dylan which I did this past week. (click image to enlarge) I’d painted the background a year ago, but hadn’t known where to go with it. Last weekend I spent an evening working on several pieces with a variety of colors on my pallet. The background from last year, perched on the easel, had been patiently awaiting my attention. In a moment of spontaneous exuberance I decided to flatten my easel against the center of the painting.

For some reason the image of Dylan appeared, and with the help of a few additional brushstrokes, the face took the final form you see here. Since the image seems to reflect a Sixties Dylan, I will add the lyrics to a Dylan song from that same period, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)"

It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows 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.

I’m Not There: My Prose and Cons

Disclaimer: I am a Dylan fan. Seeing this film was therefore obligatory.

The film I'm Not There was a freewheelin' take on another side of Bob Dylan, and another and another and another….

I have read half dozen Dylan bios and his Chronicles, own most of his albums, listened to the Dylan hour for years and still wasn’t sure what I thought about this film… OK, Dylan is enigmatic and it maybe makes sense to be enigmatic in telling his story. But did it have to be THIS enigmatic?

What follows then are my observations using Dr. Edward de Bono’s PIN method approach. That is, everything has a positive, interesting and negative aspect. If we get our analytical side awakened, it will help us avoid kneejerk reactions.

Positives
1. Cate Blanchett… not just the mannerisms but the script Haynes gives her is simply wonderful. She is actually hilarious at times, and profound often. I would love to hear what she thinks about Dylan after having played Dylan

2. In a movie that doesn’t play by the conventional rules of story telling you can potentially inject some really profound insights with new ways of seeing things that create memorable a-hahs.

3. The film offers serious insights about the culture of celebrity and the challenge of being a whole person when standing in the searing spotlight of Fame. >>> John Lennon’s recluse years come to mind here.

4. Dylan music throughout

Interesting
1. Funny line Cate Blanchett delivers when she asks “Am I the only one who has any balls around here?” Pure irony.

2. Truly original, non-linear film. Writer/director Haynes took risks to make this film in light of the challenges it would encounter in terms of mass appeal.

3. A Negro Dylan… That’s interesting. I do understand where that comes from.

4. Interesting how the different actors played Dylan.

5. I heard some criticism beforehand of Gere’s portion, but I had no such problem once you buy in. I’d seen Billy the Kid a couple times and, well, it is what it is.

Negative
My problems with the movie (which I watched twice in a row.)

1. The six characters had six different names, which made it a challenge to follow what purported to be a story line about a person.

2. The first character, Woody Guthrie (Dylan), mumbled lines that were hard to decipher and we missed things…. seems that if Haynes wrote the lines, they should be delivered in a manner that we can understand the words, even if we don’t understand meanings. This was the first character and it may have been intended to be comical, but it didn’t work. Interesting idea poorly executed.

3. For some reason I expected to see a linear story with a different character representing different eras in Dylan’s life. Instead the film is a shuffling together of his various personas in pretty much the same time frames, with the naturally difficult confusion.

4. No apparent storyline… which means the viewer is never really able to get lost in the film. Because it takes so much effort to figure things out it is too much like work and not really fun (until one gives up trying, and just goes with it the second time around.)

*****************************

This is definitely not a film for everyone. What follows are some excerpts from the IMDb.com reviews of the movie. The great majority were very positive, so you can go there to read them. I tack these on because they add some insight as to why I’m Not There pretty much failed at the box office, despite fawning reviews by the critics.

In "Chronicles, Volume One" Dylan dwells on the moment when he stumbled across Rimbaud's declaration "Je est un autre" which translates into English: "I is someone else". Dylan writes: "When I read those words the bells went off. It made perfect sense. I wish someone would have mentioned it to me earlier." That insight has sustained Dylan thru all his multiple personalities, finger pointing folkie, rock & roll rebel, Nashville good ol' boy (Oh me oh my, love that country pie), tormented lover, Born Again Christian. When he performed on his first album, aged 21, he was trying to summon up the voice of a 60 year old blues singer.

Nowhere in the film do we get a glimpse of the excitement that surrounded Dylan's emergence as an artist, or the kind of musical poetry that brought Allen Ginsburg to tears. While the film has some of the great Dylan songs, some sung by Bob and some by stand-ins, there is nothing deeply felt here and Haynes fails to capture the passion and inspiration of his music. Bob Dylan is not a series of archetypes or shifting faces. He is a poet, an artist, a musician, a man who had something important to say and said it in a way that articulated the built-up frustrations of an entire generation. In I'm Not There, in spite of the conceit of the multiple actors, there is only one Dylan - the shadow - masked and anonymous, not the man - vital and creatively alive.

Unless you know a lot about Bob Dylan and the context in which he lived - Vietnam War, folk music ... - you will be completely lost while watching this film. I went into it knowing virtually nothing about him, and really learned nothing from watching this. In fact, after about an hour, I think I slipped into unconsciousness a few times, wondering if I had been reborn in one of the 16 hell realms.

A classic case of the Emporers new clothes!