UNDERGROUND 68: A Dylan-Inspired Harvard Project and Kickstarter Campaign

"Blowin' in the Wind" -- 24"x 36", acrylic on panel

This past week I read about a section of the web called Google Scholar. It's essentially a massive library of scholarly papers, theses, articles, abstracts, court opinions. an online repository of all scholarship across all disciplines. Naturally the first thing I did was do a quick search to see what they had about Mr. Bob Dylan.

The first document that came up was something akin to a fact sheet which begins something like a form that you fill out for a job application or vehicle registration at the DMV.  Birth name. Also known as. Born. Origin. Occupation. Instruments. Years active. Labels. Associated acts. Website.

I like the list of aliases under "Also known as." Elston Gunnn, Blind Boy Grunt, Bob Landy, Robert Milkwood Thomas, Tedham Porterhouse, Lucky/Boo Wilbury, Jack Frost, Sergei Petrov.  You can read more about Dylan's aliases at American Routes. (EdNote: If you go there, I believe he misspelled Gunnn, which should have three Ns. Read Bobby Vee's account here.) I find it amusing that the guy with all these aliases took the name Alias in the film Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid.

The amazing thing, which sets scholarly work apart from much of what we find online, is the quantity of footnotes. The dossier on Dylan is 34 pages. In superfine fine print on the last two pages they have 351 footnotes.

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All this has been a roundabout way to lead into UNDERGROUND 68, a Kickstarter project founded by Harvard folk. The storyline goes like this: the '60s counterculture envelops a Harvard student whose thesis about campus Vietnam War resistance leads her to Dylan and the streets of Rome. An interesting aspect of the project is that it was initiated by a contemporary Harvard student, but features Harvard students from the Sixties.

This spring during the 2018 Duluth Dylan Fest, we had the privilege of hosting a lecture by Richard F. Thomas, the Harvard classics prof who also teaches a class on Dylan, author of Why Bob Dylan Matters. Dr. Thomas is one of the principles behind the film which is summarized this way:

The late 1960s counterculture was a mass awakening. It was a renaissance of music, art, experimental films, underground comics, psychedelic drugs, Eastern philosophy and cosmic consciousness. It was the dawn of the movements for peace, civil rights, environmentalism, sexual diversity and women’s liberation. Ariel finds the distillation of all that in the songs of Bob Dylan.

Guided by a Harvard classics professor and renowned Dylan scholar she also finds deep connections between Dylan's later songs and works of classic Greek and Roman literature, especially Virgil.

UNDERGROUND 68 is infused with Dylan songs performed by a kick-ass rock band of professional grade musicians from the Harvard class of ‘68, songs that reflect back on Ariel’s intellectual and spiritual journey.

"Light yourself a candle" manhole cover,
Bob Dylan Way, Duluth.

The filming is complete, to they're on the last leg of production. Their target goal is $36K, but anything above that will be applied to getting the film into film festivals, college campuses, art houses, etc. Their primo ultimate aim would be to raise $100K to fund a traveling show that includes film screenings, Dr. Thomas' lecture on Why Bob Dylan Matters and the Harvard band doing an all-new Dylan setlist. (Is the name of that band The Harvard Classics, by the way?)

COOLEST FEATURE: Pledge $10K and you will be listed as Executive Producer of the film. I'm sure Steve Jobs would have bit on that. For all I know, Steve might have gone ahead and funded the whole thing.

Anyways, HERE IS THE KICKSTARTER INFO
Or you can cut-and-paste:  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1409581093/underground-68?ref=nav_search&result=project&term=UNDERGROUND

EdNote: Deadline to reach goal is August 1.

Related Links
Article by Brian Lloyd: The Form is the Message: Bob Dylan and the 1960's
* Steve Jobs Film Leads To Dylan Insights for CEOs in New Forbes Article
Trivia: According to the Dylan entry at imdb.com 745 movies us Dylan music as a portion of the soundtrack. Will Underground 68 be number 746?

Meantime life goes on all around you. Get into it.

Harvard Classics Prof Pulls Back the Curtain to Reveal New Insights on Dylan's Art

Prof Richard F. Thomas

Yesterday afternoon, May 26, more than 100 people crammed into Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum to hear Dr. Richard F. Thomas deliver a lecture on Bob Dylan and the Classics. Whether you were a lifetime fan or a relatively new follower of Dylan's art, the Harvard professor's hour-long talk offered much to chew on. In return he likewise relished the opportunity to make this pilgrimage to the Northland to see points of interest in Hibbing and Duluth as well as experience the power of these places that were formative in making Dylan the poet he grew to become.

Phil Fitzpatrick, a local writer/teacher and Harvard grad, introduced Dr. Thomas after briefly reading a tribute to John Bushey, founder/host of KUMD's Highway 61 Revisited and for whom the John Bushey Memorial Lecture Series has been named. Phil welcomed everyone on behalf of Duluth Dylan Fest, Karpeles and the City of Duluth. He then noted that Dr. Thomas received his Bachelors and Masters in Auckland, New Zealand, his Ph.D. in classics at the University of Michigan. He's published more than 100 article and reviews and ten books, including this most recent Why Bob Dylan Matters. And incidentally, in addition to teaching classic literature he also teaches a class on Bob Dylan.

This was not his first visit to Minnesota. He gave a lecture in the Twin Cities in 2006.

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Dr. Thomas began by noting that Dylan may not be here in 50 years but “I believe his art will be. I hope that in 200 years people will be studying Dylan like they do Virgil."

In the initial portion of the lecture he laid out some of Dylan's early influences. The Hematite, Hibbing High's Yearbook (which archivist Bill Pagel has on display in his "Einstein Disguised As Robin Hood" exhibit), shows that Dylan was not only a fan of Little Richard, but was also a member of the Latin Club and the Social Studies Club, indicators that his later interests had early roots.

His uncle owned the movie house in Hibbing and the young Bob Zimmerman no doubt saw films like The Robe and Demetrius & the Gladiators which were released in the early 1950s. Due to this being the McCarthy era, Hollywood produced quite a few films in which the Roman Empire became a metaphor for unjust power, the contemporary reality of the American '50s.*

Dr. Thomas showed ways in which this early influence re-emerges later. First example: Chronicles, Volume 1. After noting that chapters 2 & 4 are mostly made up, he underscored the beautiful writing of chapters 1, 3 and 5 and showed that "the idea of Rome mattered to him."

Some examples from Dylan's songs were then identified, including the obscure “Goin’ Back to Rome” that he played once at Gerde’s Folk City.

In August 1962 he sang Long Ago, Far Away
"Gladiators killed themselves
It was during the Roman times,
People cheered with bloodshot grins
As eyes and minds went blind"

During the Rolling Thunder Revue Dylan opened his shows with "When I Paint My Masterpiece," which includes this reference:
“Oh the streets of Rome are filled with rubble
Ancient footprints are everywhere”

Other examples were cited, and then we began the deeper dive into Dylan's use of intertextuality, a major theme in Why Bob Dylan Matters.

Love & Theft, released Sept 11, 2001 is "an album of songs addressing antiquity" in which Dylan begins to draw from Virgil.

He then cited T S Eliot:: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”

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Signing a book for local musician Tom O'Keefe.

We were then treated to a deeper analysis of "Lonesome Day Blues" in which Dylan literally replicates passages from Confessions of a Yakuza, Huckleberry Finn and Virgil's Aeneid.

With this pattern of looking back to the classics set in motion, Dylan began drawing from Ovid for the album Modern Times.

Dr. Thomas' enthusiasm for his topic was palpable. (You never knew the classics could be this exciting, did you?) “This recent stuff is just miraculous,” he said regarding Dylan’s albums from Time Out of Mind to Tempest.

He then began identifying as many as 30 Dylan lines that are directly parallel to or identical with lines from Ovid’s exile poems.

"Getting a linear meaning out of a Dylan song is never easy or sometimes even possible," he said, and yet the manner in which Dylan reconstructs this passages is nothing short of amazing. "Dylan is unlike any other," he said. "Especially in performance.

In 2010 Dylan began drawing from yet another classic source, passages from Homer. He "began a process of becoming Odysseus, the Trickster."

And yes, afterwards we had more birthday cake.

While here this week he had the opportunity to be inside the Armory where Dylan saw Buddy Holly. As many of us know, Dylan began his Nobel Speech with this story from that encounter at the Armory. Dr. Thomas then cited a line from another Dylan speech, from 2015: “Character always mattered to me.”

The Odyssey has themes that appear vividly in Dylan's last album of original music, Tempest. What Dylan is doing is "bringing life to history." After detailing the story of Odysseus killing the Cyclops, he underscored the greatness of Bob Dylan. Dylan's themes are all there in the Classics, and it makes sense that a Classics professor would be among the first to comprehend the genius behind Bob Dylan's borrowings.

Much more can be said, but for now the best advice I can give is: Read the Book.

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Photos courtesy Michael Anderson

Related Link
Interview with Richard F. Thomas earlier this spring.

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Engage it.

*Some Bible scholars have suggested that the Book of Revelations, which circulated during the first century, was written using assorted symbols that could only be interpreted by "People of the Book" for the same reason. Only those who understood the symbols would "get it."