An Example of Polarity Management: The Grateful Dead's Truckin'

A few decades back my brother Ron, a psychologist, shared a concept with me that seems to have endless applications, the idea of Polarity Management. The concept is illustrated perfectly in two lines from the Grateful Dead's lively hit song "Truckin'." 

If you remember the song, it's essentially about life on the road as a band, with commentary about the various places they stayed or performed from Houston and New Orleans to New York, Buffalo and back to Bourbon Street. It talks openly about life on the road, which for many if not most bands included drugs at the time, so it was a counterculture anthem, not mainstream. 

The stanza that sums up polarity management is this one:

You're sick of hanging around and you'd like to travel
Tired of travel, you want to settle down
I guess they can't revoke your soul for trying
Get out of the door - light out and look all around

Who hasn't had the experience? You get tired of doing nothing and become restless, so you get busy. At a certain point, if you're too busy, you crave a break, a downtime.  So we pause, and it refreshes, but then that pause generates a longing to be active again. It's a cycle

There are dozens, even hundreds, of polarity cycles. Finding the balance between work and play is a problem that leads us into cycles. Some people like structure in their lives and create rigid lifestyles which at times feel like constraints or even shackles that we need to shake off. In our relationships, we may find our natural inclination to be supportive of whatever friends pursue, but then we fall back into a sense in which we feel a need to challenge them a little. ("Are you sure you're marching down the right path? Remember what happened last time.")

In our current post-covid business environment many executive and management level workers are struggling to find a balance between working in the office again (centralization) and continuing the "cocooning" style of working from home and connecting on Zoom. One thing for sure is that the benefits and weaknesses of each style have been experienced so that at least alternatives to what used to be a historical method have now been questioned. What comes next? It waits to be seen.

Roller coasters are exciting, but if we went to an amusement park and spent 98% of the time being flung all about, arms akimbo, we'd be ill. The excitement is fun, even terrifying, when it is temporary. Finding balance between equilibrium and drama is big part of life for many people 

Truckin' was penned by Robert Hunter, the only songwriter in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who was not a performer, a lyricist for the Grateful Dead. Bob Dylan and Hunter collaborated on Dylan's 2009 album Together Through Life, which I listened to almost continuously as I set up a major art show that summer in what is now called the Lincoln Park District here in Duluth.

To learn more about Polarity Management ask Google. Or see what's available in your local library. Numerous articles and books have been written on the subject. At the heart of them all is an apparent desire find the Golden Mean, a life of balance of sorts betwixt and between all the forces pulling us back and forth in various directions.

For me, there's a lively sophistication in the arrangement in which all the players seem to dance around the melody in this song while no one actually plays it. The singer carries that melody, surrounded by an entourage of sound that is lively, pressing ever forward. It's catchy.

If interested, you can learn more about Truckin' (not necessarily polarity management) here at http://artsites.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/truckin.html

Robert Hunter's Translations of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. ...live in the question.” 
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

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Saturday, when I wrote about Robert Hunter's collaborations with Dylan, my original intent had not been to write about Together Through Life. Rather, I had discovered Hunter's translations of some of the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke and began by laying a foundation, introducing readers to Hunter the poet/songwriter. I got a little carried away, ultimately snipping it it for a blog post of its own.

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It's often been remarked how the Internet is like a giant labyrinth, with each explorer ending up in different places based on choices one makes, following links, or as Robert Frost in his poem "The Road Not Taken" suggests, "way leads on to way" so that we sometimes know not how we arrived in these various places and spaces within this seemingly infinite hypercard deck.

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All this is a rather circuitous route to Robert Hunter's Rilke translations. Hunter was such an integral part of the Grateful Dead magic that when the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, Hunter was included with the band, even though he'd never actually performed with them. Hunter was the first, and maybe only, non-performer inducted in this manner.

As a lyricist Hunter's interests stretched beyond the bounds of contemporary songwriting so that quite by accident I discovered his translations of poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke, specifically his Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus, which features some of my own favorite Rilke verses. It's intriguing how Rilke resurrected Orpheus, a character from Greek mythology endowed with superhuman musical skills, to become a symbol in the modern world.

According to the Brittanica, "Orpheus was the son of a Muse, (probably Calliope, the patron of epic poetry) and Oeagrus, a king of Thrace (though some sources cite Apollo). According to some legends, Apollo gave Orpheus his first lyre. Orpheus’s singing and playing were so beautiful that animals and even trees and rocks moved about him in dance."

This was Jerry Garcia's mandate. "Boogie." If they -- the fans, including the rocks and trees sometimes no doubt -- then the Grateful Dead were not doing their job.

* * * *

I myself first discovered Rilke through his first and only novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. The vivid, haunting imagery moved me deeply. Then I discovered his poems. "The Panther" is probably his most famous, only because it was popularized in the film Awakenings (Robert DeNiro, Robin Williams). In 2008 I learned that the poem has been translated more than two dozen times from the original German, which I shared here at that time.

What each translator strives for is to find an approach to the work that is consistent and authentic. Translation work is fraught with challenges, as literal word-for-word translation can sometimes be stiff, or miss the meaning behind the words. Robert Hunter's aim, he states, was to "approximate the original rhythm and rhyme of The Sonnets to Orpheus."

Here I have reproduced two of the early sonnets as translated by Hunter. A link to the complete translation can be found at the end of the second passage.

THE SONNETS TO ORPHEUS

-1-

Tree arising! O pure ascendance!
Orpheus Sings! Towering tree within the ear!
Everywhere stillness, yet in this abeyance:
seeds of change and new beginnings near.

Creatures of silence emerged from the clear
unfettered forest, from dens, from lairs.
Not from shyness, this silence of theirs;
nor from any hint of fear,

simply from listening. Brutal shriek and roar
dwindled in their hearts. Where stood a mere
hut to house the passions of the ear,

constructed of longing darkly drear,
haphazardly wrought from front to rear,
you built them a temple at listening's core.

-2 -

Something akin to a maiden strayed
from this marriage of song and string,
glowing radiant through veils of spring;
inside my ear a bed she laid.

And there she slept. Her dream was my domain:
the trees which enchanted me; vistas vast
and nearly touchable; meadows of a vernal cast
and every wondrous joy my heart could claim.

She dreamed the world. Singing God, how made
you that primordial repose so sound she never
felt a need to waken? Upon arising she fell straight to dream.

Where is her death? O, will you yet discover her theme
before your song is eclipsed forever? --
Abandoning me, where does she go?--something akin to a maid-

* * * *
You will find the rest of the sonnets here.

Learn more about Orpheus in the Britannica.

When I built my first website in 1995 I also created a Labyrinth, akin to the hypercard concept I'd been introduced to several years earlier when I got my second Mac. The Labyrinth starts here, and if you make a wrong turn you might run into a Rilke poem, or a page with prose by Jorge Luis Borges.

Meantime, life goes on all around you... Listen to the music.

Together Through Life: Robert Hunter and Bob Dylan Team Up to Produce a Gem

“Things are not as easily understood nor as expressible as people usually would like us to believe. Most happenings are beyond expression; they exist where a word has never intruded.” 
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

During the Fourth of July weekend in 2009 I hung my first solo art show in more than 30 years at The Venue @ Mohaupt Block. In addition to framing and mounting illustrations and paintings from two years of blogging, quite a few of the works were from stages of my earlier life, thus making it a retrospective of sorts. The title I gave this show was First Hand Experiences. The significant piece of this story is that Bob Dylan's Together Through Life had been just released and for two days running I must have listened to the new album forty times while hanging my work.

What I didn't know at the time was the critical role played by his songwriting collaborator on this project, Robert Hunter. Born Robert Burns in June 1941, one month after Robert Zmmerman, Hunter purportedly descended from the great Scot poet of that same name, apparently an heir to the poetry gene embedded in his DNA.

Together Through Life wasn't Dylan's first collaboration with Hunter, who estanlished his cred as a lyricist for the Grateful Dead. After the brief six-gig Dylan and the Dead Tour in July of 1987 Hunter co-wrote at least two songs with Dylan for his 1988 album Down in the Groove, one of these being Sylvio, a favorite of Dylan's which he's since performed live more than 500 times during his Never Ending Tour.

According to an interview with Hunter in 2014 at the website Highway 81 Revisited, when asked how his relationship with Dylan got started, Hunter replied: It started with a song that I had written for the Dead. I used to write up a little book full of songs titled “Can You Dig It?” every year or so, and give copies, and the guys in the band who wrote would choose stuff they liked out of it. Dylan came to the practices for that Dead/Dylan (tour in 1987), and I was in court at the time, so when I got out, Dylan said, “Hey, I set one of your songs,” and he had taken “Silvio” from that book. He said, “I dig your work,” and I said, “Well, I dig your work too.”

We bantered back and forth over the next couple years. I wrote more things, and nothing was really clicking too much. Then out of the blue he asked me to write an album for him (“Together Through Life”), so I got clickin’ on that, and it’s very much a collaboration. His words are in there as much as mine are, to the point where I don’t even remember who wrote what in those songs.

* * * *
When the album was released, Dylan described Hunter as "an old Buddy" and said, "We could probably write a hundred songs together if we thought it was important or the right reasons were there... He's got a way with words and I do too. We both write a different type of song than what passes today for songwriting."

No question about it.

In 2015 Robert Hunter was finally inducted, with Jerry Garcia, into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. (Dylan inducted in 1982)

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"Hunter tapped into his generation the same way Dylan did," says Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers, a longtime Dead fan. "People will look back and say, 'That's American culture represented in music.' He captured the hippie freedom, the mentality of the little guy against the corporation. A lot of the songs are about gambling, card playing and riverboat guys who'll cut your throat if you look the wrong way."
Source: Rolling Stone, March 9, 2015

* * * *

For more on Robert Hunter, here's an exclusive Rolling Stone interview from 2015.

* * * *

For me, Together Through Life shines as another Dylan triumph, creating yet another "sound" with its accordion accompaniments, exploring still new tonal territories. I am reminded here of how he incorporated Scarlet Rivera' magic violin into the striking sound for Hurricane, Desire and the Rolling Thunder Revue.

What's more, this is his first full album of songwriting collaboration with a single artist. I would love to have been a fly on the wall, as they say, when these two creators hashed, slashed, restructured, dreamed and re-dreamed the lyrics they produced here. Where does one end and the other begin? Even Robert Hunter isn't certain, he said.

The whole world is my throne
Beyond here lies nothin'
Nothin' we can call our own

There's some dark shadows flowing through a lot of the songs, and the gravel-voiced Dylan conveys this stark beauty so convincingly.

The door has closed forevermore
If indeed there ever was a door

Meantime, life goes on all around you... Listen to the music.

Duquesne Whistle: Dylan's Upbeat Opener from Tempest Is Sheer Fun

What Dylan track has been running through your head recently? For some reason the tune "Duquesne Whistle" has been the recurring, ongoing accompaniment for me these past two weeks as my runaway train barrels down the track through the scenes of my life. It's upbeat and chipper, giving a bouyant boost that lifts my spirits when the string of railcars my little engine is towing begins to feel burdensome. In short, the song is fun and lightens my load.

You can tell Dylan enjoys it, too, as he's performed it 163 times in concert, beginning in June 2013, and it's still being played as of last night at the Pala Alpitour in Torino, Italy. (Mario, were you there at the concert?)

"Duquense Whistle" is the opening cut on Tempest, Dylan's 35th studio album which was released on September 10, 2012. The song achieves it's intended aim, letting you know Dylan's still on top of his game while drawing you in to another stellar album. The album reached #3 on the Billboard Top 200, a pretty good feat for a guy in his seventies.

The lyrics themselves aren't really that memorable per se. This is not Hard Rain or Blowin' in the Wind. Whistle strikes me as pure whimsy, much like the opening scenes in the video produced to feature this tune. In contrast, the video veers unpredictably into a startling place with a scene that echoes Reservoir Dogs' most frightening moments. Actually, Tempest itself veers into vividly dark images of horror, blood and death in a number of songs, the title song being an immense description of the sinking of the Titanic and all that entailed there.

"Duquesne Whistle" was co-written with Robert Hunter, who collaborated with Dylan on a couple cuts from Down in the Groove, and extensively on Together Through Life.

Here's the video, followed by lyrics and then a link to the initial Rolling Stone review from when Tempest came out. Enjoy.

Duquesne Whistle

Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing

Blowing like it's gonna sweep my world away

I'm gonna stop at Carmangale and keep on going

That Duquesne train gon' rock me night and day

You say I'm a gambler, you say I'm a pimp

But I ain't neither one

Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing

Sound like it's on a final run

Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing

Blowing like she never blowed before

Little light blinking, red light glowing

Blowing like she's at my chamber door

You smiling through the fence at me

Just like you've always smiled before

Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing

Blowing like she ain't gon' blow no more

Can't you hear that Duquesne whistle blowing?

Blowing like the sky's gonna blow apart

You're the only thing alive that keeps me going

You're like a time bomb in my heart

I can hear a sweet voice steadily calling

Must be the mother of our Lord

Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing

Blowing like my woman's on board

Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing

Blowing like it's gon' blow my blues away

You're a rascal, I know exactly where you're going

I'll lead you there myself at the break of day

I wake up every morning with that woman in my bed

Everybody telling me she's gone to my head

Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing

Blowing like it's gon' kill me dead

Can't you hear that Duquesne whistle blowing?

Blowing through another no good town

The lights on my native land are glowing

I wonder if they'll know me next time 'round

I wonder if that old oak tree's still standing

That old oak tree, the one we used to climb

Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing

Blowing like she's blowing right on time

Here's the Rolling Stone review of Tempest.