Dylan Indeed Contains Multitudes

“I’m a man of contradictions, I’m a man of many moods
I contain multitudes.”--Bob Dylan

Of course Dylan contains multitudes. We've known this for ages, but only in more recent years have we discovered how vast the span of those multitudes really was.

He'd begun inhaling multitudes when he took deep dives into friends' record collections when he went to Dinkytown in Minneapolis upon leaving home. When he landed in New York Dylan's first stop was Izzy Young's Folklore Center at 110 MacDougal Street. It became a place to hang out, where he could continue his threshing of the American songbook.

I use the word threshing because it's the process of separating the wheat from the chaff. I'll carry that notion further and compare what he does to the magical process of baking bread. The ovens in Dylan's mind were continuously processing, reconfiguring all these human experiences into the songs of his experience.

This process of sifting, baking and serving his delicious aromatic product (songs) to the world also got him accused of plagiarism. What's apparent is that those accusations came from people who didn't understand the historical basis of intertextuality.

It wasn't till I heard Harvard Classics professor Richard F. Thomas speak at Duluth Dylan Fest in 2018 that the light went on most fully for me. Among other things, he talked about Intertextuality. At one point he cites a statement from 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.”

Dr. Thomas, who had been a lifelong Dylan fan, began to see Dylan's later source material more clearly than most because Thomas teaches the Harvard Classics and was thus more intimately acquainted with Ovid, Virgil and Homer than the average man or woman on the street. Here's an excerpt from an interview with Dr. Thomas by the editorial staff of Harvard's Persephone:

P: When did you first begin to notice intertextuality between Bob Dylan and classical authors?

RFT: It really wasn’t until 9/11. Dylan had an album that came out on that morning called “Love and Theft.” Now I had noticed intertextuality of a similar sort in 1997 with the song “Highlands” from the album Time Out of Mind, a very long, narrative song that 2 has the refrain “My Heart’s in the Highlands.” So [that was from] Robert Burns... But it wasn’t really until the 2001 album “Love and Theft” [that I noticed intertextuality with classical authors]…Now if the intertexts are activated in the mind of the listener, it’s not just Vietnam, the war of Dylan’s youth, it’s all of these literary wars, including the Roman wars of Aeneas and the Civil Wars, for which they in some way stand.

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Like many others who listened to I Contain Multitudes the day after it was released, my mind noticed how all these pieces were stitched together into a whole, but it would take a few days to isolate its component parts. Murder Most Foul similarly is an enormous patchwork quilt of references. What I'm going to suggest is. that there's a common denominator in the two.

If we consider I Contain Multitudes as a self-portrait, Murder Most Foul is a portrait of our generation. That is, that these are influences that we--or more precisely, the generation of Bob's peers--have shared in common. Wolfman Jack, conspiracy theories about the assassination we all witnessed and lived through, the music, films, a historical tsunami of life-shaping inputs, including those Dylan himself showered on us, sometimes pelting, sometimes nourishing.

The string of images in both these songs strikes me as similar in construction to Desolation Row of his early songwriting, another sprawling cast of characters lined up along a flowing music track that serves as a lyric background landscape.

David Kinney, in his book The Dylanologists, breaks Dylan fans into eight categories from Pilgrims and Collectors to Front Rower-ers and Scholars. And then there are the Lyric Dissecters. This last category is probably the most energized by these kinds of songs. There are simply so many endless clues to follow, rabbit holes to enter. As Dr. Rollason notes on his Bilingual Culture Blog, "‘I Contain Multitudes’, clocking in at 4:36 minutes and, while shorter than its lengthy predecessor, still replete with allusions in numbers enough to keep the planet’s Dylanites happily occupied."

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Page from The Measure of His Song, Holy Cow Press

The references to other poets have already been noted by many these past few days, most readily to Poe, Blake and Whitman.

I'm not going to do lyrics dissection here, as so many have been undertaking this already, but I did think the opening lines interesting enough to lay side by side with Whitman's Song of Myself 51.

Today and tomorrow, and yesterday, too

The flowers are dyin’ like all things do.

      --Dylan, I Contain Multitudes

The past and present wilt--I have fill'd them, emptied them.

And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

      --Whitman,'Song of Myself, 51 

Both poems begin with the trisection of time, Dylan's conveying a looking back, and Whitman still looking to fill his next fold.


As with all things Dylan, much more can be said. Though many things have changed since he first appeared on the scene, one thing that's unchanged is that you never know what revelations tomorrow will bring.

When I was young I audited a class on the Book of Revelation at Princeton Seminary taught by the esteemed Greek scholar Dr. Bruce Metzger. There's a sense in which dissecting Dylan lyrics can be a little like interpreting the Book of Revelation, so rich with symbols. At the end of the semester, after teaching all the various ways that this last book of the Bible had been interpreted he was asked by a student, "And what do you believe?" He smiled and said, "The Book of Revelation attracts people who are cracked, or leaves them that way."

Can the same be said of obsessive Dylanite Lyric Dissecters? I dunno. The puzzles are many and considerably problematic while remaining immensely entertaining.

“I carry four pistols and two large knives."

Related Links
"Go Away Bomb:"---Dylan Writes A Song for Izzy Young
Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song       
Whitman's Song of Myself, 51
Harvard Classics Prof Pulls Back the Curtain to Reveal New Insights on Dylan's Art
An Interview with Richard F. Thoomas on Bob Dylan and the Classic by the Harvard Persephone Editorial Staff 
Why Bob Dylan Matters

A Walt Whitman Birthday Party with Poetry Readings, Presentations and Cake

A Whitman Reader by Holy Cow! Press

"Give me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling!"
--Walt Whitman

There were undoubtedly many significant people born in 1819. A short list might include Abner Doubleday, credited with founding American baseball; Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick and other great stories; Alan Pinkerton, the famous detective and founder of the Pinkerton Agency; and Queen Victoria,  who shares a May 24 birthday with Robert Zimmerman, preceding it by 122 years.

And then there was Walt Whitman, one of the most influential poets in the American canon.

On Friday evening, May 31 from 7:00-9:00 p.m. there will be a celebration here in Duluth of his 200th birthday at the Hartley Nature Center on Woodland Avenue. Organized by Duluth Poet Laureate Gary Boelhower, the event "Walt Whitman at 200: A Birthday Party with Poetry Readings, Presentations, and Cake" will feature readings by Duluth Poets Laureate Bart Sutter, Deborah Cooper, Sheila Packa, Ellie Schoenfeld, and Gary Boelhower along with presentations by Mara Hart, Professors John D. Schwetman, and Chris Johnson.

The event is free and open to the public and refreshments will be served.

Events like this one give evidence that the poetic vision and spirit still lives for as Whitman himself wrote, "To have great poets, there must be great audiences too."

* * * *
A few noteworthy lines from this 19th Century bard...

As for me, I know nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under the trees in the woods,
Or watch honey bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown,
Or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring,
What stranger miracles are there?

* * * *
"It is a beautiful truth that all men contain something of the artist in them. And perhaps it is the case that the greatest artists live and die, the world and themselves alike ignorant what they possess."

* * * *
"Peace is always beautiful."

* * * *

Related Links
Why Walt Whitman Called America the "Greatest Poem"
Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song
Whitman, Dylan and Me: Uncanny Connections

Robin Williams, R.I.P.

It's difficult to wake and learn that another someone who has been part of your life for so many decades has passed away. The reverberations are felt broadly because his countless films have repeatedly touched our lives. Many of these films would not have been the same without his "mad genius."

In the age of instant everything, his imdb.com profile has already been updated. His Wikipedia bio, too. Robin Williams is gone. His creative range was remarkable and he wasn't afraid to try new things.

Good Morning, Viet Nam
Dead Poets Society
Jumanji
Patch Adams
Mrs. Doubtfire
Moscow on the Hudson
Awakenings
Hook
Bicentennial Man
and on and on and on...

What would Aladdin have been without Robin Williams as the Genie?

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He used to say his Hollywood hero was the late Jonathan Winters Perhaps like Winters his mind was just too hyper-active for a normal existence. Both men had the privilege of making a living in a career that enabled their electric-eclectic hyper-energy outbursts to run rampant and become streaming entertainment. But both struggled at times with who they were. Williams was open about his struggles with mood-swings and depression.

But Robin Williams was not all comic. He gave us serious and challenging performances that connected. It's hard to believe his role as John Keating in Dead Poets Society was already 25 years ago. This passage spoke volumes to me:

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

And this line was delivered with equal eloquence.

No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.

My kids grew up on many of these films. There's no question this was a normal experience for Gen-Y... growing up with Robin Williams as a part of the family experience. In some ways when a person like this passes, it is a family loss. I anticipate talking with my daughter about this as we watched Bicentennial Man together on more than one occasion. As the ever-living robot who is destined never to die, Andrew Martin asks (after the death of Little Miss), "Will every human being that I care for just... leave?"

Yes, we all must leave one day. That's part of the human experience. So is having one's heart broken.

In 2000 I wrote a journal note about Good Will Hunting titled "Heartbreaking Beauty."  Life is complicated because we're complicated. In the midst of all our challenges we try to give back something good. Robin Williams gave us some of that.... moments of forgetfulness where we laughed and forgot our troubles.... or moments we never forgot because they left an impression on our hearts and memories.

May the broken wings of his loved ones find healing, comfort and hope through the outpouring that washes their way in the days and weeks ahead.

Photo by celebrity photographer Eva Rinaldi, used by agreement with Creative Commons and does not imply an endorsement of this blog by the photographer.

Greg Volk Sums Up History of Modern Art In Just Over An Hour

“Art not only shows what we think valuable but helps shape our appreciation” ~Frederick Church

Last Tuesday evening on the first day of spring a lecture hall at UMD was partially filled with students and local folks involved in the arts for the purpose of hearing a lecture by Gregory Volk, a journalist, independent curator and art critic whose numerous credits include writing about the arts for the influential magazine Art in America. Ken Bloom, director of the Tweed Museum, introduced Volk who began by saying he grew up near Schenectady, New York, and never expected to be involved with the visual arts.

The projector splayed a large B&W portrait of Emerson as Volk said that his biggest influence as a young journalism student was the essayist, poet and lecturer Ralph Waldo Emerson, a leader of the nineteenth century Transcendentalist movement. Emerson’s influence pervaded all the arts from Whitman to a whole array of painters who demonstrated a fascination with light and color.

Volk underscored that art making is a way of life utterly given to the exploration of passions. Emerson's essay “The Poet” declared that artists have a responsibility to go as far as they can go to find forms for saying what they need to say. In the essay, Emerson expresses the need for the United States to have its own new and unique poet to write about the new country's virtues and vices. This may have been a primary influence toward the publication of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. “Art is the path … of the creator to his work.”

The quote that most profoundly touched Volk was Emerson’s statement, “I’ve become a transparent eyeball.”

“We return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite spaces, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.” ~Emerson

However, only a "few adults persons can see nature.” For most people seeing is superficial. (I think here of Picasso's statement, "It took me a lifetime to learn how to paint like a child.")

Volk mentioned painters like Moran, Beerstott and Frederick Church whose intense colors and landscapes gave rise to an American luminous movement. Massachusettes-born Fitz Henry Lane, was another shining light of Luminism. Later, Edward Hopper was influenced by this passion for light and illumination of subject matter and with a few deft strokes Volk provided a brief portrait of art history’s progression to Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and Dan Flavin, Walt DeMario and Quaker artist James Turrell whose approach was not simply to paint sky but to create a work that was sky. Roni Horn, too, demonstrated the transparent eyeball at work.

Perhaps what made this especially fascinating was seeing how it contrasts and compares with the film series currently being shown on Saturday mornings at Zinema 2 here in downtown Duluth, brought to us by the good people of the Duluth Art Institute. (By following a single thread, the transparent eyeball theme, Volk very quickly accomplishes what Hughes endeavors to achieve with his eight part “Shock of the New” documentary.

Volk talked at length about the “spiral jetty” of Robert Smithson in Utah’s Great Salt Lake, which he stated was filled with spiritual power. For Smithson it was a significant work, and Volk explained that our focus as artists should be on making a work that we “need to make no matter how unorthodox.”

He then went on to introduce us to four artists whom he considered extremely important and brilliant:

Katharina Grosse, who spills color in a manner that sheds all restrictions and asks, “Who says a work has to be permanent?”

Ragna Robertsdottir, who uses the turf and stone and lava fragments from her Icelandic homeland to create minimalist abstractions.

Ayse Erkmen, a Turkish artist who uses freight elevators, lights and “shipped ships” to cross new boundaries while provoking confusion and insecurity.

And finally, Roman Signer, inventive Swiss genius whose remote excursions into playfully temporary sculptures had no audience, no institutional support, and were as fleeting as a table flying out a window.

I haven’t time to set the links in place, but Google will help you find these artists in a relatively quick fashion.

What’s your dream? What’s holding you back?

See you in the future!