I started listening to Dylan several years ago expecting awesome revelations. I mean, the man's practically an institution. Instead, I got an oddly atonal voice, some clunky rhymes, and songs that didn't seem to go anywhere.
But the songs kept on going on, around and around in my head. The first time I listened to him, I thought, "This is stupid." But I found I was thinking about the music all the time, as I went through my day. Pretty soon I was listening to it constantly - this is his '97 album, "Time out of Mind" - and it actually struck me how much he was saying, and I felt like I'd been run over by a train.
Dylan himself is remarkably nonchalant about his music - they're just songs, he's said in interviews. Take 'em or leave 'em. You should know that Dylan don't care what you think, and he's not trying to entertain you. He'll be inexplicably weird at points. That's part of what keeps him real. He said once in an interview that writing, for him, was like "training your brain not to think" - an interesting paradox (training . . . not to think). But that's my theory of Dylan: put him on and go do something else. It will sound weird at first. But it will get into your head, like a torpedo sent from somewhere else; and after a while it will start exploding. If you're new, you can start with anything from the 60's (he was on a roll), 1974's "Blood on the Tracks," 1988's "Oh Mercy," or anything after '97. Just let him play, and don't think about it too much - and pretty soon it will be hard to think about anything else.
Scatterings
No comments:
Post a Comment