As chance would have it, I discovered this article *while* listening to an old Bob Dylan song. Still tripping on the near god-like 1960s pairing of Dylan and Joan Baez after hearing her "nostalgia song" about him recently, I thought I'd look up his 1965 "goodbye song" to her. So I'm sitting here at the computer, listening to the following lyrics, and thoroughly enjoying imagery of lines like:
King Kong little elves On the rooftops they dance Valentino-type tangos While the make-up man's hands Shut the eyes of the dead Not to embarrass anyone Farewell Angelina The sky is embarrassed And I must be gone. ...and synchronistically, at that very moment, I click on the following article. It caused no cognitive dissonance in me, because I've *never* plumbed Dylan's lyrics for "meaning." Since Day One, I've been convinced that he was writing *imagery*, not symbolism. To me, he always just painted "sound movies" that were to be enjoyed because they were beautiful, not because they "meant" anything. But try to imagine how many people who have argued far into the night over Dylan's lyrics and what they believe (and assert with forceful intensity) they "mean" are going to react to this. My bet is that they won't believe it, any more than they would believe that the "meaning" they see in platitudes repeated by their spiritual teachers of choice may not really be there. "Of course it's there...*I* see it there." Bob Dylan Acknowledges 50-Year-Long Hoax: My Lyrics Don't Make Sense [Bob-Dylan] Rock and roll legend, Bob Dylan, acknowledged in a recent interview that he has perpetuated an elaborate hoax on the public for more than fifty years. "I can't sing, half of the time I don't even say real words, I just mumble, and my lyrics make no sense." Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman, said it began innocently in a concert at the New York Coffee House, "The Bitter End" in 1962. "The audience was so stoned that when I started to play `This land is My Land' for the eighth time, I started to mumble sounds. The audience went crazy. The critics said I was the `future of rock and roll' so who am I to disappoint them? I was just giving the people what they wanted. " Dylan, often referred to as a "poetic genius", claims he never knew what people were talking about. How profound is `don't want to be a bum, you better chew gum. The pump don't work `cause the vandals stole the handles'?" I just made up simple rhymes. Any child could have done what I did." The Rolling Stone interview was a promotion for the star's recent autobiography "Buy This Book and the Charade Will Continue". The confession has had no apparent impact on the singer's popularity, with his new book topping Amazon's best-seller chart this week. "Apparently, Lincoln was wrong. You can fool all of the people, all of the time," Dylan added.
