Blame it on Freud who has many believing that meaning is there though it may be
unconscious. When I was a grad student in Film and Television at Univ of MD, I
wrote a paper on Peter Weir's Witness. I had the theme and meaning all figured
out with tons of evidence from the film. Got an A on the paper.
Fast forward a few years and in an Entertainment Weekly interview, Weir
explained what the theme was. And it was not what I had thought it was. I was
quite tempted to write him a fan letter and tell him he got it all wrong!
From: turquoiseb
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, September 1, 2013 3:04 AM
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Still believe that the "meaning" you see is really
there?
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
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.
