{"id":11612,"date":"2020-05-25T18:25:48","date_gmt":"2020-05-25T18:25:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=11612"},"modified":"2020-05-25T18:25:48","modified_gmt":"2020-05-25T18:25:48","slug":"the-pandemics-hidden-blessing-the-first-album-of-original-dylan-songs-in-eight-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=11612","title":{"rendered":"The pandemic&#8217;s hidden blessing: The first album of original Dylan songs in eight years"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"fcbkbttn_buttons_block\" id=\"fcbkbttn_left\"><div class=\"fcbkbttn_button\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Kevin Lynch\" target=\"_blank\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/facebook-button-plugin\/images\/large-facebook-ico.png\" alt=\"Fb-Button\" \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><div class=\"fcbkbttn_like fcbkbttn_large_button\"><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=11612\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\" layout=\"button_count\"  size=\"large\"><\/fb:like><\/div><div class=\"fb-share-button fcbkbttn_large_button \" data-href=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=11612\" data-type=\"button_count\" data-size=\"large\"><\/div><\/div><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"11520\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?attachment_id=11520\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/JFK-gun-sight.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"300,216\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"JFK gun sight\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/JFK-gun-sight.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-11520\" src=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/JFK-gun-sight.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"444\" height=\"320\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>A digital evocation of the assassin&#8217;s view of his victim, President John F. Kennedy.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Could the scourge of the coronavirus pandemic hold a hidden blessing?<\/p>\n<p>Bob Dylan has arisen again. How about the first album or original Dylan material in eight years, titled <em>Rough and Rowdy Ways? <\/em>The album will be released June 19 but is available for preorder at Dylan&#8217;s website:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"tg7bVVDPrz\"><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobdylan.com\/\">Home<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);\" title=\"&#8220;Home&#8221; &#8212; The Official Bob Dylan Site\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bobdylan.com\/embed\/#?secret=MfK3VywQV4#?secret=tg7bVVDPrz\" data-secret=\"tg7bVVDPrz\" width=\"584\" height=\"329\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Album&#8217;s perspective will be poetically oblique yet insightful at times, but also gripping, graphic and direct, and powerfully evocative. That&#8217;s the evidence on the first two songs Dylan has released as singles. The first of these &#8220;Murder Most Foul,&#8221; has received plenty of attention and recently it the number one spot on Billboard singles chart, the first for Dylan who has claimed a couple of number two is in the past, including &#8220;Like a Rolling Stone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Murder&#8221; revisits John F. Kennedy assassination, including putting us right in the doomed presideny&#8217;s seat in the car next his wife Jackie, in the moments before and while he is murdered in Dallas on November 22, 1963. But the song, a somber ballad fold across nearly 17 minutes, also takes inspired stroll through\u00a0<span style=\"color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 300;\">cultural moments and figures.<\/span><span style=\"color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 300;\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">germaine to then and now. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">Despite his frequent protests that he&#8217;s not the &#8220;spokesman for a generation,&#8221; such a visionary voice can&#8217;t contain himself for too log He&#8217;s the spokesman for an era, a 2016 Nobel Prize winner in literature who started in the humblest of cultural realms and has ascended to his self-made mountaintop.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">.Here is an in depth <em>Culture Currents<\/em> review of &#8220;Murder&#8221;:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"nLUwlHH4of\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=11503\">Dylan offers an evocative, expansive ballad for JFK: &#8220;Murder Most Foul&#8221;<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);\" title=\"&#8220;Dylan offers an evocative, expansive ballad for JFK: &#8220;Murder Most Foul&#8221;&#8221; &#8212; Culture Currents (Vernaculars Speak) \" src=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=11503&#038;embed=true#?secret=Kx78M9O2BZ#?secret=nLUwlHH4of\" data-secret=\"nLUwlHH4of\" width=\"584\" height=\"329\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Several weeks after releasing &#8220;murder,&#8221; in March, Dylan followed up with &#8220;I contain multitudes,&#8221; another song that is markedly capacious in declaring his legitimacy as a commentator on important matters. Here is what culture currents previously unpublished review of that song.<\/p>\n<p>And then, a few weeks later, Dylan struck again, with a shorter, complementary song titled \u201cI Contain Multitudes.\u201d He had drawn a lance across the bow of American consciousness with his extraordinary \u201cMurder Most Foul\u201d with the flair of a poetic Robin Hood.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Review: Bob Dylan \u201cI Contain Multitudes.\u201d <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The epic 17-minute ballad evoking the assassination of John Kennedy and its after-effects to the present, was a well-aimed arrow to the heart of many things evil, without and within.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"11618\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?attachment_id=11618\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/R-Crowe-robin-hood1.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"480,319\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"R Crowe robin-hood1\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/R-Crowe-robin-hood1.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-11618\" src=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/R-Crowe-robin-hood1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"319\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/R-Crowe-robin-hood1.jpg 480w, https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/R-Crowe-robin-hood1-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/R-Crowe-robin-hood1-451x300.jpg 451w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>Russell Crowe as Robin Hood, the mythical but real-life fighter for the underdog. Digital Spy <\/em><\/p>\n<p>Released online in mid-March, the song probes into the mysteries of the most presidential and persistent conspiracy theory of modern times.<\/p>\n<p>` The assassination may feel like too long an arc of history for some, especially those not old enough to have experienced the event. But does the arc bend toward justice? That question still troubles many who see the truth lying in Cuba with Fidel Castro, Kennedy\u2019s most immediate mortal political and military foe.<\/p>\n<p>And consider, in the COVID-19 crisis, Las Vegas \u2013 the American city arguably most dependent on service industry \u2013\u2013\u00a0has reportedly not been this deserted since the JFK assassination.<\/p>\n<p><strong><b>An arc of significance perhaps can be drawn from \u201cMurder\u201d back to \u201cChimes of Freedom,\u201d\u00a0<\/b><\/strong>a similar type of chanting song, if far more full-throated, with a rise-and-fall wave-like melody. It\u2019s been called Dylan\u2019s \u201cSermon on the Mount.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe assassination was in some ways the culmination of many of the political themes about which Dylan had been singing,&#8221; wrote Tom Piazza in 2011, discussing Dylan\u2019s extraordinary 1964 Newport performance, in <em><i>Devil Sent the Rain: Music and Writing in Desperate America<\/i><\/em>. He references the climactic performance of \u201cChimes of Freedom\u201d documented in Murray Lerner\u2019s film <em><i>The Other Side of the Mirror. <\/i><\/em>1<em><i>\u00a0<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s is that extraordinary moment in recent music history:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Bob Dylan - Chimes Of freedom\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"584\" height=\"438\" src=\"https:\/\/geo.dailymotion.com\/player.html?video=x1qa67c&#038;\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; web-share\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Piazza wrote that the assassination \u201csignaled a split in the American psyche; a shifting power to a younger, vital generation had been aborted. Kennedy was replaced in office by the dour, older Lyndon Johnson. Then with the new year, came the Beatles, an explosion of fun and irony and sex from foreign shores, just the thing to help a traumatized public forget its trauma for a while.\u201d Dylan acknowledges the Beatles\u2019 1964 importance in \u201cMurder.\u201d And now we\u2019re amidst a similar trauma where America\u2019s young strive to take the political lead.<\/p>\n<p><strong><b>Historian Sean Wilentz writes that in 1964 Dylan had already b<\/b><\/strong><strong><b>een experimenting in beat-style free verse (a form pioneered in the 19<\/b><\/strong><strong><sup><b>th<\/b><\/sup><\/strong><strong><b>\u00a0century by Walt Whitman, the song\u2019s <\/b><\/strong><strong><b>conceptual inspiration, who made famous the grandiloquent idea of \u201cI contain multitudes\u201d)<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Not long after (Dylan) met (Alan) Ginsburg, he poured out a poem about the day of Kennedy&#8217;s murder which concluded:<\/p>\n<p><em><i>The colors of Friday were dull\/ as cathedral bells were gently burnin&#8217;\/ striking for the gentle\/ striking for the kind\/ striking for the crippled one\/ striking for the blind <\/i><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Pulled together, the lines would form part of what Dylan called the &#8220;chain of flashing images&#8221; that soon went into \u2018Chimes of Freedom.\u2019 &#8221; 3<\/p>\n<p>In the song\u2019s story, a couple ducks inside a doorway to escape and witness a thunderstorm, and much more. The lyric alludes to the church bells tolling on the Friday of Kennedy\u2019s burial procession.<\/p>\n<p>The analogy to an updated Sherwood Forest folk hero comes to mind in a muted yet strangely pointed manner with the most startling lines embedded in &#8220;I Contain Multitudes&#8221;:<\/p>\n<p><em><i>I carry four pistols and two large knives\/ I&#8217;m a man of contradiction, I&#8217;m a man of many moods\/ I contain multitudes.<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The first impression of the new song is of egocentric boasting, and grandiosity, and the stuff about weapons might disturb the much of the multitudes he proclaims who consider him possibly our supreme living songwriting poet.<\/p>\n<p>But they also should know by now that Dylan never conceded to our idealized versions of him. Nevertheless, let\u2019s think of the songwriter\u2019s weapon as lovable rogue Robin Hood\u2019s flashing cutlass, then as now, catching the sun and twirling, a la Douglas Fairbanks (or Russell Crowe), if that archetypal fighter-for-the-poor were a man of consciousness as much as action, a reflection of what chimes out when the blade clashes.<\/p>\n<p>We might be dealing with what literary critic Harold Bloom calls &#8220;the Daemon,&#8221; the secular or \u201cdaemonic\u201d genius of the American self. But have we had our fill of presumed American exceptionalism? Many on the left would argue hubris and selfishness have let capitalism run rampant, forging the great schism of inequality that America agonizes under.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d hardly argue against that point. But Dylan is not really playing a direct political hand here, though he is posturing as a democratic hero, a la Whitman.<\/p>\n<p>As a folk hero, Dylan easily carries the \u201cstreet-legal\u201d cred. (Speaking of <em><i>Street-Legal,<\/i><\/em>\u00a0that 1978 album\u2019s \u201cSenor [Tales of Yankee Power]\u201d is another example of how slyly and deftly Dylan has maintained his role as spokesman for the American conscience through the years, despite his own disclaimers.) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VvkosdmNlqo\"><u>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VvkosdmNlqo<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n<p>But in \u201cMultitudes\u201d Dylan essentially declares his somewhat radical cultural role by singing:<\/p>\n<p><em><i>I\u2019m just like Anne Frank, like Indiana Jones<\/i><\/em><em><i>\/<\/i><\/em><em><i><br \/>\n<\/i><\/em><em><i>And them British bad boys, The Rolling Stones<\/i><\/em><em><i><br \/>\n<\/i><\/em><em><i>I go right to the edge, I go right to the end<\/i><\/em><em><i><br \/>\n<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Um, picturing wispy Dylan as macho, whip-snapping Indiana Jones bends my imagination into a bundle. Maybe he\u2019s more akin to Holocaust diarist Anne Frank. But let&#8217;s look at what that risk-taking is couched in. The next line:<\/p>\n<p><em><i>I go right where all things lost are made good again<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Now imagine,\u00a0for a moment, if Anne Frank might\u2019ve survived to write\u00a0about the Kennedy assassination.\u00a0She would\u2019ve been 34 (the same age as my late father, a great Kennedy fan, who was born about a month after Frank, in 1929). If she could still believe that people are essentially good in the face of\u00a0The Nazis\u00a0about to destroy almost everyone in her family and six million more, surely she could nurse a flame of\u00a0hope as America\u2019s Camelot seemed\u00a0to burn to the ground.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"11619\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?attachment_id=11619\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/anne-frank-tichting-amsterdam-website-anne-frank-stichting-amsterdam-public-domain-via-wikimedia-commons-croppedjpg.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"1200,762\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"anne-frank-tichting-amsterdam-website-anne-frank-stichting-amsterdam-public-domain-via-wikimedia-commons-croppedjpg\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/anne-frank-tichting-amsterdam-website-anne-frank-stichting-amsterdam-public-domain-via-wikimedia-commons-croppedjpg-1024x650.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-11619\" src=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/anne-frank-tichting-amsterdam-website-anne-frank-stichting-amsterdam-public-domain-via-wikimedia-commons-croppedjpg.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"762\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/anne-frank-tichting-amsterdam-website-anne-frank-stichting-amsterdam-public-domain-via-wikimedia-commons-croppedjpg.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/anne-frank-tichting-amsterdam-website-anne-frank-stichting-amsterdam-public-domain-via-wikimedia-commons-croppedjpg-300x191.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/anne-frank-tichting-amsterdam-website-anne-frank-stichting-amsterdam-public-domain-via-wikimedia-commons-croppedjpg-1024x650.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/anne-frank-tichting-amsterdam-website-anne-frank-stichting-amsterdam-public-domain-via-wikimedia-commons-croppedjpg-768x488.jpg 768w, https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/anne-frank-tichting-amsterdam-website-anne-frank-stichting-amsterdam-public-domain-via-wikimedia-commons-croppedjpg-472x300.jpg 472w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>Holocaust victim and German diarist Anne Frank\u00a0 Courtesy history.com<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Yet, here, the flip side of Dylan\u2019s idealistic Jewish woman is the joker face of Mick Jagger, perhaps singing both \u201cSympathy for the Devil\u201d and \u201cYou Can&#8217;t Always Get What You Want.\u201d And such a card hand contains a risky bet on America in 2020. Why can\u2019t we mirror our political poles as neatly as that year does numerically? Why can\u2019t we focus on common goals, a common good with something closer to 20-20 vision? Right now, we\u2019re all in this deadly situation together, but politically cross-eyed.<\/p>\n<p>Part of the implicit challenge: Must we have sympathy for whomever we the perceive as the devil? And yet realize that we may not get what \u201cWe the People\u201d want, yet again?<\/p>\n<p>If that\u2019s not motivation enough to come together, what is? <strong><b>As usual Elizabeth Warren speaks to our fundamental principles as plainly as anyone: <\/b><\/strong><strong><b>Today, <\/b><\/strong><strong><b>The American) <\/b><\/strong><strong><b>dream runs into a very hard reality that this is now a world that works better and better for a smaller and smaller number of people.<\/b><\/strong><strong><b>\u201d<\/b><\/strong><strong><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So our moment may feel as fraught as Anne Frank\u2019s, facing the clomping of SS boots on the stairs. Or as heart-broken as Walt Whitman\u2019s, as he embraced and nursed dying Civil War soldiers, going \u201cright to the edge, right to the end\u201d along the battlefield of America\u2019s most tragic historic crisis.<\/p>\n<p>Dylan clearly has a sense of his importance, as few of us can, but a person can only see so much of himself amid the often-glaring sheen of ego, the mixed messages of praise and hagiography, showered on him like upon few other pop artists of our time.<\/p>\n<p>The more we reflect on Dylan&#8217;s lyrics in question, the more his ostensible egotism falls away. 4 It might be a snake\u2019s skin, but to know Dylan&#8217;s history is to know the often-elliptical ways he honors history, especially through music and literature.<\/p>\n<p>Yet also through visual art, as he reminds us here (\u201cI paint landscapes, and I paint nudes\u201d). He\u2019s been an amateur painter at least since he did the gawky, <em><i>art brut <\/i><\/em>cover for The Band&#8217;s debut album <em><i>Music from Big Pink<\/i><\/em>. in 1968, that seemed to charm us and the depicted elephant with the musicians\u2019 vibrations.<\/p>\n<p>In this sense, his artistic claim may seem self-mocking. It recalls the surprising humility of the late John Updike, one of our proudest and most vivid prose stylists. Updike, a mildly-talented cartoonist for the <em><i>Harvard Lampoon<\/i><\/em>\u00a0while attending that school, admitted:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDrawing can feel perfect the way that prose never does, and a poem rarely. Language is intrinsically approximate, since words mean different things to different people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And yet Dylan, like Updike knows he is a better wordsmith than an artist. Updike claimed he gave up on striving for vivid prose imagery in mid-career.<\/p>\n<p>But Dylan can&#8217;t give up because, for him, his songs are his best arrow and lance, for how he faces the zeitgeist, whereas his painting is more an escape from it. In the new song, he utters the title phrase the first time with a gruff sigh, as if the multitudes are a burden.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI Contain Multitudes\u201d is musically modest, hardly even \u00a0comparing to the somber, elegiac instrumentation of \u201cMurder Most Foul.\u201d His vocal delivery is oddly poignant and tender. The new song\u2019s first image is pointedly aware of fleeting life: <em><i>Today and tomorrow, and yesterday, too<\/i><\/em><em><i>\/ <\/i><\/em><em><i>The flowers are dyin\u2019 like all things do<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n<p>So it feels like is an admission of his artistic limits, and even his compulsive triviality amid his would-be encompassing heroism: <em><i>I fuss with my hair\/ and I fight blood feuds\/ I contain multitudes.<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n<p>And yet, \u201c(I) got a telltale heart, like Mr. Poe.&#8221; The man in Poe\u2019s famous story is a killer, and Dylan is even willing to go there, even if metaphorically, to abase himself before us and perhaps his God. He admits he might even betray you (\u201cJudas\u201d they cried when he went electric.)<\/p>\n<p>Yet finally, in a brilliantly simple twist of fate and tone, he seems to snidely defy our Grim Reaping pandemic in one breath, while declaring, in the next, each endeared person tattooed on his soul.<\/p>\n<p><em><i>Get lost, madame, get up off my knee<\/i><\/em><em><i><br \/>\n<\/i><\/em><em><i>Keep your mouth away from me<\/i><\/em><em><i><br \/>\n<\/i><\/em><em><i>I\u2019ll keep the path open, the path in my mind<\/i><\/em><em><i><br \/>\n<\/i><\/em><em><i>I\u2019ll see to it that there\u2019s no love left behind<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n<p>That feels like a commitment whether he survives or not, given that he\u2019s 78, and still seemingly frail, even as he has trucked on his \u201cendless tour\u201d in compromised health since his horrible motorcycle accident decades ago.<\/p>\n<p>So, the artists and writers he names here echo the assassination ballad\u2019s healing litany of songs and songwriters, for people who may remain wounded more than they realize \u2013\u00a0contributing to today\u2019s traumas. Are they merely scars for the countless from 1963, and 1968, when murder most fouled JFK\u2019s brother Bobby and Rev. Martin Luther King. Jr., two of the greatest leaders of the Civil Rights movement?<\/p>\n<p>In the end, Dylan turns from sentiment back to art. The quintessential rootsy, folk-rock musician\/disc jockey even embraces art music.<\/p>\n<p>Otherwise, how could he honestly contain multitudes?<\/p>\n<p><em><i>I play Beethoven\u2019s sonatas, and Chopin\u2019s preludes<\/i><\/em><em><i>.<\/i><\/em><em><i><br \/>\n<\/i><\/em><em><i>I contain multitudes<\/i><\/em><em><i>.<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n<p>These are reasons why we still value Dylan, among such golden incomparables as Whitman and King. Despite the oral or written word\u2019s approximate nature, they can all count on their best storytelling to last. He shows us how poetry can be a foot soldier for truth, its rhythmic mysteries abiding in the wind.<\/p>\n<p>As music historian Ted Gioia comments, on oral traditions going at least back to early Maori tribes in New Zealand:\u00a0\u201dLong after visual memories fade, the aural memories of a heard (or sung) tale remain\u2026storytelling shapes our brains in ways that even powerful images, like home movies or family portraits, cannot match. Fieldwork in surviving hunter-gatherer societies tell us that storytelling skills are among the most prized talents in those communities.\u201d 6<\/p>\n<p>_______________<\/p>\n<p>1 Tom Piazza, <em><i>Devil Sent the Rain: Music and Writing in Desperate America<\/i><\/em>, Harper\u00a0Perennial,\u00a02011,\u00a0122\u00a0(Piazza\u2019s title, though an old blues trope, seems to allude to the \u201cChimes of Freedom\u201d thunderstorm scene, and his subtitle foreshadows our current situation.)<br \/>\n2 &#8220;Chimes of Freedom\u201d has been memorably covered many times, including by The Byrds, Bruce Springsteen, Jefferson Starship and Senegalese\u00a0musician Youssou N&#8217;Dour. I was reminded of the song\u2019s power and importance when Madison historian-journalist-radio show host Stuart Levitan recited the entire lyrics onstage at a Madison jazz festival not long ago. Similarly, jazz pianist Lynne Arriale just released a new album titled <em><i>Chimes of Freedom<\/i><\/em>\u00a0with a condensed vocal version of the song as its centerpiece. Review of that: m<a href=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=11341\"><u>Arriale, Chimes<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n<ol start=\"3\">\n<li>Sean Wilentz, <em><i>Bob Dylan in America,<\/i><\/em>Doubleday, \u00a02010, 69<\/li>\n<li>Piazza, in <em><i>Devil Sent the Rain<\/i><\/em>, addresses the dichotomy of artistic ego by quoting Melville\u2019s poem about art: \u201c <em><i>\u2018Humility \u2013 yet pride and scorn\/ Instinct and study; love and hate\/ Audacity \u2013 reverence. These must mate&#8230;<\/i><\/em>&#8216; in order to <em><i>&#8216;wrestle with the angel.<\/i><\/em>&#8216; &#8220;, <em><i>Devil<\/i><\/em>, 130<\/li>\n<li>John Updike, &#8220;Lost Art,&#8221; from <em><i>The Best American Essays 1998,<\/i><\/em> Cynthia Ozick, Houghton Mifflin, \u00a01998, 244-45<\/li>\n<li>Ted Gioia, <em><i>Music: A Subversive History<\/i><\/em>, Basic Books, 2019, 79<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Lyrics to \u201cI Contain Multitudes\u201d c Bob Dylan<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Today and tomorrow, and yesterday, too<br \/>\nThe flowers are dyin\u2019 like all things do<br \/>\nFollow me close, I\u2019m\u2005going\u2005to Balian Bali<br \/>\nI\u2019ll\u2005lose my mind if you don\u2019t\u2005come with me<br \/>\nI fuss with my hair, and I fight blood feuds<br \/>\nI contain multitudes<\/p>\n<p>Got a tell-tale heart, like Mr. Poe<br \/>\nGot skeletons in the walls of people you know<br \/>\nI\u2019ll drink to the truth and the things we said<br \/>\nI\u2019ll drink to the man that shares your bed<br \/>\nI paint landscapes, and I paint nudes<br \/>\nI contain multitudes<\/p>\n<p>Red Cadillac and a black moustache<br \/>\nRings on my fingers that sparkle and flash<br \/>\nTell me, what\u2019s next? What shall we do?<br \/>\nHalf my soul, baby, belongs to you<br \/>\nI relic and I frolic with<a href=\"https:\/\/faroutmagazine.co.uk\/david-bowie-isolated-vocals-life-on-mars-audio\/\">\u2002all the young dudes<\/a><br \/>\nI contain multitudes<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m just like Anne Frank, like Indiana Jones<br \/>\nAnd them British bad boys, The Rolling Stones<br \/>\nI go right to the edge, I go right to the end<br \/>\nI go right where all things lost are made good again<br \/>\nI sing the songs of experience like William Blake<br \/>\nI have no apologies to make<br \/>\nEverything\u2019s flowing all at the same time<br \/>\nI live on the boulevard of crime<br \/>\nI drive fast cars, and I eat fast foods<br \/>\nI contain multitudes<\/p>\n<p>Pink petal-pushers, red blue jeans<br \/>\nAll the pretty maids, and all the old queens<br \/>\nAll the old queens from all my past lives<br \/>\nI carry four pistols and two large knives<br \/>\nI\u2019m a man of contradictions, I\u2019m a man of many moods<br \/>\nI contain multitudes<\/p>\n<p>You greedy old wolf, I\u2019ll show you my heart<br \/>\nBut not all of it, only the hateful part<br \/>\nI\u2019ll sell you down the river, I\u2019ll put a price on your head<br \/>\nWhat more can I tell you? I sleep with life and death in the same bed<br \/>\nGet lost, madame, get up off my knee<br \/>\nKeep your mouth away from me<br \/>\n<strong><b>I\u2019ll keep the path open, the path in my mind<\/b><\/strong><strong><b><br \/>\n<\/b><\/strong><strong><b>I\u2019ll see to it that there\u2019s no love left behind<\/b><\/strong><strong><b><br \/>\n<\/b><\/strong>I\u2019ll play Beethoven\u2019s sonatas, and Chopin\u2019s preludes<br \/>\nI contain multitudes<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Considering Dylan chose these two songs to release and that they encompass nearly half an hour of the album it&#8217;s reasonable to conclude that they are representative of the album&#8217;s material and viewpoint:<br \/>\nHowever, a couple more songs from <em>Rough and Rowdy Ways<\/em> are now available, here:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A digital evocation of the assassin&#8217;s view of his victim, President John F. Kennedy.\u00a0 &nbsp; Could the scourge of the coronavirus pandemic hold a hidden blessing? Bob Dylan has arisen again. How about the first album or original Dylan material &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=11612\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-31i","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11612"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11629,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11612\/revisions\/11629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}