Oh boy. It goes on. It really does. From the Stanford Daily, Queen of Green: Blowin’ in the Wind:

Bob Dylan introduced me to Revolution (with a capital R) in the 6th grade. At the time, I knew about other revolutions — primarily those of the French, Russian and American varieties — but no one had told me about Revolution. The introduction happened when I stole a best-of-Dylan compilation disc from my mother and inserted it into my portable CD player. Although songs such as “Subterranean Homesick Blues’ were nigh incomprehensible to me, it was impossible to miss the fact that Dylan was angry about something; even now, I´m hard-pressed to think of a song more passive-aggressive than “Blowin´ in the Wind.’

I idolized Dylan, partly because I believed him to be dead, and partly because he promised the times were a-changin´, which for an unstylish, acne-laden, puppy-fat-cursed 11-year-old was good news. My blind adoration of Dylan quickly spread to other singer/songwriters of his era, such as Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, etc. In the face of the pre-teen world´s Britney Spears obsession, my musical tastes looked odd, even to my mother, who started questioning me about ‘my music.´

As my mother explained ‘my music´ to me, stories of her youth began to emerge from the marijuana-clouded haze of her past. I had gathered that Dylan was singing about what I called in my mind the Revolution, and the stories coming from the improbable mouth of my bespectacled, polo shirt-clad mother, made the nature of the Revolution clearer. The Revolution hated racism, sexism and the war in Vietnam. The Revolution had sprung from bra-burning, long-haired nymphs such as my mother who had been arrested and been high, but most importantly had been right.

[...]

Dylan´s shining Revolution no longer exists, although I see people, young and old alike, hungering for a return of the Revolutionary glory days. During my freshman year, one of my section leaders in SLE (suspend your jokes just this once, please) frequently dismissed us from section with the half-mocking, half-earnest entreaty, “Alright. Now go rebel.’ I wished I could. I wished I could go fight the good fight, like my mother and Bob Dylan taught me. But perhaps I should have realized that revolution isn´t something learned, but something conjured in desperate times. If I learned revolution from my mother, then perhaps it isn´t revolution at all.

Today´s revolution is a whole different kind of fight, one for which even Dylan couldn´t prepare me. When I look at global warming, my chosen mini-revolution, I realize sadly that idealized arguments won´t get me very far. The answer isn´t blowin´ in the wind; the only things blowin´ in the wind are pollutants, and none of Dylan´s songs offer advice about carbon sequestration. The point is that I — we — all have to wage our mini-revolutions with Dylan´s zeal, but with the understanding that they won´t be half as romantic as Dylan´s songs. Our mini-revolutions largely lack an opposition — unless you count apathy, which is hardly fun to argue against.

[...]

But I digress. What I mean to say is that the situation of the revolution is shitty, but there is a common ground on which all our diverse revolutions stand, and it is this: Our revolutions appeal to a global conscience that is not even close to being fully-formed. If we believe in our revolutions, it will be our job to build that conscience. Although we tiny revolutionaries might feel like complete unknowns, or even rolling stones with no direction home, there´s something to be said for our brand of revolution. It´s new, it´s what our parents´ Revolution brought us to, and most importantly, it´s ours.

(bolding mine)

And there’s really nothing anyone can say.

But let me say this anyway: When I began reading the article, I was prepared to be impressed. Noticing that the writer made a distinction between “Revolution,” capitalized, and mere “revolution,” I was thinking that she was going to talk about some level on which Dylan’s music was revolutionary beyond the usual half-baked sixties-generation clichés. When she wrote about putting on his Greatest Hits album and hearing Subterranean Homesick Blues for the first time — I thought: “Right; that is revolutionary the first time anyone hears it.” It certainly was for me.

However, what she heard was that “Dylan was angry about something.” Her perceptions regarding his music seem to have started from that flawed vantage point, and gone downhill from there. In Subterranean Homesick Blues, I don’t hear what I would describe as “anger” — least of all a politically motivated rage. I hear exhuberance — to a degree that is rarely caught on record — and I hear humor, and I hear a wild expression of freedom (not least artistic freedom). There are knocks at the expectations and strictures of society in the song, to be sure, but there’s no call to overthrow anything. The call — if any — is to see through it and to be able to laugh at it.

Blowin’ in the Wind is described by the writer above as being “passive-aggressive.” I’m not sure what she means by that, but, again, I tend to think she’s imparting a political motive to a song that is above all of that , and is truly timeless. It could be sung in any era or any place, under any political system and under any conditions, and it would still be framing questions to which our souls by their nature demand answers, although those answers will never be provided with finality on this earth.

The writer of the article is clearly young — to have been a pre-teen during the Britney Spears era — and her idealism is to be admired as being superior to apathy. But I do hope she is someone who continues to listen to Dylan, rather than freezing her current impression of him forever, and that she eventually gets down to the deeper things going on in his songs. It might depend on how much time she has to spare with all the work she plans on doing to “build [a] global conscience.”

Oh mercy.

…

Addendum 10:30 pm: Thanks to Ronnie for the appropos Dylan quote:

“I know Madonna was here a few weeks ago telling everybody to think global - and I know a whole bunch of you are doing that - I want to try and tell you - rethink it!” Bob Dylan at Staples Arena 10-19-2001 during the band intro 5:50 minutes into Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat

...................
Share this!

Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:

• Fred goes electric
• Good news!
• The Times it has debuted