Bob Dylan, poet, singer, metalworker - making us think

_{I remember the furore when Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature some time ago. There was some outrage that}

_{1)  he had been given such a prestigious award and}

_{2) that he didn’t bother to appear in Stockholm to accept the prize in person.}

_{I don’t remember the details of the article I read but the gist of it was to suggest that Bob Dylan did not deserve this award and his disdain of the Nobel Prize Committee emphasized his being not an appropriate person to receive it.  So, it was with some amusement I read of how popular Bob Dylan’s acceptance speech for the Nobel prize was.} 

_{It turns out Bob Dylan wrote a rather wonderful acceptance speech which although not given in person was presented in Stockholm. I wasn’t surprised that the fact of this affair different so totally from the fiction by which it was portrayed in the media. We have become used to the dichotomy of the age we live in. Things are rarely how they are portrayed. Strangely, Bob Dylan always managed to be himself a genuine article. So, it’s not surprising that even in the case of this prestigious award his words and act actions ring true to form.}

_{I remember being shocked at one of his early performances where he introduced an electric guitar into his act. His Folk Festival} audience hated it and viewed it as a betrayal of everything he had produced before. He was actually booed by a large crowd of his fans. His response was unique. He just turned his back on the audience and continue to play. An artist that is not swayed by publicity, agents, music industry or even his fans is a unique creature indeed.  I love the fact that he makes weird metal stuff too.  It pleases me no end that when he’s not creating music or singing he likes to weld metal into amazing sculpture. 

Bob Dylans metalwork

_{Humility is rare in an artist. I like the fact that his song “All Along the Watchtower” which Dylan released was later covered by another singer Hendrix.  Dylan announced that it was Hendrix’s version that was the definitive one.  Too few modern artists could or would be so generous with praise.} 

_{In his acceptance speech, Dylan expresses an appreciation for the prize he has been awarded. He comes across as self-depreciating and admits that he had never even asked himself if his songs are literature.  Here is a short quote from that Nobel prize acceptance speech.}

_{“If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I’d have about the same odds as standing on the moon. In fact, during the year I was born and for a few years after, there wasn’t anyone in the world who was considered good enough to win this Nobel Prize.”}

_{In lieu of his presence at the Nobel prize award ceremony, the singer Patti Smith sang his song “It’s a Hard Day’s Night”.  Because it was this song that someone chose to represent his work, I wanted to take a closer look at its lyrics.  I have to confess I listen to songs and rarely hear the words. I know it is sacrilege but I tend to get caught up in the tune and the words are sort of ‘blah blah blah’ in the background. Given this tendency, I wanted to actually print out the lyrics of this song and also give it a bit of thought.}  

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall  by Bob Dylan

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?

Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?

I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains

_{For some reason the song track of Misty Mountains from Tolkien’s Book came to my mind.}

I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways

_{I think we have all experienced those highways in our lives, places you find yourself asking how you ever ended up here.  The fact that we sometimes don’t walk these but end up crawling them says a lot about how hard they are to navigate.}

I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests

I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans

_{There are dead zones in the sea suffering from hypoxia (low oxygen) due to excessive pollution from man.  In the 1960s ( Dylan wrote this song in 1962) there were roughly 49 such dead zones by 2008 the number had grown to 405.  A recent publication entitled Climate Change and Dead Zones suggests that the news could be bleaker still as climate change could have a dramatic and worrying interaction with dead zones (Altieri AH1, Gedan KB. 2015).  Talk about your worst enemies ganging up on you?}

I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard

And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard

And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?

Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?

I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it

_{The world has made valuable progress under the United Nations Millenium goals to reduce deaths in under-fives. It is a real achievement that globally under-five deaths have dropped from 12.5 million in 1990 to less than 9 million in 2008.  But heart-stopping that still 25,000 under-five year old children die every day in our world.  Those wild wolves are getting past us!}

I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it

I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin'

I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin'

_{This gruesome imagery conjures up violence against other races that has blighted nations.  Some musicians have been unusually effective in drawing attention to these atrocities.  Dylan’s song ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’ focused attention on the death of a 51-year-old black barmaid, mother of ten, who died after being struck by the cane of a 24-year-old white customer (who was released from prison after only six months).  There have been more emotive songs like Billie Holiday's - Strange fruit addressing these issues but it heartening to hear real musicians letting their craft speak truth to power.}

I saw a white ladder all covered with water

I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken

I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children

_{These lines conjured up for me, social media, all those talkers. There are 3.48 billion social media users in 2019, a big multiplication from 10,000 but his observation of broken tongues nicely predicts the misinformation that floods minds young and old around our world.} 

And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard

And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?

And what did you hear, my darling young one?

I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin'

Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world

_{Floods were, in my mind, somehow almost mythical events far from present life or relevance.  Then in 2004 on Boxing Day, the 26th of December an Indian Ocean tsunami killed almost a quarter of a million people and floods became horrifically real.  Japan’s tsunami in 2011 reinforced this reality.}

Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin'

_{Hunger is a blight and we know where it is most found and how much of the populations are impacted by it.} 

• Sub-Saharan Africa: 22.7 percent
• Caribbean: 17.7 percent
• Southern Asia: 14.4 percent
• Southeastern Asia: 11.5 percent
• Western Asia: 10.6 percent

_{We may not be laughing but until we address this problem effectively we might as well be for those in this world of ours who go hungry to bed tonight.}

Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter

_{Here are some who died before they were discovered and some examples of their words.  We should celebrate their ‘songs’ and their suffering.}

 _{“As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”}

_{― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or, the Whale}

_{“Man cannot live without a permanent trust in something indestructible within himself, though both that indestructible something and his own trust in it may remain permanently concealed from him. “}

_{― Franz Kafka}

_{“Success is counted sweetest}

_{By those who ne'er succeed.}

_{To comprehend a nectar}

_{Requires sorest need.”}

_{― Emily Dickinson}

_{“I don't want to throw these characters away. In other words, I'm going to work on the book again. I haven't been able to look at the manuscript since I got it back, but since something of my soul is in the thing, I can't let it rot without trying.”}

_{― John Kennedy Toole, on receiving a rejection for his book which would, after his death, lead to him getting a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction}

Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley

And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard

And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?

Who did you meet, my darling young one?

I met a young child beside a dead pony

I met a white man who walked a black dog

I met a young woman whose body was burning

_{This last line on a young woman with a burning body strikes a chord. Who would have thought that throwing acid on young women would become so common?  Thousands of women in countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan and India etc have had acid thrown on them in revenge attacks.  These women have usually refused either sexual advances or wedding proposals from men who feel that an acid attack on their victims sends the  message,}

_{“If I can’t have you no one shall!”}

I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow

I met one man who was wounded in love

I met another man who was wounded with hatred

And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard

It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?

Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?

I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin'

I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest

Where the people are many and their hands are all empty

Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters

_{This has echoes of the Flint water crisis in the US which began in 2014, when the drinking water source for the city of Flint, Michigan was diverted from Lake Huron and the Detroit River to a cheaper source the Flint River. Because of insufficient water treatment, lead leached from water pipes into the drinking water, exposing over 100,000 residents to elevated lead levels.  The water was coloured orange or brown, smelt strange and caused skin rashes and hair loss.  A sip of it was said to taste as if you had a metal coin on your tongue.  It took 18 months of delay and cover-up by city, state and federal government officials before the issue was corrected.  For the previous fifty years prior to 2014, the water had been fine.  In trying to save money big mistakes were made.  Lessons need to be learned here surely?  But recent studies have shown that Flint is no aberration. In fact, it doesn't even rank among the most dangerous lead hotspots in America. A recent study found nearly 3,000 areas in the US with recently recorded lead poisoning rates at least double those in Flint during the peak of that city's contamination crisis. Mistakes can be good when we learn from them but tortuous when we refuse to.}

Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison

Where the executioner's face is always well-hidden

Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten

Where black is the color, where none is the number

And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it

And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it

Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'

But I'll know my song well before I start singin'

And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard

It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

_{This is the first time I have really read one of Bob Dylan’s lyrics line by line and I reckon he deserves the Nobel Prize in Literature.  I like this poet, I like his metal work and most of all I love the fact that he does his art to please himself and not us.}

"....singing and music are the spiritual food of the hearts and souls"      Bahá'í Writings

Receptivity, hearing loss and dancing hairs in your ear

Hearing is such a wonderful sense. We forget how unique it is. Until we lose it. I have several family members whose hearing is severely damaged because of exposure to loud noises. In those days farmers didn't use ear muffs so machinery and the firing of shotguns did irreparable damage to their hearing. The effects of this often only show themselves in later years. It is particularly hard to learn these vital lessons when the effects are not immediate. My eldest brother returned from a punk rock concert forty years ago, where he had been standing a little too close to the wall of enormous speakers at the event. For three days he had a ringing sound in both ears and it lasted long enough that he thought permanent damage had been done - it wasn't, he was lucky. Who would've thought years later that the very headphones we use to protect the ears of workers are now damaging the ears of our young who blast themselves incessantly with load music. 

We lose your hearing in many different ways and for many different reasons. Conductive hearing loss is when there is a problem in the transmission of sound to the inner ear. Wax and ear infection or middle ear ossicles (when the tiny bones transmitting the vibrations on the ear drum can no longer do their job) can all contribute to this form of hearing loss.  It is sobering to think that the ear drum which is the fragile link between the outer ear and the middle ear is only 10mm in diameter.  However small that appears, the drum thickness is tinier still at only 0.08 mm.  It can be easily ruptured by excessive noise, pressure or physical trauma.  For those among us who insist on jamming ear buds in their ear to clean them - remember a typical sheet of paper is thicker than your ear drum.  Hearing is a sensitive business from every point of view.

This fragility is matched by the bones, the ossicles, which are on the other side of the ear drum resting against it to pick up the vibrations of the drum. The ossicles are the three tiniest bones in the whole body and form the coupling between the vibration of the eardrum and the forces exerted on the oval window of the inner ear.  This system is connected to the cochlea which looks a bit like a shell.  It has tiny hairs inside that vibrate and transmit the sound to our nerves in the brain.  Usually, age related hearing is when these tiny hairs become damaged and die off.  Our high frequency hair cells die off before low frequency ones and we lose some every year.  If you want to see what these hairs look like, check this out.  You need to press the video button to actual see the hair dance to music.

If you have ever wondered how it sounds to have a cochlea implant you can experience it here (click on link below and listen to both tracks).  I must admit I was disappointed with the results but then my expectations were high.  If you cannot hear at all then this must seem like unbelievable progress.  For Beethoven losing his hearing must have been a torment almost impossible to endure.

https://auditoryneuroscience.com/prosthetics/music

To see how wonderful these implants can be for those experiencing deafness this young boy's face says it all.

It is startling to discover that the young generally are more receptive.  They literally hear a much broader frequency range than older people.  Another fascinating feature is that if you lost 166,000 photoreceptors in a retina of your eye you would not be able to see a patch in your vision smaller than the moon’s image.  Everything else would look okay. However, destruction of 166,000 hair cells in your ear would result in disequilibrium and profound deafness.  

We need to respect this sense so much more than we do at present.  Think of an inertial guidance system, an acoustic amplifier and a frequency analyser inside the volume of a marble and be impressed.  Hair cells detect motions of atomic dimensions and respond 100,000 times per second.  

Remember that over time, repeated exposure to loud noise and music can cause hearing loss. To put that in perspective we need to know a few facts.

1. The decibel (dB) is a unit to measure the level of sound.
2. The softest sound that some humans can hear is 20 dB or lower.
3. Normal talking is 40 dB to 60 dB.
4. A clap of thunder from a nearby storm (120 dB) or a gunshot (140-190 dB, depending on weapon), can both cause immediate damage.
5. A rock concert is between 110 dB and 120 dB, and can be as high as 140 dB right in front of the speakers.
6. When listening to a personal music system with stock earphones at a maximum volume, the sound generated can reach a level of over 100 dBA, loud enough to begin causing permanent damage after just 15 minutes per day!

But it is the effect that this sense can have on our spirit that surprises me constantly.  Just as we can damage this amazing organ with abuse, when used appropriately it be transformative.  I love these quotes on what music can bring to all our lives.

“..although sounds are but vibrations in the air which affect the ear's auditory nerve, and these vibrations are but chance phenomena carried along through the air, even so, see how they move the heart. A wondrous melody is wings for the spirit, and maketh the soul to tremble for joy.”

`Abdu’l-Bahá

“Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.” 

Confucius, The Book of Rites