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

Diogenes, his barrel and his brutal challenges from over two milleniums ago

The sun, too, shines into cesspools and is not polluted.

quote of Diogenes

Growing up in a small rural village high in the Sperrin mountains of Northern Ireland, Diogenes was a Greek philosopher my father mentioned repeatedly during my childhood.  Much we know about his life is unsubstantiated by historical data but this colourful character is so different and unique somehow you never doubt his existence. 

Diogenes of Sinope was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynic philosophy. He was born in Sinope (modern-day Sinop, Turkey), an Ionian colony on the Black Sea, in 412 or 404 BC and died at Corinth in 323 BC.

He has the most who is most content with the least. 

quote of Diogenes

He considered his avoidance of earthly pleasures a contrast to and commentary on the contemporary behaviours all around him. This attitude was grounded in a disdain for what he regarded as the folly, pretence, vanity, self-deception, and artificiality of human conduct. He hardened himself to the elements by by living in a large wine cask, owned nothing, and seems to have lived off the charity of others. He destroyed the single wooden bowl he possessed on seeing a peasant boy drink from the hollow of his hands. He then exclaimed: "Fool that I am, to have been carrying superfluous baggage all this time!”  He used to stroll about in full daylight with a lamp; when asked what he was doing, he would answer, "I am just looking for an honest man.”

According to a story, Diogenes was captured by pirates while on voyage to Aegina and sold as a slave in Crete. Being asked his trade, he replied that he knew no trade but that of governing men, and that he wished to be sold to a man who needed a master. Fortunately, a Corinthian man called Xeniades liked his spirit and hired Diogenes to tutor his children. 

The vine bears three kinds of grapes: the first of pleasure, the second of intoxication, the third of disgust. 

quote of Diogenes

It was in Corinth that a meeting between Alexander the Great and Diogenes is supposed to have taken place. While Diogenes was relaxing in the morning sunlight, Alexander, thrilled to meet the famous philosopher, asked if there was any favour he might do for him. 

Dioggenes responded, “I  have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give.”

Alexander then declared, "If I were not Alexander, then I should wish to be Diogenes.”

In his typical direct manner Diogenes retorted, 
"If I were not Diogenes, I would also wish to be Diogenes!" 

He was known for brutal honesty in conversation, paid no attention to any kind of etiquette regarding social class or behaviour and when criticised, pointed out that most of these activities were normal and that everyone engaged in them privately. Indeed, Diogenes challenged codes of behaviour in ways that would startle us still even today!  I give just one example but there are much much worse. 
Someone took Diogenes into a magnificent house and warned him not to spit, whereupon, having cleared his throat, he spat into the man's face, being unable, he said, to find a meaner receptacle.

Diogenes could provoke both individuals and society and did so all his life under all circumstances.  As he approached old age he did not change his ways.

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings? 

quote of Diogenes

Scolded as an old man who ought to rest, he replied, "What, if I were running in the stadium, ought I to slacken my pace when approaching the goal?" To someone who declared life to be an evil, he corrected him, "Not life itself, but living ill." When asked from where he came, Diogenes said, "I am a citizen of the world".

As he reached the end of his life, he was asked about how he wished to be buried. He left instructions to be thrown outside the city wall so that wild animals could feast on his body. When asked if he minded this, he said, "Not at all, as long as you provide me with a stick to chase the creatures away!" When asked how he could use the stick since he would lack awareness, he replied "If I lack awareness, then why should I care what happens to me when I am dead?”

We are all, Diogenes claimed, trapped in this make-believe world which we believe is reality and, because of this, people are living in a kind of dream state. Although, he was thought by some to be mad, it must be said Diogenes was not the first philosopher to make this claim; Heraclitus, Xenophanes, and, most famously, Socrates all pointed out the need for human beings to wake from their dream state to full awareness of themselves and the world.

He once begged alms of a statue, and, when asked why he did so, replied, "To get practice in being refused.

quote of Diogenes