RE: Donovan--and Dylan--Redux

[Robert Cohen <rlcm17...>]

First:  Just to clear _this_ up:  According to the Sing Out! songbook 
(invaluable though flawed)--and is this how it appeared when someone posted 
the lyrics--the line is:

"Freedom is a word I rarely use without thinking of the times [n. 
plural--though I'm not sure Donovan sings it that way] when I've been 
loved."

>doesn't [Donovan's] recording of the song go "Freeedom is a word I rarely 
>use without thinking of the time when I was down."? >


I doubt Donovan ever sang "when I've been down"--but on the record I have of 
him--and, curiously, this holds for Joan on FAREWELL, ANGELINA as 
well--(s)he *sounds* like (s)he's saying "when I've been low"--maybe that's 
why Jonathan remembered, or thought he remembered, "when I've been down."

Meanwhile, I was reading, over the weekend, an interview with Dylan that I 
highly recommend, in the 11/22 ROLLING STONE.  For a change, Dylan is being 
serious and thoughtful--as opposed, say, to his legendary PLAYBOY 
interview--I really *did* buy that one for the interview!--in which an 
exasperated Nat Hentoff, not getting Dylan to agree to any proferred 
interpretations of his songs, finally asks him, "Well, what *are* your songs 
about?" to which Dylan helpfully replies to (*exactly*) this effect: 'Well, 
some are about three minutes, some are about six minutes, and believe it or 
not, some are even twelve'--anyway, in _this_ interview Dylan, in the 
inspired and very apt words of his interviewer (Mikal Gilmore--who he?), 
"lets go of his insights in constantly surprising and singular turns of 
phrase and temperament," holding forth, e.g.:

on music ("Folk music is where it all starts and in many ways ends.  If you 
don't have that foundation, or if you're not knowledgeable about it and you 
don't know how to control that [interesting choice of word--he uses it 
another time, too], and you don't feel historically tied to it, then what 
you're doing is not going to be as strong as it could be");

on music and feeling and mathematics (yep--goes back at least to Pythagoras, 
of course, but I don't think one often hears contemporary singer-songwriters 
taking this tack);

on God and himself (l'havdil; _not_ pompously at all: "I don't consider 
myself a sophist or a cynic or a stoic or some kind of bourgeois 
industrialist [!]....Basically, I'm just a regular person....I really don't 
have any defined retirement plan!")

and his music (and most recent CDs) and career ("the songs [on LOVE AND 
THEFT--latest CD] deal with what many of my songs deal with--which is 
business, politics and war, and maybe love interest on the side [I love 
that]....I just try to use the traditional values of logic and reason [!] no 
matter what age I've ever written any of my songs");

and on values and principles and the times we live in.

LOVE AND THEFT was released on 9/11, which certainly feeds into the 
sensibility of people like me, who see prophetic strands in much of Dylan's 
work (artist- and genius-prophetic, maybe or probably even more than he 
realizes, not that he's especially [or at all] wise; Rollo May says in LOVE 
AND WILL that artists always presage the central issues and themes of their 
times); a line from one song goes "Sky full of fire, pain pourin' down."  
Maybe inspired by the interview, I listened to "Desolation Row" (one of the, 
uh, twelve-minute ones) for the first time in a long time and was struck, 
again, by how brilliant and redolent so many of the images are (the RS guy 
refers to the "new world-changing methods of language and sharp wit" on 
HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED).  Consider:

"Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They're trying to blow it up"

A long shot:  Can anyone think of a paragon of Filth (with, as it happens, 
great _patience_, for Talmudophiles who think it's OK to see puns in 
prophecies) whose sexless acolytes are trying to blow up our world?  Just 
asking--in my studying prophetic writings for clues mode...

I'm just trying to figure out what the leather cup is.

Thanks for reading this far, if you did --

Robert Cohen




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