Re: Donovan--and Dylan--Redux

[Lenka Lichtenberg <lenkal...>]

Slightly ashamed, I can offer an answer to the least cerebral of your
points - the leather cup: we use it for "scrambling" and tossing dice
Lenka

----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Cohen <rlcm17 (at) hotmail(dot)com>
To: World music from a Jewish slant <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2001 6:38 PM
Subject: RE: Donovan--and Dylan--Redux


> 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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