Category: Music

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Dylan’s Turn of Phrase

I was lucky to get a pass to a pre-release viewing of A Complete Unknown, the new Dylan biopic, this week.  The event included a free drink (which turned out to be a Thatchers Gold Apple Cider in a can, which is so wrong on several levels) and an ‘Australian exclusive’ interview with director James Mangold and leading man, Timothée Chalamet. A great night. 

The film itself was very good. I can’t think of another film where an actor captured a character many of us think we know intimately, with near perfection. It was almost as if Dylan himself had morphallactic-ly returned to his early years in the physical form of Chalamet. All the essentials were there. His smirking disdain, his obsessions, his hair, the shades and the voice, bursting at the seams with creativity.  A stellar artistic performance by the actor.   

[Not to be discounted is Edward Norton as Pete Seeger. His understated performance as Dylan’s early champion is worth the price of a second ticket. The crushing disappointment he conveys when Woody Guthrie makes it clear Dylan is to be his successor, not Pete, is so good.] 

The Australian exclusive interview was prerecorded. It featured a local B grade entertainment interviewer who knew little of Dylan’s mystique or music and who received each response from Chalamet with a cooed ‘Ooo, that’s so great!’, more appropriate to an interview with parents of a severely disabled child or a granny fighting back against online scams.  Chalamet was pissed and swilled big gulps of vodka straight from the bottle. His answers were disjointed, sometimes coherent. He seemed to be channelling Dylan’s own irritated approach to dumb interviewers. For his part Mangold tried to keep disaster at bay by praising the drunken luvvy next to him and speaking of how they had ‘sculpted’ the performance and their relationship over ‘many years’.  O.K.

Definitely go see this film. 

As I walked to the cinema, I reflected for the umpteenth time on what it is about Bob Dylan that I love so much. I’m sure I could dig out several dozen reasons but the one that immediately jumped to mind was his ability to turn a phrase.  Though I’m a Dylan lifer, there are few if any songs of his that I could recite in their entirety. Maybe Blowing in the Wind if the wind were behind my back.  But I can rattle off dozens of phrases that absolutely live within my soul every day. 

All I really want to do, is baby be friends with you 

It ain’t me babe 

He not busy being born is busy dying 

She wears an Egyptian ring that sparkles before she speaks 

I contain multitudes 

Flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark 

I used to care, but things have changed 

Lincoln Country Road or Armageddon? 

A few words, seemingly simply, even thoughtlessly, placed together stand out like sparkling jewels throughout his work.  They are adornments. In Indian/Sanskrit aesthetics these are known are ‘alankara’, poetic ornaments or decorations designed to enhance the joy and delight of the reader/listener. 

I find myself repeating Dylan’s phrases at random moments and situations.  I get a kick out of marrying Dylan’s words with the situations and events of my meagre life. That feeling of delight, according to the ancient Indians, is the entire purpose of poetry, music, art and literature.  According to Vijay Kumar Roy, Associate Professor of English, University of Allahabad, “all artists are expected to have a kind of gift, through which imagination can provide the reader [something to] ‘savour’ or ‘relish’, [rasa, in Sanskrit], which is the highest form of joy or supreme bliss (delight). (1) 

Sometimes Dylan seems to throw all manner of phrases together, seemingly indifferent to whether they make sense as a whole narrative.  For years scholars and fans have tried to unpack and dissect the meaning of each of Dylan’s songs to find a coherent message.  Yet if you look at a song like It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) the phrases pile up and it’s hard to draw direct links of meaning between them. 

Darkness at the break of noon 
Shadows even the silver spoon 
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon 
Eclipses both the sun and moon 
To understand you know too soon 
There is no sense in trying 

Temptation’s page flies out the door 
You follow, find yourself at war 
Watch waterfalls of pity roar 
You feel to moan but unlike before 
You discover that you’d just be one more 
Person crying 

These verses are full of brilliant lines. Indeed, each line is full of meaning, but you’d be hard put to say exactly what he’s singing about. A simultaneous solar and lunar eclipse? Is the page of temptation a book or a young lad? I’ve seen waterfalls but don’t know what a waterfall of pity is and what that has to do with said page.  

But as the song progresses it’s clear Dylan is conjuring a scene of madness, darkness and confusion.  He is describing a disjointed disconnected modern society and so there is a certain rasa/taste to this song. Indian aesthetics identify 8 main ‘rasa’ or flavors that an artist may induce in a reader, observer or listener. One of them is Raudra: The Rasa of Anger and Fury which Dylan employs to demonstrate his righteous fury over the state of his country, society and times. It’s a heavy song. It’s got the weight of Jeremiah or Isaiah. But it is decorated and ornamented with the most beautiful turns of phrase. 

Darkness at the break of noon 
Shadows even the silver spoon 

While money doesn’t talk, it swears 

You never know how future generations will view yesterday’s heroes but it’s hard to imagine Dylan’s writing being forgotten.  His turns of phrase, dozens of them, have entered our daily banter.  

The times they are a changing.  

Blowing in the wind.   

It ain’t me, babe. 

You gotta serve somebody 

Pick up any of his records, or read his poems/lyrics on line and you’ll discover hundreds of magical delightful phrases that capture the whole gamut of human emotions. But which also mark Dylan as one of the greatest manipulators of words. 

Here is one of his phrases I use regularly, in a lot of situations. 

A change in the weather is known to be extreme 
But what’s the sense of changing horses in midstream? 
I’m going out of my mind, oh, oh 
With a pain that stops and starts 
Like a corkscrew to my heart 
Ever since we’ve been apart 

(You’re a Big Girl Now, Blood on the Tracks, 1974) 

  1. Roy, Vijay Kumar. 2012. “Indian Aesthetics and the West” In Explorations in Aesthetics, edited by Alka Rastogi. New Delhi: Sarup Book Publishers. 


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The Night Bus to Tarbela

This photo was taken at the massive Pirwadahi bus station in Rawalpindi. It is from Pirwadahi that long haul buses commence and it is at Pirwadahi that they end their journeys. At least up it was until the early 1990s, when my time in Pakistan came to an end.

I took this photo at my favorite time of day, an hour or so before sunset. It was winter, probably January or February 1989/90 giving the light a warm golden hue. The bus’s windscreen and body had just been washed so the usual dust and streaks of wipers are not a hinderance.

Pakistani bus decorating is one of the country’s great folk arts. What often looks like garish sticker-mania in fact often can be decoded. In this instance starting from the lower left: a religious poster depicting Hazrat Hussain, the Prophet Mohammad’s (PBUH) grandson and spiritual icon to Shi’a Muslims all over the world. The large script at the top of the windscreen is a Q’ranic or other spiritual saying and at the very top you can the words 1988 Model. Signifying the year not of the manufacture of the bus but of the decorations. Multiple stickers of vases and flowers reference one of the most popular design motifs from the Persian world. Scholars find many pre-Islamic references and continuities in such images. In this case, I would imagine the bus’s owner (a Shi’a) has used the stickers merely as pretty decoration, just like the image of the two kittens in the far right lower corner. The open palm stickers, like in many ancient cultures, represent an attitude of blessing and protection as well as invitation. Signaling to the passengers, “Come in, god Bless and protect you on your journey.” As these iron behemoths are not insured, its about as much assurance as you can expect. The calligraphy that balances the Hussain poster notes the destination of the bus, Tarbela Dam, one of Pakistan’s major pieces of infrastructure completed between 1968 and 1976. The pièce de ré·sis·tance is the pair of drapes which can be pulled close when the sun is too bright!

The following piece appeared first on my original blog Washerman’s Dog (17 May 2012). It included a mixtape of music you would be likely to hear on such a trip. The road system in Pakistan has improved immensely since I lived there (’86-’91.) And the music is a bit dated to that era. If you would like to download that mixtape check out the Downloads page.

When I first landed up in Pakistan I was surprised to discover that the way you got around between major cities was not by train, as in India, but by road. Unless your destination was Karachi or Quetta, in which case you flew.  And for your road trips you had several choices of transport: bus, Flying Coach or wagon.

Bus

Bus: usually a Bedford, gloriously liveried in multiple colours, decorated with beaten tin, twinkling lights, curtains, festooned with flowers (plastic, real and painted) and covered with pithy aphorisms like ‘Maa ki dua/Jannat ki hawa’ (A mother’s prayer is a breeze from heaven). Clientele: general public; those who have more time and less money.

Flying Coach

Flying Coach: a no-nonsense and business-like large Mazda or Toyota mini-bus with hydraulic doors that sigh when they open, excellent air conditioning and in most instances reclining seats. Clientele: businessmen, foreign students; those who want to get ‘there’ quick.

Wagon

Wagon: a Ford van imported from England by Kashmiris. Painted only one colour. Body dented. A few perfunctory invocations of Allah’s blessing on the front.  Seats hard. No aircon. Clientele: the slightly better off member of the general public; those with high-risk appetites.

One of the several issues confronting those who choose to travel long distance by road in Pakistan is that the vehicles (with the exception of the Bedford buses) are imported. They can move quite quickly and powerfully, designed as they are for motorways in Japan or UK.  The Pakistani highways, alas, are narrow, rutted, poorly lit and crowded. The combination, especially when blended with a driver who is exhausted, just learning his trade or stoned on charas (all three at once, is a permutation I’ve encountered) can give rise to anxiety. 

I shall never forget the dear driver (with me in front seat right beside him) who, as we sped into the fast-setting sun that nearly blinded us, decided to change the cassette and light a cigarette at the same time.  He did it! And we made it to Gilgit in one piece 12 hours later!

For some reason whenever I found myself on the road it was evening heading into night. Though the hazards increased significantly once the sun went down, I found barreling through the night in some strange way, relaxing and appealing.  Probably because there was inevitably a good concert of music to be had. After the first 45 minutes of the journey, most passengers were nodding off or whispering quietly to their companions. The driver would light another cigarette and turn up the cassette and entertain us with a selection of current and evergreen hits.

Inevitably, the concert would include the patron saint of all vehicle drivers, Attaullah Khan Niazi. Indian film music, qawwali and few sharabi ghazals, some folk and other odds and ends like a piece or two from the driver’s home region, often the Northern Areas around Gilgit.

I loved those trips because I was introduced, anonymously, to so much good music.