Sounds like Emerson, also. "Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. Thus one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes."
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It was about ten years ago when we travelled to that Senior Basketball Olympics at the University of Pittsburgh. We drew many uneasy smiles as we paraded around with the backs of our shirts announcing the services of the men who take us to the underworld. We won a few games and lost others; were eliminated and left for home disappointed, some of us more than others, depending on each man's competitive fire to defeat the foe. Like all athletes, losing felt like a small death. Even small deaths are hard to swallow, however, especially when knowing how way leads on to way and you doubt you will ever come back. As evening was darkening the Amish countryside, we departed east through country roads in silence, each lost in his interior monologue on the journey ahead. Playing low on the radio, from my back seat I could barely make out Dylan singing, "It's not dark yet, but it's getting there."
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Two years ago there was a short Grantland documentary, "The Finish Line," about Steve Nash, the latest Pistol Pete. An uncanny player, Nash was battling injuries and age, and the documentary shows him pondering whether or not to retire or continue his rehabilitation and attempt a comeback. In the opening scene Nash goes out with his dog into the shadowy pre-dawn where he muses on his dilemma. His words are hypnotic. "I feel," he said, "that there's something that I can't quite put my finger on that - I don't know -- I feel that it's blocking me or I can see it out of the corner of my mind's eye, or it's like this dark presence... is it the truth that I'm done?"
Hobbled by a nerve injury that severely limited his movement, he played a few more games and retired within a year. Like Pete Maravich, he had brought an infectious joy to his playing, but he left without fulfilling his dream of winning an NBA championship. Of his retirement he said, "It's bittersweet. I already miss the game deeply, but I'm also really excited to learn to do something else." Unlike many athletes, Nash was moving on; his "dark presence" wasn't a final death but a step on the road to a hard rebirth. It was a Dylanesque restless farewell: "And though the line is cut/It ain't quite the end/I'll just bid farewell till we meet again."
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"A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true. They're like strange countries that you have to enter. You can write a song anywhere... It helps to be moving. Sometimes people who have the greatest talent for writing songs never write any because they are not moving." Bob Dylan, Chronicles
Dylan has long been accused of abandoning his youthful idealism and protest music. I think this is a bum rap. He was never a protester, though his songs became anthems of the civil-rights and anti-war movements. There is no doubt that those songs were inspirational and gave people hope to carry on the good fight. But in turning in a more oblique and circumspect musical direction, following his need to change as the spirit of inspiration moved him, Dylan's songs have come to inspire in a new way. You know his sympathies lie with the oppressed and downtrodden, but he doesn't shout it. A listener has to catch his drift. If you go to the music, and dip into his various stylistic changes over the decades, you will find a consistency of themes. He deals with essentials like all great poets. Nothing is excluded. His work is paradoxical. Yes, he's been singing about death since twelve, but it has always been countered by life and rebirth. There is joy and sadness; faith and doubt; happiness and suffering; injustice and justice; romance and its discontents; despair and hope. His music possesses a bit of a Taoist quality mixed with a Biblical sensibility conveyed by a hopelessly romantic American. He has fused his themes into an incantatory delivery that casts a moving spell of hope upon the listener. He is nothing if not a spiritual spell-binder; similar in many ways to that other quintessential American - the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, whose best work was a poetic quest for an inspired salvific poetry.
If the listener is expecting an argument, a thesis, inductive reasoning, or a didactic approach from Dylan, he is out of luck, and rather than be inspired he will be disappointed. This is art, not theory, and art of a special kind since Dylan is an artist at war with his art. His songs demand that the listener's mind and spirit be moving as the spirit of creative inspiration moved Dylan. A close listening will force one to jump from verse to verse -- to shoot the gulf - since there are no bridges to cross, no connecting links. The sound carries you over and keeps you moving forward. If you're not moving, you'll miss the meaning.
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"A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song." Chinese Proverb
So if the world is getting you down and all the news is bad to your ears, don't lose hope. Step to the side, out of the glare of the sun, the blare of the headlines where lies and fears shout in our ears and echo down our days like a repetitive nightmare. Give Dylan a listen. As he has said of spiritual songs, "They brought me down to earth and they lifted me up all in the same moment." His songs have the same paradoxical power because he excludes nothing. That is why they are truthful.
It is fitting that his latest album, "Shadows in the Night," comprised of ten beloved old ballads sung by Frank Sinatra, from "The Night We Called it a Day" to "Some Enchanted Evening," has him changing again, going back to go forward. He is full of surprises, which any child will tell you bring joy because surprises and change are the core of living. To change this crazed world, we must change and find hope and joy along the way. Repetition will kill us. Dylan's artistic metamorphoses and ingenious song writing offer offbeat sources of hope. Just listen.
Having been compared to Frank Sinatra with these songs, he's said, "You must be joking. To be mentioned in the same breath as him must be some sort of high compliment. As far as touching him goes, nobody touches him. Not me or anyone else... But he never went away. All those things we thought were here to stay, they did go away. But he never did." Sinatra, like Pistol Pete, didn't fade away because he too inspired Dylan to inspire us to hope and carry on. If it feels dark and night-like to you, move sideways into the shadows. Look away and you'll see the light.
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