Tid bits, Larks' tongues, Wolf's nipples...

Item: I've found The Neglected Books Page via the always compelling blogger at Anecdotal Evidence. It's in the sidebar now (one bookmarking technique of mine).

This could be more than just intellectually satisfying. It could also be helpful. Say, in 2014 when everyone's talking about Harvey Fergeson's Capital Hill...you can cough and uninterrupted tell people you read it in 2007. "What. They make a movie?"
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I continue to marvel at Dylan's latest ("Modern Times") as well as Love And Theft from 2001, which took awhile to hook me. It's strange though: I read the lyrics before hearing Modern Times, as did my older brother, who is also a Dylan devotee. We both agree now that this was a mistake. Not that the poetry isn't astonishing, for its uncanny emotional realism. Just that on first reading, you can't get it and after all they are just words on paper, read one time, without the music.

I can't get over this sensation that, in song, Dylan somehow gives voice to people I am certain are quite ordinary but somehow I've never met them. Or maybe , they're people I met long ago and nearly forgot.

One song, "Floater" uses quaint out-dated expressions. Some sound like defunct cliches, as if our language became absent-minded and we may have forgotten the truth, cliches always have.

The first person voice in the song seems to be a young man, considering his story, so you imagine he is still at an age where he parrots his folks, with these expressions.

Also there are clues that he admires most of his elders, or at least is interested in them.

Here are a few of these old turns of phrase. Maybe I heard my grandfolks talk this way. Maybe I hear these words all the time from people I am not really listening to.

In a song, they are striking!

I'll underline the phrases I mean, from the verses.

A summer breeze is blowing
A squall is settin' in
Sometimes it's just plain stupid
To get into any kind of wind
*
There's a new grove of trees on the outskirts of town
The old one is long gone
Timber two-foot six across
Burns with the bark still on

They say times are hard, if you don't believe it
You can just follow your nose
It don't bother me - times are hard everywhere
We'll just have to see how it goes
*
They went down the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Tennessee
All the rest of them rebel rivers
*
My grandfather was a duck trapper
He could do it with just dragnets and ropes
My grandmother could sew new dresses out of old cloth
I don't know if they had any dreams or hopes

I had 'em once though, I suppose, to go along
With all the ring dancin' Christmas carols on all of the Christmas Eves
I left all my dreams and hopes
Buried under tobacco leaves
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I'm "how could he know?" and then , "Oh he could have read some old books!" Well, that's smart of him!

Maybe my examples just go to show, you really do have to listen to the music. Reading the lyrics without knowing the tune? Say, Meh.

Sean over at R.W. Bob recalls from "Chronicals" that Dylan is quite a Civil War buff. I am too, but like to get down in those middle times too, those odd times where nothing much seemed to be happening. Maybe Dylan is reading about the 1870's.

Of course, you may have read, "Modern Times" seems partly inspired by the poet laurette of the Confederacy. Which brings me to the heart breaking "Nettie Moore".

But I'm NOT going to re-read the lyrics... yet. Maybe not for years, maybe never.

I'm absorbing this song.

Apparently a man has lost a woman who was either his slave or a very submissive wife.

At the start of the song, he is sitting on the railroad tracks, and a passer by senses "something's out of whack".

The singer begins this internal dialoug and the story is told not by events but simply by his revealed attitude. For instance he will recall things he regularly said to "Nettie", ("...you better keep your business straight"). Then as more is revealed ---and again, not from any recitation or narrative--- you come to understand the depth of his loss and don't wonder that this is a type of true love, although fractured and morally corrupted (from memory, there's a line that 'everything I knew turned out to be wrong').

It is (maybe) after the Civil War and at the end of each refrain, ("I miss you , Nettie Moore") he states with deep aching wonderment that "the world has gone black before my eyes."

All of these songs are between six and eight minutes long, by the way. The more I listen, I start to think that this isn't just to complete a story but to maintain the atmosphere Dylan has magically conjured to appreciate. There are throw away lines, for instance, oddly humorous. ("well the world of research has gone beserk: too much paper-work").

Well here I am writing about what interests me. Dylan is my last idol from my teenage rock and roll worship days. I swear, I started thinking that pencil thin mustache of his looked good, after awhile...And now I want the cowboy hat that's in this video.

(My current favorite Dylan song, incidentally, called "Cold Irons Bound".)


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Over the top of the week, into real time not saving daylight, November now. It's not nice outside, why why why must the outside take its stand? But I am keeping my warmth through friction, debating our local graduate students and young professionals on the local political forum
in this enchanting university town.

It worries me, who I'll find to get surly with after the election victories. What's to argue. I win my point and what do I get but silence. And hey! They turn back in anger and call me a name, too! I should throw rocks at those people before they call me names, because I know they're going to, they always do. Go on, get outta here.


Thanks for visiting. I hesitate to post because it will put this week's instructional movie a little further down the page. Do scroll down if you are interested in some short time travel.