I'm checking my work email while hiking Clarkemmeffingburg yesterday because work email turdich happens Wednesdays. Ten students hired didn't turn in paperwork I am neither responsible for filing nor badgering the students to turn in. What the fuck happened, I'm demanded to answer. Local Park and Planning Commission park rangers have rerouted three of the trails in Little Bennett since we last hiked them. It's planned trail maintenance to cut down on erosion, I imagine. I had a moment: for three seconds, in Little Bennett Park in Clarkemmeffingburg, MOCO, I didn't remember, didn't know - it was the redwinged tanager fish-hooking my eye - I had a totally disoriented where the fuck am I moment, so cool. It's been since ever since I saw a tanager, since ever since I tripped. Meanwhile Left Twix dropping turdich on Right Twix's excitable Masthead of Mandom, the Masthead massively assholing. The turdich hasn't even started, will increase or decrease depending on Left Twix's own personal stink. I'm kidding - it will only increase.
I'm back at work now. I just texted Olive, told her Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Lit, she selfied back ▲.
- When the Nobel committee trolls it's time to admit we live in the Trollocene era. Everything is trolling.
- Self-care is compliance.
- That which is said and not said.
- An afternoon in early Autumn.
- An Oligarchy aggrieved.
- They've got you, wherever you are.
- Olive is more upset at Dylan winning the fucking Nobel than I am, and online it seems the only people angry are otherwise smart people who for whateverfucking reason like Dylan's music.
Wow! A Tamaryn cascade. Fits my almost perma-mood these days. [Check your email.]
ReplyDeletea few lines that come to mind
ReplyDeleteoh you masters of war
for me he was chastised, for me he was hated, for me he was rejected by the world that he created
lay lady lay across my big brass bed
(a year after this song came out i actually got a brass bed - my grandparents gave it to me when they moved to florida)
won't you please crawl out your window, use your arms and legs it won't ruin you
jimi performing the last one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdYQ8EJ0tPE
Re, our new Nobel Laureate,
ReplyDeleteNow that's one acceptance speech I don't see happening.
And if it does, I imagine it'll be akin to John Lennon's speech when he won a literary prize in 1964: "Thank you very much. You have a very lucky face."
Personally, despite the fact that I haven't listened to his records in nearly 25 years, and that my formative teenage intellect owed a big debt to the lyrics from early 'lectric-period Dylan, I was very ambivalent when I first heard the news. And now that I look and see that he nudged out DeLillo and Roth for the prize, I can easily see why plenty of people are _pissed_.
A friend tells me that a poet friends of hers commented, "What...is 'Bob Dylan' Swedish for 'Margaret Atwood'?"
I imagine Roth deep in his single malt trumping in his notebooks. I wonder if they'll reach archives, all the writing he's done since he quit writing. I don't care about the Nobel or Dylan winning it beyond the small joy it gives me at people anguishing over it.
DeleteThe music - including voice as instrument - gotta get me before I pay attention to lyrics which pretty much made Dylan bore me from the start. I don't doubt the lyrics are better than the music. I'm also small - I've friends and loved ones who Mount Rushmore Dylan, and I like trolling them.
it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future - but my guess is that bob would sing and play, rather than make a speech, at the ceremony in stockholm if he does show up
Deletehis current repetoire? his greatest hits? something written for the occasion? could be
I'll never understand why anyone would give a shit about what other people like in music. Who cares? What is this, identity music? I stopped listening to pop and rock in the mid seventies. It served its purpose which was it got me interested in other types of music. Sometimes, about maybe once a year I'll listen to a rock band from the sixties, not because any of it was great music but because of nostalgia. It reminds me of my youth and I wasn't the jaded asshole I am now. None of those bands were very good, and that includes the motherfucking Beatles who were mediocre at best, and that's stretching it. The Beatles were the product of promotion. The Rolling Stones, Cream, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, none of them were exactly what you would call great musicians. Grace Slick couldn't sing her way out of a bathtub. She was a terrible singer. You want great singers? Then you should listen to opera. And I'll never understand why people idolize musicians or singers, which by the way are two completely different things. Most musicians are pompous jack-asses. Any idiot can learn how to play music. There's nothing special about musicians, they're just people. Miles Davis was a fucking pimp and a dope dealer. Stan Getz was a total asshole and an addict like Parker and so many others. Addicts do bad things to other people, they steal, rob, lie, etc. Yeah, real great human beings to be sure. People should just like the music they like and leave it at that. I mean shit, what's your favorite color. I like blue! But I like pink! And I like green! Give me a fucking break.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing special about musicians, they're just people
ReplyDeletea case in point (from Wikipedia):
Joseph Brooks, born Joseph Kaplan (March 11, 1938 – May 22, 2011), and also known as Joe Brooks or Joey Brooks, was an American composer, director, producer, and screenwriter. He was a prolific writer of advertising jingles and wrote the hit songs "My Ship Is Comin' In", "If Ever I See You Again", and "You Light Up My Life", the latter being composed for the hit film of the same name that he also wrote, directed, and produced. In his later years he became the subject of an investigation after being accused of a series of casting-couch rapes. He was indicted in 2009, but committed suicide on May 22, 2011, before his trial.
and with regard to the nobel laureate, scorcese's film makes it clear that he is a joker and a thief, as well as a prolific poet and charismatic performer - i wonder if the academy that awarded the prize was aware of just how many unattributed repurposed passages from other authors have appeared in books by him