With Enthusiasm

The one thing I missed when we were in New Zealand was a ready supply of music. I thought of taking the iPod along to supply the necessary, but decided in the end to travel light. I think that was the right decision since I rarely, happily had a spare moment in our sojourn on South Island. And now I'm very ready indeed to engage in some attentive listening.

The one exception to the general lack of sweet sounds on the trip was the opportunity to listen to music on the plane journeys. The ear-phones on the various flights weren't up to much but I managed to enjoy a fair amount of Dylan on the ways there and back. On the journey out, flying British Airways, I found an odd, highly eclectic selection of various offerings from the great man. Not exactly a greatest hits collection, it seemed more like a grab-bag of someone's particular favourites, but not in any obvious chronological order. The effect of this was to create some very striking contrasts between individual songs, serving as a reminder of just how extraordinarily varied Dylan's oeuvre is, and also to jar me into giving old favourites a fresh listen. For example, I've heard the live version of Idiot Wind, from the Hard Rain album, at least fifty times. But this time round the ferocity of the performance was startling having accessed the track between calmer pieces. The anguish of the singer became more obvious than ever and, for the first time ever, I felt something like genuine pity for him rather than just revelling in the sonic glory of the event.

Ironically on the way back I found myself listening to a very different version of the song. The Singapore Airlines flight we took from Auckland offered a selection from the recently released More Blood, More Tracks featuring the slower, gentler, essentially acoustic version originally intended for Blood on the Tracks. It was a revelation. I've never thought of the song as essentially tender, almost wistful, but that's how it was in this incarnation. And twice as moving as a result. Genius.

And it's the genius of the Bobster that is conveyed so convincingly in Richard F. Thomas's Why Dylan Matters. I'd heard the prof (of the Classics at Harvard) speaking before (on youtube somewhere) of the connection of Dylan's work to the great writers of antiquity, but never quite bought the argument. However, the accumulated detail of Thomas's book on the connection(s) is generally convincing, and even when you think he's pushing it a bit far the sheer excitement and fun of the writing carries you with it. It's wonderful also that real attention is paid to the greatness of the later albums, post Time Out Of Mind, and Dylan as performer in the final glorious phase of his work. Plus you get the clearest argument so far for the genius of Dylan as a master thief. Finally someone who understands the nature of inter-textuality as real creativity.

With all that in mind I'm about to put the ear-phones on and lose myself for a couple of hours. Bye!