| |
A Prophet Sings the Blues
Bob
Dylan’s CD Modern Times casts the singer/songwriter/poet
in a decidedly Biblical role
Reviewed by John
Tintera
Warning: I am about to say something that
may be disturbing to some people. I believe that Bob Dylan
is the prophet of our times. First, some background to put
my assertion in perspective:
In
the Hebrew Bible, the primary act of worship is listening:
“Hear now, O Israel, the decrees and laws I am about
to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go
in and take possession of the land that the LORD, the God
of your fathers, is giving you” (Deuteronomy 4:1 NIV).
Following
and obedience are necessary corollaries, but are secondary
to the great command to open oneself up to the voice of the
Almighty. In like manner, the primary
spiritual leaders in Judaism are not shamans entering trances,
scribes interpreting the laws, or priests performing sacrifices,
but prophets listening to and communicating the word of God.
The prophet speaks and the people listen. This is the essential
transaction between God and the people of God in Judaism.
Looking
back on Biblical times, especially the times of Moses and
Joshua, Christians are often tempted to think, “Wow!
It must have been easy to be a faithful person back then.
There were clearly called and commissioned prophets, a supporting
community all around you, and very clear distinctions between
‘the good guys’ serving God and ‘the bad
guys’ offering sacrifices to graven images and worshiping
kings.”
As
tempting as that may seem, I like to think of the Israelite’s
quarrels at Meribah and their groaning in the desert as signs
that it was just as hard to be faithful back then as it is
now. All of which brings us to the Bob Dylan’s CD Modern
Times.
From
his earliest days singing about his devotion to Woody Guthrie—the
troubadour of the downtrodden—and his anthems of political
struggle, to his present efforts to channel traditional folk,
jazz, and blues ballads, Dylan’s music is a labor of
love pointing “Beyond the Horizon,” as the title
of one of the new songs puts it. In order to touch the masses
in our intentionally secular culture, the would-be prophet
cannot stand upon sacred texts and simply hand down the decrees
of old. Rather, the prophet must dig into the same earth,
plow the same fields, and gather in the same harvest as his
or her peers. What’s more, prophetic utterances can
never be simply moralistic—they must also be sympathetic.
The prophet not only sings to humankind of the ways of God,
but also brings word of our plight to the Creator.
What’s
most striking about Dylan’s new CD is the difficulty
he has in putting into words the overwhelming emotions he’s
experiencing. (This, from the poet whose best
songs often run for five or more long stanzas.) Modern
Times opens with the following quatrain:
Thunder
on the mountain, and there's fires on the moon
A ruckus in the alley and the sun will be here soon
Today's the day, gonna grab my trombone and blow
Well, there's hot stuff here and it's everywhere I go
As
captured in the line “Today’s the day, gonna grab
my trombone and blow,” a deep irony runs throughout
the CD. Dylan, our most successful poet, seems to be abandoning
words. The thunder, the ruckus, and all that “hot stuff”
everywhere compel him to make music, but not necessarily speak
out with a guitar and a microphone as he did in the heady
days of the early ‘60s. Instead, he wants to cover his
lips and blow the low notes on the trombone. Later, in the
last song on the album, Dylan further elaborates his frustration
with words:
Ain't
talkin', just walkin'
Through this weary world of woe
Heart burnin', still yearnin'
No one on earth would ever know
The
refrain, “Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’”
is repeated nine times in the song, driving home his growing
discomfiture toward his calling, and his recognition that
words ultimately come up short against reality—especially
the reality of times like ours.
Dylan’s
discomfort with his role and his reluctance to speak parallel
the experiences of many of the Biblical prophets, who also
felt an uneasiness with their responsibility to warn Israel
about the consequences of its unfaithfulness. Moses questioned
God about his calling saying, "O Lord, I have never been
eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to
your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue." Jonah
famously ran in the opposite direction when God called him—ultimately
landing himself in the belly of a whale.
In
his autobiography, Chronicles
Volume One, Dylan muses upon “the big bugs
in the press [who] kept promoting me as the mouthpiece, spokesman,
or even conscience of a generation.” “That was
funny,” he says. “All I’d ever done was
sing songs that were dead straight and expressed powerful
new realities.”
Now that the aging troubadour, who once sang “I was
so much older then/I’m younger than that now,”
qualifies for the support of the AARP, the subject of aging
has entered his repertoire in more meaningful ways than ever.
In “Spirit on the Water,” the second track, he
croons,
You
think I'm over the hill
You think I'm past my prime
Let me see what you got
We can have a whoppin' good time
He’s
also looking to square-up old debts. In one of the record’s
rollicking blues numbers, “Rollin’ and Tumblin,’”
Dylan turns from chastising old loves (i.e. “long dead
souls from their crumblin’ tombs”) and abruptly
asks for forgiveness:
Let's
forgive each other darlin',
let's go down to the greenwood glen
Let's put our heads together now,
let's put all old matters to an end
It’s
the kind of sentiment rarely, if ever, heard in traditional
blues.
And
yet, despite the prophet’s stuttering and his homely
humanism, God’s message of comfort to his people still
manages to come through. In the song, “When
the Deal Goes Down,” we see the prophet as a vulnerable
traveler, lost like Dante in the deep forest of night:
In
the still of the night, in the world's ancient light
Where wisdom grows up in strife
My bewildering brain, toils in vain
Through the darkness on the pathways of life…
We live and we die, we know not why…
God
speaks this to the bewildered pilgrim:
I'll
be with you when the deal goes down
What’s
“the deal” going down? It is mortality and death.
Cancer, heart disease, plane crashes, terrorism, and the threat
of nuclear holocaust. Preachers and prophets don’t speak
of death as “the deal,” but old bluesmen do. In
the plain and repetitive tones of the blues, Dylan has rediscovered
a mode of speaking that enables him to communicate not with
irony but rather with the authority of the prophet spreading
his message of God’s undying love for all times and
for all people.
©2007
John Tintera
|
