{"id":890,"date":"2024-03-09T16:32:19","date_gmt":"2024-03-09T16:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2024\/03\/09\/saturday-night-at-the-oldies-lawrence-auster-on-bob-dylan\/"},"modified":"2024-03-09T16:32:19","modified_gmt":"2024-03-09T16:32:19","slug":"saturday-night-at-the-oldies-lawrence-auster-on-bob-dylan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2024\/03\/09\/saturday-night-at-the-oldies-lawrence-auster-on-bob-dylan\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday Night at the Oldies: Lawrence Auster on Bob Dylan"},"content":{"rendered":"


\"Lawrence<\/a>
I was surprised, but pleased, to find that the late Lawrence Auster<\/a>, traditionalist conservative, photo above, 1973, had a deep appreciation and a wide-ranging knowledge of Dylan's art.  Born in 1949, Auster is generationally situated for that appreciation, and as late as '73 was still flying the '60s colors, if we can go by the photo, but age is not even  a necessary condition for digging Dylan, as witness the case of Thomas Merton (1915-1968) who was early on into Dylan and Baez.  Auster's Jewishness may play a minor role, but the main thing is Auster's attunement to Dylan's particularism.  See the quotation below.  Herewith, some Dylan songs with commentary by Auster.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Band, I Shall Be Released<\/a>.  Auster<\/a> comments:<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This Dylan song can seem amorphous and mystical in the negative sense, especially as it became a kind of countercultural anthem and meaningless through overuse. But the lyrics are coherent and profound, especially the first verse:<\/span><\/p>\n
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They say everything can be replaced<\/span>
They say every distance is not near<\/span>
But I remember every face<\/span>
Of every man who put me here.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The modern world tells us that everything is fungible, nothing is of real value, everything can and should be replaced\u2014our spouse, our culture, our religion, our history, our sexual nature, our race, everything. It is the view of atomistic liberal man, forever creating himself out of his preferences, not dependent on any larger world of which he is a part. The singer is saying, No, this isn\u2019t true. Things have real and particular values and they cannot be cast off and replaced by other things. And, though we seem to be distant, we are connected. I am connected to all the men, the creators and builders and poets and philosophers, and my own relatives and friends, who have come before me or influenced me, who created the world in which I live.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Most Likely You'll Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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First off, some comments of mine on the video which accompanies the touched-up Blonde on Blonde<\/em> track.  The video is very cleverly constructed, providing a synopsis of milestones in Dylan's career.  The first girl the guy with the acoustic guitar case is walking with is a stand-in for Suze Rotolo<\/a>, the girl 'immortalized' on the Freewheelin' Bob Dylan<\/em> album cover.  But now we see the pair from the back instead of from the front.  She is replaced by a second girl representing Joan Baez.  (Dylan's affair with Baez helped destroy his relationship with Rotolo.) Then the guy gets into a car and emerges on the other side with an electric guitar case.  This signifies Dylan's going electric in '65 at the Newport Folk Festival, a change  which enraged the die-hard folkies and doctrinaire leftists who thought they owned Dylan as a mouthpiece for their views.    A quick shot of a newpaper in a trash can with the headline "Dylan Goes Electric" appears just in case you missed the subtlety of the auto entry-exit sequence.  After that we see a downed motorcycle representing Dylan's motorcycle accident, an event that brings to a close  the existentialist-absurdist-surrealist phase of the mid-60s trilogy, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde.<\/em>  After the accident Dylan is further from the mind and closer to the earth.  Dylan the psychedelically deracinated returns to his roots in the Bible and Americana with John Wesley Harding<\/em>. The girl in the brass bed is an allusion to "Lay Lady Lay<\/a>" ("lay across my big brass bed") from the Nashville Skyline<\/em> album.  Dylan then coalesces with the man in black (Johnny Cash), and steps over and through the detritus of what remains the hippy-trippy 60's and into the disco era, his Christian period, marked by the 1979 Slow Train Coming<\/a> and a couple of subsequent albums, his marriage to a black back-up singer, and on into the later phases of the life of this protean bard on a never-ending tour.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Here<\/a> is what Auster has to say about the song:<\/span><\/p>\n

By the way, that\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve seen \u201cjudge\u201d rhymed with \u201cgrudge\u201d since Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cMost Likely You Go Your Way (And I\u2019ll Go Mine),\u201d from Blonde on Blonde<\/em>. Here\u2019s the recording<\/a>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dylan\u2019s lyric (not for the first time) is pretty appropriate to our situation:<\/span><\/p>\n

Well the judge<\/span>
He holds a grudge<\/span>
He\u2019s gonna call on you.<\/span>
But he\u2019s badly built<\/span>
And he walks on stilts<\/span>
Watch out he don\u2019t fall on you.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is now on the U.S. Supreme Court an intellectually sub-par Puerto Rican woman whose entire career has been essentially founded on a grudge against whites, a judge who makes her pro-Hispanic, anti-white agenda an explicit element in her judging. \u201cThe judge, she holds a grudge.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Sotomayor is not the first of that kind, however. Another Supreme Court sub-competent, Thurgood Marshall, openly stated to one of his colleagues that the philosophy behind his judging was that \u201cIt\u2019s our [blacks\u2019] turn now.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Spanish Harlem Incident<\/a>.  (From Another Side of Bob Dylan<\/em>)  Auster's take<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

Thinking about<\/strong> the murder<\/a> of motivational speaker and \u201cpositive, loving energy\u201d guru Jeff Locker in East Harlem this week, where he had been pursuing an assignation with a young lady not his wife but got himself strangled and stabbed to death in his car by the damsel and her two male accomplices instead, I realized that this is yet another contemporary event that Bob Dylan has, in a manner of speaking, got covered. Here is the recording<\/a> and below are the lyrics of Dylan\u2019s 1964 song, \u201cSpanish Harlem Incident,\u201d where the singer, with his \u201cpale face,\u201d seeks liberating love from an exotic dark skinned woman, and is \u201csurrounded\u201d and \u201cslayed\u201d by her. The song reflects back ironically on the Jeff Locker case, presenting the more poetical side of the desires that, on a much coarser and stupider level, led Locker to his horrible death. By quoting it, I\u2019m not making light of murder, readers know how seriously I take murder. But when a man gets himself killed through such an accumulation of sin and gross folly, a man, moreover, whose New Agey belief in positive energy and transformative love apparently left him unable to see the obvious dangers he had put himself in, there is, unavoidably, a humorous aspect to it.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

SPANISH HARLEM INCIDENT<\/span><\/p>\n

Gypsy gal, the hands of Harlem<\/span>
Cannot hold you to its heat.<\/span>
Your temperature is too hot for taming,<\/span>
Your flaming feet are burning up the street.<\/span>
I am homeless, come and take me<\/span>
To the reach of your rattling drums.<\/span>
Let me know, babe, all about my fortune<\/span>
Down along my restless palms.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gypsy gal, you\u2019ve got me swallowed.<\/span>
I have fallen far beneath<\/span>
Your pearly eyes, so fast and slashing,<\/span>
And your flashing diamond teeth.<\/span>
The night is pitch black, come and make my<\/span>
Pale face fit into place, oh, please!<\/span>
Let me know, babe, I\u2019m nearly drowning,<\/span>
If it\u2019s you my lifelines trace.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been wonderin\u2019 all about me<\/span>
Ever since I seen you there.<\/span>
On the cliffs of your wildcat charms I\u2019m riding,<\/span>
I know I\u2019m \u2018round you but I don\u2019t know where.<\/span>
You have slayed me, you have made me,<\/span>
I got to laugh halfways off my heels.<\/span>
I got to know, babe, ah, when you surround me,<\/span>
So I can know if I am really real.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 There's more.  There's always more.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was surprised, but pleased, to find that the late Lawrence Auster, traditionalist conservative, photo above, 1973, had a deep appreciation and a wide-ranging knowledge of Dylan's art.  Born in 1949, Auster is generationally situated for that appreciation, and as late as '73 was still flying the '60s colors, if we can go by the … Continue reading “Saturday Night at the Oldies: Lawrence Auster on Bob Dylan”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[196,64,167,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americana","category-conservatism","category-dylan","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}