Duquesne Whistle Mania

the Dylan World Hoist with its Own Critical Petard

At blog Ralph the Sacred River, http://ralphriver.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/bobdylan-carl-sandburg-and-problem.html:
Thursday, June 03, 2010 Bob Dylan, Carl Sandburg, and the "Borrowing" Problem At 12/06/2010 04:42:00 PM, Singing Bear said...

Whatever Dylan's motives may or may not have been in, seemingly, fabricating events by misusing the words of others, it certainly indicates the lengths he has gone to to break free from the prison of his 80's slump. Japanese novelists, Henry Timrod and now this. As a life-long Dylan fan, I'm beginning to feel a little uneasy about the plagiarism*. On the other hand, much of the work that has arisen from this activity is stunning. Not sure if it justifies such 'love and theft', though.

Yup: Dylan really had his nose to the grindstone: business as usual. There was nothing to break free from. This is purely the Dylan worlds posthystoplasmosis intellectual and aesthetic delusion. Luke 7 King James Version (KJV) for those oh-so-sensitive to the delicate nuances and cadences of bluesy language:
30But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him. 31And the Lord said, Whereunto then shall I liken the men of this generation? and to what are they like? 32They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept.

In December 2009 there was a BBC Radio 6 programme called Bob Dylan's Changing Times. In it we got the delusional and dull-witted tabloid biographer Howard Sounes stroppily dismissing Dylan's Eighties work, in an irritating London wide-boy accent, as having 'no[oooow] unifying concepts!' Wrong: he just didnt perceive any. No surprise there. Last night the wind was whispering; Sounes was trying to make out what it was. There are fewer unifying concepts blowing through 2001s Love And Theft than through 1983s Infidels. But what does the Warmuthian cut-and-paste generation care in its two-dimensional perception and delusional critical arbitration about the limitations of the genius of what they call, paradoxically, a genius? Hurricane blowing (Jokerman); St James Street / Where you blew Jackie Ps mind (Dont Fall Apart On Me Tonight): revisited eighteen years later in the secrets of the breeze and the blowing of Gabriels horn. Fearful symmetry between the opening and closing songs of Infidels and between

Infidels and Love And Thefts own fearful symmetry between its opening and closing songs. Things twice. Michael Gray on Infidels:
. . . it was all too obvious, even in the murky dusk of 1984, that this wasn't a tyger at all. No fearful symmetry here, no burning bright, no fire in the eyes. This was the runt of some domesticated mongrel litter, by Hollywood out of Tin Pan Alley, set loose just for the tourists. A real Bob Dylan tyger wouldn't have looked at it twice.

John Gibbens, author of The Nightingales Code: A poetic study of Bob Dylan, writes in his Bow Down to Her on Sunday Web article:
But a song can have hidden or other meanings in another way: not as concealed within it or behind it, but hidden in the sense that we dont see them until we see the larger form of which the thing we are looking at is a part. These are the relations that give a work of art its third dimension, its depth. The larger form is the artists body of work and also the order of words that Northrop Frye speaks of, the total form of literature.

In his book The Nightingales Code: A poetic study of Bob Dylan (2001), John Gibbens quotes from Henry Millers surreal My Dream of Mobile: a chapter in The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945). Not that Gibbens mentions how to locate it or even that it is just a chapter rather than a larger work. (I had to go to Sodom and Gomorrah to get it.) Here is a smaller snippet from Gibbenss own excerpt, the snippet fitting perfectly with the ways I have thought about Bob Dylans Jokerman since 1983; and from within the first few listenings. When I saw the excerpt in 2002, the snippet below just leapt out at me as original Jokerman inspiration (even though Gibbens does not evidently use it in that way) directly in keeping with the interpretative tenor of much that I had already thought and written:
Events transpire in all declensions at once; they are never conjugated. What is not Gog is Magogand at nine punkt Gabriel always blows his horn. But is it music? Who cares?

Dylans Gabriel blows his horn lyric, links, via Henry Miller, Love And Theft (2001) with Infidels (1983), where theres far more alchemy than in that much later album so celebrated for its cut and paste. But what do you care? What does a badchan like Dylan care whether the Rams Horn Music blowing through concept-album Infidelss Rosh Hashanah code in the lyrics is rabbinically proscribed from being blown as a specifically musical instrument? Or, for that matter, whether anybody comes close, Mick Brown, to picking up on that critical breadcrumb oversight (Larry Yudelson)? Jokerman:
Youre a man of the mountains, you can walk on the clouds Manipulator of crowds, youre a dream twister Youre going to Sodom and Gomorrah But what do you care? Aint nobody there would want to marry your sister

http://www.ajudaica.com/judaica101/religious-articles/shofar/
Judaica 101 Judaica and Jewish Guide Shofar In Later Times The Shofar is discussed in the Talmud and later rabbinic writings. Though following the destruction of the temple it was forbidden to play musical instruments, rabbinical authorities ruled that the Shofar is not a musical instrument.

The Tweedles know the secrets of the breeze in Love And Thefts opening song. In the closing song, Sugar Baby:
Just as sure as were living, just as sure as youre born Look up, look upseek your Makerfore Gabriel blows his horn

So we have this: hurricane blowing; blew Jackie Ps mind (1983) secrets of the breeze; Gabriel blows his horn (2001) And via the Miller passage anyone who wants to be uncool and come close (like home-theorist Mick Brown, Mick the Exclusive) to understanding Dylans Eighties work can see that Infidels and Love And Theft are not shofar apart at least in respect of blowing. Anyone except Howard Sounes, that is. Until now. Childrens writer Nigel Hinton inhabited (Whitmanesque) multitudes (above the surface waste). Hinton in Into the Future, Knocked Out and Loaded in the highbrow former Dylan fanzine The Telegraph in the late Eighties:
So, since 1979, I have found Dylans work to be largely lacking in that quality that put him in another class from everyone else. Even when his songs in this period had been clever (and many of them have been clever and beautiful) they have always been explicit. The meaning is all there on the surface and there has not been that elusive, ambiguous quality with which he used to manage to invest even simple words so that they would suddenly open up to a new meaning. Even rich and complex songs such as Jokerman are rich and complex only on the surface they do not have resonances that suddenly bloom to reveal something previously unthought of by the listener. There has been no mystery in his art and, simultaneously, he has been less musically and vocally inventive.

But with the truth shofar off, what good will it do? Dont Fall Apart on Me Tonight, closing song of Infidels:

Lets try to get beneath the surface waste, girl No more booby traps and bombs No more decadence and charm No more affection thats misplaced, girl No more mudcake creatures lying in your arms What about that millionaire with the drumsticks in his pants? He looked so baffled and so bewildered When he played and we didnt dance

The less baffled and bewildered John Gibbens on p 190:

Even with his creativity undimmed, as in the lyric writing of Infidels (some of the most potent of his entire career) when it came to presenting the work to the world his sureness of touch failed him without that connection to the current of the times.

Dylans Infidels left his listeners so baffled and bewildered when he played and they didnt dance. Gibbens p 345:
Though there are a few wonderful things on each of these records, and some that come from the same period and were hidden, by and large Dylan was baffled in his attempts to find again a public voice befitting the times. The original Infidels, which was to have included BLIND WILLIE McTELL and FOOT OF PRIDE, would have been as powerful and troubling a record as he'd ever put out, but he opted for controversy over contrariety and the linear over the labyrinthine. At the root of this choice there seems to be a failing confidence in his public's ability to follow what he was on about. A judicious CD edition of Infidels that restored some of the first cuts might still prove a belated masterpiece.

Gibbens p 101:
Likewise the invocation, "Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune", is countered right at the end of the record by a verse of typical and brilliant scorn . . .

Which is this:
What about that millionaire with the drumsticks in his pants? He looked so baffled and so bewildered When he played and we didnt dance

As for 2012s Duquesne Whistle, nothing but a penny whistle in a teacup for the Dylan world to blow (in the St James Hotel in St James Street to the tune of none other than Infidels out-take Blind Willie McTell). Whereunto then shall I liken the Warmuthian cut-and-paste generation? and to what are they like?
32They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept.

2012 Paul Kirkman, Messianic Dylanologist.