The Poet Speaks

A few gems from Bob Dylan's recently released autobio, "Chronicles." Have not read much of it yet, but its great reading. Paints a unique point of view of times of changin'. . .

"I just thought of mainstream culture as lame as hell and a big trick. It was like the unbroken sea of frost that lay outside the window and you had to have awkward footgear to walk on it. I didn't know what age of history we were in nor what the truth of it was. Nobody bothered with that. If you told the truth, that was all well and good and if you told the un-truth, well, that's still well and good. Folk songs had taught me that. As for what time it was it was always just beginning to be daylight and I know a little about history, too--the history of a few nations and states—and it was always the same pattern. Some early archaic period where society grows and develops and thrives, then some classical period where the society reaches its maturation point and then a slacking off period where decadence makes things fall apart."


"I had no idea which one of these stages America was in. There was nobody to check with. A certain rude rhythm was making it all sway, though. It was pointless to think about it. Whatever you were thinking could be dead wrong."


"...songs, to me were more important than just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reallity, some different republic, some liberated republic. Greil Marus, the music historian, would some thirty years later call it "the invisible republic."


"It's hard to describe what makes a character or an event folk song worthy. It probably has something to do with a character being fair and open and honest and open. Bravery in an abstract way."