Reading about Legends: Bob Dylan

The Bill Gates divorce and the articles which followed was like a personal loss to me. Unknowingly I had become a fan of his, reading his articles / talks / his book list. For a long time, my mind still could not accept it. I am 50+ so it is not that I am a teenager and infatuated with Justin Beiber. There are so many corporate scams which are written in India that now we have become thick skinned if we hear about ILFS (the latest one going around). There also these hushed departures when a person is asked to leave overnight and the stories start floating about inappropriate behavior, bribe etc.

Although I know that we are humans and are allowed some distractions, but I always wonder why people at such senior levels who have everything they need – money, fame,  would cross the line knowing that they are hitting the danger zone. Is it worth it? But corporate actions doesn’t interest me (I think most of it is greed) as much as the creative folks mind and heart.

Inside my heart somewhere there was always a hidden creative light which was shining like a sun till teenage and after the whole engineering/medical melodrama of life landed me in the fringes of creative world. So as a day job creativity took shape in videos, websites, emailers campaigns & not the way my teenage heart had visualized but not blank also – so a middle ground.

Hence, it’s fascinates me on how a person writes books, songs, makes certain movies – what’s the inspiration / drive, how they have grown. With the internet you can get drowned with opinions but there are a few columns / journalists I read time to time. And some land up on at your inbox – thanks to Netflix / Prime / Disney and not forget the Criterion channel & now MUBI. 

The Other place of discovery is Blossoms where in that mountain of books you just may find a book which you never knew existed. That is how I picked up Bob Dylan’s Chronicles: Part 1 (just for record there are no other parts – it is like the last book of GOT, still being written).

And when I did a search on Netflix, I found a Dylan documentary Rolling Thunder Revue directed by non-other than Martin Scorsese. With my playlists having most of the Dylan albums, it was easy to envelope yourself with Dylan, I was listening to Oh! Mercy and reading about how the album came into existence. I also Googled and read about New Orleans a melting pop of jazz, folk and music – that is place a house was converted into studio and Oh Mercy was recorded.

Bob Dylan’s book is like a blog in some sense, he just rambles in a way that it almost feels like he is narrating you a story. Imagine a big wooden house in heavy winter where the logs are being turned over to spread some warmth and both of us are sipping some scotch. The language is very different I think that is way he would have spoken in his early days and maybe now as well. So it’s not an easy rad and type set also not the usual font – this is a 2^nd hand book which was printed in UK in 2005.

What stuck me – one was his sense of observation & sense of detailing; it was like he was capturing the milieu of 50’s / 60’ & New Orleans so beautifully that I could visualize the whole scenario. A similar feeling comes to you when you listen to Tambourine Man or Hard rain is falling. I think that is what makes a great poet / writer. The words creates a whole new world in front of you – This are the words of Kazuo Ishiguro for whom Bob Dylan’s songs were an inspiration and why he got into writing.

I don’t want to judge Dylan or any of the greats because they also toil through the lives like we all do and what we wanted to do and we do sometimes are very different. Although his inspiration Woodie Guthrie just did that all his life – sing folk songs, his sings took a very different edge as he passed through his lifetime.

Looking at the documentary it did not feel any different what so many Hollywood movies have visualised the late 60’s & 70’s hippie culture. It was very different from what you saw in 1963 Newport Folk Festival (63/64) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pid0Ud4y3XY / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeP4FFr88SQ ) – 2 of my favourite videos.

I still live with that image of Bob Dylan in my mind when I go to sleep.

For informed reviews read:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/oct/16/highereducation.biography

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/05/books/so-you-thought-you-knew-dylan-hah.html

https://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/books/reviews/10010/

Overstory: Richard Powers

 

Some books change your lens, and you start looking at things in a completely different way, and when that deals with the fundamentals of life – suddenly you start connecting the dots. Overstory is one such book which will make you look at trees in a completely different way.

The basic premise of the book is that trees talk to each other, take care of the world around it and are intelligent. The older generation / tribes / sages in the context of India understood this and hence they are a big part of myths and philosophy – like Rigveda / Bible etc.

Right from page 1 trees are symbiotically woven into every character and their family. I loved the choice of characters and for me, the first section – Roots which creates the foundation of all the 8 characters was the best part and held me spellbound by it’s lovely storytelling.

The second part – Stem is all about getting them together for the cause – which is protecting the trees from corporates who were razing them to ground to create resorts or properties. Some portion of it was long winded and but this is where the trees form the center piece – trees are described in a way that you can touch and feel them. I googled and saw the Red Wood trees and they are nothing like I had seen in Assam or the Himachal / Uttarakhand belt. These are like giants and, I cannot imagine a forest of such trees or how would somebody cut them.

Some portions of the book could have been smaller (630+ pages), some characters were there for no reason – at least I could not connect with characters like that of Ray & Nilay. But one would overlook these minor things and admire the ambition of the book – which is to write a book where trees are the real heroes. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2019. and is based on the principles laid out in The hidden life of trees By Peter Wohllwben.

As I was reading the book over a period of week ten days, I would go for a walk and look at the trees around my apartment with awe – imagining what’s happening inside the tree and all the birds, squirrels, woodpeckers, ants, mushrooms, bees, insects and the whole eco-system which exists because of these trees.

Trees always fascinated me and they have been part of many folklore, stories, poem. Here’s something from the book which I really liked:

We all travel the Milky Way together, tress and men….In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness. Muir

The Bystander at 51

 Is that what I am,

A question comes to one,

who turned 51

There is a war out there:

at every turn of the page, every switch of a channel.

Sample a few:

People of Lakshadweep protest just to survive,

Farmers and their family from Punjab Protest to no avail

Villager in Uttarakhand protest against the hydro projects in Uttarakhand.

Can they stop:

The dams & ports being built.

Reverse the policies.

The pages of history are replete with

1000’s of people maybe millions

Laying down their lives

Knowing that

Very soon

They will soon become 

part of

Public amnesia.

The only thing this bystander can do,

Is to sign some petitions which come in Wapp

Or make some contribution to a welfare schemes.

Beyond that,

he lives in the imaginary world where;

the stories come to an end.

movies come to an end.

He knows'

 this war will only end

When the world comes to an end.