The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #151929 Message #3551037
Posted By: GUEST
20-Aug-13 - 10:44 AM
Thread Name: Bob Dylan 50yr. hoax
Subject: RE: Bob Dylan 50yr. hoax
It's actually harder to deliberately write some meaningless lyrics (providing they are reasonably good lyrics in terms of their effect, structure, rythm, etc) than it is to just naturally write lyrics that do mean something...at least at the subconscious level...because the subconscious almost always gets involved in the process.
It's a laborious process to deliberately write something meaningless. It's a natural process to convey meaning. Some of Dylan's lines in the surrealist stuff he wrote in '65-66 probably didn't mean anything in particular...but on the other hand, some of them definitely did. I can't think of any song he wrote in that period which doesn't carry a pretty evident and strong meaning, but there will be certain odd phrases in them here and there which are pretty arbitrary.
There is, however, an emotional foundation in them that's usually clear as can be, and it says something meaningful, and that's why people like those songs.
Now, you want to see some really chaotic free verse by Dylan that'll mostly leave you scratching your head? Try reading "Tarantula" (the book).
He had a contract to write that book, didn't really want to much, and he ended up just churning out a bunch of surrealist stuff that didn't communicate anything anyone can make much sense out of.
The period when he wrote that way was pretty brief...basically in 1965 and '66. If you look at the songs he did in '67 after the motor cycle accident when he recorded John Wesley Harding, they are spare, simple, economical use of words, well expressed, and well sung. Most of them are nondenominational religious parables or moral tales about the fall from grace...and it seems pretty clear that he's talking about himself.