Ode to a Song

(Our friend, Jake Dockter, has been kind enough to submit, for your widespread reception, a piece about hearing. Enjoy his actuations.)

"To a song whose title I can't remember

Late night radio, fm dial
down on low end, the 80's
tucked amongst npr, talk radio and public hippie dippie radio
was a song.

Its simple refrain and simple lyrics grabbed me as I almost scanned by
staying away from static, from hard rock, from country.
I needed something simple i needed something clean

The song had already started, I mostly caught the end
but the guitar, the trumpet, the drums
all came slowly, slowly, slowly.
with the window rolled down, crossing that bridge across the river
the still, warm, summer air
it fit.

The station may have been one of those weird random waves coming in from Seattle,
or bouncing off a satellite, or some reflective piece of atmosphere.
My grandfather, living in the mountains of southern California
once talked to a trucker in Texas on their CB radios,
some kind of miracle,
the air carrying voices and music to distant places and distant radios and distant people.

In our collection of family letters,
my great-grandmother was written to by a man on an island off the coast of Alaska.
She was a singer, on the radio, in the 40's,
and one night performed and sang and then went home and went to sleep.
But in that night the waves of her song, the broadcast
kept traveling, out across the pacific,
the lonely waves of ocean pushing her
until she reached a man in a small cabin on a small island
who sat in rapt attention,
and after hearing, had to write a letter.

In the car, on that night, that song came from somewhere
and its simplicity held me, and then faded into the static.
I fiddled with the knobs and buttons and dials
but it was gone.
And i am back to the hardrock, and country and talk radio
which i meant to hear, which is supposed to reach me

I'd rather listen to those stolen sounds
and random, wandering noises
that i was never meant to hear."

-Jake Dockter

Dylan of the Week, Mk. 3

“Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”
Bob Dylan
Hard Rain – 1976



I've been disembarked! I left not that long ago. Here is what brought me to where I am. Doesn't it feel like air? Like the sound of the breath of a girl lying next to you in bed in the morning? Sun cuts through the window and slices up your legs. It feels so good, like an aria that blows life into the Ragman, the French Girl, Mona, Ruthy, the Neon Madmen, and Shakespeare. We can't send any messages because we've got nothing to say. All we do is feel anymore – like the lovers in bed. What the hell would we have to say, even if the lines of communication worked? Tell tales of getting in fights with the railroad men? Being stuck in the cities of Tennessee? Why would we say this when others could say it so much better? His voice shakes the shit out of your soul. His buddy's guitar rives your hammer and anvil. Its almost comical how good of a time they're having. It almost destroys the musicians, but never the music. It destroyed his marriage, but that had been going south for a while already. But here we have the chance - Taste his fingers! Sleep in his voice! Get drunk and never stop listening to this song!

Dylan of the Week, Mk. 2

"All You Have To Do Is Dream"
Bob Dylan
1967



This is the music that never dies. The type of music that is resurrected but never dead, never really needing anything. Something that exists without intervention. Something more like a form than an instantiation. Its confusing. Its because of the way its reckless, because of the way the guitar is far too loud at the beginning of the solo. The way that they just can't manage to stop singing the song at the end. Because the song tumbles into itself, like its already going when it starts. Does any of this make sense? What's it about? A DREAM! A nothing. Conceivably a something, but definitely not real. This shit can't die because its never born, or maybe stillborn. And what the hell is a “floorbird” anyway? Whatever it is, its gotta be American. “...because in America the fantasy of the country sells everything else and everything else on sale sells the country:

ALL YOU
HAVE
TO DO
IS DREAM!”


(Of all the communal, secret, everything music that Bob Dylan and the Band made in their houses in Woodstock, this has to be one of the gems. And that's saying something. We've got a selection here ranging from “I'm Not There (1956)”, “Tears of Rage”, and “Lo and Behold!” to “You Ain't Goin' Nowhere” and “Baby, won't You be my Baby”. Anything that was ever said by an American (and I'm even talking about the politicians and shysters) is spoken of here. And what a song to record! An Everly Brothers hit at the time of the end of the revolution of rock n' roll, when pop was consumed by the radio and spit out to the masses (sound familiar?). Little girls listened to this music! Jerry Lee Lewis was daily exorcising demons from his piano, Little Richard was baptizing in the name of Ripin' It Up, and Gene Vincent had some strange complex which resulted in an overactive libido which resulted in crotch guitar. And here were the Everly Brothers crooning “gee whiz”? Although time has rightly justified the song as wonderful, it was scary pop at the time. And here comes Dylan in '67, rebooting the thing as a song of the real, abandoned America that doesn't care about anything but gettin' down. Because “restriction causes damage / And damage causes lust”. Subversion. Che Guevara had some things to learn here.)

Dylan of the Week, Mk. 1

“You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”
Blood on the Tracks – 1974
Bob Dylan



“Situations have ended sad,
Relationships have all been bad.
Mine've been like Verlaine's and Rimbaud.
But there's no way I can compare
All those scenes to this affair,
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go.

I'll look for you in old Honolulu,
San Francisco, Ashtabula,
Yer gonna have to leave me now, I know.
But I'll see you in the sky above,
In the tall grass, in the ones I love,
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go.”

The lady leaves, unexpectedly. I waited for her for a couple hours, then she left. I wanted her to say things like “I love you” or “Have you ever read Seneca?” I spew invectives. I talk to Alex – smell some of her on him, smell some of that. Sometimes the worst thing is maturity – Rash, Rash, Rash! (cholera dances through my eyes like a drunken otter) The worst bit is that we do see them “in the ones I (we) love”. The universe’s conceit is to pull us into relationships with others like the ones we’ve got, but maximized, leading to the sky, leading to transcendence. Does she want to stay? Impatience or impertinence. I looked for a while (maybe not in “old Honolulu”), but couldn’t find the original diamond. But oh! those beginnings, those middles before it went to vituperative shit. Sublimity! Does anything compare? NO! Not since the beginning of time has man conquered or invented its likeness. It is because we cannot “compare / All those scenes to this affair” that we loiter after the lope. Hands in pockets, heads down, hearts in stomachs, thoughts in the dirt. Ultimately I am lonesome, but that lonesomeness has conceptual companions, even if I don’t have actual ones. Its accompanied by serenity and self-pity. Revelations will take their time before they appear again. They can still be heard, though, in Bob’s harp. Listen to the way he blows after the final verse – almost like he’s sighing into the harmonica. He’s got a handful of disintegration and he’s letting everyone know it, with his playful lugubriousness.