Jingle Jangle Morning

Bob on Bob: Dylan talks in the New Yorker is great article on the statesman of folk:

He is a songwriter. He likes to talk about songs. When interviewers figure this out, the work gets easier. Of course, many of Dylan’s interviewers want to talk about songs, too, Dylan’s songs. Often, they try to get him to interpret them, but Dylan does not think that songs were meant to be interpreted, so this line of questioning can lead to some ugly dialectical moments. “What’s your new album about?” Dylan was asked during a televised press conference in San Francisco in 1965. “Oh, it’s about, uh—just about all kinds of different things—rats, balloons. They’re about the only thing that comes to my mind right now,” he said.

I agree with this. Strongly. Songs are songs. They are self-contained, and by dissecting them and over-analyzing you run the risk of destroying their character. Pulling away the curtain.

I always hated aspects of literature study for this reason. I love reading. I love grabbing a book and immersing myself in whatever world is held within the pages. I strongly feel that searching, clawing, for some deeper meaning ruins the enjoyment of letting yourself into that world. Halts the suspension of belief.

Art, all art, is what you get out of it. It shouldn’t be about trying to work out what the artist (or author/lyricist/sculptor/bogan/whatever) was thinking at the time. About tying it to politics or sex or war or tv.

Maybe that black dot really is just a black dot. Maybe not. Maybe he’s being literal when he sings about suicide, maybe he’s alluding to something else. It shouldn’t matter.

Rats and balloons and the light at crack of dawn.

Posted in Flatbeat on Sunday September 3, 2006.