Dylan on a Sunday

So, what to do about those pesky "Christian" albums that Dylan produced in the 80's. Most assessments of Dylan pan these years as a low point in his career. While his soul might have been saved, he was lost musically. He sold out, became preachy, turned his back on his previous work and his audience. You get the picture.

But I've read in the past few weeks a few reassessments of these years from Dylan devotees who had once been in that group that held that the Christian years were the low point for Dylan. Truth is, these reappraisals go, when taken now in relation to the overall body of his work, the Christian albums aren't really that much of an anomaly. In fact, some of his most interesting songs, musically speaking, are on these albums. And no one denies that Dylan is vitally engaged with the music in these works. If he's lost, no one told Dylan. And his concerts, these writers admit, were nothing if not passionate. From that standpoint, this may have actually been Dylan at his best.

So, as a theologian, it might seem that my take on this might be "told you so." I am glad if the knee-jerk because-its-Christian-it-must-be-artistically-inferior days might be waning. But that's less because I'm a theologian and more because everyone's work should be taken on its merits, Christian or not. Truthfully, as a theologian these are not his most interesting albums to me. I'm not sure what Dylan's personal beliefs are these days, but his current work is still shot through with biblical allusions and theological themes that are more interesting to me than his particular brand of theology in the "Christian" albums.

But what does interest me in this reappraisal is the issue of passion. In fact, its this characterization that makes me want to listen more deeply to these albums. I am convinced that the best art is done from the inside out, that passion communicates, that passion embodied conveys authenticity. And that passion comes and goes, or at least those times when everything is shot through with it.

I think this is true for artists, but also for being Christian. I don't think its unusual for there to be seasons when we're set on fire, completely sold-out, animated by some source of passion beyond ourselves. These are days to cherish. But I don't think it unusual for that to be only for a time. When your hair is burning, its tempting to think this is the way things should always be and that this is how everyone should be. This is understandable, and maybe we need people who are on fire to believe that so that we can remember what that's like too even if it feels a little condescending. But I think that these days mostly live on through something that burns on a little lower flame, one that doesn't flame out.

I think Dylan's recent stuff is his best, most interesting. And I don't think we get these last few cd's apart from his "Christian" period. So, here's to passion and its lingering genius.

Dylan on a Sunday

Sean Wilentz, in his new book Dylan in America, writes the following: "Anyone interested in Dylan’s body of work must face the challenge of owning its paradoxical combination of tradition and defiance." I love this statement, especially the "paradoxical combination of tradition and defiance" bit. As I noted in my last post on preaching, a vivid, living voice always combines both strong elements of continuity and discontinuity. There has to be both traditional and subversive elements. I like Wilentz's choice of the word defiance in this regard.

We have no choice about the tradition part. None of us are born free of the moments or movements that come before us. Some of us live under the illusion of being the first human (e.g. Alexander Campbell's desire to read Scripture as if no one had ever read it before), but I would argue that those persons who are tagged with the adjective "original" are often those most acutely aware of how they stand in relation to what has come before. In fact, what is new is often not the evasion or usurping of the old, but the fusing of various traditions.

What we do have some say about is our relationship to the traditions we receive given our level of awareness. Some of us are content to stay within the smooth banks of what has been handed to us. Though even this represents some form of change, since we never do the same thing in the exact same situation--we never wade into the same stream, it is always moving. The meaning of the event, even for those content with simply mimicking, is therefore never the same. One can never go home.

Using some of the same logic, the decision to be subversive or "defiant" is also ironically what keeps a tradition vital and alive. Subversiveness extends the life of a category. And Dylan does this well. Even when Dylan "plugged in," he still saw himself extending the musical influences that had brought him to that moment. According to Wiletz, he is acutely aware of himself as a minstrel, a vaudevillean, a troubador. He is keeping these traditions alive by blending them, bending them, and even defying them. He is original precisely because he is so vitally aware of various historical streams.

So, here's my hypothesis: the more thickly construed one's sense of the world inherited, the more articulated that sense is, the greater the possibilities for creativity, for newness, for originality. More, the greater we understand how we have been thrown into the reality we now occupy, the more likely our acts of defiance and subversion will be life giving.

Dylan on a Sunday

There are two new books out on Dylan and I'm trying to create the space and money to read them both. I don't read everything on Dylan. I've been given books on Dylan on the mistaken assumption that I am as obsessed as the person who gave the book to me, and I haven't read them. But I'm anxious to read these books. The reason is a great interview with both of the authors that I found last week.


Greil Marcus, Bob Dylan, is a critic who has followed Dylan closely and written a lot about him through the years. Sean Wilentz is a historian who has written something of a cultural history, Bob Dylan in America. Wilentz claims to have become a writer because he became a fan of Dylan's. "I was never interested in figuring out what the songs meant. I was interested in figuring out my response to them, and other people's responses. I wanted to get closer to the music than I could by listening to it—I wanted to get inside of it, behind it, and writing about it, through it, inside of it, behind it, was my way of doing that."


I love the interview because both talk about things that in which I am interested in my other life--the way words and performances create worlds, and the way an artistic imagination works and is funded. For both, the song is the medium that allows Dylan to capture multiple, stray worlds in a single place. They know his world, the literary references, the folk history, Dylan's own notions of historical consciousness. They hear the echoes, recognize the allusions, and know just how large the imaginative landscape is from which Dylan performs. And I'm interested in that. So, over time, I will buy and read these books.


But the interview is great as well. Here are a few of my favorite excerpts:


SW: One of the marks of Dylan's genius is the ability to shuffle time and space like a deck of cards. He can make the past sound like the present and the present sound like the past. In doing this, he is a great, great historian, like Greil says. But Dylan also does something that historians can't do, which is to actually commingle the past and the present in ways that are astonishing.


GM: So it's that sense that there are so many worlds behind and within the songs to discover and live in, but also this sense of empathy for the people who appear in his songs. Dylan once said, maybe sarcastically, that all of his songs really ended with "Good luck." But that may be what he says to the people in his songs.


SW: In the liner notes to World Gone Wrong, he talks about how virtual reality has taken over, or is taking over—he calls it "hegemony"—and people are just not able to write songs like the ones that he is singing for the dead and out of the dead; they can't write those kinds of songs any more. He makes it pretty clear that, in some ways, all he can do to battle this hegemony, as he calls it, is to sing those songs, and to continue to write his own songs out of that tradition, out of those traditions, the many traditions, not just one. It's not exactly the attitude of a big rock star who thinks he's all powerful; this is a guy who feels like he and the world are up against forces that are so complex and so overpowering that singing these songs is all that he can do.


SW: You're up against a lot in this world, and you may be up against more now than you were in 1961. But as he says, he finds his lexicon in the songs, and in the songs he can find a measure of hope to battle against it. But that means more than just protesting; it's not about protesting. Well, maybe it is always about protesting—all of his songs are protest songs. But it's really about exploring realms of human imagination that he finds being flattened out in this virtual reality in which we live.


I hope my work is in some measure is recognizable in light of that last sentence.

Dylan on a Sunday

Though I write here frequently about Bob Dylan, the truth is I listen to him much less than I listen to other artists. I don't have a Pandora station for Bob Dylan, (though I'm more likely to listen to the channels I've created where he is likely to pop up now and then). Dylan songs are sprinkled throughout my itunes playlists, but none of them appear in my top 25 played songs list. Don't get me wrong, there are times when I could spend the whole day listening to Dylan, especially his later stuff (I seldom listen to an entire album of his early songs), but these days come along only occasionally.


I'm not exactly sure what mood it is that makes Dylan the appropriate musical companion. I know there are musical moods for which Dylan is not particularly useful. Joy, for instance. If I want ridiculously happy music, better said, music that makes me ridiculously happy, Dylan's not the choice. If I need background music, something to stay comfortably in the background, Bob's not the guy. And, somewhat surprisingly, he wouldn't be a choice for a broken heart. I mean, Dylan sings about the gritty moments of life, and broken hearts are certainly on that side of life. Dylan's songs know about broken hearts, but not in an overly sentimental way. Everyone's heart gets broken. That's the deal. Move on. Dylan knows love, and he knows love disappointed, but he doesn't linger there.


The possible exception might be, Till I fell in Love With You.


Well my nerves are exploding and my body's tense
I feel like the whole world got me pinned up against the fence
I've been hit too hard; I've seen too much
Nothing can heal me now, but your touch
I don't know what I'm gonna do
I was all right 'til I fell in love with you


It's not so much that his heart has been broken, but life is hard enough without the burden of love, or worse the loss of love's safe harbor. It's the absence of love that makes the other stuff, the bad stuff, harder to bear.


Still, Dylan is no Sarah McLachlan, nursing love's pain for all its worth. Or Elvis Costello for that matter. They'll hand you the stinking kleenex. Dylan, not so much. And I like that about Dylan.


So, here's a few stabs at what kind of day would send me to Dylan. An ironic day. A thoughtful day, but in a whimsical kind of way. A look the world in the eye kind of day in order to wink. Or a day to remember things deeply. I hope I have one soon.

Dylan on a Sunday

Dylan came to me in a dream last night. Veeery vivid. And I think the only time I've ever dreamed of Dylan. Certainly, the only one I remember.

He was short and slight and soft-spoken, (looked like he does in the Oh, Mercy days) and amazingly reassuring. He was there for me, not the other way around. He said hello to me and I was dumbstruck. All I could think to say was, "I saw this guy named Jakob Dylan in concert recently." I thought he would walk away. Maybe they don't talk, or he's behind on child support. Or worse, it's just so horribly obvious and not cool. But despite my clear inability to say something meaningful, he smiled at me and asked, "was he any good?" I assured him that he was very good.

Then he looked at me and said, "It's gonna be alright. Your tremor makes you a better guitar player." (I have this tremor in my hands that is increasingly making my life a challenge and definitely doesn't make me a better guitar player). Then I told him I needed to go to bed, and he said he did too and could he stay at my  place. And so he did, in an orange sleeping bag in a guest room I didn't recognize.

I'm sure this all means something bizarre, and I know I haven't eaten healthy foods the last few days, and that the orange sleeping bag probably means I will die in the near future or lose all my toenails or something. But today I'm leaning on the words, "it's gonna be alright." And I think if an angel appeared to me in a dream, Dylan would be the necessary visage to make me listen. And I've thought today that maybe he's my spirit-animal, like in a Native American sort of way. And that's pretty cool too. You can have an owl or a badger or a trout. I've got Dylan. And that's nice.

Dylan on a Sunday

VH1 has been airing a series of shows under the banner, "The Greatest." They compile votes to determine the top 100 in various categories. One category is greatest artist, and by artist they mean musical. Dylan came in at number five behind only (in ascending order) Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, and the Beatles. Not bad company.

Asked for a comment, Dylan said he was going for a walk.

No, not really. But I imagine if he knows at all, he shrugged. This is because I have only an imaginary relationship with Bob (or Zim, which is what he lets me call him), and I want to project certain values of mine on him. And I don't want this top five thing to matter to him.

And part of that is because I don't want this kind of stuff to matter to me. Not where Dylan stands, but where I stand. I know that all of us are prone to comparing ourselves to others, and sometimes this gets in the way of being an authentic person. People who have a certain public-ness though are more susceptible than others, I think, to this temptation. And I have a modest amount of public-ness.

How do my speeches measure up? My publishing? My programs? My blog? My hair? My guitar playing/songwriting vis-a-vis other theologian/wannabe rockstars? These are demons I beat back on a regular basis. (But seriously, for an olding dude, I have great hair).

I have a John Updike quote taped above my desk that I try to believe in. "One can either see, or be seen." I'm trying to see, but wouldn't mind being seen in the process. I want Updike's quote to be true. And I want it to be true of me. Which means I also have to believe things like, "if you want to save your life, you must lose it." I know for some people its the resurrection that presses credulity. For me its this losing and saving business. More than anything else, I want this one to be true.

So, I hope Dylan shrugged.

Dylan on a Sunday

Last Sunday, Bob Dylan was in concert at McMenamin's Edgefield in Troutdale, OR. And I was stuck here in Michigan.

I'm reticent to see Dylan in concert these days. I've only seen him once, a few years ago in Dallas, and it was perfect. And I know from many who have seen him several times that this is not always the case with Dylan. So, I'm reluctant to mess with that. But to see him at Edgefield...

I worked for eleven years for a congregation located about three miles from Edgefield. It's simply one of my favorite places in the world. Edgefield, like Dylan, has been many different things in its existence. It started as a New Deal poor farm and later did a stint as a home for the mentally ill. Now the McMenamin brothers, known for their brewpubs throughout the Northwest, have turned it into a hotel/vineyard/winery/artisan hangout/pitch and putt golf course/brewpub/lush gardens/fine dining/billiards room/music venue extravaganza.

When I have the chance to introduce friends to Portland, the greatest city on the planet, I always take them to Edgefield. (Those of you who read Richard Beck's blog should ask him about Edgefield. Ask him what "any flat surface will do" means). Nancy and I have stayed often in the hotel. In fact, I celebrated my last birthday there--the big five-o--with several of my favorite people. It's just a great place.

They only started doing concerts outdoors at Edgefield in the last five years or so, so I've never been to a concert there. They have started to attract great bands--Wilco, The Black Crowes, Avett Brothers, and now Dylan (who shared his two days there with John Mellencamp). I would love to see a concert there.

Edgefield makes me feel connected--connected to the earth, to people, to art, to my body, to pleasure. And this is increasingly important to me spiritually. I consider myself a theologian of the cross. It is my one theme. Too often, however, the cross is only seen as punishment or suffering or enduring. But it is more to me. It is God's complete identification with creaturely existence. It is God going to weddings, eating with tax collectors and sinners, welcoming children, and enduring death. God on the cross is full contact life. It is joy and sorrow, love and grief. It is life fully embodied and embraced. I go to Edgefield because it is good to be reminded often of how delicious life can be.

I can't say for sure that I would have risked the one great taste of Dylan live that I have. But I can say that seeing him at Edgefield would surely have tempted me.

Dylan on a Sunday

Satellite radio this morning. Listened to the station, The Loft. First song, Van Morrison. Second song, Bob Dylan. That's already a good morning. The Dylan song was "When I Paint My Masterpiece."

Masterpiece. That's a tall word. And not one you want lurking around when you're writing a dissertation. It's hard enough to put one word after another without them having to be so many sparkling bits of glass for a stained glass window.

Honestly, most days I'm writing to finish. If I happen to put things together in an interesting or compelling way, so much the better. But there are days when I think to myself, "dang, this could be something." These are dangerous thoughts.

Its words like masterpiece that keeps dissertations from getting written. After all, its often the first great album that keeps the second one from coming out, or that keeps Pet Sounds from being released for years (Brian Wilson's rumored "masterpiece").

I believe in masterpieces, though perhaps not for me. But I also believe they are mysterious. They're as much lightning in a bottle as they are sweat and toil (though I do believe they also require sweat and toil). I think Dylan, who has had a few in his career, knows this. Life is what happens while you're waiting for your masterpiece. So, I'm going to find the best ordinary words I have, string them together as quickly as possible, and live my life.

Dylan on a Sunday

If you ever go to Houston, better walk right

Keep your hands in your pockets and your gun belts tied

If you're asking for drama, if you're looking for a fight

If you ever go to Houston, boy you better walk right

These lyrics are from Dylan's latest cd, Together Through Life, which drips with Southwestern culture. I listened to it Saturday as I drove from Dallas to Houston (long story). The cd (good, but not one of my favorites) is at home on the river walk or in a taqueria or in a seedy honky-tonk with a neon lone star bottle, half burned out, shining in the window. It sweats like a hot and humid hill country night. And this might be why its not my favorite Dylan work.

Of all possible weather conditions, hot and humid is for me the worst. If hell is a dry heat, I would prefer that to Houston. So, if you want to scare me righteous, the line would be "if you lie, you'll go to Houston." After two Minnesota winters and one in Michigan, I can say with a chest full of conviction that I prefer a northern winter to a south Texas summer. Which is to say, I'd rather thaw my eye balls than endure sweaty underwear all day. (Too much information?). I simply don't understand people who hold the opposite view.

Which is why I'm so puzzled that my friends who either live there, or who have in the past, love Houston. They love it. Last Fall, I spent an evening with my son and some of his friends in downtown Houston, and I have to admit I had a lot of fun. My friends who like it find the cultural life energizing. There's stuff to do, great food, museums, concerts, night life. And for them, sweating, horrendous traffic and sharing a city with George H W Bush is not enough to overwhelm the benefits.

I will say this. Both Houston and Dallas seem pretentious to me (unlike P0rtland or Minneapolis), but at least Houston can pull it off. Pretentious in Dallas is posing. Houston wears it more comfortably. One more thing, and this is big to me, diversity in Dallas plays only as a threat. Houston embraces its cosmopolitan-ism. I am at this moment sitting in a Starbucks near the Galleria, and its one of the most ethnically diverse rooms I've ever had coffee in.

None of Dylan's songs are about a Starbucks in Houston. He's going for belt buckles, wildcatters, accordions, pentecostal manliness, and sweaty, serial romance. And that he delivers. I'll listen to it again as I drive today from Houston to the Dallas airport (long story). But at this point I'm happy that Texas and I are not Together Through Life.

Dylan on a Sunday

I started this day in Federal Way, WA. My friend, Jerry, drove me to the airport in his Toyota pick-up at 6 am. I took a commuter flight from Seattle to Portland on a prop plane manufactured in Canada. I got a shuttle from the airport to my hotel room for this evening where they let me check in early. I dumped my stuff in my room and walked to the nearest light rail stop (the Max), changed to the Gresham line at the Gateway transit center and rode it all the way to the end. That left me about a mile and a half from the East County Church of Christ, where I ministered for eleven years. I walked and arrived just in time for the opening song. After services, I walked about a mile to Edgefield, one of my favorite places in all the world, a kind of constant carnival of music, good food and beverage, golf, glass blowing, gardens, etc.

There should be a song in all of that, or two, or three.

I thought about that as I walked to Edgefield. I walked past a long stand of blackberry vines, which are omnipresent in Western Oregon and a nuisance. Except for this time of year, when they have ripe berries. And the best part of that is the smell. I used to run along trails in this area and the smell of the blackberries on the breeze made the run immensely more enjoyable.

Anyways, as I was walking past and smelling the blackberries, I thought this is the kind of thing that would show up in a Dylan song. While the song wouldn't be about it, (or if it were, only in an oblique way) a line about berries on the wind could very well make it into a song. The power of his observations are often what make his lyrics so great.

I am not always the most observant person in the world. Some things simply evade me. So when a particular smell opens up a fist-full of memories, I want to be a poet. I want the few things that I deeply observe to have a mark on the world, to linger, to have a shared existence. And I wish most of all that I could combine that with melody, and a great middle eight, and a chorus with a subtle, but memorable hook. Today will be content with a blog post, oh underachieving today.

Dylan on a Sunday

I visited my Aunt Dorothy today (my mom's aunt, actually). She's in hospice care and so this may very well be the last time I visit with her. She's been a presence in my life. She was my 4th grade Sunday School teacher. During worship, she sat on the aisle on the second row opposite my mother on the other side of the aisle. I have told people that I learned the gospel by paying attention when Dorothy and my mother would nod during my father's sermons.

When I preached for the East County Church in Gresham, OR, Dorothy and her husband, Jess, sat on the second row as I preached. They were always dressed to the nines and became fixtures in our congregation. There was simply no one like them, especially Dorothy.

Dorothy is a Guild, one of my grandfather's younger sisters. And all of them are strong-willed, outspoken, insightful women with a more than a little bit of cantankerous mixed in. My favorite Dorothy story consists of an encounter she had with a famous Church of Christ preacher who had retired and attended the congregation she attended. He had a peculiar view of the Holy Spirit. He couldn't deny that the Bible talked about a personal indwelling of the Spirit, but he maintained that the Spirit was only active in relationship to Scripture, kind of a modified word-only position for those of you CoC'ers.

So, to demonstrate how ridiculous this position was, she bought a necktie, wrapped in in a gift box and gave it to him one Sunday after church. Once he opened it, she told him that she never wanted him to wear it. He protested. "Why would you give me a gift and expect me not to use it!" "Exactly!" she pounced. "Why would God give us the Holy Spirit and not expect us to use it."

Classic Dorothy.

I talked to her husband, Jess, yesterday on the phone. He promised Dorothy he would never put her in a home. And a few months ago, it looked like Dorothy's decline would be fast and final. But she's a tough old boot and is hanging in there. She's improved. And this could go on now indefinitely. And even thought the hospice workers come to their home periodically, along with other helpers, Jess is exhausted. He's 84, and while he's in good health, this is an ordeal.

He told me yesterday that he has fought in the war, been shot at, and had other difficulties in his life, but that this was by far the most difficult thing he's ever done. "I think I can do it, though, see it through, if I could just get a little rest."

I admire Jess. He's been married to Dorothy for 60 years and she is the more dominant figure in their relationship. I'm thinking not everything has gone his way, that he's had to swallow a few things here and there. But here he is, serving Dorothy, beyond his endurance and stamina allows. He wants more than anything to see it through to the end.

So, for Jess today, Dylan on a Sunday is When the Deal Goes Down.

In the still of the night, in the world's ancient light
Where wisdom grows up in strife
My bewildering brain, toils in vain
Through the darkness on the pathways of life
Each invisible prayer is like a cloud in the air
Tomorrow keeps turning around
We live and we die, we know not why
But I'll be with you when the deal goes down

We eat and we drink, we feel and we think
Far down the street we stray
I laugh and I cry and I'm haunted by
Things I never meant nor wished to say
The midnight rain follows the train
We all wear the same thorny crown
Soul to soul, our shadows roll
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down

Well, the moon gives light and it shines by night
When I scarcely feel the glow
We learn to live and then we forgive
O'r the road we're bound to go
More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours
That keep us so tightly bound
You come to my eyes like a vision from the skies
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down

Well, I picked up a rose and it poked through my clothes
I followed the winding stream
I heard the deafening noise, I felt transient joys
I know they're not what they seem
In this earthly domain, full of disappointment and pain
You'll never see me frown
I owe my heart to you, and that's sayin' it true
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down

Dylan on a Sunday

I noticed that Brandi Carlile is playing the White House on the 4th of July. That's got to feel like a pretty big honor. I hope she'll do her cover of "Fortunate Son." That would set them on their ears.

That got me to thinking about what Dylan would do on the 4th of July (mostly because I write this blog). As I write this, he's about to go on stage in Ireland. I doubt he'll sing America the Beautiful, but I could be wrong. I imagine Dylan at this point avoiding anything that would seem like a statement, even if he thought not singing America the Beautiful would be a statement. He might play the White House on the 4th of July, but he would gloss the day, give no indication of its significance. Not make it a big deal, one way or another. At least, that's what I imagine.

One consistent thing about Dylan's music, at least his recent stuff, is that he brooks no idolatries. He writes from inside the details of life these days, not from a stance above it that would allow him some universalizing critique. There are no ideologies or utopias. There is nothing in life that doesn't have another side to it. Dylan is not likely to sermonize. He's more likely to undo you with irony, to let your project fall by its own weight.

I'm more comfortable with this view of life. I missed the patriotic gene somewhere. It's not that I'm not thankful for the life I have, and I know a big part of that is because I live in an impressive country that's gotten a lot of things right. I'm under no pretense that somehow I've earned or deserve the prosperity I enjoy. I've traveled enough to know how much I take for granted. I'm no America basher (though two weeks in Uganda is more than enough to sponsor some real Western guilt).

But I'll also have to admit that Toby Keith turns my stomach and you'll never catch me mouthing the words to a Lee Greenwood song. And if you want to get under my skin at church, talk about America as a Christian nation. I've only rarely enjoyed fireworks (I know, this is kind of grinchy), and parades make me very, very tired. I'm just not constitutionally cut out to be patriotic.

But I'm also wary of hyper-patriotism. I think it is one of the easiest places to set up idolatries, to use God's name for our own aspirations, especially when you're the most "powerful" nation in the world. I hope President Obama prays before he commits troops. But I also hopes he keeps that to himself, lest someone confuse our cause with God's.

I do plan on watching fireworks tonight. And I will give thanks for what we share as a nation. And if I hear Brandi Carlile sing, America the Beautiful, I imagine it will even deliver a goose bump, for which I'll be thankful.

Dylan on a Sunday

The preacher quoted Dylan today. That's what he called him. "Dylan." I moved to the edge of my seat. "Dylan got it right," he said. Finally, something interesting! What would the quote be. I was hoping for obscure, clever, ironic, because these kinds of things hold the possibility of meaning. Obvious is nearly always a disappointment, a cliche, a belly-laugh thief.

And I got obvious. Dang. Church ought to be, but seldom is, the place where you should get something other than obvious. If the world was in good shape, then God should be obvious. If not, then God has to be a surprise, something between the lines, a cure for hiccups.

I got, "You gotta serve somebody." The best thing about this song is the back-up singers. It's not that its bad, exactly. It's not bad. It's just so obvious. And it's an easy dualism. This or that. And those don't go down well with me. I like it all just a bit more complex.

Now, I didn't really expect anything different. I was shocked to hear Dylan's name at all. If I hadn't been so shocked in the first place, I would've guessed "Serve Somebody" or something old like "Blowin in the Wind." No chance it could have been, "Not Dark Yet," or "What was it You Wanted," or even something like "Highway 61 Revisited."

After my Pepperdine presentation, someone who evidently reads this blog (sorry can't remember who), expressed mock surprise that I didn't quote Dylan in my sermon. And I'm pretty sure that I never have. I don't think we have that kind of relationship. I've quoted the Rolling Stones, Heart, U2, Pink Floyd, but never Dylan.

And today's experience convinced me that no one should. The Dylan stuff that would fit in a sermon, at least most sermons, is not his best stuff. And his best stuff doesn't go with anything else. The world of a Dylan song is incommensurate with other worlds. And so is the world of a good sermon. You don't just casually shuffle those kinds of things together.

So, Dylan on a Sunday is always a good thing. But maybe not in a sermon.

Dylan on a Monday

The past two Sundays have been travel days for me, so no new Dylan posts. Yesterday, I was driving back from Toronto in my boss Dodge Caravan rental hoping that no one would recognize me. I felt a little like Clark Griswold.

On the upside, it had a sirius satellite radio and I stumbled across the Theme Time radio show by none other than Bob Dylan. I knew of the show, but not having a sirius radio, had never heard it. Dylan has produced 100 episodes to great reviews, though it appears Theme Time's run is over.

I heard two episodes, and they were great. The first episode featured songs, stories, quips, and non-sequitors around the theme "fruit." He told fruit stories and played songs about fruit. Everything from Strawberry Fields Forever to The Banana Boat Song. Some of the tracks were obscure, other well-known. Dylan told the back story on many of the songs. And he had a running gag through the show on which fruit was #1; bananas according to Dylan. The second show featured songs about roads, avenues, lanes, boulevards, etc. It featured everything from Dylan reading Scripture after the song "Straight Street," to telling stories about route 66, to playing Green Day's Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

It was funny and witty and interesting. And you could tell Dylan was having great fun doing it. Dylan's narration is not conversational. It's poetry or schtick or whimsy or something. It's definitely performance. He's in a rhythm. The phrasing is as important as the words. This is different than his conversational tone in interviews, for instance. This is the same voice that lines out the phrase, "how does it feel?"

The place where I laughed the hardest was when Dylan volunteered his voice for a car's navigation system, and he gave an example of what that would sound like. Can you imagine having Dylan tell you when to turn right.

So, this is performance art for Dylan. This is different that VH1's story teller series where we get up close with the performers. Still, even in this performance, you come away with a greater sense of what Dylan is about. The different medium reveals another edge to his creativity, and you get a different sense about how his mind works, how things come together for him. The little allusions he drops along the way, the kind of details he's interested in, the kind of songs he knows about--all of it provides a thick enough backdrop that meanings and resonances become more clear with respect to his other work. This despite the fact that Dylan never intentionally gives us much of himself directly.

Those of you who follow me around a bit know that I'm fully invested in this notion of understanding. How do we come to understand one another and the world around us? Thick description. Understanding does not come only through science given over totally to critical methodologies. Understanding comes through use, through layers of experience, through the fruitfulness of prior assumptions, and through the encounter with new horizons.

Dylan on a Sunday

Joni Mitchell was interviewed recently and had some unkind things to say about Dylan. To wit.

"Bob is not authentic at all. He's a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I."

Dude.

I'm not a Dylan can do no wrong kind of guy. I write about Dylan, not because I think he's the greatest, but because he's interesting and provides the occasion for commentary on so many different topics.

One of those topics is identity and self. Who is Bob Dylan? Is he the real deal, or a fiction? Is that really the way he sings, or was this simply the stylings of an opportunist? Is he a prophet of conscience or a social chameleon, trying on positions like socks? Joni's not the first one to take the side of "fake" in the great Dylan debate.

These ways of framing the discussion, however, miss the point for me. There's not one of us who don't live in relation to some narrative, some account of ourselves, that is a selective telling. This is a complex enterprise, especially at the level of authorship. We are co-authors of that narrative, but make no mistake, all of us author an account of ourselves that we in turn perform.

It's possible to play a role that doesn't correspond at all to the facts on the ground, and thereby to betray trust in others who depend on our authentic performance. And to the extent that authenticity has to do with the capacity to integrate more and more details of our life, the good and the bad, it is possible to label a performance inauthentic that radically compartmentalizes, etc. But Dylan has been doing this long enough now in relation to others that this is who he is. This isn't Miley Cyrus being Hannah Montana. The former Robert Zimmerman is Bob Dylan.

But beyond all that, why would Joni Mitchell feel the need to say something like this? Even if she believed it, why would she say it? It is so un-generous. And that's a big deal to me, especially from someone like Mitchell who has enough accolades of her own to be generous with others without any fear of diminishment.

This is not a defense of Dylan. Maybe Mitchell is right. Maybe he killed her cat at some point and this is evening the score. Maybe we all need to be protected from Dylan's pernicious fiction. She's merely being a thoughtful public servant. And maybe this need is so great that she is willing to take the hit for appearing petty and mean-spirited so that we might all be better. Perhaps.

This is the thing for me. Having just turned 50, I am thinking a lot about who I want to be at 60 and 70. And I want to be generous. While I want to be discerning and insightful, I want to make sure that I'm making room even in the categories I choose as interpretative lenses. I want to honor the miracle of the ordinary, that people make meaning out of the simplest things and even out of poorest performances. I want to be better when I'm older.

I'm afraid I couldn't tell a very convincing narrative that this is who I've been to this point. But I've seen it in others. I know what generous of spirit looks like. And I think I'm beginning to see how that might be me as well.

Dylan on a Sunday

I have spent a lot of time with Oh, Mercy these last few weeks. Today I looked for youtube versions, to hear what the songs sounded like live. There are a lot of great tunes on this cd. What Good Am I might be my favorite. And this is a pretty good quality video. So, this is today's Dylan on a Sunday.

Dylan on a Sunday

I'm a big believer in voice. That your most powerful self is the most authentic self. And I believe that voice, in this sense, is elusive, subject to various temptations of mimicry.

Which brings me back to the documentary about Dylan's music in the 80's. The 80's saw more than just Dylan's "Christian trilogy," they also saw the release of what many consider Dylan's worst efforts: e.g. Empire Burlesque, Knocked Out Loaded. Disco beats, synth effects, Don Johnson wardrobe covers. Even Dylan was susceptible to the corrosive pop pressures of America in the Reagan years.

Commentators say Dylan was lost. And they point to his performances at LiveAid and on the song "We are the World," as prime exhibits. (There's a hilarious clip on the documentary of Stevie Wonder coaching Dylan on how to sing his lines for the song. Stevie does a dead on Dylan). By the end of the 80's, with the help of Daniel Lanois, and the release of Oh, Mercy, Dylan had found his voice again. Or so the story goes.

Voice.

I taught preaching for awhile. And the big thing in homiletics (the science of preaching) during this period was naming different approaches to the preaching. This is how you preach a deductive sermon. This is how you preach an inductive sermon. The emphasis was on the surface structure of the sermon. After working with young preachers, I totally scrapped distinguishing between various sermon strategies. The reason? Voice.

The "aha" moment came one afternoon when an African-American student preached an inductive sermon in class. It was well designed. Thoughtful. But it lacked life. This lack of life was more striking in an African-American student, I think, because they have such a strong preaching voice in their churches. This emphasis on a surface structure completely rubbed out this student's own voice. From that point on, I wanted my students to focus on saying something meaningful in a voice--their voice--they would discover over time in relationship to the biblical text. The student sermons got much better.

This is not true only for preaching. I think something like this is true for aspects of life that don't have to do with speaking, singing, etc. There are habits, practices, professions, that over time provide a vehicle for "voice." And I think this happens the moment when we're no longer conscious of imitation (we never escape it), but move in a practice as if its our own. That's a powerful thing.

Dylan on a Sunday

My friend, Lyndon, gave me a documentary done on Dylan in the 80's for my birthday a few weeks ago. I watched it yesterday. Pretty interesting stuff, notably because it features Dylan's so-called "Christian" years. There are a lot of really interesting aspects to this time period. Two stand out. I'll focus on one today.

The three Dylan albums dealing with explicitly Christian themes were different from his former albums in one very significant way. Previous albums depended on poetic allusion or metaphorical images. There's nothing hidden in these albums. The language is very direct. "It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody."

This directness had at least two effects (my analysis). First, it came off as preachy, or as one Dylan expert interviewed suggested, didactic. It's not that Dylan's world was less black and white than his previous albums. Dylan has always painted the world in fairly stark terms, with good guys and bad guys. As I have noted elsewhere, what ties Dylan's body of work together from beginning to end is an apocalyptic perspective. The world is always teetering on the edge of destruction, and there are always culprits who bear the judgement for this set of circumstances. (One interviewee in the documentary also noted this continuity).

But in his previous work, listeners participated in Dylan's world indirectly through a poetic sensibility. The Christian trilogy created a different relationship with listeners. Dylan was less the poet and more the instructor. As didact, Dylan stands squarely on the side of his lyrics over/against the listener. And his listeners were highly offended. There was only way to be on Dylan's side in this music--agree with him, or go to hell.

This is the advantage of forms of speech like narrative, poetry, metaphor. They can create common space through a playful openness. What they lack in directness, they make up for in their ability to say things that bring singer and audience together in the openness of a new world. They are more hospitable. Notice here that Infidels, Dylan's next album after the "Christian" trilogy is still full of gospel themes and images, but is seen by his fans as a step back toward the classic Dylan. As one commentator put it, his art caught up with his themes. And it brought his audience back.

I've been teasing out the implications of this in my head, specifically regarding Christian speech. This should teach us something about speaking of God. Unless God can be captured in language and precise categories, these "open," more hospitable figures may be more amenable to the tasks of theology, and by extension, truth.

Dylan on a Sunday

One of the great things about hitting a birthday that end with a "0" is that people feel sorry for you and give you things--namely music. I collected $75 in iTunes dollars, half of which I have spent. (And thanks Craig for the music. Got it yesterday in the mail).

When you have a few extra dollars, you can go back and fill in some holes--things you should own but don't. So, I bought some DMB, Pearl Jam, Raconteurs, and some Dylan. I am ashamed to admit that I didn't own Oh, Mercy. People ask me where to start if they want to develop a sense of what Dylan is all about. Hard to answer before. Easy now. Oh, Mercy. I love it, and it brings together some of the best parts of his music over time.

It's the beginning of the contemporary Dylan sound. My favorite. Like Dylan's early stuff, there's some protest here. And the biblical references are explicit, reminiscent of his "Christian" period. A little bit of everything.

But its also a consistently great cd. It deserved the Grammy attention it got. The songs are full of passion and heartbreak, Dylan's own and the ache of others. This cd is so human. Dylan's wheeze suits them. I've listened to it straight through several times, and I never want to move on to the next song. Some are already my favorites.

Political World--We live in a political world, where mercy walks the plank...

Everything is Broken-- Broken lives, broken strings, broken threads, broken springs, broken idols, broken heads, people sleeping in broken beds, ain't no use jivin', ain't no use joking, everything is broken.

Ring Them Bells--Ring them bells, sweet Martha for the poor man's son, so the world will know that God is one, for the shepherd is asleep, where the willow's weep, and the mountains are filled with lost sheep. Ring them bells for the blind and deaf, Ring them bells, for those who are left, Ring them bells, for the chosen few, who will judge the many when the game is through...

Man in the Long Black Coat--Not a word of goodbye, not even a note, she's gone with the man in the long black coat...Somebody said in the Bible he quote, there was dust on the man with the long black quote...

Most of the Time--Blogged about this song a few weeks ago. Great, great song.

What Good Am I?--What good am I if I'm like all the rest. If I just turn away when I see how you're dressed. If I shut myself so I can't here you cry, what good am I? (I think this is my favorite song on the cd).

So, if you haven't jumped in the Dylan pool yet, here's the spot.

Dylan on a Sunday

Last Sunday I turned 50.

What do you write after a sentence like that? There should be something. The more I live with this number, the less I seem to have to say about it. And I think that's probably a good thing. It is what it is, and the number names a place in my life. It doesn't create that place, but names it, and all-in-all its a pretty good place.

It's a confident place. I know what it is that I do, what I'm good at, and what my place in things is. I'm not trying to make my mark. I no longer worry about my work being noticed. And I know that my work is still a projection. That is, it still has a future. It's not all behind me. I'm not yet attentive to a legacy.

But my future is not an indefinite possibility. The arc of my life is fairly clear. And I think this is the thing I struggle against a bit. I'm a little life a-d-d. I love the frontier, the blank page, the opening lines, the new horizon. I'm a life long learner, I think. The fact that I'm still a student would be exhibit A. So, the fact that I sense my options narrowed at this point in my life gets at me.

So, I'm feeling a little feisty. This story has a few surprises left and I can't wait to see what they are. And after I take a nap, I'm gonna do something about that. Dylan's lines from Spirit on the Water are mine today.

You think I'm over the hill

Think, I'm past my prime

Let me see what you got

We can have a whoppin' good time.