Bob

Classic tale from the American Music Scene

Revisado: 02-06-25

Van Ronk is a critical piece in the tapestry of American Music. He was a student of American forms and a curator and caretaker of it at one of the inflection points in the history of American Music. He deserves to be celebrated and remembered. He is the primary inspiration for the Cohen Brothers’ film “Inside Llewyn Davis” and they did their job so well that hardly anyone knows that the film is even named after the album “Inside Dave Van Ronk.” His story is the story of the 99.9999% of people who have devoted their lives to perfecting their craft:

Little known, hardly remembered, small successes and no fame or fortune to speak of, but part of the “invisible college” of people who have vouchsafed our creative heritage to us. He would hate my nod to Carl Jung. Which is why I hope it would make him laugh the way his wit makes me laugh.

If I had wings like Noah’s dove….fare the well, Dave.

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Love to visit again and again

Revisado: 12-06-24

The book feels like Paris. Food, wine, art, conversation. Visiting with Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Sylvia Beach and and F. Scott Fitzgerald along with Hemingway’s family. A delight and a treasure.

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Beautiful. Necessary.

Revisado: 05-27-24

I hope that Mecca spreads to every block so that America might someday be America.

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Masterwork. Canonical.

Revisado: 03-01-24

This work ought to be part of the “Western” canon and taught in every high school. Even prior to his more enlightened period of “true Islam”, even as a “hustler”, his experiences and insights must be heard and taken seriously in their own terms. Malcolm X remains one of the great human beings who has ever lived and Fishburn’s performance of this work retains the earnestness, passion and sincerity of this martyr to the cause of progress for human rights from the first word to the last.

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An important and concise explication of the most underrated western philosopher

Revisado: 01-04-24

Kastrup is a very important voice on the contemporary philosophical scene, all of whose work deserves a reading.

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A Masterclass by the Preeminent American Poet

Revisado: 10-15-23

Bob Dylan is a great writer because he is a great reader. He is a great musician because he is a great listener. The same wild eyed intensity that you see in his stage performances, where it is, as if you can see him channeling the ghosts of all the men and women who have ever sung the songs that he is either singing or borrowing from, at same manic fervor, exists in the man’s ears. He hears things from other dimensions, he can hear what the songwriter meant to say, even if he or she completely flubbed it. Bob Dylan is the kind of human being that inspires hagiography, and I don’t mean sycophantic or flattering catalogs of their lives, I mean, literal Scriptures. I mean new books added to the Bible, and he is the star of those books. He is a prophet, and like all prophets, he speaks and writes in poetry.

He analyzes and comments on a selection of modern songs and, as he does so, it’s as if he composes it doesn’t songs on top of inside and around each one of the songs that he’s communicating about. He operates, according to a different kind of logic. A logic of truth, but not correspondence. A logic, where the meaning of something is conveyed, even if it takes a roundabout, scenic journey, and incorporate all kinds of wildly crazy associations, that upon reflection aren’t crazy at all. They are exactly what this song is about. He is able to demonstrate how seemingly juvenile utterly simplistic songs are actually deceptively complex and nuanced. Then he can show you how a song that is attempting to be highbrow is actually bawdy and perverse. He helps you hear a classic love song, as if it was written by a serial killer, because there are some forms of love that are so consuming that they actually do make men and women to the tax people with murder the object of their love if they could.

He writes about poetry poetically. He has never not singing. This book is a treasure of the human spirit. A lot to be required reading for anyone who desires to learn more about the folk cultures of the world and about how the human consciousness emerge from the soil grew up in the sky scrapers then shot itself on the moon.

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It is a Song. A masterpiece.

Revisado: 10-11-23

Woody Guthrie is one of the most important human beings who ever lived. He left us the legacy of his recorded music. Along with Woody’s own catalog, we can add the music of Bob Dylan, who began as a Woody Guthrie impersonator but who went on to actually work in the spirit of Woody Guthrie for his lengthy career. But along with his songs, we have this masterpiece of an autobiography. Not a single word is out of place, even though he uses folksy grammar and style. In fact, this is less a prose work than it is a poem, or perhaps an extended song cycle. It is the most inspiring, authentic, truly American, romantic biography, or perhaps work of non-fiction that I’ve ever encountered. This book should be taught in every school, at least in America, if not the entire English speaking world. It is a core text and a foundational document for the modern psyche, wherever it is found. The criticisms that it levels at the powers that be are absolutely devastating. But they are never offered without a heaping helping of love, joy, humor, and good nature on the side. The man was a prophet. A saint. Predictably forsaken by those without eyes to see, but those who, like Bob Dylan, had ears to hear, once he was heard, he must be hearkened to. His example must be followed. I implore you to listen to this book and to try to be some fragment of the person that this man was. For the sake of everything and everyone that you love. Well, it will bring troubles and perhaps hard times, it is not a hard job. It ain’t hard being happy and trying to show folks how to do likewise. His yoke is easy, and his burden is light.

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It is a Song. A masterpiece.

Revisado: 10-11-23

Woody Guthrie is one of the most important human beings who ever lived. He left us the legacy of his recorded music. Along with Woody’s own catalog, we can add the music of Bob Dylan, who began as a Woody Guthrie impersonator but who went on to actually work in the spirit of Woody Guthrie for his lengthy career. But along with his songs, we have this masterpiece of an autobiography. Not a single word is out of place, even though he uses folksy grammar and style. In fact, this is less a prose work than it is a poem, or perhaps an extended song cycle. It is the most inspiring, authentic, truly American, romantic biography, or perhaps work of non-fiction that I’ve ever encountered. This book should be taught in every school, at least in America, if not the entire English speaking world. It is a core text and a foundational document for the modern psyche, wherever it is found. The criticisms that it levels at the powers that be are absolutely devastating. But they are never offered without a heaping helping of love, joy, humor, and good nature on the side. The man was a prophet. A saint. Predictably forsaken by those without eyes to see, but those who, like Bob Dylan, had ears to hear, once he was heard, he must be hearkened to. His example must be followed. I implore you to listen to this book and to try to be some fragment of the person that this man was. For the sake of everything and everyone that you love. Well, it will bring troubles and perhaps hard times, it is not a hard job. It ain’t hard being happy and trying to show folks how to do likewise. His yoke is easy, and his burden is light.

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Timeless wisdom, relevant today

Revisado: 04-13-22

This work belongs alongside the greatest wisdom literature and is every bit as relevant today as it was when it was written. Well worth listening to over and over again.

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Should be part of every education

Revisado: 01-29-22

I heard about this book from Chloe Valdary and I’m so grateful to have encountered it. So clear, direct and full of urgent, earnest truth. The issues it deals with are as relevant today as ever and the current solutions on offer by both “sides” are just repeating the same failed philosophies and practices Murray meticulously catalogs.

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