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Undoubtedly, poets are useful, but to be honest, so are plumbers. Try going without a cool shower, especially now that it's hot.
Words are important, but so are pipes. I say this because when it comes to poetry, it’s natural to get a bit pretentious, even if you don't want to.
So, to avoid overdoing it, you need a counterbalance, which in my case is to say that poetry is just like anything else, if not even a trivial thing.
Regarding whether Dylan is a poet or not, try thinking about that plumber who extorted a considerable sum from you and after a few days, the problem reappeared worse than before.
Well, perhaps that plumber isn't the best in town, but pipes are still his trade. That's how it is, you can't deny it.
But the most important thing is that suddenly you remember that while he was fiddling with the pipes, he was whistling a strange tune. He was adding music, in other words. And adding music is always a good idea.
In any case, and to clear up any confusion, it's well known that Mr. Dylan fixes his own sink.
…
Recorded on a sleepy afternoon, one of those where the muses pounce on you even if you don't want them to, I'm not there was supposed to live for just one day like roses. Or remain in a drawer like certain unimportant notes.
Instead, it lived a semi-clandestine life, scattered in untraceable bootlegs or in the confused memories of those who somehow managed to listen to it.
Until it became a sort of legend, partly due to a title that couldn't be more Dylan-like, which is "I'm not there," which is what Dylan used to say every time he cast off a mask before putting on another one.
It took forty years before you could listen to this song on an official album. Todd Haynes made sure of it by including it in the soundtrack of his film about Dylan, which coincidentally, is titled I'm not there.
Since 2014, you can also find it in the complete edition of the Basement Tapes (Bootleg series number 11), along with another HUNDRED or so songs (!!!) that, smiling, I imagine playing in Ludovico mode to all those who disdain Dylan.
Want to see you dance? No, I want to see you suffer...
...
The era is of the pink house and the return to order. The king has abdicated and is cloistered with a few trusted men. They play in the barn, they play in the basement. Move by inertia, recharge the batteries, this is the mandate.
The past years have been too much, all that joker eloquence fired in the enemy's face, ever-tense nerves, and the ferret-like look behind dark glasses. Not to mention all that decadent poetry.
But who made me do it? Rimbaud understood it, damn it, a few years of poetry and then shit, what’s done is done. All future decadents forgot this, but not me; I am Bob Dylan.
Thus, the return to order. Although it's not the point. The point is the ghosts, and the ghosts don't give a damn; they don't care about aesthetics. I also believe possession is involved, and if you’re possessed, you can play rococò, quid pro quo, or whatever.
...
"If I'm not there is the greatest song ever written, it is because it isn't written." So said a high-ranking Dylanologist, though, as of now, I can't recall which one.
It could be Greil, or Alessandro, or Riccardo. Or perhaps my cousin Ismaele, who for years has listened only to Blonde on Blonde in the car and thus always travels alone.
Anyway, whoever the author may be, the phrase might seem like the usual intelligent quip meant to impress fools. Well, nothing could be more wrong. First, because I'm not there is one of those songs for which there is nothing like it, and second, because yes, it's not written, or it's scarcely written, or just enough.
Dylan had only a few lines, and the rest he improvised on the spot. Some of the words aren't even words but simple sounds. So in the end, we have a confused and incoherent text, a nonsensical jumble of emotional dyslexia.
After all, when discussing certain issues, the only thing you can do is scramble. And if you see a face in the clouds, a mere wind can make it disappear.
But the real kicker is that voice situated in a psychic zone between the gray and the shaky, recorded live from hell.
...
Remember "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands," that otherworldly melody added with psychic expansion? "A dream, a riddle, a prayer," as Tom Waits masterfully put it.
Well, our dream/riddle/prayer speaks of a magical woman and does so with a kind of skewed stilnovismo. The impression is that of a serenade in a separate world, announcing a spring morning.
Now take "Sad Eyed Lady" and pass it through an opaque mirror. What you'll get is "I'm not there," or a ghost song, or if you like, the ghost of a song.
No spring morning then, the dawn is leaden, and the sun is hiding, with no hope it will even peek through. None at all.
...
Of course, "I'm not there" is also steeped in stilnovismo, but vain and heartbreaking are the images that carve the figure of the girl, "the mystic with a sad heart, the angel, the rainbow, the beauty, the milestone"...
And they're vain and heartbreaking because the one singing is no longer there; the one singing has left.
But the little brat with the whip in hand, the muse, insists on moving forward. This time, however, it is not like the others; the words come out, but they come out confused.
"Islets - writes Alessandro Carrera - that only touch below the surface."
Avant-garde poetry? Delirium? Modern Sumerian? Oh no, no and no again. It’s just that the snake’s bite was yours, and it’s not so easy to say it.
...
Sure, nothing attracts a poet like magical women, all those little Audrey’s in sixteenth size on the type of schoolteacher.
But it’s also true that nothing he does better than letting them fall apart. Once he’s properly angelized them, his task is done, and good luck finding him. Gone, poof.
And with Eurydice wandering the suburbs of some godforsaken American town, what the hell are we to do with your crocodile tears, jerk?
...
But do we want to listen to this song?
Ok, here we go...
...
…In media res. there is no real beginning. And if there was, someone cut it with scissors.
No decoy, just quicksand. You can sense, you feel, that the breath producing the sound is that of a demon.
"I'm not there" is but blurred raw matter, a melody that coils in on itself, gray and sinister.
A black hypnosis clotted around the unspeakable. A magic lantern in reverse.
With an uncompromising emotional crescendo that ends with an abrupt cutoff, If there’s no beginning, there can be no end. If not chopping with an axe.
When listening is over, what sticks with you is a sort of crash between what can be said and what cannot.
Even if, then, there’s no need to remember that life is shit, we know. And neither are we, for that matter, that great.
...
I'm not there Dylan never considered.
Who knows, maybe it seemed absurd to him that a sloppy sketch could have the rank of a completed work. And then how did chance allow itself to be a better poet than he was?
Or he always lied knowing he was lying. The poet is not only a pretender but also plays hide and seek, and damn, he played it brilliantly. After all, how do you find someone who isn’t there?
But most of all, dear my damned wandering Jew with a crow’s voice and false as Judas, what do you know about your songs?
You are only Dylan, not a Dylanologist.
Trallalla...
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