Bob Dylan
Blonde on Blonde

The life of Dylanologists must be very hard, visited as they are, night and day, now by this, now by that Dylan. The list is long and the curly-haired kid, the pilgrim, the prophet, the ultimate hipster, the born-again Christian, the gold seeker are just the first ones that come to mind.

Oh, it’s crowded over there, a whole tangle of shadows and phantasmatic projections.

That to our man's schizophrenia must be added the schizophrenia of the fans, each of whom is attached to a different figure obtained by mixing, in varying doses, bits of their fragile psyche with Dylanesque clippings haphazardly put together.

But I am a relatively recent fan and the only shadow knocking at my door has the face of the cover of “Blonde on Blonde.”

Not that messages don't come from other “lesser” Dylans, they do. Sparingly though, and that's just as well, because this is stuff that needs to be savored, chewed, spat out. And chewed and spat out again.

And even though I mostly frequent the fabulous one-two-three of the electric turn, every now and then I go for some random trip, like when you get to the village wherever-you-go and the bartender serving you the sparkling wine is yet another goddess you didn't expect.

So here the folk prodigy whispers something in my ear, and the gypsy Jew devoted to the rolling thunder improvises a circus stunt. Or the latest version (the latest?), that somewhat shabby gentleman, still a god though, whose voice passes through a microphone of broken glass and shattered bottles, appears to me...

Then, on top of that, there are also extra-musical trips, fabulous castles of words, which our man managed quite well. They're old interviews or little poems that no one reads anymore,

For instance, who was that boy kneeling on a railroad field and tearing out tufts of grass with wild fury... that boy waiting to hear the mining carts' sound, with tracks starting to shake while he bit his lips...that boy who said he accepted beauty only if it was ugly, because railroads, with their sewer color and their smell of soot and dust, weren't beautiful at all?

Oh yes, who was he? Oh, it was the same one who one day, drunk and defenseless, grasped another kind of beauty hearing a girl named Joan sing. And that beauty was a kind of magic wand,

So that boy is talked about in a poem from '64 (period bringing it all back home or just before) and if you're among those who think Dylan has nothing to do with literature I strongly suggest you read it.

In any case, I've come up with a thought... and that is, the ugly beauty and the beautiful beauty, holding them together I mean, that's the true stroke of genius of our man, and one of the keys to understanding him.

The transition from ugly to beautiful is the transition from realism to delirium, because to say beauty there are no words, except for crazed signifiers that run after each other in a vain attempt to embrace it. After all, many artists are like those autistics who shoot random words trying to recompose a treasure map torn into a thousand pieces.

And yet “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” one of the masterpiece tracks on "Blonde on Blonde," is an endless serenade where precisely those crazed signifiers we mentioned chase each other. Not such a vain exercise in the end, given that it’s enough to suspend rationality and attach the hidden treasure to the folk/blues classicism so that the two beauties together create something absolutely new, both musically (purity plus electrification) and linguistically (archetypes of the road plus delirium).

And if you think that's little...

And anyways it’s not just about beauty, but also, psychedelic obviousness, about fading away through the smoke rings of one's mind. With also a tenfold ability to tell the nightmare, because beauty gives the word the power and strength to head towards its opposite. This is true for all of the eloquence of certain endless texts like “Desolation Row” where you almost have the impression of being able to face the horror of the world on equal terms.

Then maybe delirium isn’t the only way, maybe it’s just one possible way. But it seems to me, for someone who had always suffered from oracular verbosity and a prophetic flair, that delirium was a near-obligatory path

After that, another fantastic thing is that proposing the unheard was a kid in love with the past. Another fabulous example of wonderful Dylanesque prose is that piece in "Chronicles" where he narrates his encounter with Robert Johnson's music. And who could ever forget the hair standing on his head, the sound of guitars like stabs, the specters entering the room. Is there any music critic that managed to talk that way about Robert Johnson? No, I don’t think so.

In short, Dylan was a genius.

But during the days of my pimply, legendary youth Dylan was nobody. Nobody, or, at most, just a boring man mumbling abstruse verses.

And then, one of our gurus back then, the caustic Luigino Cannuccia, didn’t he talk about an impressive lack of talent? Oh yes, sure...

But we hadn’t yet heard the first Velvet stutter with Uncle Bob’s ghost whispering amiably what to do to our Luigino...

We didn’t know that the blonde and dark Miss Teutonia, the Valkyrie of Valkyries, before recording the little mirror song, had a real hysterical crisis screaming "I want to sing like Bob Daylaaaan."

Ah gentlemen, the reason for that quiet voice in “I'll Be Your Mirror” is that Miss Nico (may God bless her) couldn’t sing like Uncle Bob and, since that quiet voice is one of the most magical things in all music, thanks uncle also for this...

Of the three velvet, the only one who didn’t care about Dylan was the John who, having attended an alchemical school of urban esotericism, was above everything.

But, back to us, we didn’t care about Dylan... for us the poets were Morrison, Reed, Hammill...not him...

Although...

Although every now and then we would meet someone who didn’t think so...and it was always characterful people, like the Ancient for instance...

Oh yes, let’s start with the Ancient, because the Ancient had style...

But what is style? That thing you cling to when everything sinks or a cooler and therefore more credible mask than others? A conscious intellectual construction or the shore you land on for attitude, need, desire to be yourself?

I don't know, I really don't...But I do know I’ve always loved those figures who built their style outside of the already seen or heard (even the good already seen and heard, so to speak). And those figures ended up seeming like movie characters in my eyes...

I'm sure you've met people like that too, I imagine.

Well, the Ancient was one who drove two hundred on country roads at night, went around with a strange fur coat, and never used the word no ("I've heard too many no's," he used to say)...

Someone who was seven or eight years older than us...

One day we found him at a little party outside town: Very much out there too, he stopped all the girls saying “Hi, are you from Imola?" then started laughing and sneaked away...

At some point he came towards us and we were talking about music, imagine what losers we were...still laughing he said "what the hell are you talking about, I like Dylan”...

We were facing a myth and even though frozen and petrified our loser cockiness emerged...

“Dylan is a walking dead man”

"I guess you’re just a bunch of little bastards” and he left us there in our post-adolescent crap.

Then the Ancient was also the one of therapeutic silences and, in certain periods, he shut himself in almost absolute muteness. I said almost, because maybe there was the exception of dreamy girls and poetic people. “Because beauty is a fact and poetry too. There are no other facts.” Oh, no wonder they called him the Ancient.

Then there's Andrea, one who as a kid lived in the States with his grandparents and therefore spoke perfect English.

Andrea was an amazing guy, imagine a face like Zanardi's (from Pazienza), but tilted towards romantic intensity and not towards assholery...a conspiratorial face, full of disgust towards the present,

Imagine a shadowy eloquence but devoid of resentment...imagine something akin to a never-exhibited depth...

And a very pale ghostly complexion...

Imagine all this and you’ll have Andrea.

Andrea and I would get drunk, get drunk and talk a lot. One night, after two bottles of port, he put on "Blonde on Blonde" and began translating, word by word.

“But look, I, at most, like Hurricane...”

"Shut up and listen, you fool...”

You know when you see a place dear to you as a child, that sensation of grand that turns out to be ridiculously small? Every time I read Dylan’s translations the sensation was always that.

Where did the eloquence and magic of that night go? In the headache of the next day?

But maybe the Dylan of that night wasn't but one of the many possible Dylans...the Dylan/Andrea or Andrea/Dylan, take your pick...And "Blonde on Blonde" was just a kind of background, since the essential was the drugged eloquence doubled by the subtle sweetness of the port...

"Blonde on Blonde"...What did I care about "Blonde on Blonde"... I was a wave youngling!!!

Yet something clicked that night, even if it was just a matter of words...the train of words’ smoke thread, not yet the rattling, the fabulous rattling of the racing cars.

Oh yes, it took time for the rattling..a long time.

“Blonde on Blonde.”

Last of a fabulous trilogy, “Blonde on Blonde,” doesn’t have the power of Highway 61, nor the magical in-betweenness of before and after when Dylan brought it all back home.

Oh no, “Blonde on Blonde” is sly, at times almost relaxed, with atmospheric little organs and metaphysical harmonica.

And inside there's everything. Blues nightmares, scraps of love songs, psychedelic little orchestra numbers, naive watercolors à la "Norwegian Wood", journeys without reference points and the endless serenade I mentioned.

And even some rather lit rock moments.

And there are many figurines that appear in watermark, many, many indeed. Right now Mona Lisa and her highway blues and the hungry Achilles like a man on a leash come to mind, but, we could spend hours fishing wonders out of that infinite well.

The well...

The well of that grating and iron voice, most suited for delirium...a voice that's beautiful because it’s ugly and ugly because it’s beautiful.

Oh, it takes a voice like that to sing words that are the very paradigm of imperfection and to keep up with a dirty and sublime language that is far/far from a sense of proportion,.

Of the three electric turn albums, “Blonde on Blonde” isn't necessarily the most beautiful, but it’s the one closing the circle, and it's the most visionary...Oh, I know, visionary is a term that perhaps is tired, and indeed it’s hard to bear...and it's fabulous that scene in "I’m Not There" where a sixty-year-old wag approaches our man saying “Oh Mr. Dylan you are so visionary!!!”

But, what can I do, no other term comes to mind..And after all, how else would you define Johanna’s visions and the lady of the plains?

Besides, such things were never heard before...

And then “sad-eyed lady...,” besides being the haven of that boy who suddenly discovered beauty, is a capolavoro limite. Long and exhausting, supported by a barely barely of psychedelic tremor, it seems to never end.

And, indeed, it never ends. For it is us, once those harmonica notes are over, it’s us going on. yes us...

us...

meaning me, though perhaps at a reduced pace, or the Ancient with his dream girls and his poetic crazies, or Andrea who that time of translation mixed up the deliriums, his and Dylan’s.

Yes, it’s us going forward, or we just put the record back at the beginning.

Then what about “Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again” with that feeling of being stuck in a labyrinth and feeling prisoner with blue devils on your shoulders? And that substantial, perfectly oiled music?

What a pleasure to hear it at the beginning of “I’m Not There” the notable film by Todd Haynes, where some (oh only some, yes) of the many Dylans chase each other...

Oh it’s really beautiful to hear, while on screen, in the metaphysics of black and white, a thousand faces of passersby, prophets, hobos pass by...

And it remains beautiful even when suddenly color comes, and green hills come...and the freight train comes and the folk kid-devotee of Woody Guthrie jumps on it...

The folk kid, but also the little trickster who, like a perfect blue/man, invents his own personal legend.

But each song would truly deserve a separate discussion.

I’ll just mention “I Want You” which my girlfriend loves so much and “4th Time Around” which has a kind of crystal perfection and is the one, as I said above, that resembles a little "Norwegian Wood."

Stop...

Actually no, one more thing. How is it possible that Dylan went from protest songs to the smoke rings of the mind, or, if you prefer, from Guthrie to Rimbaud?

Oh sure, I’ve talked to you about ugly beauty and beautiful beauty. But I think there’s more.

In “I’m Not There” the Dylan/Rimbaud illustrates the seven simple rules for living on the margins.

But we don’t need seven...we only need one, the one that says: “When they ask you if you care about the world’s problems, look deeply into the eyes of who’s asking. They won't ask you again.”

Indeed, is there really anyone who wants to change the world? No, there isn't.

The important thing then is not to get caught, stay on the fringes. Like an outlaw or a lone hero. Always assuming you don't want to catch Dylan yourself, but I really doubt you can do that, since no one’s ever succeeded.

Finally, something about Andrea and the Ancient, my two favorite Dylanologists. I haven't seen them in twenty years, Nothing strange, since they were really the kinds who tend to run away.

But, even if it will probably never happen, I would really like to listen to “Blonde on Blonde” again with them. For now, I’ll just dedicate this writing to them.

So goodbye Ancient, goodbye Andrea...