Over the past several decades, the U.S. State Department has deteriorated from a reasonably professional home for diplomacy and realism into a den of armchair warriors possessed of imperial delusions, a dangerous phenomenon underscored by the recent mass “dissent” in favor of blowing up more people in Syria.
And ends with:
Yet, the neocons and liberal hawks who control the State Department – and are eagerly looking forward to a Hillary Clinton presidency – will never stop coming up with these crazy notions until a concerted effort is made to assess accountability for all the failures that that they have inflicted on U.S. foreign policy.
As long as there is no accountability – as long as the U.S. president won’t rein in these warmongers – the madness will continue and only grow more dangerous.
The piece led me to re-post something from my first 12 months of blogging, it was posted originally in May 2007.
I was moved by an article written by one of my favourite journalists, Christopher Cooper, for The Wiscasset Newspaper [Sorry, link now defunct]. The piece was titled "As Some Warn Victory, Some Downfall" - a line from Bob Dylan's song "It's Alright Ma (I'm only bleeding)".
A short extract:
"Anybody who likes this [Me:or any] war should sign on to it. Send his or her son and daughter. Send the Pentagon a generous check toward the cost. Support the troops? Go die in the desert so they don’t have to. Yellow ribbons tied to a power pole or a string of made in China toy flags along a bridge rail don’t do the job five long years into the butchery.
I wish I thought electing Democrats these days made much difference. I wish I thought the anguish ninety or a hundred families feel every month when they see a brace of officers coming up their front walks bearing that unspeakably terrible salutation could somehow seep into each of our hearts and make us turn off the ball game or the car race or walk out of the Spiderman sequel and demand that somebody, anybody, either party, do the right thing. Right now."
Christopher Cooper's article led me, via its title, to read again some Bob Dylan lyrics of the 1960s. Many remain relevant today, they were written when Uranus conjoined, or lay very close to, Pluto.
In a 2002 review of Mike Marqusee's book, "Chimes of Freedom: The Politics of Bob Dylan's Art", Stefan Schindler of La Salle University wrote:
"What is especially fresh about Marqusee's book is its astonishing relevance. It's a journey into the smoldering fissures that still inform our collective psyche: globalized, militarized, terror-edged, led by lunatics. Marqusee makes exactly the right point when he suggests that "the sixties might someday come to seem merely an early skirmish in a conflict whose real dimensions we have yet to grasp." As William Faulkner said: "The past is not dead. It's not even past."
Bob Dylan's lyrics are in stark contrast to the mawkish sentimentality of some country music offerings. Dylan's own politics have been the subject of argument among his fans. It may well be that he is not quite as "lefty", nor totally anti-war, as these lyrics suggest. It doesn't matter. We each see in them what we want to see. Good poetry and lyrics can be chameleon-like, capable of appreciation in many ways, on different levels.
From MASTERS OF WAR Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly
From IT'S ALRIGHT MA (I'm only bleeding) As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred.
Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.
While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.
From SONG TO WOODY I'm out here a thousand miles from my home,
Walkin' a road other men have gone down.
I'm seein' your world of people and things,
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings.
Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song 'Bout a funny ol' world that's a-comin' along.
Seems sick an' it's hungry, it's tired an' it's torn,
It looks like it's a-dyin' an' it's hardly been born.
Why have I gone back into that 1960s time slip I found myself in some days ago? Well, I noticed in a list of events for 20 January through the years that on this day in 1965 The Byrds recorded the master take of Bob Dylan's "Mr Tambourine Man"....after hearing the first few bars of the song, once again I slipped back. Dylan's own version of the song, and that of The Byrds are posted at the end of this ramble. Wikipedia: snips.
The master take of "Mr. Tambourine Man" was recorded on January 20, 1965, at Columbia Studios in Hollywood, prior to the release of Dylan's own version. The song's jangling, melodic guitar playing (performed by McGuinn on a 12-string Rickenbacker guitar) was immediately influential and has remained so to the present day.................
The single reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 1 on the UK Singles Chart, making it the first recording of a Dylan song to reach number 1 on any pop music chart.
Dylan began writing and composing "Mr. Tambourine Man" in February 1964, after attending Mardi Gras in New Orleans during a cross-country road trip with several friends, and completed it sometime between the middle of March and late April of that year after he had returned to New York. Nigel Williamson has suggested in The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan that the influence of Mardi Gras can be heard in the swirling and fanciful imagery of the song's lyrics
The song has a bright, expansive melody and has become famous in particular for its surrealistic imagery, influenced by artists as diverse as French poet Arthur Rimbaud and Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini.... Interpretations of the lyrics have included a paean to drugs such as LSD, a call to the singer's muse, a reflection of the audience's demands on the singer, and religious interpretations. Dylan sings the song in four verses, of which The Byrds used only the second for their recording.
Bob Dylan's lyrics:
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
Though I know that evenin's empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming.
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin' ship
My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels
To be wanderin'
I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way
I promise to go under it.
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy .....etc.
Though you might hear laughin', spinnin' swingin' madly across the sun
It's not aimed at anyone, it's just escapin' on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin'
And if you hear vague traces of skippin' reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it's just a ragged clown behind
I wouldn't pay it any mind, it's just a shadow you're
Seein' that he's chasing.
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy....etc.
Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
Listeners decide for themselves meanings of any song lyrics - in the same way someone gazing at a painting in an art gallery decides what meaning, if any, there is for them in the piece of art under perusal. With this song, I'm quite happy just to float along in the haze of lovely imagery without attributing much meaning at all.
I found a long and interesting comment (dated 2006) on a website where an old discussion had been ongoing about the meaning of these lyrics - I though it worth hauling out, at least in part because the website was unstable, jumping around and hard to control - on my computer anyway. Let's give a clip from the comment some fresh air:
First off, all of Dylan's songs are ambiguous. Ambiguity it what makes something art. For example, to say you're less pretty now that you are older is literal, however, to say "Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May" is art. It is artful in its ambiguity. And do to this ambiguity there can certainly be many personal interpretations. But I assure you it is not simply a metaphor for drugs.
Dylan rarely commented on the meaning behind his lyrics in order to keep the ambiguity and ability for personal interpretation alive. However, he always insisted that this song was not about drugs and often was very offended by that assumption. In his most recent autobiography he states that this song was inspired by his experience at Mardi Gras.
For anyone that knows anything about Mardi Gras; it is the celebration that leads up to Ash Wednesday and Christian Holy day that marks the beginning of Lent. The party was historically intended to be one last blow out before basically giving up our bad habits for the forty days of Lent.
For anyone who has been to Mardi Gras, it is quite a strange scene come Tuesday night at midnight. At midnight, when Wednesday and lent technically begin the streets clear out. The bars however will remain open as long as there are customers. So for basically a week there is none stop parties in the street until all hours of the night/morning (basically they dont stop). On Tuesday, however, you can walk into a bar at 10:00 pm with Bourbon Street buzzing like crazy and walk out anytime after midnight and the street, once packed and crazy for an entire week, is empty, completely desolate. Rosary beads appear over all the grave stones in the cemeteries, everyone goes home for the beginning of the religious observance of Lent.
If you are not expecting this, this can come as quite a shock. And the scene is quite eerie. This is what happened to Dylan he walked into a pub with the street packed and walked out, surprised to find it completely empty, except for a costume (french quarter of New Orleans/Mardi Gras...the clown with the tambourine is actually literal) wearing musician with a tambourine........Tambourine (let alone anything) in such an eerie empty place.
As for the rest...
But as Dylan himself put it "I'm not going to write a fantasy song. Even a song like 'Mr. Tambourine Man' really isn't a fantasy. There's substance to the dream."
"Well, songs are just thoughts. For the moment they stop time. Songs are supposed to be heroic enough to give the illusion of stopping time. With just that thought. To hear a song is to hear someone's thought, no matter what they're describing. If you see something and you think it's important enough to describe, then that's your thought. You only think one thought at a time, so what you come up with is really what you're given. When you sit around and *imagine* things to do and to write and to think - that's fantasy. I've never been much into that."
So in a sense the rest of the song is merely his thoughts at the very moment that he experienced that very eerie scene.
"Mr. Tambourine Man," like the other material Dylan was developing in early 1964, was emblematic of his escape from the shackles of topical songwriting into more abstract imagery, often suggesting a search for liberation from both external and internal prisons.
"And for the sky there are no fences facing" -- he's longing for freedom and a break from the restraints imposed by the lull that popular music had fallen into. Artistic expression should have no fences around it.
That quest was quite apparent in another of the songs he worked on during his journey, "Chimes of Freedom," its call for the abolition of repression not tethered to any specific political or social movement. "Mr. Tambourine Man" went yet further, evoking not just escape from bondage but an altered state of perception, with its plea for transportation through mystical ships and corridors of time to a land of diamond-studded skies. A use for music not previously conceived of. Remember this is before the psychedelic movement really. None of the music of the time could really transport you to an altered reality to escape the despondence of the one you currently were living in.
Inspired by the faint happy jingle jangles of a ragged clown playing a tambourine in the middle of a deserted Bourbon Street, while feeling nearly sick with exhaustion Dylan thought about escaping, past the frozen leaves and crazy sorrow to a place with diamond skies, a place where you could dance with one arm waving free, where all your memories and the unfortunate fate of your life was out of sight.
Bob Dylan plucked imagery for his songs from the bible, esoteric writings, tarot and other mystical sources. Trying to interpret his lyrics is like trying to knit fog! Yet they do entice us to try.
All Along the Watchtower is an intriguing example, first aired on Dylan's 1967 album John Wesley Harding, it has since been much covered by artists of all genres, Jimi Hendrix's version being possibly the best known after Dylan's own renditions.
Dylan wrote All Along the Watchtower with the other songs on John Wesley Harding over the year or so following his motorcycle accident in the summer of 1966. His recuperation from the accident enabled Dylan to escape the excesses of touring and make a dramatic change in his lifestyle. With one child born in early 1966 and another in mid-1967, he settled into family life and even took a growing interest in reading the the Bible, which is reflected in the album's Biblical allusions, particularly in songs such as All Along the Watchtower, Dear Landlord, I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine and The Wicked Messenger.(Wikipedia)
There's little doubt that for this song's imagery Dylan borrowed from the bible. See Book of Isaiah, Chapter 21, verses 5-9:
"Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink: arise ye princes, and prepare the shield./For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth./And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with such heed./...And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground."
Imagery is simply a trigger. The insight and imagination of each reader or listener comes into play. Lyrical imagery isn't meant to be taken literally. Dylan, I'm pretty certain, was not writing a song about biblical Babylon. Or maybe I'm being too certain. What if he was....that's what comes of trying to knit fog! However, each reader or listener is entitled to find their own meaning, that's how "the magic" emerges. The same kind of thing happens when looking at an abstract or surreal painting. What the writer or painter had in mind at the time of creation of the piece matters only to that painter or writer, not to their audience.
All Along the Watchtower. First act: a conversation between two individuals characterised by a joker and a thief (archetypes or two sides of a single personality?) discussing life and its frustrations. The joker isn't happy. He would like to change the status quo. The establishment (the corporations and the elite?) are extracting the best from life, the earth and its bounty without appreciating their true worth. The thief figure responds, presents a more laid-back attitude, yet shrewdly points out that they should know well enough, through experience, that though others might look on the status quo as some kind of joke, talking falsely (propaganda, kidding oneself?) now isn't wise because "the hour is getting late" - facts must be faced.
There must be some way out of here Said the joker to the thief There's too much confusion I can't get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine Plowmen dig my earth None of them along the line Know what any of it is worth
No reason to get excited The thief, he kindly spoke There are many here among us Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that And this is not our fate So let us not talk falsely now The hour is getting late
Act 2: Backdrop changes to a castle with elevated watchtower, the scene is peopled by princes and servants (the establishment, the status quo?) with a distant view of two riders - are they the joker and the thief from Act 1, coming to warn of imending change? We are not told. The atmosphere has become sinister, dangerous even. Wild animals wait to pounce, a howling wind threatens......Is the establishment in danger? Are the two riders representative of the avant garde of a revolution to come ?
All along the watchtower Princes kept the view While all the women came and went Barefoot servants, too
Outside in the distance A wildcat did growl Two riders were approaching The wind began to howl..............
I have the last lines of these lyrics permanently placed at the foot of my blog page - because I find a grain of hope within them. Thanks Bob!
HBO threw up the movie "I'm Not There" the other night - we caught it. It's a peculiar brand of bio-pic on the life and times of Bob Dylan. People who like Fellini, surrealism, abstractions and suchlike, as well as knowing Bob Dylan's body of work and life story quite well, would probably enjoy the movie. It was directed by Todd Haynes. We struggled to keep up!
I was a fan of Dylan's lyrics back in the day, but was always uneasy about Dylan the man, he was a bit of a mystery. This movie partially solves it. If nothing else it goes some way to explaining his astrology.
For an article on Dylan by a professional astrologer I'd recommend Neil Spencer's piece - see here. I'm adding my own two penniworth in connection with the movie "I'm Not There" which hadn't been released at the time of Neil's article.
Bob Dylan born 24 May 1941 in Duluth MN, at, according to Astrotheme, 9.05 pm.
The movie depicts Dylan as a group of six different personas which develop throughout his life and career.
First he's a runaway black child with a guitar and the spirit of Woody Guthrie, I like this persona best of all, but it's not really his essence. In his natal chart the Woody-like persona is reflected most by the Taurus cluster - earthy, real, sincere. He evolves into a linked pair of facets - an evolved Taurus - the "real" man with his lovers, children, homes, and on the other side the musical phenomenon we knew best: awkward, uncommunicative, slippery, but with a certain genius - his Gemini side.
A fourth facet is explored briefly, his literary side, in tribute to his idol French poet and anarchist Arthur Rimbaud. This could be said to link to natal Neptune, which although a generational planet, in Dylan's chart is very close to North Node of the Moon, a sensitive chart point. It links to his ever fertile writing talent - imaginative, creative Neptune is in helpful trine to his four Taurus planets.
Two later facets of Dylan develop. He is depicted as a Born Again Christian, possibly reflected in his Sagittarius ascendant, Sagittarius links to religion. And finally as an ageing Billy the Kid. I found this to be the least convincing facet of all. It perhaps could be linked to his Mars in Pisces squaring Gemini Sun. Mars in Pisces seems to me to be the odd one out in his chart which consists mainly of a large Taurus/Gemini cluster, one sign blending into the otherwhen Jupiter @ 29 Taurus meets Sun @ 3 Gemini.
As in the chart of Tom Jones, shown in a recent post, most of Dylan's planets are clustered around the descendant on the right side of the chart - the side said to relate to others rather than self (self connects to the ascendant on the left side of the chart). In the case of musicians, the right side of the chart probably links to their ability to relate to their audience as well as to their success, or lack of it, in personal relationships.
The question I was left with, and which I'd never thought to ask before: was Bob Dylan sincere in his early protest songs, or were they cynical money-making opportunities? I regret to say that I suspect the latter is true. A line in the movie brought it home to me. A British reporter asks him if he really meant those protest songs, and he replies "What if I thought I could do them better than anyone else?" These were the movie-maker's words, not necessarily Dylan's, though they may have been culled from an old recording, I don't know this. But the words rang true enough for me. However, whether or not the words were sincerely felt by their author doesn't detract from their meaning to an audience. We attach our own emotions, at the time of listening or reading, to the words of poets and lyricists, irrespective of the writer's own motives.
A lot of the credit for the movie's success must go to a surprising and inspired piece of casting which helped to hold our interest throughout - Cate Blanchett as the quintessential Bob Dylan, the musical phenomenon (she's at bottom right in the group of 6 photographs above).
The real Bob Dylan, then and later....
His "Masters of War" with appropriate images added - I hope, that in this song, he was sincere.
I was moved by an article written by one of my favourite journalists, Christopher Cooper, for The Wiscasset Newspaper. The piece is entitled "As Some Warn Victory, Some Downfall" - which is a line from Bob Dylan's song " It's Alright Ma (I'm only bleeding)". Mr Cooper writes exactly what I'd like to be able to write.
A short extract: "Anybody who likes this war should sign on to it. Send his or her son and daughter. Send the Pentagon a generous check toward the cost. Support the troops? Go die in the desert so they don’t have to. Yellow ribbons tied to a power pole or a string of made in China toy flags along a bridge rail don’t do the job five long years into the butchery.
I wish I thought electing Democrats these days made much difference. I wish I thought the anguish ninety or a hundred families feel every month when they see a brace of officers coming up their front walks bearing that unspeakably terrible salutation could somehow seep into each of our hearts and make us turn off the ball game or the car race or walk out of the Spiderman sequel and demand that somebody, anybody, either party, do the right thing. Right now."
Christopher Cooper's article led me, via its title, to read again some Bob Dylan lyrics of the 1960s. Many still seem very relevant today, they were written in the 1960s when Uranus conjoined or lay very close to Pluto. The sentiments expressed may become even more relevant when the Uranus/Pluto squares arrive in 2011.
In a review of Mike Marqusee's book, "Chimes of Freedom: The Politics of Bob Dylan's Art", in 2002, Stefan Schindler of La Salle University wrote:
"What is especially fresh about Marqusee's book is its astonishing relevance. It's a journey into the smoldering fissures that still inform our collective psyche: globalized, militarized, terror-edged, led by lunatics. Marqusee makes exactly the right point when he suggests that "the sixties might someday come to seem merely an early skirmish in a conflict whose real dimensions we have yet to grasp." As William Faulkner said: "The past is not dead. It's not even past."
Bob Dylan's lyrics are in stark contrast to the mawkish sentimentality of some country music offerings of today (as mentioned in Saturday's blog post). Dylan's own politics have been the subject of argument among his fans. It may well be that he is not quite as "lefty" nor totally anti-war as these lyrics suggest. It doesn't matter. We each see in them what we want to see. Good poetry and lyrics can be chameleon-like, capable of appreciation in many ways, on different levels.
Perhaps, as we draw nearer to those Uranus/Pluto aspects, more Dylan-esque lyric writers will arrive on the scene, I hope so.
From MASTERS OF WAR Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks
You that never done nothin' But build to destroy You play with my world Like it's your little toy You put a gun in my hand And you hide from my eyes And you turn and run farther When the fast bullets fly
From IT'S ALRIGHT MA (I'm only bleeding) As some warn victory, some downfall Private reasons great or small Can be seen in the eyes of those that call To make all that should be killed to crawl While others say don't hate nothing at all Except hatred.
Disillusioned words like bullets bark As human gods aim for their mark Made everything from toy guns that spark To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark It's easy to see without looking too far That not much Is really sacred.
While preachers preach of evil fates Teachers teach that knowledge waits Can lead to hundred-dollar plates Goodness hides behind its gates But even the president of the United States Sometimes must have To stand naked.
From SONG TO WOODY I'm out here a thousand miles from my home, Walkin' a road other men have gone down. I'm seein' your world of people and things, Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings.
Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song 'Bout a funny ol' world that's a-comin' along. Seems sick an' it's hungry, it's tired an' it's torn, It looks like it's a-dyin' an' it's hardly been born.
******************************************* I'll be spending several hours in the waiting room of our local hospital this morning, riding shotgun for HeWhoKnows while he has a routine "procedure". No reason at all to worry, it's one of those Uranian (wink) procedures which American doctors seem very keen on. The appointment HWK was given - 6.15am - was a little sadistic .....yawn. I think the tee shirt he's wearing (right) fits in well with this blog entry. Image at top of post from Be the Change USA
From MASTERS OF WAR
