I think it was yesterday that the Nobel prize for literature was given out, and the winner, Bob Dylan, didn't show because of "former commitments." Really? One million dollars and international glory, and you're busy? It is in keeping with the Dyan mystique that he would shun the awards of the world (publicly, at least) for his own inner agenda, but the question at hand today I got while fiddling with the radio as I was occupied in the bathroom. A man on a station from Chicago was saying, "what a stupid award! His nasle singing, stupid tambourines, and non-sensical lyrics don't make him a contender. All that is, is political nonsense from the Euro political agenda." Then, the station played "a hard rain's gonna fall" as it was sung by his proxy in Stockholm, and there it was: although the woman had to pause for nervousnous, she got the tone perfectly, as Dylan would have it. It hit the same chord with me as always - the combination of lyrics and song dug deeply into the "me" that shares the American psych. Regardless of the skill of voice or instrument, Dylan somehow captured the discontent and longing beneath American culture. I don't care what they say - he deserved the award, even if I can't quite understand how he did what he did.
This came to me after begining a new book by Bernardo Katstrup titled, More than Allegory: on Religin, Myth, Truth and Belief. So far, this book has captured exactly how I perceive religion and the current cultural phase in our world. For Katstrup, the shared objective reality (which is more than I will say here - that is for another time) contains, in its being and interaction, no inherent meaning that comes from simply experiencing it. That is to say, objective reality is like a bunch of interacting pixels that have no meaning (to us) outside of what we, subjectively, give it. That seems indesputible. For instance, a jackel eating a gazell does not tell us "this is the circle of life" or "this is disgusting:" Rather, those are things we tell ourselves, given our individual and cultural background. This background is what Katstrup calls our "myth" - that is, our story that gives coherence and meaning to the world. He further states that, in the past, myth gave voice to our inner, or intuitive, need for meaning and cosmic unity. Now, our world myth is science, which does NOT give us the meaning we long for. It gives us relational answers, but these are couched in terms of chance and morally blind interactions. It does not answer the needs of the soul, and with that, we live with an inner fear and discontent.
Enter again Bob Dylan. While we might try to decipher just HOW Dylan's songs are great, we try in vain if we do so by picking those songs apart for harmony and classical depth. Rather, his music echoes, at some level beyond words and analysis, our particular American discontent with our current inadequate myth, one that is now outside religion and well short of our psychic needs. His music IS our discontent, making it ours not only for its reflection of anomie (lost sense of community), but for its grand vistas of land and travel that is a part of living in America. So they paint the backdrop of our objective reality and fill it in with our feelings of being lost, of being pilgrims still on the long wagon trail to some glory, to some imagined personal utopia that we can never quite reach. We think it might be found in the wealth and power of our nation, but know it will not be - no. Instead, each one of us is that lonely wanderer along the long highways through our vast land, each of us stil in search, each of us still driven by this deeper-than-words longing.
Dylan does not anwer our needs; rather, he points out our longing and leaves the rest to us. He often did not, I think, even known exactly what he was doing. It is easy to see that some of his songs were exploiting popular agendas of his time. Still, beyond even himself, he reflected our agony and our hoped-for glory. Which makes him - Yes - most certainly worthy of the prize.
As for Kastrup, more on him later, for he DOES attempt to give us an answer, and so far, it seems, or at least I feel, that he is on the right track. FK
This came to me after begining a new book by Bernardo Katstrup titled, More than Allegory: on Religin, Myth, Truth and Belief. So far, this book has captured exactly how I perceive religion and the current cultural phase in our world. For Katstrup, the shared objective reality (which is more than I will say here - that is for another time) contains, in its being and interaction, no inherent meaning that comes from simply experiencing it. That is to say, objective reality is like a bunch of interacting pixels that have no meaning (to us) outside of what we, subjectively, give it. That seems indesputible. For instance, a jackel eating a gazell does not tell us "this is the circle of life" or "this is disgusting:" Rather, those are things we tell ourselves, given our individual and cultural background. This background is what Katstrup calls our "myth" - that is, our story that gives coherence and meaning to the world. He further states that, in the past, myth gave voice to our inner, or intuitive, need for meaning and cosmic unity. Now, our world myth is science, which does NOT give us the meaning we long for. It gives us relational answers, but these are couched in terms of chance and morally blind interactions. It does not answer the needs of the soul, and with that, we live with an inner fear and discontent.
Enter again Bob Dylan. While we might try to decipher just HOW Dylan's songs are great, we try in vain if we do so by picking those songs apart for harmony and classical depth. Rather, his music echoes, at some level beyond words and analysis, our particular American discontent with our current inadequate myth, one that is now outside religion and well short of our psychic needs. His music IS our discontent, making it ours not only for its reflection of anomie (lost sense of community), but for its grand vistas of land and travel that is a part of living in America. So they paint the backdrop of our objective reality and fill it in with our feelings of being lost, of being pilgrims still on the long wagon trail to some glory, to some imagined personal utopia that we can never quite reach. We think it might be found in the wealth and power of our nation, but know it will not be - no. Instead, each one of us is that lonely wanderer along the long highways through our vast land, each of us stil in search, each of us still driven by this deeper-than-words longing.
Dylan does not anwer our needs; rather, he points out our longing and leaves the rest to us. He often did not, I think, even known exactly what he was doing. It is easy to see that some of his songs were exploiting popular agendas of his time. Still, beyond even himself, he reflected our agony and our hoped-for glory. Which makes him - Yes - most certainly worthy of the prize.
As for Kastrup, more on him later, for he DOES attempt to give us an answer, and so far, it seems, or at least I feel, that he is on the right track. FK
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