Songs move through time, seeking their final form. What happens on that path is only partly up to the writer, the singer, the musicians. It may be partly up to the audience hearing the songs, watching them as they are performed, with the response of the audience, even of a single member of the audience, coming back to the performers and, in ways that can be felt but never determined, reshaping the song. That is why, perhaps, it is the fact of Bob Dylan’s songs moving through time, and the way they have taken on elements of those times as they moved through them, that matters most on this interesting occasion.
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there’s nothing really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind
* You may have noticed that the Chicago Sun-Times endorsed Comptroller Leslie Munger this week. An excerpt…
Ask Munger what she thinks about Rauner’s agenda of pro-business reforms and she’ll tell you she likes it. But, unlike the governor, she has never argued those reforms should be a condition of passing a budget.
During remarks to the press and social service leaders, Munger repeated Rauner’s familiar refrain on the budget issue and how to solve it.
“We need to ask the governor and the General Assembly to get a balanced budget in place. I cannot emphasize (enough) the importance of the word ‘balanced,’” she said. “(It) must include some reforms. … We have very high cost for businesses and send businesses and jobs out of state.”
The bottom line is, the governor isn’t ever going to agree to a “balanced” budget (meaning new revenues) until he gets some of his reforms. And Munger has never once to my knowledge urged the governor to set aside those economic demands and work out a budget deal.
* Earlier today, we talked about how Democratic House candidate Tony DelGiorno said “I have no intention to at this point in time” of voting for Michael Madigan for Speaker if he’s elected.”
“My district does not like the leadership of Speaker Madigan,” DelGiorno added.
* Well, GOP Rep. Sara Jimenez has a new TV ad that features audio of DelGiorno praising Madigan and pledging his vote…
* Script…
ANNOUNCER: On the Sangamon County Board, Tony DelGiorno doesn’t fit in. DelGiorno cast the only vote against a bipartisan balanced budget, denying critical funds for infrastructure, law enforcement, even veterans, while blocking a balanced budget. No wonder DelGiorno’s running for state Representative as Mike Madigan’s candidate.
DELGIORNO: “I admire the leadership that Speaker Madigan has. That means I’m voting for Madigan.”
ANNOUNCER: Tony DelGiorno, he’s for Madigan, not Sangamon County.
Those quotes were obviously from two different audio sources, but still.
* I’ve been surprised at the number of people who think Bob Dylan didn’t deserve his Nobel Prize for Literature. But here’s Rolling Stone’s take…
This is easily the most controversial award since they gave it to the guy who wrote Lord of the Flies, which was controversial only because it came next after the immensely popular 1982 prize for Gabriel García Márquez. Nobody can read the minds of the Nobel committee – it’s not that kind of award. You can’t argue that Dylan jumped the line in front of more deserving candidates, because there’s no internal logic to the process. Like most literary Nobels, except much more so, it comes out of the blue, giving Dylan fans a whole new glorious enigma to battle over. So settle in. This argument will take us years. If you’re looking to get silly, you better go back to from where you came.
According to the Swedish Academy, Dylan won “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” Of course it’s not poetry, not even sung poetry. It’s songwriting, it’s storytelling, it’s electric noise, it’s a bard exploiting the new-media inventions of his time (amplifiers, microphones, recording studios, radio) for literary performance the way playwrights or screenwriters once did…. He won for inventing ways to make songs do what they hadn’t done before.
The best argument for Dylan’s Nobel Prize comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson, even though he died a century before Shot of Love. His 1850 essay “Shakespeare; or the Poet,” from the book Representative Men, works as a cheat sheet to Dylan. For Emerson, Shakespeare’s greatness was to exploit the freedoms of a disreputable format, the theater: “Shakespeare, in common with his comrades, esteemed the mass of old plays, waste stock, in which any experiment could be freely tried. Had the prestige which hedges about a modern tragedy existed, nothing could have been done. The rude warm blood of the living England circulated in the play, as in street-ballads.”
This is a key point – Shakespeare was a writer/actor/manager hustling in the commercial theater racket for live crowds. He didn’t publish his plays – didn’t even keep written copies. Once it was onstage, he was on to the next one. (After his death, his friends had to cobble the First Folio together, mostly from working scripts, hence the deplorable state of his texts.) Low prestige meant constant forward motion. The theater was becoming a national passion, “but not a whit less considerable, because it was cheap.” He aimed his poetry at the groundlings: “It must even go into the world’s history, that the best poet led an obscure and profane life, using his genius for the public amusement.”
Dylan didn’t write many books either – his songs came out of that same “rude warm blood.” He makes sure you can’t reduce his songs to their verbal content
* Gov. Rauner was asked today about the Trump revelations of the past few days. He said he didn’t want to talk about politics, repeated that he was “outraged by the rhetoric,” but did say this…
I will say as well that I condemn in the strongest possible way sexual assault, sexual harassment in any form.
Such courage. He didn’t say if he believed the allegations were true, however.
* When pressed about whether or not he was supporting or voting for Trump, he said this…
I have not endorsed, I have not endorsed, not supported and I’ve, I’ve said that and I, that’s my position.
Actually, he has never come out and said he wasn’t supporting Trump. So, maybe that’s a bit of sunlight, despite the tortured way it was said?
Rauner repeatedly had sought to stay out of the presidential race, though he did say that as leader of the GOP in Illinois, he would back the eventual nominee. But Rauner aides stressed there are various levels of “support,” and that the governor would not be giving Trump a formal endorsement.
* Listen to the raw audio because there are more questions, including his funding of legislative races…
