Comments on: “You can manufacture faith out of nothing”–Bob Dylan

By: briteness

briteness — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 14:59:52 +0000

I have that Rogovoy book and like it, but haven’t read all of it. I hadn’t read the bit about Dylan’s Grammy speech being based on an Orthodox commentary. (Nice detective work.) It adds another layer of meaning to that fairly remarkable moment. Since Dylan himself was making an allusion here, it seems appropriate to ask whether or not anybody has ever noticed the hilarious allusion to this speech found on the Tom Waits song “Lucky Day” on the Black Rider album.

Incidentally, I entirely agree with you about the aptness of the phrase about the “unaccountable heft and profundity of Dylan’s work.” It only continues to deepen as time goes on, and I have been a fan for over 30 years.

By: eruke

eruke — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:04:12 +0000

Dear TJ–I’ve just now had the chance to add your site to my list o’ links, and to thank you for this much-needed treasure trove (can it be a treasure and a necessity at the same time??). Well, thanks to Tom for calling our attention to you, and then to you for calling our attention to your site.

By: TJ Hawk

TJ Hawk — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:18:17 +0000

Thanks Tom for the referral. I recently helped Frosty Jackson with a new website of Dylan videos, with comments about each song. Notice how many have Christian references: Make You Feel My Love, Shooting Star, Sweetheart Like You, Highlands, When the Deal Goes Down, Red River Shore, God Knows, Ring Them Bells, Every Grain of Sand, and others, including Dignity, where he sings about the spiritual that cannot be photographed. His writing is amazing, deep and significant. The videos and brief comments just highlights his brilliance. The new site is http://www.BestDylanVideos.com

By: eruke

eruke — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:37:13 +0000

Hello Robert, thank you for another valuable comment and my apologies for taking so long to reply. I agree completely that the Grammy thing is a great piece of performance art: the clamorous song and then the hilarious and also sobering *speech*. He is truly mischievous when it comes to the time demands of television, the other examples of this that come to mind are his marvelous distracted wanderings on and off the stage during the first Letterman appearance, and stopping and starting Like a Rolling Stone on Unplugged.

I think for myself I don’t ask to be persuaded by Dylan-and-prophecy arguments, mainly because any theological reading works through affinity rather than premise, if that makes sense. I did want to know if Seth Rogovoy himself felt a new authority in Dylan’s work one he began excavating the scriptural allusions.

Doubt, absolutely, Dylan is the “great poet of doubt.” I’d go so far as to say he teaches what doubt is: it’s not the complacence or deferral or agnosticism, and it’s not the infantile resentment that follows the loss of consolation or authority. It’s an irresolvable condition in which kinds of incompatible knowledge are fully felt. High Water, Ain’t Talkin, Forgetful Heart–I hear true doubt and not disillusionment in these. I think I’m not close enough to the theology of prophecy to know whether or not a prophet is a voice of true doubt, rather than despair that the fallen world will never find its way to redemption.

Regardless of perfectly realistic arguments you might have with Rogovoy’s project, he works from inquiry and wonder and not from dogma, and his inventory of allusions is something I’m very grateful for.

Thanks for your comments on my bit on Up to Me–you could spend a lifetime just on the consonants of that song. No one will ever do it justice. All you can do is listen.

By: eruke

eruke — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:01:41 +0000

Thank you so much for this link, and thank you infinitely more for directing our attention to Dylan’s recent work, which I agree wholesouledly is his “deepest and most profound[ly] spiritual.” What it is to feel shifts of conviction and despair in a moment, to feel transcendence affirmed and denied in a moment, this state of being is one of the great glories of what Dylan has been doing in his most recent work. All the attention to his *method* of composition, the loveandtheft methodology, we need to find a way to absorb this into the emotional and spiritual effects of the songs. Thanks for taking the time to write about this.

By: Tom Wheeler

Tom Wheeler — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:32:46 +0000

Thanks for your thoughts about Dylan and faith. Larry Norman believed that Slow Train was the best Christian album ever and TJ Hawk wrote that half of his songs since 1981 contain Christian imagery http://www.hawkstories.com/christmas.html. Though I deeply appreciate the late Norman’s remark, I believe that the deepest, most profound spiritual songs of Dylan are not on the Slow Train album, and many have been released in the past twelve years.

By: Robert Reginio

Robert Reginio — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:20:41 +0000

Thanks again for the great summary of your enviably great course!

I’ve always thought that Grammy speech was one of his greatest comic performances: I might be too besotted by Bob, but the long uncomfortable pause and then “…he said so many things”…just perfect; cracks me up every time.

I’m encouraged here to look into Rogovoy’s book: I’m always unpersuaded by Dylan-and-prophecy arguments. That’s a big topic, but for now, I’ve a comment on this question of yours: “[did you find] a new authority to [Dylan's work] imputed by the seeding of the scriptural matter?”

Authority-scripture: I’m skeptical. For me, Dylan’s authority comes from his ability to dramatize the complexities of doubt–it’s a more earth-bound authority, a voicing of doubt that pierces me to my heart. For me, he’s our great poet of doubt.

BTW: the reading of “Up To Me” you posted a few entries ago…wow. *Great* stuff.