Everything in life, directly or indirectly, has a great degree of mystery. To paraphrase Warren Zevon, "Some days I feel like my shadow's casting me." Persons, places, things … time itself is a mystery. You know, like, who can explain it? It's really difficult to define anything. What's slow can speed up. Love can turn into hate. Peace can turn into war. Pride can turn into humility. Anger to grief. How would you define a simple thing like a chair, for instance—something you sit on? Well, it's more than that. You can sit on a curb, or a fence. But they are not chairs. So what makes a chair a chair? Maybe it's got arms? A cross has arms, so has a person. Maybe the chair doesn't have arms? Okay, so it's a post or a flagpole. But those aren't chairs. A chair has four legs. So does a table. So does a dog. But they're not chairs either. So a chair is a mystical thing. It's got a divine presence. There's a gloomy veil of chaos that surrounds it. And "chaos" in Greek means "air." So we live in chaos and we breathe it. Is it any wonder why some people snap and go crazy? Mystery is ancient. It's the essence of everything. It violates all conventions of beauty and understanding. It was there before the beginning, and it will be there beyond the end. We were created in it. The Mississippi Sheiks recorded a song called "Stop and Listen" To most music aficionados, it's but a ragtime blues. But to me, it's words of wisdom. Saint Paul said we see through the glass darkly. There's plenty of mystery in nature and contemporary life. For some people, it's too harsh to deal with. But I don't see it that way.
-Bob Dylan, October 2011
The Fire's Gone Out But The Light Is Never Dying
When Bob Dylan arrived in Britain in 1965, he was asked by a journalist: "What's your real message?” He replied: "Keep a good head and always carry a light bulb."
On 1 September 2011, a ban on the manufacture and importing of 60W incandescent light bulbs came into force across the European Union. The imposed switch to low energy Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs (CFL) has been driven by a hope of reducing man-made contribution to climate change. Similar moves are occurring all over the globe. However, many have expressed resentment at the change being imposed rather than voluntary, and there is a widespread view that CFL bulbs trade several aspects of light quality in order to achieve their lower energy consumption. CFLs have been described as ugly, with harsher light, adversely altering the color of illumination and painfully slow at reaching a useable brightness. We here at DIGS support evidence-based conservation of the planet, but sees fit to mark the passing of what has been described as a mini-laboratory in a glass jar.
Light fascinates.... and has fascinated since ancient times. Genesis 1 describes light being created before the sun, moon and stars. Perhaps some things only exist by reference to others, eg their opposite. Light and dark are opposites and it may be that we need one as a reference point to understand the other: it’s possible to define darkness as the absence of light, and light as the absence of darkness. Light has wave properties – it’s an electromagnetic vibration at a given frequency or at a multitude of frequencies and our eyes can only recognize a tiny fraction of them. So, it’s a bit like music then – music for the eyes. String Theory in physics suggests that all matter is derived from the vibration of minuscule strings, so maybe everything comes down to music.
So what music is fitting to play at the passing of this technological achievement? What should be the components of a Requiem For An Incandescent Bulb?
A good place to start would be with the guy usually credited with inventing it, Thomas Alva Edison. He’s from New Jersey you know. In actual fact, after Humphrey Davy generated the first incandescent light (though not in a bulb), more than 20 inventors of the incandescent bulb are listed ahead of Edison. What Edison did was improve it to the point where it was reliable, generated useable quantities of light, and was suitable for mass manufacture. Edison is also credited for inventing the phonograph; rumors of whose death were exaggerated as well.
What's Happening!!
I’m not referring to the iconic 1970’s sitcom starring Fred ‘Rerun’ Berry. But while we’re on that subject; who could forget that great guest star appearance from The Doobie Brothers that taught us all that recording concerts and selling them is against the law. And while we’re still on that subject; why was Dee always snitching on Raj? What’s up with that? Nobody likes a snitch. And before I leave this subject; did you know and realize that the title of this television show actually included the two exclamation points? It’s true.
What I am referring to and what I’m asking is what’s going on in the world today? If it’s not tornados it’s Schwarzenegger. If it’s not earthquakes it’s Strauss-Kahn. If it’s not triple digit temperatures in early June it’s Weiner. Seems that my news coverage choices of late are natural disasters or male disasters. Perhaps there should be some new reality show where the two phenomenons are somehow combined. Natural Male Disasters. I'm seeing this as a joint venture between The Weather Channel and Spike TV. If that doesn’t have ‘instant hit’ written all over it, I don’t know what does. -dave
I Was So Much Older Then, I'm Younger Than That Now
Bob Dylan turned 70 this past week. It was big news and not news at all just like Dylan himself. I first saw him live at Boston’s Orpheum Theater in 1981 and countless times since. Among the zillions of articles written this past week heralding Dylan’s turning 70, the below stands out. Penned by Sinead O’Conner who never was much of a favorite of mine, but I always admired her vocal stances when it came to women’s rights and religious issues. Take a gander at her letter and see if I’m not correct.-dave
Dear Zimmy,
It's your gorgeous birthday. You're three years younger than my father (whom I hope never reads this!). That's a bit of a head-wrecker.
It is a fact that I wish to high heaven that my father's father had met my mother's whatever-it-is earlier. Then I would have been old enough to tell you all this in a more delicious setting. My beloved brother Joseph, who introduced me to you, passed an invitation to me from the Mail to write something about you because it’s your birthday.
I said, 'But I'm a moron! What will I say?' He said, 'You could make it like a letter to Bob. To say the oul' happy birthday'.
So... Bobby, or R.J or Ray, or Anything...Here is my birthday little thing for you.
This week when everyone is writing and talking and thinking about your birthday, they're all gonna go on about the usual stuff.
'Prophet'.
Blah blah.
'Voice of a generation.'
Blah blah. Blah blah. Blah blah.
All true I'm sure... But no one ever says: 'Holy Mother of God! That Dylan fellow is an extremely adjectival sexy adjectival m.a.n. so he is for himself!'
It's about time all the ladies, and I mean ALL the ladies, need to tell everyone exactly where it's at concerning the deliciousness of Robert Zimmerman.
Drop. Dead. Gorge. Us.
Yes, sir! THE sexiest man that ever stalked the face of this earth.
'Tis lucky for you, boyo, that you're away over there in America. Sure there's barely a woman in the universe who could keep her mitts off you! Thanks be to God that flights are not cheap here in Ireland or you'd be wise to run. And also to follow Gaddafi's example by employing fake Bob Dylans, so no-one will know which one is actually you. Incidentally, should you decide you want to follow Gaddafi's example by employing all-female body guards, I hope you will consider me. Please don't ask for a reference though. I wouldn't come up looking very good.
I once worked with a lady who'd once worked with you. She said you're just crazy about the ladies. I took her in my arms and danced with delight. Hurray!
This means I'm not the only person on earth who thinks you're a ride. Despite your main feature being sexeliciousness, you're also not a bad oul' sayer of songs. And by the way, there's something the 13-year-old me wants to say to you: Thank you for making Christian music sexy. Poor God. Until you made ‘Slow Train Coming’, He was suicidal. From listening to terrible religious music.
I mean, have you ever seen Irish dancing? It's the un-sexiest thing one could see. We only dance from the knee down. Keeping everything else tight as a board. Arms stiff at our sides. For fear we might slip into the world of sensuality.
People say, and I hope it's not so, that you didn't 'stand by' Slow Train Coming. I don't know what they mean exactly. And I don't even care. Either way you could never have known what it was like in Ireland before that album tore down the walls which separated God and sex. You couldn't have known the effect the record would have. And that's appropriate. Why should you know?
I was 13 the year it came out. Joe, my brother, brought it home.
I was just beginning to wonder what kind of person I wanted to be. And what kind of woman I wanted to be. And what kind of artist I wanted to be. There weren't many options open to a female like me. I would either die or go to jail if I continued along the path that was given me.
But when I heard you singing those songs on Slow Train Coming, and when I saw the drawing of the train on the sleeve, I knew what I wanted to do with my life.
So Rabbi, from you I know I gotta serve somebody. I know I'm a precious angel. I know God believes in me. I know I'm gonna change my way of thinking. I know I'm gonna make myself a different set of rules. I know I'm gonna put my best foot forward, stop being influenced by fools.
I saw you at Slane when I was like 16. I couldn't believe I would actually see you in the flesh. I had a boyfriend at the time. Only reason we were together was we were both obsessed with you. Sadly we never did really anything but talk about you! Of course I could never have dreamed of telling him you were way sexier than him. Am I bad? I certainly hope so.
Santana played before you. When you came on you had on Oompa Loompa orange make-up. So it wasn't only musically or spritually that you were ahead of your time. You foresaw fake tan!
I think you also had on loads of black khol eyeliner. Very strange sight. Gorgeous nonetheless, obviously. But strange.
Then I briefly actually met you twice. Backstage at two festivals, there were loads of us playing. I must have seduced your manager with sexual bribes, I can't remember, but there I was in your dressing room. Just you and your tour manager.
You asked would I like a drink. I said yes, and though I can't stomach alcohol I sipped away and pretended I wasn't suppressing the desire to let you have a look at what I ate for lunch. You did a lot of pacing up and down. I remember thinking 'Holy mother of the divine lord, who could perform after drinking this?'
The third and final time our paths crossed was on that infamous evening at your tribute concert in Madison Square Garden, an evening which heaved with consequence. In the week or so before that show I had done an incendiary acapella version of a Bob Marley (the other 'Bob') song called ‘War’ on Saturday Night Live. I changed some words and made it about child abuse instead of racism. And at the end of the song I tore up a picture of the then Pope, JP2. No smirking please, Bob - when mentioning 'the incident' one must always look very serious.
Then, soon after that, I went shopping to find an outfit for your upcoming show. The decision I made was so wrong - a turquoise jacket and skirt suit which should have been worn by a very old woman...and with a hideous gold thing on the jacket. Unforgivable. I look at the footage of the show now and I am appalled. What was I thinking? Perhaps I should have slipped you a note before the show, explaining 'the incident' to you, but in the terror of my image in my dressing room mirror I guess I forgot.
So I walked on stage that night and half the audience cheered and the other half booed. Was it the Saturday Night Live fallout or had I just totally made the wrong wardrobe choice?
Seriously though, backstage afterwards, you looked at me confused as if to ask me what I had done to upset people so much. Instead of singing I Believe in You, as planned, I had screamed out the Bob Marley song instead. But it felt appropriate for me to scream while I had the chance. And I knew, if you understood, you wouldn't mind that I used the stage you gave me to stand for the God you also gave me. I hope your questions from that night have since been answered for you by the various revelations concerning the spiritual condition of the catholic church. In God's wide world. If I had simply sung ‘I Believe in You’ that night my voice would have been drowned in the noise of the opposing spiritual forces in the room.
I had to do what I did in Madison Square Garden. Even if it meant being treated like a mental case for years after.
The God I believed in was the one you brought off the pages of scriptures into my life. Not the one those bored black-and-white-wearing priests droned on about whilst flicking bits of dust off their altars in the middle of the consecration of the Host.
Even if they showed me to the door. And said don't come back no more cuz I didn't be like they'd like me to. Even if I walked out on my own. A thousand miles from home, I didn't feel alone. Cuz I believe in you.
I believe in you, even through the tears and the laughter. I believe in you even though we be apart. I believe in you even on the morning after. Though the earth may shake me, though my friends forsake me, this feeling's still here in my heart.
Don't let me stray too far. Keep me where you are. So I will always be renewed. And Lord, what you've given me today is worth more than I could pay. And no matter what they say, I believe in you...
But, I digress, Bob. I only meant to tell you you're gorgeous. So have seventy kisses for yourself on Tuesday.
Sinead
This & That: Three's Company
Three Dog Night once sang that ‘One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do’. Bruce Springsteen sang that ‘Two hearts are better than one.’ But it’s common knowledge that celebrity deaths come in threes. And these past few weeks have provided quite the celebrity death trifecta, eh?
First Poly Styrene, then Phoebe Snow and now Osama Bin Laden finishes the triple shot. Only historians will be able to tell which of them had the greatest cultural impact, but they are eerily similar to each other.
Lead singer in the band X-Ray Spex, Poly Styrene was hailed by no less a musical authority as Billboard as the "archetype for the modern-day feminist punk"; because she wore dental braces, stood against the typical sex object female of 1970s rock and was of mixed race. She was one of the least conventional front-persons in rock history, male or female".
Phoebe Snow gained fame and acclaim with her 1974 debut album ‘Phoebe Snow’ that earned her a Grammy nomination and led to tours with Paul Simon and Jackson Browne.
Osama Bin Laden; we’ll, I think we’re all familiar with his gig.
Styrene had "Oh Bondage Up Yours", Snow had "Poetry Man" and Bin Laden had 9/11 and all three of them pretty much coasted on their one big hit after that. Styrene and Snow chose motherhood and I suppose that this may have been Bin Laden's excuse as well, though he was much more private about his Abbottabad celebrity lifestyle. Then there's the way they died which are also eerily similar. Styrene and Snow both had cancer while Bin Laden had the metaphorical "cancer" of being shot up by United States Navy Seals. When will they find a cure? For Poly, for Phoebe, for Osama. Rest in peace everyone; well, almost everyone.
- Dave Glassman
No One Wins Unless We All Win
I first heard the above quote in 1984 at a Bruce Springsteen concert in (where else) New Jersey. He used to use this line as his lead in before he played his most famous song, ‘Born To Run’. I suppose I’d heard this line before in some other fashion or from someone entirely different, but it’s the first time it stuck with me. It seemed like a noble ideal, but the more I pondered it, it seemed, quite frankly, an impossible ideal. Something too big to strive for. Which lead me to think that why should I, or anyone for that matter, bother striving for something when the chances of reaching the goal seemed so out of reach? I wondered if Springsteen himself really bought into this concept of no one winning unless we all won. Sounds mighty powerful when you pitch it in front of 65,000 people across three continents night after night for two years, but was this something he believed in and worked for? I’d like to think he did and still does, but I digress.
I didn’t ponder the ‘no one wins unless we all win’ philosophy until 2002 and once again music was the motivator. This time it was a song sung by Solomon Burke off his stellar cd ‘Don’t Give Up On Me’. Burke, the self proclaimed King of Rock & Soul won a Grammy for this disc which featured songs written specifically for him by the likes of Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, Van Morrison, and Tom Waits. The song that caught my attention was ‘None Of Us Are Free’ co-written by Brenda Russell, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. The self same folks who also wrote such chestnuts as, ‘We Gotta Get Out Of This Place’, ‘On Broadway’, ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’ and a host of others. The song’s chorus goes, “None of us are free if one of us are chained, none of us are free.”
This one was of those song moments where just as you finished listening to it, you pressed reverse (well, in ye olden days of technology you did, now we simply press play again!) and listened to it again and then repeated the process for the next hour. So where am I going with this? We here at DIGS, well actually me here at DIGS wasn’t always one of those ‘reach for the stars’ type of folk. My thought process usually leaned to the ‘if it seems impossible, don’t even try’. Well, my thought process has since changed and I think what I’m trying to communicate is that no matter how difficult something seems or insurmountable it might appear, there’s still a great deal of nobility in mounting up and doing whatever it is one can do to make a change. In this case I’m speaking about our environment and how utilizing sustainable materials plays such an important role. Try as we might (and by George we are trying!) to spread the word concerning sustainability around the globe, we realize we’re up against factors much greater than ourselves. This in fact is daunting, but on the flip side is all the more motivating. So we’re doing our small part; linking arms with our sustainable brothers and sisters across the globe. We’re simply one small link in the chain, but it’s most gratifying all the same.
I’ve always posited that a good song could make you late for work, but a great song could make you quit your job. In this case a great song, like all great songs can motivate one to a higher goal. Take a listen to “None Of Us Are Free”.
dave