Music to Hear on Here: Dylan Interview 1965: The Myth? The Auteur? Protest Music? A disappearance act?

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Dylan Interview 1965: The Myth? The Auteur? Protest Music? A disappearance act?

(5)"It's hard, he said. "It's hard for Dylan to do anything real, shut off the way he is, not interested in the world, maybe no reason why he should be. Maybe the weight of the days is too strong. Maybe withdrawal is a choice we'd all make if we could...." One's reminded that art doesn't come--perhaps it's that it can't be heard--in times of crisis and destruction; art comes in the period of decadence that precedes a revolution, or after the deluge. It's prelude to revolution; it's not contemporary with it save in terms of memory." Marcus, p. 9

(7) To this kid Dylan is a figure of myth; nothing less but nothing more. Dylan is not real and the album carries no reality. He's never seen Bob Dylan; he doesn't expect to; he can't figure out why he wants to." Marcus, p. 10
(17) "You think he'd dig running for presiden?" /"Nah, that ain't his trip he's into something else."/ "You met him, Mike? What he into?"/"I don't know for sure but it ain't exactly politics. You ever met him?"/"Yeah, once about seven years ago in Gertie's Folk City down in the West Village. I was trying to get him to do a benefit for civil rights or something...." Marcus, pp. 19-20

(18) "It's certainly an odd self-portrait: other people's songs and the songs of a few years ago. If the title is serious, Dylan no longer cares much about making music and would just as soon define himself on someone else's terms. There is a curious move towards self-effacement: Dylan removing himself from a position from which he is asked to exercise power. It's rather like the Duke of Windsor abdicating the throne. After it's over he merely goes away, and occasionally there'll be a picture of him getting on a plane somewhere." (Marcus, p. 20)

"Dylan has a vocation if he wants it; his audience may refuse to accept his refusal unless he simply goes away. In the midst of that vocation there might be something like Hamlet asking questions, old questions, with a bit of magic to them; but hardly a prophet, merely a man with good vision." Marcus, Self-Portrait No. 25

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Course Description

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Martin Mull (or Elvis Costello)

Thinking about the meaning and value, intellectual, affective and neurological experiences, and aesthetics of music has occupied an important position in modern and contemporary philosophical writings. Central to the philosophy of music is a questioning of what music is insofar as it is an art form and practice, akin to but different from other arts, such as drama, literature, painting, sculpture, to name but a few examples. Claims have been made, in fact, that music’s effect, when performed and listened to, surpasses those of the other arts because of its abstact purity, of its universality, and of its singular capacity to express, represent and incite emotions. This course will explore such issues in 19th-20th century philosophy. We will begin with introductory readings of what composes the field and discipline of the philosophy of music. We will read—among other philosophers, novelists, critics and musicologists—Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Barthes and Adorno’s writings on music. Finally, we will have the occasion to read about and listen to specific musicians, both high and low, and explore the contexts of their work, concentrating on the historical and political dimensions of the practice, performance and art of making music.