bob dylan | dual personalities

December 2, 2016

Father of minutes, Father of days*

by chuckofish

Well, the weekend is upon us. Sigh. I intend to check out our Grace Church Holiday Sale, go to a baby shower for daughter #3, and attend our Advent Lessons and Carols service. Maybe I will convince the OM to go with me to buy our Christmas trees…

In between the aforementioned fun activities, I plan to start watching Christmas movies. You know:

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

The Bishop’s Wife (1947)

or maybe Edward Scissorhands (1990)

There are so many to choose from! Meanwhile, maybe I’ll get started on those Christmas cards!

BTW, don’t forget to set your DVR this month, because TCM is, of course, showing a lot of Christmas classics! Here’s the schedule.

And this Instagram made me laugh:

Enjoy your weekend!

6 Comments

October 14, 2016

“You don’t need a weather man To know which way the wind blows”*

by chuckofish

Zut alors, it is Friday again. My girls are visiting this weekend, daughter #1 having arrived last night and daughter #2 expected tomorrow morning.

We’re doing some wedding planning, so the weekend will be a veritable tourbillon d’activités. I hope I can keep up.

In other news: yesterday I spied an iris bud amidst the fall leaves.

Can you believe it? You go, little iris plant!

And here’s some good news…and about time!

Here’s another reason to visit Oklahoma.

This is an interesting story with a happy ending (even though it is an obituary.)

The St. Louis Blues opened their 50th season last night against the Minnesota Wild. They want us to care, I suppose, because we don’t have a football team anymore.

We’ll see. And this is so true:

Have a terrific weekend!

*Subterranean Homesick Blues, Bob Dylan, 1965

3 Comments

May 26, 2016

Happy belated birthday, Mr. Zimmerman

by chuckofish

As you probably already know, Tuesday was Bob Dylan’s 75th birthday.

Thank goodness, he is still going strong and has just released Fallen Angels, his 37th LP and second straight album of American Songbook classics.

So in honor of his big day let’s listen to one of my favorites from 1981:

Dylan described “Every Grain of Sand” as “an inspired song that just came to me … I felt like I was just putting words down that were coming from somewhere else.”

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There’s a dyin’ voice within me reaching out somewhere
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair

Don’t have the inclination to look back on any mistake
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master’s hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay

I gaze into the doorway of temptation’s angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer’s dream, in the chill of a wintry light
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand

Copyright © 1981 by Special Rider Music

Because we’re just pilgrims passing through after all.

3 Comments

February 12, 2015

This and that

by chuckofish

There has been a lot of head-scratching and wink-winking over the fact that Bob Dylan is featured in the February/March issue of AARP. But Bob does not consider himself too cool for AARP. He is 73 after all.

In this interview he talks a lot about his new album of standards from the American Songbook (“Shadows in the Night”), many popularized by Frank Sinatra.

These songs are songs of great virtue. That’s what they are. People’s lives today are filled with vice and the trappings of it. Ambition, greed and selfishness all have to do with vice. Sooner or later, you have to see through it or you don’t survive. We don’t see the people that vice destroys. We just see the glamour of it — everywhere we look, from billboard signs to movies, to newspapers, to magazines. We see the destruction of human life. These songs are anything but that.

Bob speaks the Truth. He has a lot to say, including this about Billy Graham:

When I was growing up, Billy Graham was very popular. He was the greatest preacher and evangelist of my time — that guy could save souls and did. I went to two or three of his rallies in the ’50s or ’60s. This guy was like rock ’n’ roll personified — volatile, explosive. He had the hair, the tone, the elocution — when he spoke, he brought the storm down. Clouds parted. Souls got saved, sometimes 30- or 40,000 of them. If you ever went to a Billy Graham rally back then, you were changed forever. There’s never been a preacher like him. He could fill football stadiums before anybody. He could fill Giants Stadium more than even the Giants football team. Seems like a long time ago. Long before Mick Jagger sang his first note or Bruce strapped on his first guitar — that’s some of the part of rock ’n’ roll that I retained. I had to. I saw Billy Graham in the flesh and heard him loud and clear.

You can read the interview here.

And here’s a tidbit from the Let’s-Not-Mince-Words Dept.:

“One might wish that the leadership of the Episcopal Church would come to grips with reality. The people of the Diocese of South Carolina voted by an overwhelming majority to leave the Episcopal Church. Any church bureaucracy that would try to force its will on a Diocese where the majority of people have said they no longer want to be affiliated is manifestly evil. They are just trying to suck the life out of the Diocese of South Carolina (and the other dioceses they are suing) by bleeding them dry through lawsuits. (That’s just my opinion, of course. But this kind of continued pernicious evil from the Episcopal Church’s leadership has been going on long enough that it just makes you wonder what it will take to finally drive a stake through the vampire’s heart.)”

–Rev. Robert S. Munday, former President and Dean of Nashotah House

He’s talking about the bruhaha in South Carolina where part of the Episcopal Church has broken off and joined the Anglican Church. The problem comes down to money and who owns church property. Read the whole thing here.

The other night I watched A Tale of Two Cities (1935) which I had DVR’d from TCM. I was really impressed. This movie is 80 years old, after all, and you might think it would be a tad dated/stilted. But it really isn’t and Ronald Colman is superb.

He was nominated for an Oscar three times, but not for this movie! He is so engaging and sympathetic as the doomed Sydney Carton, who, you will recall, switches places with the husband of the woman he loves and goes to the guillotine in a final act of selfless sacrifice. I nearly wept. Really. (If the music had been better, I would have.) All the supporting players are marvelous as well: Reginald Owen, Basil Rathbone (excellent as the Marquis St. Evremonde), H.B. Warner, Blanche Yurka (Madame De Farge), Edna May Oliver (wonderful as Miss Pross), and Isabell Jewell as the little seamstress.

Well, anyway, if you are ever looking for something to watch, remember this one. You’ll be glad you did. By the way, TCM is showing Academy Award-winning or nominated movies all month in their “31 Days of Oscar.” I check every morning before work and set my DVR accordingly.

And, hey, just a reminder…

Happy Thursday!

4 Comments

February 9, 2015

When the storm of life is raging / Stand by me

by chuckofish

How was your weekend? We enjoyed a glorious mid-winter weather break this weekend with record-breaking temperatures in the low 70s. Wow. After church the OM and I headed down to Ted Drewes only to find it closed with a sign saying it would be open by Valentine’s Day! Why? I have no idea. Confused and let down, we drove back to our flyover town and settled for Andy’s frozen custard, which was good, but just not the same.

Otherwise the weekend was pleasant enough. I did some more work on the basement re-organization project and went to lunch with some girlfriends. Again, we were thwarted in our plans, due to our chosen restaurant being too busy. Everyone and his brother was out and about this weekend!

Since I had finally gotten the DVD back from the boy, I watched Road to Perdition (2002) and enjoyed it a lot.

I was quite struck by the cinematography, so I looked up the cinematographer, Conrad Hall who, it turns out, won his third Oscar for this movie. I found out that he was the son of James Norman Hall, who along with Charles Nordhoff was the author of Mutiny on the Bounty. He was born in Tahiti and studied filmmaking at USC. Nominated ten times, he won Oscars for American Beauty (2000) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1970) and the aforementioned Road to Perdition, his last film. He was nominated for one of my favorites, The Professionals (1966), but not for another favorite, Cool Hand Luke (1967). Indeed, he was a great cinematographer.

The beautiful musical score is by Thomas Newman, who is the son of the great Alfred Newman (How the West Was Won and many others) and the cousin of Randy Newman. Thomas has been nominated twelve times for an Oscar, but has never won. He composed the music to Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and Oscar and Lucinda (1997) among many others.

Considering that The Road to Perdition is a movie about Irish-American mobsters, there is not an overabundance of violence. (But it is directed by Sam Mendes and not Martin Scorcese.) Bad things happen, terrible things, but first and foremost it is a very low-key film about fathers and sons. Tom Hanks plays the anti-hero who is so screwed up by his upbringing that he cannot escape perdition, but he does the best he can to save his son.

Daughter #1 sent me the link to Bob Dylan’s speech accepting the MusiCares Person of the Year Award. Read the whole thing, because it is quite the speech. Bob is just the Best.

I can not tell you how much I love it that he quotes the old hymn “Stand By Me” in front of all those unbelievers! Testify. When I do the best I can / And my friends don’t understand / Thou who knowest all about me / Stand by me.

The Old Testament reading on Sunday was the wonderful passage from Isaiah 40:21-31:

²¹Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?

²²It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:

²³That bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.

²⁴Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown: yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble.

²⁵To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One.

²⁶Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.

²⁷Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God?

²⁸Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.

²⁹He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.

³⁰Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:

³¹But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

So do not faint and grow weary, Kiddos. All will be well. Have a good Monday.

7 Comments

October 14, 2014

Leave the light on in the yard for me

by chuckofish

Last week daughter #2 sent me a present–a new CD! Way to make my week automatically better. (I had been listening to 1970s CSNY. Woof.)

Anyway, the CD was Lost in the Dream by The War on Drugs, which is an indie rock band I was not acquainted with. So I have been listening to it non-stop in my car and it is wonderful!

Clearly the lead singer is greatly influenced by Bob Dylan. The album is also reminiscent of Dire Straits and Bruce Springsteen–all fine with me. Indeed, there is a lot of “homage” going on and, again, that is fine with me. Try it, I say. You will like it.

Here’s a sample:

So make your week better–and as they say, treat yourself.

6 Comments

May 23, 2014

Happy Friday–like the blast of a trumpet!

by chuckofish

This Friday has been a long time coming–what a long week! But we have a three-day weekend coming up, so it’s all good.

FYI May has been a big month for birthdays already and this weekend we have two more favorites: Bob Dylan (May 24) on Saturday

and Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25) on Sunday!

Those are two great reasons to celebrate this weekend! One good way to do so would be to re-read Self Reliance, which I have been meaning to do–how about you?

“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance

Another way would be to watch No Direction Home (2005)–a film chronicle of Bob Dylan’s evolution between 1961 and 1966 from folk singer to rock star. Directed by Martin Scorsese, it uses archival footage and recent interviews to tell the story of the illusive Bob, who refuses “to be simplified, classified, categorized, or finalized”. And why should he be? He is, like Emerson and those other guys mentioned above, a “pure and wise spirit,” both great and misunderstood.

Dylan and Emerson are certainly on the same page. Here’s Bob:

‘Trust yourself
Trust yourself to do the things that only you know best
Trust yourself
Trust yourself to do what’s right and not be second-guessed
Don’t trust me to show you beauty
When beauty may only turn to rust
If you need somebody you can trust, trust yourself’

How Emersonian can you get?

So enjoy your weekend and trust yourself. Eat cake.

6 Comments

April 17, 2014

Everything was blazing

by chuckofish

…Everything was blazing, everything was sweet. They were playing old Bob Dylan, more than perfect for narrow Village streets close to Christmas and the snow whirling down in big feathery flakes, the kind of winter where you want to be walking down a city street with your arm around a girl like on the old record cover–because Pippa was exactly that girl, not the prettiest, but the no-makeup and kind of ordinary-looking girl he’d chosen to be happy with, and in fact that picture was an ideal of happiness in its way, the hike of his shoulders and the slightly embarrassed quality of her smile, that open-ended look like they might just wander off anywhere they wanted together, and–there she was! her! and she was talking to herself, affectionate and old-shoe, asking me about Hobie and the shop and my spirits and what I was reading and what I was listening to, lots and lots of questions…

–Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

Okay, I have finally finished this magnum opus and I have to say I liked it. I think it is overly long and could have used some tightening up. At times I wanted to tell ol’ Boris to shut the hell up, but, you know, he was a talker. I have heard some blog-grumbling about the end of the novel. Personally–spoiler alert–I was relieved to have it work out the way it did. And I think the last twenty pages were worth waiting for.

I guess they are making a movie. I’m sure it will be awful. Sigh.

3 Comments

December 20, 2013

People disagreeing everywhere you look makes you wanna stop and read a book.*

by chuckofish

So recently the Man Repeller’s Amelia Diamond was cogitating about who she would choose as her celebrity BFF. You can read it here. This is a brilliant topic.

She was writing about her imaginary friendship with Mindy Kaling, a twenty-something wunderkind with whom I can not relate. Daughters #1 and 2 think she is hilarious, but I’m afraid I am neither young or hip enough to get her. She went to Dartmouth and so did my BFF, so we have that going for us. I will probably reverse my opinion on Mindy at some future point, but sorry, no.

The comment section of this post was fascinating. Answers included Emma Stone, Tina Fey, Cecily Strong, Courtney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Axl Heck from The Middle and Bernadette and Penny from The Big Bang Theory. And Angela Lansbury. (I have no idea whether these people realize that some of these are fictional characters or if they mean the actors who play them. If that is, indeed, the case, they should know the names of their BFFs.) Okay then.

Well anyway celebrities don’t really matter much to me these days. The only well-known person I would like to hang out with is of course, Bob Dylan. We could be BFFs.

We are a lot alike. We read a lot. We stay out of politics. We love the Lord. He is a better and more prolific writer than I am, but I understand the process. We trust our gut. We are even starting to look alike.

And we are in total agreement that:

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed…

I have also always felt that Johnny Depp is probably a long lost family member. He always reminded me of my older brother in his younger days. This may come as a surprise to his children, but it’s true.

Yes, Johnny, in his own flaky way, would fit right in with the Chamberlins. We are the flakiest.

And I mustn’t forget Sarah Michelle Geller,

who is, after all, like a fourth daughter to me.

She would fit right in, don’t you think?

Who would you choose as your celebrity BFF?

P.S. This would be a good night to watch Edward Scissorhands (1990) which qualifies as a Christmas movie after all.

* “Watching the River Flow”, Bob Dylan, 1971

8 Comments

September 26, 2013

A musical note

by chuckofish

Today’s musical interlude is from Odetta, the legendary American folk, blues and jazz singer (December 31, 1930 – December 2, 2008). She influenced many folk singers of the fifties and sixties, including Bob Dylan, who said, “The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta. I heard a record of hers Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues in a record store, back when you could listen to records right there in the store. Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar, a flat-top Gibson. … [That album was] just something vital and personal. I learned all the songs on that record.”

I have always loved this gospel standard and her version is pretty great. Remember Tennessee Ernie Ford? He had a syndicated daytime talk/variety show, The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show, that I watched sometimes in the summer when I was home and bored. He was called “the Ol’ Pea-Picker” because of his catch-phrase, “Bless your pea-pickin’ heart!” I had forgotten that he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984 and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1990.

Anyway, isn’t it great that Odetta and TEF sang this duet back in the day and now we can enjoy it like this? Those guys humming in the background are all right too.

2 Comments

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