Unconfirmed Reports

If nothing else, I need to write a blog post today just to get that hideous picture of Joss Stick off the top of my blog page.

So: some diversions. Or: what I have been reading and watching.

I recently picked up a second-hand copy of Chronicles, the first volume of Bob Dylan´s autobiography. I got a bit drawn in, because on the back cover there´s a list of about 30 famous writers and critics who listed it among their “books of the year”. But as it turns out, it´s at least as good as that.

I am one of those who thinks that Bob is (was?) a great songwriter - and I now believe that he is also an outstanding words writer. He has previously authored a bizarre book called Tarantula, which I read some years ago, but remember as being very entertaining. And the cover notes to the album John Wesley Harding are no mean piece of script, either.

In the first volume of his autobiography, he shows an amazing facility to ramble on, apparently vague and possibly lost in his narrative, but then somehow wheel things around to making a point. Then I am left feeling that all the rambling was for a reason, and I should learn to be more patient next time. There´s something patient about the book. Bob seems to be a man of wisdom and judgement - who knows when to move and when to wait. Interestingly, he claims that before he became a famous musician and cultural icon, he had no doubt that all this would come to pass.

I should say that it comes down to this: the guy just knows how to write. Just the simple stuff - he´s good a putting words together. Here is the first paragraph I have turned to at random:

“I stared down into the alleyway and then up to the rooftops from tower to tower. Snow was beginning to fall again, covered the cement covered the earth. If I was building any new kind of life to live, it really didn´t seem that way. It´s not as if I had turned in any old one to live it. If anything, I wanted to understand things and then be free of them. I needed to learn how to telescope things, ideas. Things were too big to see all at once, like all the books in the library - everything laying around on all the tables. You might be able to put it all into one paragraph or into one verse of a song if you could get it right.”

In many other parts, Bob narrates certain moments, or certain days, from 30 or 40 years ago, telling them with minute detail of who walked past in the street, how a cat jumped out of a garbage bin, etc etc. I am not sure if he really remembers all this, or if he just makes up lots of details for his own amusement - but it doesn´t matter. What matters is he has the ability to make you feel stuff, by the way he captures his own human perception. There is not much here about what it was like to be famous, or meet the Rolling Stones or whatnot. Most of the book is simply about how he lived his life day-to-day… and not in particular period, but in a scattered way, picking up on the moments that he now feels were important.

I feel like I know him pretty well now. Or know how he looks at the world. That in itself is an achievement for any writer: trying to give people a view inside your world is pretty difficult, I think, without just becoming self-indulgent, grandiose or plain boring. And so perhaps the best thing I could say about this book is that it is in itself a worth narrative… if I´d never heard of Bob Dylan, or didn´t care for his music, or perhaps if I´d been presented this as a novel, I think it would have still been a good read.

Another remarkable diversion: the film, Shooting Dogs. This is a bit documentary-like, though really it is a film with actors and characters and a screenplay and script. But the film-makers have gone for straight-faced realism, trying to recreate events and let them speak for themselves. The events are a massacre in Rwanda, part of the greater genocide, and the role the UN had in its opportunity to protect a few civilians from being hacked to death.

This is one of the saddest, most painful things I have ever seen. It says a lot about how horrible humanity is. So maybe you´re thinking now that´s the last thing you need or want to see… but maybe it´s better to face these things than to avoid them. I find it hard to imagine a piece of art that could give you a stronger impression of how disgraceful we are as a species.

The worst thing is: you see how things are, and you´re not sure if you´re any better. Not sure if you would have done any different. Generally, we are selfish bastards and that is that.

So thanks for reading, and have a great day!