The "I" in "You" or "Me"

So I quite enjoy the music of Mr. Bob Dylan and, as I wrote about last time we met, I’m going through this book series covering a number of influential albums. I’m almost done with the book on Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and it is funny how certain quirks from artists can come out over the course of a career. In this case, the quirk is that of obfuscation. This comes out in a quote from Bob on who the inspiration is of the songs from the album. Here’s Bob’s answer and it’s classic Dylan:

“Sometimes the ‘you’ in my songs is me talking to me. Other times I can be talking to somebody else. If I’m talking to me in a song, I’m not going to drop everything and say, alright, now I’m talking to you. It’s up to you to figure out who’s who. A lot of times it’s ‘you’ talking to ‘you.’ The ‘I,’ like in ‘I and I,’ also changes. It could be I, or it could be the ‘I’ who created me. And also, it could be another person who’s saying ‘I.’ When I say ‘I’ right now, I don’t know who I’m talking about.”

There you go everybody. Now that that’s cleared up, let’s move on…

Sounds of Clarity

So a few weeks ago I stumbled upon a music shop in Belmont Shore with some friends and ran into a series I have had my eye on for quite some time. It’s the 33 1/3 series published by Continuum Publishing and I love the concept dearly. It’s a series of books, each by a different author, completely centered on a specific influential album. Because I rule, I happen to have a few of the albums that are based in the series. Unfortunately they didn’t have all the titles in the series I want to read but then again it may have driven me to the poor house if they would have so no worries. I’ll get there eventually. Anyway, that afternoon I picked up books on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Pink Floyd, Highway 61 Revisited by Bob Dylan and Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys.

I started with Piper, which lead to me listening to The Floyd and Syd Barrett for an unhealthy amount of time last week but moved on to Pet Sounds at the end of the week, which I just finished today. Now as much as I love Piper, Pet Sounds is one of those discs that just have always gotten to me emotionally. There are some obvious (to me) personal parallels to experiences I’ve gone through in the past decade or so but I don’t know if I’ve ever been able to properly articulate my feelings, as is sometimes the case with me and music. Anyway, while reading the epilogue this afternoon, the follow passage jumped out at me and I said, “THAT’S IT!!” as everything became clear as crystal in astonishing clarity. Here goes:

“And it really is a gift to those of us who need it. It so perfectly captures a perspective that isn’t part of the daily discussion. I mean, people don’t go around telling each other how alienated they feel, and how divorced they feel from the emotions others so readily access, and how they desperately want love and acceptance and yet fear what may come if they grow accustomed to them and then these vital elements of life suddenly go away. If someone does talk about these things, it’s rarely with such eloquence and clarity. With Pet Sounds, we hear what Brian thought and felt, and his thoughts and feelings are communicated not only through lyrics, but also through often disorienting music that wheedles its way into our subconscious.”

Not that I have been particularly looking to read someone so aptly describe this album, but I appreciated it nonetheless. Once again music is cathartic, exhilarating, speaks to and through our soul, and is such a medium used to transmit the experience of lives, one at a time. I can’t wait to dig through the next volume.