Bob Dylan, The Time Machine & The Artist's Conundrum
Cross-Tie Walker
so exquisitely in his short story Berenice .."she roamed carelessly
through life with no thought of the shadows in her path, or the silent
flight of the raven-winged hours".
Time and the differing concepts of time have always fascinated writers,
musicians and wordsmiths, there is a school of thought that I subscribe
to which insists that most, if not all, art, literature and music are
in many ways an attempt, or struggle to hold back time, perhaps stop
time, laugh in the face of the ticking clock as it were.
I dont mean in the sense of halting the aging process,or being
suspended in time, more like making a mark along the road, a creation,
a painting,playing a concert, writing a symphony, a sculpture, even a
chord progression. Anyone who has created something knows the sense of
accomplishment they get from it. and also the knowledge that your
creation will live on long after you do, in a way you have immortalised
yourself....and laughed at time a little.
Through Bob Dylan's works I can see he too is a keen observer of time
and all it's many nuances. Without going into his lyric achives I can
think of quite a few occasions he has looked at the concept of time,
and the passing of time " sundown yellow moon,I replay the past, I know
every scene by heart, they all went by so fast " from "If You See Her,
Say Hello"...actually Blood On The Tracks has many references to time "
he hears the ticking of the clock"..." Simple Twist Of Fate// "I could
stay with you forever, and never realise the time"// Youre Gonna Make
Me Lonesome When You Go// "time is a jet-plane, it moves too fast"
"Youre A Big Girl Now"... from Oh Mercy " time is running backward and
so is the bride" and on it goes..I havent even delved into the rest of
his work but Im sure the time concept would be in many.
I suspect that the artists view of time is also one of the reasons that
Bob still plays so many concerts, I know Ive been to certain concerts
where time just seems to melt away, and Im only a member of the
audience, the performers must feel that more intensely.
If Im correct in my guesswork, Bob, with his immense body of work and
the number of concerts he has played and continues to play, has made
more marks on the road and laughed at time more than most.
CTW.
Poor_Howard
there's the immortality he's achieved with his writing ... remember the
lyrics to the musical "Fame"? "I'm gonna live forever ..." In other
words, this isn't unique to Bob. All truly great art transcends time.
It has to; otherwise great art could never speak to generation after
generation across the centuries, re-instantiating the power of the
artist's thoughts and feelings in the thoughts and feelings of all who
encounter it, resurrecting the artist's soul in the very act of
transforming human consciousness.
And that transcendence of time is something that costs you all your
love. You can't get it for money. Bill Gates was once asked what,
with all his money, he would want more than anything else in the world.
He answered, "More time."
Ah, Bill, if only you had chosen to become an artist instead, you might
have owned eternity for the price of a single work of genius.
H.
jackmcinroy
>and all it's many nuances. Without
In the last issue of Judas! there was an essay on this very theme by
Padraig Hanratty.
Cross-Tie Walker
Youre right Howard, absolutely not unique to Bob, its been happening
since artists,men and women noticed how quickly the sun set and the day
was done.Just a point on time itself, youve heard all the cliches of
course .." the older you get the quicker it goes" etc..etc , do you
think time, and a lifespan would go slower for a man living in say...a
wilderness, completely severed from modern civilisation, no outside
news..nothing but the dawn and the coming of night to signal another
day over,or, someone such as ourselves living in a world where we are
very busy, and constantly bombarded with media of all types?, reminding
us of all types of anniversaries..for example...its been xxxx years
since man landed on the moon...its been xxxx years since Lady Diana
died...its the xxxx anniversary of 9/11...when I hear those types of
announcements my first thought is usually " is it THAT long ago?...that
time has just flown", Its all very subjective I suppose..does time seem
to go quicker for you or I ?, if we lived exactly parallel lives maybe
that would be the case,then again, it may depend on my or your outlook
or personality.. I dont know..the whole concept of time is
mind-boggling..Im starting to give myself a headache here...maybe I
need some time out.
CTW.
"Odds and ends..odds and ends, lost time is not found again"..obscure
20th century poet.
Poor_Howard
You ought to read Proust's _Swann's Way_. It's about the same question
you're asking; the critical role of memory in consciousness and the
perception of past time.
Psychologists say that sizable periods of time tend to be perceived as
a ratio or percentage of one's entire life, so that -- for example -- a
year to a five-year-old kid would seem to last something like ten times
longer than a year seems to last to a fifty-year-old. In the first
case the year is 20% of the kid's entire life. In the second case it's
only 2%.
And also it depends on things like the individual's metabolism, whether
there are lots of events and novel or unexpected things happening or
whether it's relatively boring and routine, etc.
Also it depends on the people around you; they can influence your
internal sense of time. For example, it's a known fact that when
groups of women live together for extended periods, their monthly
periods tend to synchronize.
The rate of time passing also depends on how fast you're moving. In
physics, time is really thought of as a kind of length in another
dimension of reality equivalent to the three space dimensions. But the
only way we can perceive time in that way is by generating events that
have repeating, cyclic relationships and then measuring the distance in
the space dimensions between those events. For example, we know that a
pendulum clock keeps time accurately and evenly because the pendulum
always moves back and forth the same distance. Counting seconds on the
clock is then equivalent to measuring off how many times the pendulum
swung through that distance. All clocks operate on that same
principle. In a spring-gear driven clock, a second is equal to the
distance between two teeth on a gear; electronic clocks count
vibrations of a crystal excited by an electric charge; atomic clocks
count the transitions of states of electrons jumping from lower to
higher energy levels; etc. So, in a sense, even in science we never
really measure time itself ... and it was Einstein who realized that
because lengths of physical objects shorten in the direction of their
motion as they approach the speed of light, any measurement of time
based on lengths of objects would show that time slows down when
measured with fast-moving objects compared to slow-moving objects.
And then there's thermodynamic time, which represents the tendency of
the whole universe and everything in it to randomly evolve into states
that are more probable. Here's an example of what this means: When
you heat a pot of water on a stove, the water molecules move faster,
but nothing in physics prevents all the molecules from moving in
exactly the same direction -- which, if it happened, would result in
all the water in the pot flying up and splashing on the ceiling. Why
is this never observed? Simply because it's incredibly, astronomically
improbable. It's far more probable that all the water molecules move
faster in random, different directions, and therefore the water stays
in the pan and boils. The sequence of events in which the water tends
to sit in the pot and boil after it's put on a hot stove is the
sequence of thermodynamic time. And thermodynamic time turns out to
move in that sequence because the whole universe is expanding! If the
universe were contracting, the probability of the water flying up and
hitting the ceiling would get greater and greater the more it
contracted ... so the sense of time in the end depends on the Big Bang,
too.
It's a slippery and deep concept indeed :-)
H.
J Buck
<Psychologists say that sizable periods of time tend to be perceived as
a ratio or percentage of one's entire life, so that -- for example -- a
year to a five-year-old kid would seem to last something like ten times
longer than a year seems to last to a fifty-year-old. In the first case
the year is 20% of the kid's entire life. In the second case it's only
2%.>
Makes sense mathematically, but not in practical terms. Why does a
summer fly by in a heartbeat and a winter lasts a (no pun intended) ice
age?
Cross-Tie Walker
Thats an excellent in-depth analysis Howard[ I had to read it twice to
absorb it properly!], J Buck's question is a good one ,Im thinking that
in the end it may come down to the individuals make-up and [ as Howard
said] personal life circumstances...its a question for the ages [excuse
the pun].
One of my favoutite stories about time [ and passing time] is a short
story by the fantasy writer Ray Bradbury called "That Hellbound Train"
I believe he borrowed the title from an old railroad song which went
.." A drunkard lay on the barroom floor, hed drunk till he could drink
no more, he went to sleep with a troubled brain, and woke up on that
Hellbound Train".
Anyway...the devil is the conductor on the Hellbound Train and the
central character[ cant recall his name] I will call him Billy...is a
young down and out riding the rails..a hobo..the Hellbound Train pulls
up alongside Billy one night..the devil jumps off..and has a deal for
Billy...its the usual..he wants his soul..anything Billy wants he will
grant..as long as Billy hands over his soul when he dies..now Billys a
smart lad....he wants the old railroad watch the devil has and whenever
Billy wants to he can wind the watch backward and time will stand
still..the devil grumbles but agrees...so Billy goes off with the
watch..in a few weeks he finds himself in the city panhandling.. so he
now has money and a bed in a crummy mens shelter and it feels so good
he almost gets out the watch and winds it..but he thinks " if I get a
job I can have my own place..maybe a car..maybe even a girlfriend.. and
on it goes.. he gets a job..he gets a girl...marries...everytime his
life improves and hes happier he is tempted to wind the watch and stop
time..but he doesnt..next thing..he has children..but he cant stop
time..he wants to see them grown up..then theres his business..the kids
grow up..now there are grandchildren on the way....towards the end he
gets divorced..loses all his money and is once again walking down the
railroad line..the devil re-appears laughing..and says "I knew youd
never wind that watch ..no one ever has, the perfect moment of
happiness never comes, dont you see Billy? the fun is in the journey
not the destination!". But Billy has the last laugh....I wont tell you
what happens in the very end in case you ever read the story.
There are so many stories with time as a central theme, Rod Serling
wrote some beautiful pieces as well. I guess when you start really
thinking about the time concept..and asking unanswerable question such
as ..when did time start ? youre not very far off the question of
creation, Gods existence and all sorts of other puzzles that spring to
mind.
BD once said..in " Trust Yourself" .." dont look for answers where no
answers can be found", on occasion, that can be good advice.
Time is one of the great mysteries of life, and will always attract the
poets [such as Bob] and the artists of this world, perhaps the people
who post on RMD are artists of a kind also?, our posts are immortalised
in a way.
CTW.
"Life is what happens to you while youre busy making other plans" J
Lennon
Jim Linwood
>story by the fantasy writer Ray Bradbury called "That Hellbound Train"
"That Hellbound Train" was written by Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho, not
Ray Bradbury.
JL
Cross-Tie Walker
Thanks for the correction Jim, youre right, I got the two confused,Ray
Bradbury would have been proud to have his name on that story though,
thats the only fantasy type story that Ive seen from Robert Bloch, do
you know of any others ?.
I think they are both of a similar vintage and possibly wrote in the
same era that the Weird Tales magazine was popular.
CTW.
jackm...@yahoo.co.uk
Judas can be ordered here
http://www.judasmagazine.com/pages.asp/issue11.asp I think.