Reading Dylan
I bought a lot of concert tickets this week. Blondie. Ian Brown. Artists I'm not too familiar with, but that's no excuse. I wasn't too familiar with Mercury Rev or dEUS either, when they showed up. I enjoyed them anyway, and have since gotten to know dEUS, at least, very well.
"You never regret the concerts you go to", says my mother. "Only the ones you miss out on."
(pause)
"Well, except for that Bob Dylan concert with Tom Petty. That was terrible."
***
Bob Dylan, Chronicles, volume 1, p.148:
"I'd been on an eighteen month tour with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. It would be my last. I had no connection to any kind of inspiration. Whatever was there to begin with had all vanished and shrunk. Tom was at the top of his game and I was at the bottom of mine. I couldn't overcome the odds. Everything was smashed. My own songs had become strangers to me, I didn't have the skill to touch their raw nerves, couldn't penetrate the surfaces."
***
Dylan shovels similes and metaphors like coal into an engine, keeping the narrative train going, shooting off in all directions, driving the point home.
The fourth chapter, encompassing his 1987 burnout, shows it well:
"It was like carrying a package of heavy rotting meat. I couldn't understand where they came from. The glow was gone and the match had burned right to the end. I was going through the motions. Try as I might, the engines wouldn't start".
Occasionally it get tiresome.