Isis

[Landys ghost]

sorry its a day late but


"I married Isis on the 5th day of May"

[Landys ghost]

WEDNESDAY, MAY 5, 2010

The Perplexing Puzzle of Bob Dylan and Jann Wenner, The Unrepentant
One of the responses to the theory I presented in my previous post, regarding what I see as a hidden message in Chronicles:Volume One about song interpretation, included, "I'm not saying you're wrong about it, I'm just not convinced you're right." For my unconvinced reader I will present another puzzle that Dylan seems to have planted. Since today is the fifth day of May, a date that features prominently in the song "Isis," I am tempted to discuss Dylan's use of material from Madame Blavatsky's 1877 book Isis Unveiled. Blavatsky's charlatanism does tie in with some other themes that appear in the book's hidden subtext, but that discussion will have to wait until a future date. Instead I will present a puzzle that uses some of the same elements as my previous example; a similar grafting of material from contemporary music writing and the writing of Jack London.

Are these just examples of "the chance that mimics choice" that Vladimir Nabokov writes of in "The Vane Sisters," a short story which includes a number of deliberate puzzles, including a critical acrostic for the reader to discover? I think not.

The same comment on my previous post also included, "Is Dylan really trying to make a point with cryptographs? To whom? Puzzle enthusiasts?" I believe that this is precisely what Dylan is doing. Just like many of Nabokov's narratives are built with a strategy or scheme in mind, with masked chess moves or anagrams, Dylan too has embraced a love of puzzles and has incorporated a great number of them into his memoir in order for them to be solved by the careful reader. I believe that Dylan's scheme is for real.

There are number of parallels between Dylan and Nabokov that can be useful to consider. When I read Joni Mitchell's comment that "Bob is not authentic at all" Nabokov's disdain for authenticity and sincerity came to mind. There is an interesting passage in the forward to Nabokov's Mary where he contrasts the novel with his memoir Speak, Memory. He writes, "I had not consulted Mashenka when writing Chapter Twelve of the autobiography a quarter of a century later; and now that I have, I am fascinated by the fact that despite the superimposed inventions (such as the fight with the village rowdy or the tryst in the anonymous town among the glowworms) a headier extract of personal reality is contained in the romantization than in the autobiographer's scrupulously faithful account."

The fictional version was more real for Nabokov. This is certainly something to consider when looking at the number of experiences that Dylan passes off as his own in Chronicles: Volume One, experiences which turn out to be incorporated from other sources - that Dylan is presenting what perhaps is a stronger personal reality by using the anecdotes of others.

Nabokov, like Dylan, clearly did not want to be interpreted or have his ideas paraphrased - but he certainly wanted his work to be decoded. Chronicles: Volume One is loaded with things to be decoded, I think of it as The Da Vinci Code of rock 'n' roll.

Dylan uses material from an overwhelming number of sources in Chronicles: Volume One, but it is the work of Jack London that he returns to again and again, dozens and dozens of times. Nabokov takes a potshot at Jack London in his short story "The Doorbell" and a running gag in his novel Pnin involves people not knowing who London is. Pnin visits a book store and asks for, "...a celebrated work by the celebrated American writer Jack London." The bookseller draws a blank, holds her temples and repeats, "London, London, London." Nabokov once dismissed Ernest Hemingway and Joseph Conrad as "the writers of books for boys" and I imagine that he would probably place Jack London in the same category.

In stark contrast, Dylan seems to be a fan of these books for boys, incorporating material from each of the three into Chronicles: Volume One, ranging from the quick nod to Heart of Darkness on page 124, to the lines from over a dozen Hemingway short stories that appear throughout the book, to the long laundry list of Jack London that I've compiled.

I am intrigued by how at one point in his memoir Dylan has crafted an puzzle worthy of Nabokov by using material from Jack London, a writer that Nabokov seemingly did not respect. In the portion of Chronicles: Volume One where Dylan discusses the recording of the album Oh Mercy he writes, "Even with all the churches and temples and cemeteries, New Orleans doesn't have the psychic current of holy places. That's a cold, frozen fact."

Dylan has packed a lot into those two sentences. He is comparing New Orleans to Tangier by using material from an amazing article that Robert Palmer wrote for Rolling Stone, in which Palmer returns to Morocco to visit with the Master Musicians of Joujouka and experiences visions while in a trance state. Dylan then tags this with a reference to Jann Wenner. Here is how he did it -

From "Into The Mystic" by Robert Palmer, Rolling Stone, March 23, 1989:
"Tangier's cunningly balanced architecture of surfaces, arches, and crenelated towers serves as a kind of transformer for the spiritual electricity of the muezzin's call. In Morocco there are different kinds of electricity. This kind is called baraka, a kind of psychic current that certain holy places, sounds, and people absorb and hold like storage batteries. The receptive can plug into these sources - without getting fried, one hopes."

Dylan's sentence "That's a cold, frozen fact." is there to let you know that this reference to Robert Palmer's article is indeed intentional and not a fluke.

From the short story "Jan, the Unrepentant" by Jack London:
"He looked yearningly at that portion of Jan's anatomy which joins the head and shoulders. 'Give it up,' he repeated sadly to Lawson. 'Throw the rope down. Gawd never intended this here country for livin' purposes, an' that's a cold frozen fact.'

Jan grinned triumphantly. 'I tank I go mit der tent und haf a smoke.'

'Ostensiblee y'r correct, Bill, me son,' spoke up Lawson; 'but y'r a dummy, and you can lay to that for another cold frozen fact. Takes a sea farmer to learn you landsmen things. Ever hear of a pair of shears? Then clap y'r eyes to this.'"

The use of the line from "Jan, the Unrepentant" is meant to signify Jann Wenner. I had a great laugh at my own expense when reading London's story and trying to suss out why Dylan had used the passage. While reading the tale a second time I realized that since the character is Scandinavian his name would not have the hard "J" sound - that it wasn't Jan like "Jan-Michael Vincent," but rather Jan like..."Jann Wenner." It was a light bulb moment combined with egg on my face.

That Dylan has partnered Robert Palmer's line with a reference to the man who paid Palmer for writing it is glorious. What a clever way to pay respect to Palmer. I marvel at how much thought that Dylan must have put into that. Much of Dylan's book functions on this type of level.

I could just list page after page of similarities between the writing of Dylan and Jack London, but what that would result in is not my goal. "The suggestion of plagiarism is always sensational. When a half-page of deadly parallel is run in a newspaper, plagiarism is certainly suggested." Jack London wrote those words on April 10, 1906 in an angry letter regarding an item that had run in The New York World, one that showed more than a dozen uncanny similarities between one of London's short stories and a non-fiction article that had run in McClure's Magazine a few years earlier. I'll leave the sensational suggestions of plagiarism to Joni Mitchell and the knee jerk straw horse arguments to others, but just because it might be fodder for the media grist mill doesn't mean that we shouldn't continue to examine Dylan's work and have a discussion of what material he used from others and his possible reasons for doing it.

Adam Gopnik wrote an illuminating profile of magician Jamy Ian Swiss called "The Real Work" that ran in The New Yorker in 2008. In the article Gopnik writes about how David Blaine was preparing for an endurance feat involving sleep deprivation by reading A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake by Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson. I've been reading that book too, not only to learn about Joyce, but also to learn more about their approach to literary puzzle and problem solving, perhaps something that could be applied to learning more about Dylan the magician. One of my favorite lines in the A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake is, "Not until a sufficient number of readers have survived thousands of independent plunges will our Key become obsolete." I love the notion of plunging into a book thousands of times to see you might come up with. There is a section in Nabokov's "The Vane Sisters" regarding characters "examining old books for miraculous misprints" that touches on Finnegans Wake, mentioning "a prophetic sequence of the initial letters of Anna Livia Plurabelle" that I particularly enjoy, in that what Nabokov has his characters do is the antithesis of the measured approach that Campbell and Robinson took.

[Landys ghost]

There is a passage in Lolita where Nabokov compares the stability of characters in books and how we sometimes try to impose the same expectations on people. In the book Humbert Humbert states, "Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them. Thus X will never compose the immortal music that would clash with the second-rate symphonies he has accustomed us to. Y will never commit murder. Under no circumstances can Z ever betray us."

That our man Z is mercurial, labeled as Judas, engaging in things that have been taken as betrayals, whether that takes the form of going electric or finding religion or releasing a Christmas album, is hardly an original observation. Nabokov has Humbert say, "No matter how many times we reopen 'King Lear,' never shall we find the good king banging his tankard in high revelry, all woes forgotten, at a jolly reunion with all three daughters and their lapdogs." I suggest that the Dylan inside Chronicles: Volume One is not fixed like King Lear and if one plunges again and again into Chronicles: Volume One what one emerges with is an ever-changing

[Kent Allard]

Thanks for this; fascinating. It's starting to look like Bob has used stuff from most books ever written. Anything from Tolstoy in his work? War and Peace page 1,329? I doubt it....

[Landys ghost]

he's a big Chekov fan apparently

[Kent Allard]

Where does it appear in his work?

[thin man]

thanks KJ

[Garilia]

Where does it appear in his work?

in Chronicles he says the songs from Blood on the tracks are based on the short stories of Anton Chekhov.

[Landys ghost]

Thanks Gar....he also told Ricks that....unfortunately unless it has some religious overtone the work doesnt matter to Kent

[Isis]

in Chronicles he says the songs from Blood on the tracks are based on the short stories of Anton Chekhov.

Chekhov just happens to be one of my favorites too. lol A friend of mine just put up one of Chekhovs plays.

[Isis]

Thanks Gar....he also told Ricks that....unfortunately unless it has some religious overtone the work doesnt matter to Kent

That is not true at all Landy.

[Kent Allard]

in Chronicles he says the songs from Blood on the tracks are based on the short stories of Anton Chekhov.

Was he joking? What lines and in what songs?

[Garilia]

Was he joking? What lines and in what songs?

Who knows if he was joking. He didn't give specific examples. I think that if you're familiar with some of Chekhov's work you can see a certain similarity. Dylanologists aren't buying it though!

[Landys ghost]

Was he joking? What lines and in what songs?

you can -you know - be inspired by something without using it verbatim, your weird you have this very odd way of looking at the artistic process, Dylas very well read - it seems to me - and as has been noted he's a sponge picking these ideas to use in his work , it means nothing more significant than that, why do you find it so staggering?

[Kent Allard]

I am weird...has it taken you this long to work it out? ;)

[thin man]

...

[Isis]

I am weird...has it taken you this long to work it out? ;)weird?

[thin man]

How Isis came to Fairlane for Menewa (http://www.menewamusic.com/fairlane.htm)
By: Mark Kelly

“This doesn’t look very promising,” Jonathan Spottiswoode related. A glum enough assessment in the abstract for folks hoping for good news — but somehow all the more so when delivered via cell phone in a well-modulated British accent.

On a mission for some friends in Birmingham, the leader of the New York-based band Spottiswoode and His Enemies was standing in front of an apartment building on West Broadway, the ceaseless flow of Manhattan teeming in the background. There had been no answer when he rang the bell and there was no mention of Jackelope Publishing to be seen on the exterior, Jonathan said. Showman that he is, though, he’d held something back just in case it came to this.

“I do have one other idea.”
***
It all started because “Isis” is one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs — so much so that when my band, Menewa, went into the studio in March to begin the recording sessions for our upcoming CD, Fairlane, it was the first track we laid down. We started with “Isis,” rather than one of our own songs, because we’d fallen into the habit of opening our rehearsals with it; it’s a great warm-up, the deceptive simplicity of its chord structure — A-G-D-A in our arrangement — allowing all kinds of possibilities for playing around with dynamics, vocal phrasing and instrumental leads.

The straightforwardness of the melody is counterbalanced by a lyric of structural and narrative complexity. Dylan himself has called it “a song about marriage,” but it’s that and more, an allegorical tale that draws on age-old archetypes of mythology and mysticism to paint a vivid picture of the quest for love and stability in a treacherous and fleeting world. Plus, it’s a vocalist’s delight, full of lilting lines like “I cut off my hair and I rode straightaway/For the wild unknown country where I could not go wrong,” and “She was there in the meadow where the creek used to rise/Blinded by sleep and in need of a bed,” and my favorite verse, “The wind it was howling and the snow was outrageous/We chopped through the night and we chopped through the dawn/When he died, I was hoping that it wasn’t contagious/But I made up my mind that I had to go on.”

“Isis” appeared originally on Dylan’s 1976 album, Desire, which among other reasons is notable because seven of the nine songs were co-written by Jacques Levy — one of only a couple of times in his nearly 50-year career that Dylan has worked with a collaborator. Known primarily as a director and songwriter for musical theater, Levy had done some work with Roger McGuinn of the Byrds in the early 1970s, co-writing songs such as “Chestnut Mare” and “Lover of the Bayou.” He was sitting in a Greenwich Village club one evening in 1975 when Dylan pulled up a chair and asked him to help with the lyrics of a half-finished composition; they left the club for Dylan’s apartment nearby and completed “Isis” that night. As the critic Jason Ankeny noted in the All Music Guide, on “Isis” and the other songs the two men eventually co-wrote, Levy’s theatrical background “fostered and amplified the innate narrative drama.”

I haven’t pieced it all together yet, but I’m pretty sure the Dylan-Levy partnership was the proximate cause of Menewa’s problem. At work in the studio, we decided to include “Isis,” along with eight of our original compositions and a couple of other cover songs, on the CD. To do that, we had to obtain what is known as “mechanical rights,” or permission from the song’s publisher — and payment of appropriate royalties — to reproduce our performance for distribution and sale.

Generally speaking, getting mechanical rights is a simple process. For almost any song you’d want to perform, you can visit the website of the Harry Fox Agency, which administers publishing rights for over 27,000 music publishers around the world. You pay a standard royalty rate of 9.1 cents per number of CDs to be printed, and you get a license to replicate the song.

Our saga began when we found that, while Harry Fox administers a total of 100 Dylan songs — only a fraction of his catalogue — “Isis” is not one of them. When I contacted the agency by phone, I was told that we’d have to get permission directly from the song’s publisher. That led me to BMI, a performing right organization that tracks public performances of its members’ music and collects and distributes royalties on about 6.5 million songs. The BMI Website informed me that the rights are held by Jackelope Publishing and “other non-BMI publishers,” and provided a street address for the company — 478 West Broadway, Apartment 2, in New York City.

Problem was, I needed faster action than the U.S. Postal Service, or even FedEx, could provide. To meet our Aug. 9 release date, the company in California replicating and packaging our CD had to have license agreements in hand no later than July 23, giving us roughly six business days either to obtain rights to “Isis” or leave it off the CD — a decision which also would entail additional time and expense to make necessary changes in our cover art and liner notes. In other words, we needed to talk to somebody at Jackelope Publishing right away.

When neither New York directory assistance nor Google could provide a phone number for the company, I was ready to give it up. Then Gary Hyche, our lead guitarist, had a thought.

“Let’s call Jonathan,” he said.
***
When the relatively short walk from his apartment to the West Broadway address for Jackelope proved fruitless, Jonathan pulled the ace from his sleeve. Last November, Spottiswoode and His Enemies had played at a Dylan tribute at Lincoln Center, on a bill that also included the likes of Patti Smith, Phil Lesh, Roseanne Cash, Jay Farrar, Joan Osborne — and Ryan Adams, who performed “Isis.” Somebody had to have given him permission to do that, right? Jonathan offered to contact the show’s promoter to see if he could help.

Reached later that afternoon, a Friday, the promoter provided an email address for Jeff Rosen — Dylan’s publisher. Jonathan promptly fired off an email explaining our situation and the need for a quick response. Given that it was a weekend, and that we had no idea how many emails Rosen receives or responds to in a given day, or whether he would appreciate the plight of an independent band in Birmingham, Ala., that wanted to print a few hundred copies of its CD with “Isis,” we remained less than optimistic.

Then, over a cup of coffee on Sunday morning, I opened my email to find a message from Jonathan: “Bingo! Let me know how it turns out...” Copied was Rosen’s reply, sent at 11:30 Saturday night: “Thanks for writing. The song is administered by us. Have them write to Callie in my office.”

I shot Jonathan a quick note of thanks, at which he modestly demurred, saying that, “for the first time in my life, I suddenly feel like I have connections!” I replied if that all went well, we intended to get our own mileage out of his connections: “From now on, when anyone asks about this CD, we can say, ‘Well, we ran into a little copyright issue, but we were able to get with Bob’s people and work it out.’”

As it turns out, Bob’s people are pretty damn nice. Between the time of my first rather frantic and unnecessarily lengthy email on Monday morning the 16th, and around 4:30 that Thursday afternoon, when our license for “Isis” rolled off the fax machine from upstate New York, Callie Gladman was nothing but patient and helpful in navigating me through the process. Our materials were shipped for California the next day and arrived there, about six hours under the wire, on Monday morning the 23rd.

I didn’t take time to ask Callie about it in the rush of things, but I have a theory about why we ran into difficulty. The songs co-written with Levy are the only Dylan compositions published under the Jackelope name. My guess is that it was Levy’s own publishing company, and that Dylan decided to provide him with a nice ongoing income stream by allowing him to control the publishing rights to their collaboration. I’m also guessing that the apartment building to which Jonathan traversed on his wild goose chase was at one time Levy’s residence, and that when Levy died in 2004, the rights to the songs on Desire reverted to Dylan — which is why they are now administered by Ram’s Horn Music, one of several publishing concerns under the umbrella of the Bob Dylan Music Company headed by Jeff Rosen.

It’s a good story, anyway. As for our own story, the end has yet to be written. As a condition of obtaining mechanical rights to “Isis,” Menewa has to provide the Bob Dylan Music Company with one free copy of Fairlane. I’m sending two, with a note to Callie thanking her for all of the help and asking her to forward the extra copy to Bob. I know he generally works alone, but if he wants to license one of our songs, or ever again finds himself in need of a collaborator, we’ll be happy to return the favor.

[Kent Allard]

...

Weirdo

[thin man]

Weirdo


..having confessed, I guess this does give YOU a qualified advantage for that statement

[Isis]

don't worry thinman you are still in the lead for all the weird people in this ol' world. Nobody is gonna bypass you any time soon so you just relax ok?

[thin man]

trolling comes natural to you .. doesn't it

[Isis]

....

[Isis]

Sorry. I meant it as a compliment believe it or not. it just seemed to me you and Kent were in some competition who was the weirdest of you both and i thought this would cheer you up?:flogged: I thought it was a big honor to be chosen
as the weirdet poster ever?

[Landys ghost]

Sorry. I meant it as a compliment believe it or not. it just seemed to me you and Kent were in some competition who was the weirdest of you both and i thought this would cheer you up?:flogged: I thought it was a big honor to be chosen
as the weirdet poster ever?

your taking the piss

[Kent Allard]

trolling comes natural to you .. doesn't it

haha

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/10/27/article-0-00E79B3D00000190-136_468x286.jpg

[Isis]

trolling comes natural to you .. doesn't it

It is for free. No charge.:cheese:

[Isis]

haha

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/10/27/article-0-00E79B3D00000190-136_468x286.jpg

Macenroe was married to Tatum. What a ride that marriage must have been............jeee.......two great personalities both headstrong and interesting......they are actually both still alive and well too?

[Isis]

The day thinman stops to knock me down... and insult me to make me feel bad, is the day I will stop knockin' him down too. I still haven't gotten over that he told me in public here so everybody could read it that I have no skills and that I don't understand anything. I just think he barked up the wrong tree. He hasn't apologized either and that's why I can't get over it. I can't stand people that insults me and then not say they are sorry. That is not a friend. I have nobody to stick up for me and defend me so I do it myself.
He, he, thanks a LOT Kent. I can not begin to tell you how proud I am to be compared to Mcenroe. He's a great fighter. Never gives up a game. :)

HMMM just a suggestion for thinman. How about you editing a little bullshit? it is Mother's day tomorrow and I did my editing down at the chatbox?

[thin man]

HMMM just a suggestion for thinman. How about you editing a little bullshit? it is Mother's day tomorrow and I did my editing down at the chatbox?


go away from me troll!

[Isis]

go away from me troll!

you only have to ask that once.