I saw the great man again last night. For the 12th time, I believe. That I believe at the end of the previous sentence is troubling. Here I am, a connoisseur of numbers and dates, or so I tell myself or others tell me, and I can’t remember if it’s 11 or 12 — I’m pretty sure it’s 12. Now I’m stressed out, how about you?
Speaking of memory: I believe (there are those two words again, the basis of so much trouble in this world, so very much) it was 7 years ago today that the great man won The Nobel Prize in Literature. A capstone. Well deserved, one of the two bright spots in an extremely dark 2016 (the other being a certain Chicago baseball club — the only one that matters, really — winning their first World Series in 108 years).
I was gobsmacked when I read the news. I reached for my phone and spammed so many friends with aggressively excited texts about such an accolade. I couldn’t believe they had done it. I couldn’t believe they had given it to this great man, but I couldn’t have agreed more. He deserved this award, had deserved it for years, and to read it that morning was such an incredible rush of affirmation and joy at the beauty of art.
I used to say the great man was the greatest American artist since Whitman, but that has since been modified to: He’s the greatest American artist there has been. It is most certainly worth pointing out the absurdity of attempting to isolate one artist as the one who stands astride all the others, and it is of course subjective, subjective as hell, but I believe the argument rests with the great man and his accomplishments. His originality. His almost alien insistence on following the path he sees in front of him. He did not bend to society’s expectations, instead he did something far more impressive: he molded and shaped and changed society based on his genius. This is not something that is easily done, to say the least, nor is it common. The Beatles come to mind, of course (when don’t they?) and other artists can lay claim to such paradigm shifting repercussions from art, but very few. Very few indeed.
But his voice, they’ll say. He mumbles, they’ll say. And they will always say that, until the end of time, because he is an artist we will be speaking about until the end of time. He is that important.
And what of his voice? I know not what to say other than it sounds as authentic as anything America has produced and emotes and phrases descriptions of life and it’s travails in a supernaturally piercing way. And of the mumbling? Does he mumble at times? He certainly does. So do we all, in one way or another, and the mumbling takes nothing away from the authenticity — in some ways it might enhance it.
II
Art being what it is — eternal, universal, inviting, off putting, affirming, destabilizing, in short: the world — it is important to understand that there is subjectivity in all reaction to art. I subjectively respond to the great man in such a way because he explains the world back to me better than any other artist I’ve encountered. Even now, snatches of his lyrics pop into my head at a moment’s notice as if gospel, as if a guide book, or both:
people tell me it’s a sin
to know and feel to much within
nothing really matters much, it’s doom alone that counts
ah how can I explain,
it’s so hard to get on
i was born here and i’ll die here, against my will
i know it looks like i’m movin, but i’m standin still
the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay
you can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way
everything passes, everything changes
just do what you think you should do
i wish, i wish, i wish in vain
that we could sit softly in that room again
ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat
i’d give it all gladly if my life could be like that
you who philosophize disgrace
and criticize all fear
take your rag away from your face
now ain’t the time for your tears
today and tomorrow, and yesterday too
the flowers are dyin, like all things do
life is sad, life is a bust
all you can do is do what you must
you do what you must do and you do it well
i do it for you, honey baby — can’t ya tell?
now there’s a wall between us, something there’s been lost
i took too much for granted, i got my signals crossed
just to think that it all began on an uneventful morn
‘come in,’ she said, ‘i’ll give you shelter from the storm’
III
The above could have gone on for some time. These are mostly from memory — though the last reference to “Shelter from the Storm” was becasue I was listening to that song. However I didn’t even get into some of the doozies, the real head splitters of imagery, absurdity, the mid 60s visions stretched across a palette of guitar and harmonica and organ and bass, all somehow snearing just as the voice is snearing, something totally new made from the accomplishments of what came before, even ironically referring to the own comment on modernism, the creation of a new form of art, when he sang:
ezra pound and ts eliot were fighting in the captains tower
while calypso singers laugh at them and fisherman hold flowers
Such that I wanted to name some form of creation another as “flowerholdingfisherman”, a clear indication we have entered the social media phase of creation, the time when once profound words separated become meaningless profundity in mashed up letters, one word and a world then, too.
Nostalgia, too. Memories rising and falling, fawning and clawing for our conscious attention only to present a reel of unmistakable glorification of the same broken feelings from which we now run. Rememberence as a solvent for the current despair. Rinse and repeat. And then here is death, riding on the wings of regret, smiling its cancerous smile and laughing louder than memory.
When we die, we lose it all, including the idea that we have a clue or perception to the world around us. It’s terrifying to think about the erasure of our train of thought in the universe, but it only makes sense. We have a time in which to express ourselves — sequential, perhaps in the manner of a mirage — and when the cessation of that time arrives, so too does our own harsh judgment. Instead of expressing, we distract, we lift up the stones we have placed over puddles of pain and wonder at the reflection of scruitinous light. Feeling again then emptiness and a loss of form. Feeling then the absence of our own creativity. Feeling again then desolation. So we try to remember, we try to uncover the visages of endless traumas, we try to recreate the puppet show of life as if the dancing marrionate and shadow play can replace the absurdity of believing life was anything more than expression and absorption. To wit:
so go on boys, and play your hands, life is a pantomime
the ringleaders from the county seat say you don’t all that much time
Above, the great man tells us the fecklessness of it, the absurdity of placing a mark on the world while encouraging us to do that, and to do it quick. We don’t have all that much time, indeed. Live your life, which is to say: create form for the emptiness, feel the weight of what remains inside you and excise it as clearly as you can.
Seven years on from the recognition of the great man, I stand in awe long enough to know I too cast a shadow, that I too am meant to express and release and reinvent, that I too am trying to mold time, that it is all a dumb show dancing on the strings of pain.
Seven years on from the recognition of the great man, the bestowing of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
