NP: Dylan on Moby-Dick

[Allan Balliett]

It also contains an account of the career defining aisthesis he experience
through Buddy Holly at a concert in Duluth in 1959.

Nice blog post on the lecture here:

http://www.daysofthecrazy-wild.com/bob-dylan-attends-buddy-holly-show-january-31-1959/

The lecture isn't long so, if I don't take the time to share it here now I
have to go outside and continue planting okra, here it is. (For those who
do not have the time to read it, the last line is “Sing in me, oh Muse, and
through me
tell the story," which I feel I've understood for the first time.

Oh, and it contains this putdown of Dylanologists: "John Donne as well, the
poet-priest who lived in the time of Shakespeare, wrote thesewords, “The
Sestos and Abydos of her breasts. Not of two lovers, but two loves,
thenests.” I don.t know what it means, either. But it sounds good. And you
want your songs tosound good. "

Apologies for the crudeness of text formatting

-Allan in WV, who needs someone to tell him about the audio for this
lecture since he refuses to listen to anything Dylan has recorded since
Blood on the Tracks

Bob Dylan's Nobel Lecture

When I first received this Nobel Prize for Literature, I got to wondering
exactly how mysongs related to literature. I wanted to reflect on it and
see where the connection was. I.m going to try to articulate that to you.
And most likely it will go in a roundabout way, but Ihope what I say will
be worthwhile and purposeful.

If I was to go back to the dawning of it all, I guess I.d have to start
with Buddy Holly. Buddydied when I was about eighteen and he was
twenty-two. From the moment I first heard him,I felt akin. I felt related,
like he was an older brother. I even thought I resembled him. Buddyplayed
the music that I loved – the music I grew up on: country western, rock .n.
roll, andrhythm and blues. Three separate strands of music that he
intertwined and infused into onegenre. One brand. And Buddy wrote songs –
songs that had beautiful melodies andimaginative verses. And he sang great
– sang in more than a few voices. He was thearchetype. Everything I wasn.t
and wanted to be. I saw him only but once, and that was afew days before he
was gone. I had to travel a hundred miles to get to see him play, and
Iwasn.t disappointed.

He was powerful and electrifying and had a commanding presence. I was only
six feetaway. He was mesmerizing. I watched his face, his hands, the way he
tapped his foot, hisbig black glasses, the eyes behind the glasses, the way
he held his guitar, the way hestood, his neat suit. Everything about him.
He looked older than twenty-two. Somethingabout him seemed permanent, and
he filled me with conviction. Then, out of the blue, themost uncanny thing
happened. He looked me right straight dead in the eye, and he transmitted
something. Something I didn.t know what. And it gave me the chills.

I think it was a day or two after that that his plane went down. And
somebody – somebodyI.d never seen before – handed me a Leadbelly record
with the song “Cottonfields” on it.And that record changed my life right
then and there. Transported me into a world I.d never known. It was like an
explosion went off. Like I.d been walking in darkness and all of thesudden
the darkness was illuminated. It was like somebody laid hands on me. I must
haveplayed that record a hundred times.

It was on a label I.d never heard of with a booklet inside with
advertisements for other artists on the label: Sonny Terry and Brownie
McGhee, the New Lost City Ramblers, JeanRitchie, string bands. I.d never
heard of any of them. But I reckoned if they were on thislabel with
Leadbelly, they had to be good, so I needed to hear them. I wanted to know
allabout it and play that kind of music. I still had a feeling for the
music I.d grown up with, but forright now, I forgot about it. Didn.t even
think about it. For the time being, it was long gone.

I hadn.t left home yet, but I couldn.t wait to. I wanted to learn this
music and meet the peoplewho played it. Eventually, I did leave, and I did
learn to play those songs. They weredifferent than the radio songs that I.d
been listening to all along. They were more vibrant andtruthful to life.
With radio songs, a performer might get a hit with a roll of the dice or a
fall ofthe cards, but that didn.t matter in the folk world. Everything was
a hit. All you had to do wasbe well versed and be able to play the melody.
Some of these songs were easy, some not. I had a natural feeling for the
ancient ballads and country blues, but everything else Ihad to learn from
scratch. I was playing for small crowds, sometimes no more than four orfive
people in a room or on a street corner. You had to have a wide repertoire,
and you hadto know what to play and when. Some songs were intimate, some
you had to shout to beheard.

By listening to all the early folk artists and singing the songs yourself,
you pick up the vernacular. You internalize it. You sing it in the ragtime
blues, work songs, Georgia seashanties, Appalachian ballads and cowboy
songs. You hear all the finer points, and youlearn the details.

You know what it.s all about. Takin. the pistol out and puttin. it back in
your pocket. Whippin. your way through traffic, talkin. in the dark. You
know that Stagger Lee was a bad man andthat Frankie was a good girl. You
know that Washington is a bourgeois town and you.ve heard the deep-pitched
voice of John the Revelator and you saw the Titanic sink in aboggy creek.
And you.re pals with the wild Irish rover and the wild colonial boy. You
heardthe muffled drums and the fifes that played lowly. You.ve seen the
lusty Lord Donald stick aknife in his wife, and a lot of your comrades have
been wrapped in white linen.

I had all the vernacular all down. I knew the rhetoric. None of it went
over my head – thedevices, the techniques, the secrets, the mysteries – and
I knew all the deserted roads thatit traveled on, too. I could make it all
connect and move with the current of the day. When Istarted writing my own
songs, the folk lingo was the only vocabulary that I knew, and I usedit.

But I had something else as well. I had principals and sensibilities and an
informed view ofthe world. And I had had that for a while. Learned it all
in grammar school. Don Quixote,Ivanhoe, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver.s
Travels, Tale of Two Cities, all the rest – typicalgrammar school reading
that gave you a way of looking at life, an understanding of humannature,
and a standard to measure things by. I took all that with me when I
startedcomposing lyrics. And the themes from those books worked their way
into many of mysongs, either knowingly or unintentionally. I wanted to
write songs unlike anything anybodyever heard, and these themes were
fundamental.

Specific books that have stuck with me ever since I read them way back in
grammar school

– I want to tell you about three of them: Moby Dick, All Quiet on the
Western Front and TheOdyssey.

Moby Dick is a fascinating book, a book that.s filled with scenes of high
drama and dramaticdialogue. The book makes demands on you. The plot is
straightforward. The mysteriousCaptain Ahab – captain of a ship called the
Pequod – an egomaniac with a peg legpursuing his nemesis, the great white
whale Moby Dick who took his leg. And he pursueshim all the way from the
Atlantic around the tip of Africa and into the Indian Ocean. Hepursues the
whale around both sides of the earth. It.s an abstract goal, nothing
concrete ordefinite. He calls Moby the emperor, sees him as the embodiment
of evil. Ahab.s got awife and child back in Nantucket that he reminisces
about now and again. You can anticipatewhat will happen.

The ship.s crew is made up of men of different races, and any one of them
who sights thewhale will be given the reward of a gold coin. A lot of
Zodiac symbols, religious allegory,stereotypes. Ahab encounters other
whaling vessels, presses the captains for detailsabout Moby. Have they seen
him? There.s a crazy prophet, Gabriel, on one of thevessels, and he
predicts Ahab.s doom. Says Moby is the incarnate of a Shaker god, andthat
any dealings with him will lead to disaster. He says that to Captain Ahab.
Anothership.s captain – Captain Boomer – he lost an arm to Moby. But he
tolerates that, and he.s happy to have survived. He can.t accept Ahab.s
lust for vengeance.

This book tells how different men react in different ways to the same
experience. A lot ofOld Testament, biblical allegory: Gabriel, Rachel,
Jeroboam, Bildah, Elijah. Pagan names as well: Tashtego, Flask, Daggoo,
Fleece, Starbuck, Stubb, Martha.s Vineyard. ThePagans are idol worshippers.
Some worship little wax figures, some wooden figures.Some worship fire. The
Pequod is the name of an Indian tribe.

Moby Dick is a seafaring tale. One of the men, the narrator, says, “Call me
Ishmael.”Somebody asks him where he.s from, and he says, “It.s not down on
any map. Trueplaces never are.” Stubb gives no significance to anything,
says everything is predestined.Ishmael.s been on a sailing ship his entire
life. Calls the sailing ships his Harvard and Yale.He keeps his distance
from people.

A typhoon hits the Pequod. Captain Ahab thinks it.s a good omen. Starbuck
thinks it.s a bad omen, considers killing Ahab. As soon as the storm ends,
a crewmember falls from theship.s mast and drowns, foreshadowing what.s to
come. A Quaker pacifist priest, who isactually a bloodthirsty businessman,
tells Flask, “Some men who receive injuries are led toGod, others are led
to bitterness.”

Everything is mixed in. All the myths: the Judeo Christian bible, Hindu
myths, Britishlegends, Saint George, Perseus, Hercules – they.re all
whalers. Greek mythology, the gorybusiness of cutting up a whale. Lots of
facts in this book, geographical knowledge, whale oil

– good for coronation of royalty – noble families in the whaling industry.
Whale oil is used toanoint the kings. History of the whale, phrenology,
classical philosophy, pseudo-scientifictheories, justification for
discrimination – everything thrown in and none of it hardly
rational.Highbrow, lowbrow, chasing illusion, chasing death, the great
white whale, white as polarbear, white as a white man, the emperor, the
nemesis, the embodiment of evil. Thedemented captain who actually lost his
leg years ago trying to attack Moby with a knife.

We see only the surface of things. We can interpret what lies below any way
we see fit.Crewmen walk around on deck listening for mermaids, and sharks
and vultures follow theship. Reading skulls and faces like you read a book.
Here.s a face. I.ll put it in front of you.Read it if you can.

Tashtego says that he died and was reborn. His extra days are a gift. He
wasn.t saved byChrist, though, he says he was saved by a fellow man and a
non-Christian at that. Heparodies the resurrection.

When Starbuck tells Ahab that he should let bygones be bygones, the angry
captainsnaps back, “Speak not to me of blasphemy, man, I.d strike the sun
if it insulted me.” Ahab,too, is a poet of eloquence. He says, “The path to
my fixed purpose is laid with iron railswhereon my soul is grooved to run.”
Or these lines, “All visible objects are but pasteboardmasks.” Quotable
poetic phrases that can.t be beat.

Finally, Ahab spots Moby, and the harpoons come out. Boats are lowered.
Ahab.s harpoon has been baptized in blood. Moby attacks Ahab.s boat and
destroys it. Nextday, he sights Moby again. Boats are lowered again. Moby
attacks Ahab.s boat again. Onthe third day, another boat goes in. More
religious allegory. He has risen. Moby attacks onemore time, ramming the
Pequod and sinking it. Ahab gets tangled up in the harpoon linesand is
thrown out of his boat into a watery grave.

Ishmael survives. He.s in the sea floating on a coffin. And that.s about
it. That.s the whole story. That theme and all that it implies would work
its way into more than a few of mysongs.

All Quiet on the Western Front was another book that did. All Quiet on the
Western Front isa horror story. This is a book where you lose your
childhood, your faith in a meaningfulworld, and your concern for
individuals. You.re stuck in a nightmare. Sucked up into amysterious
whirlpool of death and pain. You.re defending yourself from elimination.
You.re being wiped off the face of the map. Once upon a time you were an
innocent youth withbig dreams about being a concert pianist. Once you loved
life and the world, and nowyou.re shooting it to pieces.

Day after day, the hornets bite you and worms lap your blood. You.re a
cornered animal. You don.t fit anywhere. The falling rain is monotonous.
There.s endless assaults, poisongas, nerve gas, morphine, burning streams
of gasoline, scavenging and scabbing for food,influenza, typhus, dysentery.
Life is breaking down all around you, and the shells arewhistling. This is
the lower region of hell. Mud, barbed wire, rat-filled trenches, rats
eating theintestines of dead men, trenches filled with filth and excrement.
Someone shouts, “Hey, youthere. Stand and fight.”

Who knows how long this mess will go on? Warfare has no limits. You.re
being annihilated,and that leg of yours is bleeding too much. You killed a
man yesterday, and you spoke tohis corpse. You told him after this is over,
you.ll spend the rest of your life looking after hisfamily. Who.s profiting
here? The leaders and the generals gain fame, and many othersprofit
financially. But you.re doing the dirty work. One of your comrades says,
“Wait aminute, where are you going?” And you say, “Leave me alone, I.ll be
back in a minute.” Then you walk out into the woods of death hunting for a
piece of sausage. You can.t see how anybody in civilian life has any kind
of purpose at all. All their worries, all their desires –you can.t
comprehend it.

More machine guns rattle, more parts of bodies hanging from wires, more
pieces of armsand legs and skulls where butterflies perch on teeth, more
hideous wounds, pus coming outof every pore, lung wounds, wounds too big
for the body, gas-blowing cadavers, anddead bodies making retching noises.
Death is everywhere. Nothing else is possible.Someone will kill you and use
your dead body for target practice. Boots, too. They.re yourprized
possession. But soon they.ll be on somebody else.s feet.

There.s Froggies coming through the trees. Merciless bastards. Your shells
are running out.“It.s not fair to come at us again so soon,” you say. One
of your companions is laying in thedirt, and you want to take him to the
field hospital. Someone else says, “You might saveyourself a trip.” “What
do you mean?” “Turn him over, you.ll see what I mean.”

You wait to hear the news. You don.t understand why the war isn.t over. The
army is sostrapped for replacement troops that they.re drafting young boys
who are of little militaryuse, but they.re draftin. .em anyway because
they.re running out of men. Sickness andhumiliation have broken your heart.
You were betrayed by your parents, yourschoolmasters, your ministers, and
even your own government.

The general with the slowly smoked cigar betrayed you too – turned you into
a thug and amurderer. If you could, you.d put a bullet in his face. The
commander as well. You fantasizethat if you had the money, you.d put up a
reward for any man who would take his life byany means necessary. And if he
should lose his life by doing that, then let the money go tohis heirs. The
colonel, too, with his caviar and his coffee – he.s another one. Spends all
histime in the officers. brothel. You.d like to see him stoned dead too.
More Tommies and Johnnies with their whack fo. me daddy-o and their whiskey
in the jars. You kill twenty of .em and twenty more will spring up in their
place. It just stinks in your nostrils.

You.ve come to despise that older generation that sent you out into this
madness, into this

torture chamber. All around you, your comrades are dying. Dying from
abdominal wounds,
double amputations, shattered hipbones, and you think, “I.m only twenty
years old, but I.m
capable of killing anybody. Even my father if he came at me.”


Yesterday, you tried to save a wounded messenger dog, and somebody shouted,
“Don.t
be a fool.” One Froggy is laying gurgling at your feet. You stuck him with
a dagger in his
stomach, but the man still lives. You know you should finish the job, but
you can.t. You.re on
the real iron cross, and a Roman soldier.s putting a sponge of vinegar to
your lips.


Months pass by. You go home on leave. You can.t communicate with your
father. He said,
“You.d be a coward if you don.t enlist.” Your mother, too, on your way back
out the door,
she says, “You be careful of those French girls now.” More madness. You
fight for a week
or a month, and you gain ten yards. And then the next month it gets taken
back.


All that culture from a thousand years ago, that philosophy, that wisdom –
Plato, Aristotle,
Socrates – what happened to it? It should have prevented this. Your
thoughts turn
homeward. And once again you.re a schoolboy walking through the tall poplar
trees. It.s a
pleasant memory. More bombs dropping on you from blimps. You got to get it
together
now. You can.t even look at anybody for fear of some miscalculable thing
that might
happen. The common grave. There are no other possibilities.


Then you notice the cherry blossoms, and you see that nature is unaffected
by all this.
Poplar trees, the red butterflies, the fragile beauty of flowers, the sun –
you see how nature
is indifferent to it all. All the violence and suffering of all mankind.
Nature doesn.t even notice
it.


You.re so alone. Then a piece of shrapnel hits the side of your head and
you.re dead.
You.ve been ruled out, crossed out. You.ve been exterminated. I put this
book down and
closed it up. I never wanted to read another war novel again, and I never
did.


Charlie Poole from North Carolina had a song that connected to all this.
It.s called “You Ain.t
Talkin. to Me,” and the lyrics go like this:


I saw a sign in a window walking up town one day.
Join the army, see the world is what it had to say.
You.ll see exciting places with a jolly crew,
You.ll meet interesting people, and learn to kill them too.
Oh you ain.t talkin. to me, you ain.t talking to me.
I may be crazy and all that, but I got good sense you see.
You ain.t talkin. to me, you ain.t talkin. to me.
Killin. with a gun don.t sound like fun.
You ain.t talkin. to me.


The Odyssey is a great book whose themes have worked its way into the
ballads of a lotof songwriters: “Homeward Bound, “Green, Green Grass of
Home,” “Home on theRange,” and my songs as well.

The Odyssey is a strange, adventurous tale of a grown man trying to get
home after fightingin a war. He.s on that long journey home, and it.s
filled with traps and pitfalls. He.s cursed to wander. He.s always getting
carried out to sea, always having close calls. Huge chunks ofboulders rock
his boat. He angers people he shouldn.t. There.s troublemakers in his crew.
Treachery. His men are turned into pigs and then are turned back into
younger, more handsome men. He.s always trying to rescue somebody. He.s a
travelin. man, but he.s making a lot of stops.

He.s stranded on a desert island. He finds deserted caves, and he hides in
them. He meetsgiants that say, “I.ll eat you last.” And he escapes from
giants. He.s trying to get back home,but he.s tossed and turned by the
winds. Restless winds, chilly winds, unfriendly winds. Hetravels far, and
then he gets blown back.

He.s always being warned of things to come. Touching things he.s told not
to. There.s two roads to take, and they.re both bad. Both hazardous. On one
you could drown and on theother you could starve. He goes into the narrow
straits with foaming whirlpools that swallowhim. Meets six-headed monsters
with sharp fangs. Thunderbolts strike at him. Overhangingbranches that he
makes a leap to reach for to save himself from a raging river. Goddessesand
gods protect him, but some others want to kill him. He changes identities.
He.s exhausted. He falls asleep, and he.s woken up by the sound of
laughter. He tells his storyto strangers. He.s been gone twenty years. He
was carried off somewhere and left there.Drugs have been dropped into his
wine. It.s been a hard road to travel.

In a lot of ways, some of these same things have happened to you. You too
have haddrugs dropped into your wine. You too have shared a bed with the
wrong woman. You toohave been spellbound by magical voices, sweet voices
with strange melodies. You toohave come so far and have been so far blown
back. And you.ve had close calls as well. You have angered people you
should not have. And you too have rambled this country allaround. And you.ve
also felt that ill wind, the one that blows you no good. And that.s still
not all of it.

When he gets back home, things aren.t any better. Scoundrels have moved in
and aretaking advantage of his wife.s hospitality. And there.s too many of
.em. And though he.s greater than them all and the best at everything –
best carpenter, best hunter, best experton animals, best seaman – his
courage won.t save him, but his trickery will.

All these stragglers will have to pay for desecrating his palace. He.ll
disguise himself as afilthy beggar, and a lowly servant kicks him down the
steps with arrogance and stupidity.The servant.s arrogance revolts him, but
he controls his anger. He.s one against a hundred,but they.ll all fall,
even the strongest. He was nobody. And when it.s all said and done,when
he.s home at last, he sits with his wife, and he tells her the stories.

So what does it all mean? Myself and a lot of other songwriters have been
influenced bythese very same themes. And they can mean a lot of different
things. If a song moves you,that.s all that.s important. I don.t have to
know what a song means. I.ve written all kinds of things into my songs. And
I.m not going to worry about it – what it all means. When Melvilleput all
his old testament, biblical references, scientific theories, Protestant
doctrines, and allthat knowledge of the sea and sailing ships and whales
into one story, I don.t think he would have worried about it either – what
it all means.

John Donne as well, the poet-priest who lived in the time of Shakespeare,
wrote thesewords, “The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts. Not of two lovers,
but two loves, thenests.” I don.t know what it means, either. But it sounds
good. And you want your songs tosound good.

When Odysseus in The Odyssey visits the famed warrior Achilles in the
underworld –Achilles, who traded a long life full of peace and contentment
for a short one full of honor and glory – tells Odysseus it was all a
mistake. “I just died, that.s all.” There was no honor. No immortality. And
that if he could, he would choose to go back and be a lowly slave to
atenant farmer on Earth rather than be what he is – a king in the land of
the dead – thatwhatever his struggles of life were, they were preferable to
being here in this dead place.

That.s what songs are too. Our songs are alive in the land of the living.
But songs are unlikeliterature. They.re meant to be sung, not read. The
words in Shakespeare.s plays weremeant to be acted on the stage. Just as
lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on apage. And I hope some of
you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they wereintended to
be heard: in concert or on record or however people are listening to
songsthese days. I return once again to Homer, who says, “Sing in me, oh
Muse, and through metell the story.”


On Mon, Jun 5, 2017 at 12:06 PM, Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for this!
>
> LK
>
> On Mon, Jun 5, 2017 at 11:30 AM, Donald Antenen <dantenen at sas.upenn.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Dylan released his Nobel Prize lecture, and it includes an incredible
>> account of Moby-Dick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TlcPRlau2Q
>>
>> all the best,
>> Donald
>>
>
>
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