NP nor Pandemic. We can all talk about this new song and why Bob released it now?
Mark Thibodeau
jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com
Mon Mar 30 15:36:52 UTC 2020
Not to mention (re: Merchant) the pound of flesh that splashed across the
hot black trunk of that 1961 armored Lincoln Continental...
Jerky
On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 5:42 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> Nice....
>
> I think Dylan may have added some dark vision to the death of the Fisher
> king motif.
> Dead King Arthur and all the dead lands, The Wasteland in here too (and we
> know Eliot
> borrowed from From Ritual to Romance if I remember correctly) and
>
> yes, death, all that Shakespearean death all over the wasteland since
> Camelot ended.
>
> for Merchant I say.....money, Trump's god........and Lady Macbeth because T
> accepts no responsibility...
> just looseness of connections, I know....but seven types of ambiguity often
> happen very loosely.
>
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 5:31 AM Thomas Eckhardt <
> thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de>
> wrote:
>
> > I am not saying you're wrong, just that the first thing one notes surely
> > is that Bob Dylan is a conspiracy theorist.
> >
> > As for the archetypes... The song comes across as an elegy for a country
> > or world gone wrong because of the most foul murder of the "king". If
> > this is true, the ailing Fisher King of Arthurian legend does not work
> > as a frame of reference, and neither does Frazer's sacrifice of a dying
> > king for the good of the kingdom. Yes, the assassination is depicted as
> > a "human sacrifice", a ritual slaughter performed on "the altar of the
> > rising sun", but the killing of the king does not lead to the
> > restoration of a barren wasteland but to strife and civil unrest. The
> > allusions to Shakespeare therefore seem more apt, even though I wonder
> > why, besides "Hamlet", "The Merchant of Venice" and Lady Macbeth are
> > singled out for reference.
> >
> > Apart from the references to the murder itself, the most peculiar aspect
> > of the lyrics is the interlocking of motifs from assassination lore and
> > from popular culture. Is this just free-wheelin' association, or is
> > there more to it?
> >
> > Also, I find some of the lyrics awful. The clumsy opening or "I'm just a
> > patsy like Patsy Cline" -- this is not very good, is it?
> >
> > Related listening:
> >
> > https://www.themetimeradio.com/
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> --
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