My America includes Dylan
The American media has turned its spotlight on the presidential debates with the starspangled exclusivity of which only America is capable.
This is not a complaint. It is just the way it is in America. There are not many subjects more important than America to Americans. It’s one of the reasons I like Bob Dylan.
Canadians often say that our geographic and cultural proximity gives us a unique perspective on the United States. Maybe it once did, but I’m not sure it does anymore.
I stood in the rain outside of Antwerp this past summer, surrounded by people whose language I couldn’t identify, much less speak, and I felt more at home there than I did recently in the lineup at a Popeye’s on the outskirts of Phoenix.
Fighting gun control? Opposing Obamacare? Banning gay marriage? Imprisoning marijuana users? Believing in creationism? Thinking Clint Eastwood is a good director? I don’t care if I can see Rochester on a clear day; quite a few Americans might as well be speaking Flemish as far as I’m concerned.
But I often detect an unattractive note of glee in the voices of non-Americans when they talk about the decline of America. I suppose it’s understandable. Americans have never shied from having views on countries they don’t know anything about, either. Sometimes, they invade them.
But nobody, least of all a Canadian, can afford to take any pleasure in America’s troubles. It’s not as if the world would be better off if it lost the best of America.
Speaking of which: the release of Bob Dylan’s 35th studio album, Tempest, can’t help but bring the subject of America to mind. Not only does he sing about America. Not only is his music soaked in the rich traditions of American songwriting. Not only does his voice now sound absolutely like the rumble of a night train crossing the plains. What is most striking about his recent work is its American-ness.
The narrators of his lyrics are the hardheaded and the cold-eyed, the heartbroken and the beloved, the resigned and the angry, the tough and the sentimental: the American characters we think we understand, but don’t, actually.
Bob Dylan doesn’t pretend to understand them himself, but he captures voices as precisely in his lyrics as he evokes blues, rock ’n’ roll, gospel, folk, swing, country and Tin Pan Alley in his music. America runs through him like an electric charge — much as, at another time of American crisis, it ran through Walt Whitman.
Tempest, like Dylan’s three previous albums, is fascinating. The musicians with whom he works are subtle, understated and (as Steve Jobs might have put it) insanely good.
It is also a beautifully arranged recording. (I recommend good headphones and an early morning walk in October, and I recommend a handkerchief when you get to “Roll On, John,” Dylan’s tribute to John Lennon.)
“Transcendent,” a friend of mine said. At 71 years old, Dylan is making a good case for including his later work in the ranks of his very best.
But for me, the reason that Tempest comes to mind as Mitt Romney and Barack Obama duke it out is that the spirit they both hope to evoke can be heard so clearly in its music. What do we who are not Americans most admire about those who are? Their ingenuity. Their unfussy way of finding brilliance in the ordinary. The goodness that is in the best of their bravest and most inexhaustibly inventive hearts. Which brings me back to Bob Dylan. After you watch the presidential debates, listen to the talent that is evident in a song like “Duquesne Whistle.” And then talk to me about the decline of America. davidmacfarlane.mail@gmail.com