#1962 bob dylan my darling

[raelityundernyc]

baby bobby i love you so much

[wordacrosstime]

Especially When It Snows

by Michael Spring

This is a brief and true story of heartache and injustice, a tragedy that stretched over generations. It is one of those stories that prods at your sleep, etches itself into views and places, and finally leaves you shouting at the moon.

My part in the story is simply that of an observer. I have traced down some of the links, read some of the poetry, wept silently at the rank injustice that surrounded these few connected individuals. The only good thing to come out of it was the poetry – a few desperate quanta of light, somehow not gathered into the black hole - but let me begin the story where I started.

The Only Blonde in the World is a painting by an artist called Pauline Boty. It’s part of the collection of works held by Tate Britain, and its subject is Marilyn Monroe. I’d walked by it a few times, liked its confident presence and its understated enthusiasm for a woman who in her own lifetime became more legend than reality.

I was reminded of it when I – by accident – wandered around the small exhibit dedicated to Marilyn Monroe at the National Portrait Gallery in 2012. There was a photo there of Pauline Boty with her painting. I decided to try to find out some more.

Pauline Boty was beautiful, like the subject of her painting (Michael Seymour and Lewis Morley’s photos of her are in the National Portrait Gallery). Her friends called her the Wimbledon Bardot for her resemblance to the legendary Brigitte. She was talented too, and followed up her time at Wimbledon Art College by moving to the Royal College of Art. And there she started painting and drawing her contemporary heroes – Monroe, Jean-Paul Belmondo, the Rolling Stones – as well as assembling collage and other multi-media works that emerged from her course, nominally concerned with stained glass.

In London, she took wing. Her work featured in an exhibition, Young Contemporaries, with Robyn Denny, Richard Smith and Bridget Riley. With her fellow artist Derek Bolshier, she was accepted, after auditioning, to appear as a dancer on the TV Show of the moment – Top of the Pops. She got to know Peter Blake, later to design the cover of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper LP, Bob Dylan, Kenneth Tynan, David Frost. She was one of the few women amongst the pop art movement, and she was also an actress, good enough and photogenic enough to get a cameo role in Alfie as one of Michael Caine’s girlfriends.

And then she fell in love.

After 10 days of knowing Clive Goodwin, they decided to get married and in 1965, unexpectedly and at the age of 28, she found she was pregnant. She also found that she had cancer.

She refused all treatment, and instead determined to have her baby, a girl, who became known as Boty Goodwin. Pauline Boty died five weeks after the birth.

Boty was brought up by Clive and her grandparents, often staying with the family of the left-wing poet, Adrian Mitchell, whose daughters became firm friends.

12 years after her mother’s death, her father (the publisher of Black Dwarf and a successful TV and film producer) was in Hollywood, meeting with Warren Beatty in a big hotel there to discuss the forthcoming film Reds. Clive Goodwin felt unwell and in the lobby was sick and collapsed. Hotel staff and police who were called thought he was drunk – he’d actually had just one glass of wine – and threw him into a cell where he died alone, of a brain haemorrhage.

Boty grew up and emerged as a talented woman like her mother. She completed a first degree at the University of California in Los Angeles. (The eventual settlement from her father’s death had made her financially independent). And when she came back to the UK, she stayed with Adrian Mitchell and his family. She was offered post-graduate scholarships at UCLA in two subjects, literature and fine art.

Returning to California, she was given heroin at a party, and died of an overdose in her sleep.

In response, Adrian Mitchell wrote some heart-wrenching poetry, the best of which is Especially when it snows, which should be read in full, but contains these lines of heartbreak:-

especially when it snows and down the purple pathways of the sky the planet staggers like King Lear with his dead darling in his arms

It would be hard to make up such a tale of injustice and suffering, a tale in which so many bright lights are extinguished with a callousness that makes me think that if there is a god, I want nothing to do with him.

The Only Blonde in the World is part of the collection at Tate Britain. The poetry of the late Adrian Mitchell is published by Bloodaxe in the UK. You can search on YouTube to see and hear Adrian Mitchell reading his anti-war poem, Tell me lies, at the Albert Hall in 1965.

Image (c) Estate of Michael Seymour 1962, from National Portrait Gallery Collection NPG x88193. Extract from Especially When It Snows (c) Estate of Adrian Mitchell / Bloodaxe.

Michael Spring

wordsacrosstime

15 January 2021

[lunasong365]

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? And where have you been, my darling young one? I've stumbled on the sides of twelve misty mountains I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Oh, what did you see, my blue eyed son? And what did you see, my darling young one? I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin' I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin' I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Oh what did you hear, my blue-eyed son? And what did you hear, my darling young one? I heard the sound of a thunder that roared out a warnin' I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin' I heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin' I heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin' I heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter I heard the sounds of a clown who cried in the alley And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son ? And who did you meet, my darling young one? I met a young child beside a dead pony I met a white man who walked a black dog I met a young woman whose body was burning I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow I met one man who was wounded in love I met another man who was wounded in hatred And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Oh what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son? And what'll you do now, my darling young one? I'm goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin' I'll head for the depths of the deepest dark forest Where the people are many and their hands are all empty Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison And the executioner's face is always well hidden Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten Where black is the color, and none is the number And I'll tell and think it and speak it and breathe it And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin' And I'll know my song well before I start singing And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

- Bob Dylan, 1962

[elizabeth-karenina]

YO I GOT TAGGED

by the ever beautiful, sparkling Onora @madamedelafayette! Thank you, darling! I haven’t done one of these in a while, so this should be fun! 

So without further ado, HERE WE GO:

Name: Elizabeth 

Gender: Cisgender female

Star sign: I’m a Libra, my dudes.

Height: 5’0. It’s hard out here for hobbits, I’ll have you know! The struggle is real.

Birthday: October 10th

Fave bands/musicians: Oh my God, I have way too many to give a full list! But lately, I’ve been really into rock and older country music. I love Queen, Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles, The Kinks, CCR, The Byrd’s, The Lovin’ Spoonful; bands like that. In terms of older country music, I really love The Carter Family, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline, and Loretta Lynn. 

However, I also love Elton John, The Bee Gee’s, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, ABBA, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Cher, David Bowie, among many other older artists. 

However, in terms of more modern artists, I love Beyonce, Nicki Minaj, Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga, Dua Lipa, Rihanna, Doja Cat, Lorde, Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Justin Timberlake, Bruno Mars, The Weeknd, Khalid, Post Malone, Marina and The Diamonds, Florence and the Machine, Black Eyed Peas, Shakira, Janelle Monae, and Ava Max. 

Song stuck in my head: Break My Heart by Dua Lipa  

Last movie: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Last show: I just watched that documentary about the Yorkshire Ripper on Netflix, and all I gotta say is...wow. That’s just crazy that it took the police that long to catch him! 

When I created this blog: April or May 2013. Oh my God, this blog is almost a decade old. It’s insane to think that so much time has passed between then and now. Ew, I don’t like thinking about it, LOL! 

Last thing I googled: Whether or not the county I work for was going to make students and teachers go back to in-school learning (we’re not,THANK GOODNESS!!!). 

Other blogs: NONE, LOL. This is the only one I’ve ever had, and I plan on keeping it that way. However, I do have a Twitter @Elizabe66274283 if you wanna follow me there as well). 

Do I get asks: Yes, not as often as I would like, but I get them occasionally. 

Following: 138 

Instruments: I wish I had kept up my violin lessons. Same goes for the piano. However, I would really love to learn to play the cello or mandolin. 

Why I chose this url: Because I’m quite vain about my first name, and I was reading Anna Karenina around the time I made this Tumblr. It made me sound like a Russian aristocrat, and quite honestly, I’m all for that fantasy. 

Nationality: American (unfortunately, ugh get me out of here). 

Average hours of sleep: Lol, I’m lucky if I get 7 or 8. 

Lucky number: 10

What I’m wearing: black sweatpants and an oversized gray long-sleeved shirt.

Dream trip: Oh my God, so many places! I’d love to go around Europe and see all the beautiful cities there. But I would also love to go to New Zealand as well. Egypt, Turkey, and India are also places that I would love to go to. 

Favorite food: I think if I had to choose, it’d be Italian food, Greek food, Mexican food, and Korean BBQ. I also devour soul food any time and anywhere I can get it. 

Favorite song: Please...please have mercy on me. Don’t make me choose. Listing all those musical artists was hard enough lmao. 

Top 3 fictional universes I’d like to live in: 

1. I’m definitely living in Middle Earth in some way--maybe a two-way between the Shire and Rivendell? 

2. Whatever universe the Night at the Museum movies take place in. 

3. Narnia. I’m not sorry. 

[dylanradio]

Now Playing on DylanRadio.com: John Brown by Bob Dylan from Bootleg Series Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos (1962-1964)

John Brown went off to war to fight on a foreign shore. His mama sure was proud of him! He stood straight and tall in his uniform and all. His mama's face broke out all in a grin. "Oh son, you look so fine, I'm glad you're a son of mine, You make me proud to know you hold a gun. Do what the captain says, lots of medals you will get, And we'll put them on the wall when you come home." As that old train pulled out, John's ma began to shout, Tellin' ev'ryone in the neighborhood: "That's my son that's about to go, he's a soldier now, you know." She made well sure her neighbors understood. She got a letter once in a while and her face broke into a smile As she showed them to the people from next door. And she bragged about her son with his uniform and gun, And these things you called a good old-fashioned war. Oh! Good old-fashioned war! Then the letters ceased to come, for a long time they did not come. They ceased to come for about ten months or more. Then a letter finally came saying, "Go down and meet the train. Your son's a-coming home from the war." She smiled and went right down, she looked everywhere around But she could not see her soldier son in sight. But as all the people passed, she saw her son at last, When she did she could hardly believe her eyes. Oh his face was all shot up and his hand was all blown off And he wore a metal brace around his waist. He whispered kind of slow, in a voice she did not know, While she couldn't even recognize his face! Oh! Lord! Not even recognize his face. "Oh tell me, my darling son, pray tell me what they done. How is it you come to be this way?" He tried his best to talk but his mouth could hardly move And the mother had to turn her face away. "Don't you remember, Ma, when I went off to war You thought it was the best thing I could do? I was on the battleground, you were home . . . acting proud. You wasn't there standing in my shoes." "Oh, and I thought when I was there, God, what am I doing here? I'm a-tryin' to kill somebody or die tryin'. But the thing that scared me most was when my enemy came close And I saw that his face looked just like mine." Oh! Lord! Just like mine! "And I couldn't help but think, through the thunder rolling and stink, That I was just a puppet in a play. And through the roar and smoke, this string is finally broke, And a cannon ball blew my eyes away." As he turned away to walk, his Ma was still in shock At seein' the metal brace that helped him stand. But as he turned to go, he called his mother close And he dropped his medals down into her hand.

[warholiana]

The art world's first souperstar; This monumental biography of Andy Warhol is extremely fun - but fails to crack the enigma.

Daily Telegraph (London, England)

By Mick Brown

WARHOL: A LIFE AS ART by Blake Gopnik 976pp, Allen Lane

At the end of this monumental trawl through Andy Warhol's life and times, Blake Gopnik concludes that he has "overtaken Picasso as the most important and influential artist of the 20th century. Or at least the two of them share a spot on the top peak of Parnassus beside Michelangelo and Rembrandt and their fellow geniuses."

Warhol would have loved that. As a college student, Picasso was a favourite of his, and at the height of his pop art fame he made the rivalry explicit by wearing the Breton striped T-shirts Picasso was famous for - part tribute, part self-

promotion. Andy Warhol was the artist as brand, avant la lettre: as the title of this book suggests, his greatest creation was himself. So who was he exactly? Warhol's parents were immigrants from what is now Slovakia, who settled in the industrial nowhere land of Pittsburgh. His father was a labourer, the family poor.

Warhol was a sickly child who suffered from the shakes and chronic skin problems. His summers were spent lying in bed, listening to the radio with "cut-out paper dolls all over the spread and under the pillow". It was an upbringing he disowned as quickly as he could. When he arrived in New York in 1949, as an art-school graduate in search of work as an illustrator, he told a magazine editor who asked for a potted biography: "My life wouldn't fill a penny postcard."

The young Warhol was "very shy and cuddly, very much like a bunny", according to one friend, "an angel in the sky" according to another. He was also gay - a fact that, as Gopnik, an American art critic, sets out to demonstrate, would be crucial in shaping his "outsider" relationship to art and the milieu he moved in, and ultimately the milieu he created; crucial, too, in the way that public attitudes towards his work shifted from rejection to celebration.

In the late Forties, when two Pittsburgh judges had referred to homosexuals as "society's greatest menace" and police were drawing up lists of "known perverts", Warhol - then a window dresser in a Pittsburgh department store - favoured a pink corduroy suit, a tie dipped in paint and brightly coloured fingernails. Yet the notion of Warhol as "a feeble, androgynous waif ", says Gopnik, is "a mirage". As a young man, he lifted weights at the YMCA two or three times a week, and Lou Reed described him as being "like a demon, his strength is incredible" - at least until 1968, when an assassination attempt by a disturbed woman, Valerie Solanas, left him chronically debilitated.

Like Robert Mapplethorpe, he had an obsession with penises. Friends, acquaintances - total strangers - would be asked to drop their pants, according to one friend, and "Andy would make a drawing. That was it. And then he'd say, 'Thank you'." Sometimes "there'd be a little heart on them or tied with a little ribbon ..." An unrequited romantic, throughout his life he would fall in love with a succession of younger men, usually unhappily. But he seems to have had little enthusiasm for sexual relations. One partner, the photographer Carl Willers, recalls that he was "more passionate about food and eating".

It was a gay aesthetic, Gopnik argues, that informed what Warhol described as the "fairy style" curlicue illustrations of shoes with which he first made his name as an artist, and the camp taste for "lowly pop culture", which he would elevate to the realm of fine art. In characteristically faux-naif fashion, he traced the origins of his pop art to the time he spent working as a window dresser at Bonwits in New York, when he used comics and advertisements as a backdrop to his displays of dresses and handbags. "Then a gallery saw them and I just began taking windows and putting them in galleries."

This would lead to what Gopnik calls Warhol's "eureka moment - one of the greatest in the history of art", the Campbell soup can, and the notion that mass-produced commercial goods could be art - and, eventually, that art could be profitably mass-produced. His first Los Angeles exhibition in 1962 showed 32 soup cans, which were bought by the gallery owner Irving Blum for $1,000. In 1996, Blum sold them to Moma for $15million. "They might be worth half a billion now," Gopnik observes.

What Warhol was selling, as one friend put it, was "not so much art as milieu", a milieu "dripping with edge and irony". In 1964, he moved into a former hat factory in midtown Manhattan, where he produced the silk-screen prints of Marilyn, Elvis, electric chairs and suicide leaps, attended by a coterie of acolytes, and disciples - junkies, hustlers, transvestites and chronic narcissists, whom Warhol turned into his "superstars".

There was Ondine, "the Factory's favourite gay speed freak"; Warhol's principal muse, the bruised and beautiful heiress Edie Sedgwick, whose "charming incapacities" and decline into addiction and chaos Warhol chronicled with clinical indifference; and the flame-haired, honking-voiced Viva - "Warhol's Garbo", as the newspapers had it: a reference that had everything to do with her gaunt, porcelain features and nothing to do with reticence. Viva's "verbal diarrhoea", as Gopnik puts it, "left her no time for social niceties. Any thought that could cross her lips did."

Then there were the drag queens Jackie Curtis, Cindy Darling and Holly Woodlawn - a reflection of Warhol's fascination with gender. At college, for one self-portrait assignment, he shocked his class by depicting himself as a girl with Shirley Temple ringlets, explaining: "I always want to know what I would look like if I was a girl." Many years later, when asked what "famous person" he would most like to be, he replied "Christine Jorgensen" - America's first famous transsexual.

"Andy was like the Statue of Liberty," one friend tells Gopnik. "'Give me your tired, your hungry - your drag queens, your junkies.' He was the saint of misfits." But Warhol's friend, the critic and art curator Henry Geldzahler, put it more acutely when he described Warhol as "a voyeur-sadist" who needed "exhibitionist masochists in order to fulfil both halves of his destiny". Like a priest, Warhol could offer absolution for the perverse, but no promise of an afterlife. Most left his circle - or were ejected - feeling used, embittered and betrayed.

One comes to the conclusion that there was an emotional vacancy in Warhol. He didn't know how to feel. A lover, John Giorno, recalls watching the news of Kennedy's assassination unfold on television. "I started crying and Andy started crying. Hugging each other, weeping big fat tears and kissing. It was exhilarating, like when you get kicked in the head and see stars. Andy kept saying, 'I don't know what it means.'" But what did he believe? Like Bob Dylan, he deliberately cultivated the art of the put-on and concealment. Typical was this exchange with a journalist: "How close is pop art to 'Happenings'?" "I don't know." "What is pop art trying to say?" "I don't know."

When I interviewed Viva over lunch some years ago, she described how Warhol "would just want to gossip, like a woman would gossip basically - or his idea of what a woman would think gossip was. What Andy really liked to talk about was men's penises." (At this point a deathly silence fell over the crowded restaurant, all heads turning to hear what Viva would say next.) Henry Geldzahler wrote that Warhol "plays dumb just as his paintings do, but neither deceives us", adding that he was "incredibly analytical, intellectual, and perceptive". And, he might have added, incredibly shrewd.

In 1972, after Richard Nixon's historic visit to China, Warhol asked a friend, "Since fashion is art now and Chinese is in fashion, should I do some Mao portraits?" The idea spawned some 2,700 images, transforming a man who, as one critic pointed out, had "murdered about 60million Chinese and caused poverty and starvation in all China" into an icon.

But by then, Warhol had long since made the transition from underground artist to darling of the establishment, turning out portraits to order for Italian industrialists, wealthy socialites and the Shah of Iran, combining a Stakhanovite work ethic with manic socialising: a typical evening would take him from a Broadway opening to a fancy dinner, a rock star's birthday, and, always, Studio 54. "It's work," he explained.

Gopnik's rollicking book is a formidable achievement, but for all its dense accumulation of detail, scholarship and unabashed gossip, Warhol remains, as he doubtless would have wished, essentially, brilliantly, unknowable.

[angelloverde]

ΣΑΝ ΣΗΜΕΡΑ/ON THIS DAY 

17/1

Το ʼʼBlood on the Tracksʼʼ είναι το 15ο στούντιο άλμπουμ του Bob Dylan που κυκλοφόρησε από την Columbia Records σαν σήμερα το 1975.

Ο Cedar Walton γεννήθηκε στις 17 Ιανουαρίου το 1934 και είναι ένας Αμερικανός πιανίστας της hard bop jazz. Ήρθε στο προσκήνιο ως μέλος της μπάντας του ντράμερ Art Blakey, πριν διανύσει μια μακρά και πετυχημένη καριέρα ως bandleader και συνθέτης.

Ο Sidney Catlett γεννήθηκε σαν σήμερα το 1917 και ήταν ένας γνωστός ντράμερ της swing jazz συχνά αναφερόμενος και ως ʼʼBig Sid Catlettʼʼ λόγω του  ότι ήταν ʼʼθηριώδηςʼʼ.

Το τρίο του Nat King Cole ηχογράφησε το 1944 το ʼʼBody and Soulʼʼ.

1950 "Alive & Kicking" opens at Winter Garden Theater NYC for 46 performances

1959 "Say, Darling" closes at ANTA Theater NYC after 332 performances

1962 Roy Harris' 8th Symphony, premieres in San Francisco

1972 "My Hang-Up Is You" single released by Freddie Hart (Billboard Song of the Year 1972)

1974 Styne, Comdem & Green's musical "Lorelei" premieres in NYC

1976 "I Write the Songs" by Barry Manilow hits #1

1983 10th American Music Awards: John Cougar & Rick Springfield, Olivia Newton-John

1988 "Teddy & Alice" closes at Minskoff Theater NYC after 77 performances

[siouxempirepodcast]

Art in the Darkest of Times

I didn’t expect this to be a dark time. As I approached the end of my 5th decade of life, there was a certain assurance of good ahead. I had overcome many struggles and had worked hard to better myself, to enrich myself of experience and to share the wisdom of that experience with others. My personal evolution seemed to mirror the progressive and positive change I saw in the world, as well. The most formative part of my personal experience and self-identity started with music. Punk Rock was the big galvanizing force of my young life, the influence that would determine the kind of adult I would be. I bristled under authority (and still do) and recognized the efforts of people who acted independently. In the early and mid-1980’s most of pop culture seemed to reflect the “norms” of our society. White, middle-class, picket-fence, Reaganomics, the Christian Coalition, “Greed is Good,” Billboard’s Top 40. None of that resonated with me in the slightest. Give me a barely-lit hole in the wall club in Hamtramck, Michigan with dollar Rolling Rocks, LOUD music and a crowd full of people all dancing together. The punk clubs were a melting pot – predominantly white, but not exclusively so. Ostensibly heteronormative, at least on the surface, but in the dark who knows (or cares) what went on? Punk had a decidedly F-you attitude that resonated for this chick and those I associated with. Weird? Good. Different? Well, okay. This was the counter-culture, after all. We didn’t care if you had a Mohawk, black or white skin, piercings, money if you lived in a nice house out in Rochester or you slept in your car down in the seedy Cass Corridor. We weren’t necessarily all equals (gender norms were still in swing, for instance) but it was close. Sure, there were also dark moments during those punk years. There were those who took excess and experimentation too far, and never came back. There were those who burned out, faded away and now live in some unknown small town in Arizona or Ohio or the Far East. But you got through those dark times with your friends, and whatever talent you could cobble together. For many of my friends, it was music. Sharing whatever raw space on a late weeknight to practice and whatever bar or tavern or club would let you play live on the weekend. I wasn’t a musician (although I did briefly sing in an all-girl punk band when I was sixteen). Nor was I an artist, but I had many friends who drew and sketched and sculpted. No, I was a writer. I wrote and edited a local fanzine, all about the local scene, and I dreamed of being a successful author someday. I had lots of ideas, but it’s hard to get focused when you’re hitting the clubs, hitting the Rolling Rock and trying to be “cool.” It took a long time in life to get serious about my writing practice. But I got there – I’m working on my fourth book now. I’ve long identified with the artists, the weirdo’s, the “others” in our society. I’d rather have a smaller house and a bigger travel budget. I have forsaken corporate work in favor of PBJ sandwiches and a sense that my destiny is MINE. The compromises I’ve made are still acceptable to me and would be even if I hadn’t finally broken through those roadblocks to writing. And I recognize that artists are often the saving grace during times of trouble. Until this past November, I had reached the place I was freaking happy. I mean, HAPPY! Not just content or satisfied or resigned, but truly happy. Life wasn’t perfect, and the world wasn’t perfect, but I said to friends last year that it felt like I was in “the home stretch.” Now, it feels like I’m sitting at the bottom of a massive hill and I can’t even see what’s ahead, let alone how hard it’s gonna be to get there. This made me think about the other times in history when chaos came along and tore up the plans that our ancestors made in their personal journeys. What becomes of society when you can’t make sense of what’s happening? You make art, that’s the simple answer. You paint or your photograph, you dance or your design. You write your way through that nonsense like your life is at stake because of my friend – it is. If you look back at the bleakest and most chaotic times in history, you’ll see that what remains, what is remembered is the beauty that somehow managed to slip through the cracks. You’ll find the desperate souls that fought to write their little stories, songs, plays and performances and then fought to share them and preserve them. If we examine some of the darkest moments in history, you’ll find that what rose out of the ashes of those times were the powerful creative efforts of those who survived. Often, they were those who had to hide in the shadows because they faced imprisonment, banishment or death. When you talk darkness, it’s natural to default to the Holocaust. The years of Nazi oppression, the concentration camps, the brutalities, and atrocities seem to be present with us these many decades later. Not just because of film reels, but by what was left behind. We know and understand the Holocaust interpretively through art. We understand the Nazi uprising as it responded to the earlier Weimar Republic years – the Gay Thirties of Berlin, the era of Christopher Isherwood’s “Goodbye to Berlin” and of Marlene Dietrich, flaunting and tormenting through “The Blue Angel.” We understand the brutality when compared to the Bauhaus art movement, through Dadaism, through Bertolt Brecht’s agitprop. We understand the seduction of Fascism as viewed through the lens of the works of Paul Klee and the operas of Kurt Weill (“Threepenny Opera”) and Alban Berg (“Lulu/Pandora”). We certainly understand the Holocaust through the prism of the art that was created during the War years – Picasso’s “Guernica” alone speaks volumes about man’s inhumanity to man. But we also understand the Holocaust through what came in the immediate aftermath. After that, the world began to process what it learned about mankind’s ugliest extremes and our ability to survive those extremes. In fact, composer Bertolt Brecht wrote, “In the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing. About the dark times.” World War2 was followed by a period of unprecedented cultural impact by Jews. Writers like Philip Roth and Elie Wiesel, artists like Marc Chagall, entertainers like the Marx Brothers and Bob Dylan. It wasn’t just that Jews were valued, in our society, after having nearly been obliterated. More importantly, it is that they had something incredibly valuable to share, having survived that experience. When you survive the unthinkable, you are poised to become one of the great thinkers. The Holocaust was a striving for perfection. The Great Leap Forward in China was more about uniformity. Historian Frank Dikotter explained that “coercion, terror and systematic violence were the foundations of the Great Leap Forward” and that it “motivated one of the most deadly mass killings in human history.” It is believed that somewhere between 18 and 55 million people died, including during the years of the terrible Famine that plagued China (1958-1962). During the Great Leap Forward, the Chinese Communist Party did permit criticism of the government (including the infamous “Gang of Four”). A tsunami of Chinese literature emerged during this time, including painful accounts of life under Chairman Mao. These included short stories that appeared in official government publications. The Maoist system, like the Nazi’s before, believed in a policy of agrarian reliance. The images, in both totalitarian systems, publicly presented include robust farmers and plump housewives, darling children and industrious teens –all working toward the greater good of self-reliance and integrity of resources. But the Great Leap Forward pushed agricultural reliance to the extreme, resulting in the failure of crops across the countryside. After the famine had ended there was a period in which the Chinese leadership embraced a cultural wave known as “Scar Literature” in which the people of China were able to write honestly about their experiences. Scar literature was cathartic and depicted truly horrific accounts of life during the Cultural Revolution – of persecution and violence, including the state-sanctioned executions of their loved ones. Examples of “scar literature” include “Red Azalea” by Anchee Min, “Mao’s Last Dancer” by Li Cunxin and “Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China” by Jung Chang. In “Wild Swans,” author Chang relates “Father said slowly, “I ask myself whether I am afraid of death. I don’t think I am. My life as it is now is worse. And it looks as if there is not going to be any ending. Sometimes I feel weak: I stand by Tranquility River and think, just one leap and I can get it over with. Then I tell myself I must not. If I die without being cleared, there will be no end of trouble for all of you… I have been thinking a lot lately. I had a hard childhood, and society was full of injustice. It was for a fair society that I joined the Communists. I’ve tried my best through the years. But what good has it done for the people? As for myself, why is it that in the end, I have come to be the ruin of my family? People who believe in retribution say that to end badly, you must have something on your conscience. I have been thinking hard about the things I’ve done in my life. I have given orders to execute some people…” Today’s current literature trend of purging the soul owes a great debt to those Chinese writers, many of whom wrote their true stories under the most horrendous of experiences, often hiding their works until they could be free, or defect, and share them with the world. This included stories of forced labor, brutal rapes, and cannibalism. But perhaps no time in history had as great and as long-lasting a cultural impact as that of the years of the Great Plague. The “Black Death” raged from 1346 to 1353 and claimed the lives of as many as 200 million humans. Our cultural understanding of Death itself, from the image of the Grim Reaper, of Heaven and Hell and Purgatory, stem from those years. Dante’s works bear the marks of the plague all over them. The artistic descriptions of fair maidens languishing away and the bird-beaked plague doctors, aromatic herbs warding off the bug. In fact, our very understanding of the nature of insects in the lives and health of humans came from the Black Death. Whatever would Kafka and Burroughs have written about without first the concept of the insect as the enemy? With every tragic and terrible moment in history, you’ll find a creative burst that enlightens and entertains. World War I brought us Jazz. The Crusades gave us Islamic art. The Depression gave us the works of Dorothea Lange. The Slave Trade gave us Gospel, and later, Rock and Roll. I didn’t expect this to be a dark time in my life. As a writer I understand that my responsibility is to document, to chronicle, to “bear witness” as Victor Klemperer (the German Holocaust-era journalist) wrote. But as a creative soul, a left-brained, punk rock weirdo, I have to find an outlet for my despair and not just an inlet. There’s a tiny part of me that is fascinated by what may emerge, in our future. Like other darker moments in our history, I know that it is because of the determination of our artists, that the future can be brighter.

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from Art in the Darkest of Times

[dylanradio]

Now Playing on DylanRadio.com: A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall by Bob Dylan from You Don't Know Me (1962-1992)

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? Oh, where have you been, my darling young one? I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains, I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways, I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests, I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans, I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard, And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard, And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son? Oh, what did you see, my darling young one? I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it, I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin', I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin', I saw a white ladder all covered with water, I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken, I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children, And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son? And what did you hear, my darling young one? I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin', Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world, Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin', Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin', Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin', Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter, Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley, And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son? Who did you meet, my darling young one? I met a young child beside a dead pony, I met a white man who walked a black dog, I met a young woman whose body was burning, I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow, I met one man who was wounded in love, I met another man who was wounded with hatred, And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son? Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one? I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin', I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest, Where the people are many and their hands are all empty, Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters, Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison, Where the executioner's face is always well hidden, Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten, Where black is the color, where none is the number, And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it, And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it, Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin', But I'll know my song well before I start singin', And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

[dylanradio]

Now Playing on DylanRadio.com: A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall by Bob Dylan from You Don't Know Me (1962-1992)

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? Oh, where have you been, my darling young one? I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains, I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways, I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests, I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans, I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard, And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard, And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son? Oh, what did you see, my darling young one? I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it, I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin', I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin', I saw a white ladder all covered with water, I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken, I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children, And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son? And what did you hear, my darling young one? I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin', Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world, Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin', Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin', Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin', Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter, Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley, And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son? Who did you meet, my darling young one? I met a young child beside a dead pony, I met a white man who walked a black dog, I met a young woman whose body was burning, I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow, I met one man who was wounded in love, I met another man who was wounded with hatred, And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son? Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one? I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin', I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest, Where the people are many and their hands are all empty, Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters, Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison, Where the executioner's face is always well hidden, Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten, Where black is the color, where none is the number, And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it, And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it, Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin', But I'll know my song well before I start singin', And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

[dylanradio]

Now Playing on DylanRadio.com: A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall by Bob Dylan from Paranoid blues (1962-1964)

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? Oh, where have you been, my darling young one? I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains, I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways, I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests, I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans, I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard, And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard, And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son? Oh, what did you see, my darling young one? I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it, I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin', I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin', I saw a white ladder all covered with water, I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken, I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children, And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son? And what did you hear, my darling young one? I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin', Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world, Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin', Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin', Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin', Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter, Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley, And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son? Who did you meet, my darling young one? I met a young child beside a dead pony, I met a white man who walked a black dog, I met a young woman whose body was burning, I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow, I met one man who was wounded in love, I met another man who was wounded with hatred, And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son? Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one? I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin', I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest, Where the people are many and their hands are all empty, Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters, Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison, Where the executioner's face is always well hidden, Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten, Where black is the color, where none is the number, And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it, And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it, Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin', But I'll know my song well before I start singin', And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

[dylanradio]

Now Playing on DylanRadio.com: A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall by Bob Dylan from You Don't Know Me (1962-1992)

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? Oh, where have you been, my darling young one? I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains, I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways, I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests, I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans, I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard, And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard, And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son? Oh, what did you see, my darling young one? I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it, I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin', I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin', I saw a white ladder all covered with water, I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken, I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children, And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son? And what did you hear, my darling young one? I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin', Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world, Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin', Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin', Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin', Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter, Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley, And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son? Who did you meet, my darling young one? I met a young child beside a dead pony, I met a white man who walked a black dog, I met a young woman whose body was burning, I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow, I met one man who was wounded in love, I met another man who was wounded with hatred, And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son? Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one? I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin', I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest, Where the people are many and their hands are all empty, Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters, Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison, Where the executioner's face is always well hidden, Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten, Where black is the color, where none is the number, And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it, And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it, Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin', But I'll know my song well before I start singin', And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

[dylanradio]

Now Playing on DylanRadio.com: John Brown by Bob Dylan from The Gaslight Tapes 1962

John Brown went off to war to fight on a foreign shore. His mama sure was proud of him! He stood straight and tall in his uniform and all. His mama's face broke out all in a grin. "Oh son, you look so fine, I'm glad you're a son of mine, You make me proud to know you hold a gun. Do what the captain says, lots of medals you will get, And we'll put them on the wall when you come home." As that old train pulled out, John's ma began to shout, Tellin' ev'ryone in the neighborhood: "That's my son that's about to go, he's a soldier now, you know." She made well sure her neighbors understood. She got a letter once in a while and her face broke into a smile As she showed them to the people from next door. And she bragged about her son with his uniform and gun, And these things you called a good old-fashioned war. Oh! Good old-fashioned war! Then the letters ceased to come, for a long time they did not come. They ceased to come for about ten months or more. Then a letter finally came saying, "Go down and meet the train. Your son's a-coming home from the war." She smiled and went right down, she looked everywhere around But she could not see her soldier son in sight. But as all the people passed, she saw her son at last, When she did she could hardly believe her eyes. Oh his face was all shot up and his hand was all blown off And he wore a metal brace around his waist. He whispered kind of slow, in a voice she did not know, While she couldn't even recognize his face! Oh! Lord! Not even recognize his face. "Oh tell me, my darling son, pray tell me what they done. How is it you come to be this way?" He tried his best to talk but his mouth could hardly move And the mother had to turn her face away. "Don't you remember, Ma, when I went off to war You thought it was the best thing I could do? I was on the battleground, you were home . . . acting proud. You wasn't there standing in my shoes." "Oh, and I thought when I was there, God, what am I doing here? I'm a-tryin' to kill somebody or die tryin'. But the thing that scared me most was when my enemy came close And I saw that his face looked just like mine." Oh! Lord! Just like mine! "And I couldn't help but think, through the thunder rolling and stink, That I was just a puppet in a play. And through the roar and smoke, this string is finally broke, And a cannon ball blew my eyes away." As he turned away to walk, his Ma was still in shock At seein' the metal brace that helped him stand. But as he turned to go, he called his mother close And he dropped his medals down into her hand.