[HN Gopher] Getting lost and found in the Bob Dylan archives
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Getting lost and found in the Bob Dylan archives
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 28 points
Date : 2024-11-04 15:26 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bookforum.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bookforum.com)
| moomin wrote:
| Dylan wouldn't be the only person to turn graphomania into a
| viable business. Look at Brandon Sanderson.
| NaOH wrote:
| He's got innate talent, he's skilled, he's had some good luck
| (like anyone, but it's often overlooked with (and by) the
| successful), and there are plenty of interviews with others that
| make clear he's also a regular person in terms of having
| interests, showing a sense of humor, being curious, etc. The two
| things that always stand out to me are 1) how he used his wealth
| to shield himself from the world of fame and the often
| overbearing culture of the US and 2) how he didn't let that
| wealth which was realized in his mid 20s affect his work ethic.
| The author does well talking about that Dylan work ethic just as
| it pertains to his work as a musician (there are many other areas
| outside the scope of this piece):
|
| > The more time you spend in the Archive the more you find
| yourself overcome by the intensity of Dylan's work ethic, the
| pathology of his drive. Scraps of paper bags, the backs of
| receipts, both sides of a business card, the insides of used
| matchbooks, hotel stationery from Miami and Sydney, from Skopje
| and Tokyo.
|
| > It's tempting to call this graphomania, but you don't think he
| suffers from a compulsion to write per se. It's more that his
| mind never stops racing. He's always thinking, riffing a mile a
| minute about girls and the fates of nations and chord
| progressions and what it is God put us here for (though in his
| hand it is nearly always written "G-d," the Jewish way) and a
| better rhyme for the line and whatever he sees out the window and
| some old blues song and a tall tale sprung out of a daydream and
| he's writing it all down not because he thinks he's gonna use it
| --though he _might_ , that's why he's saving it--but because it
| has to go somewhere. He has to get it out of his head. And so he
| is always, _always_ writing, the gaunt letters straining ahead
| like hard-driven horses, the ideas pouring forth one on top of
| the next, good ones and bad ones, brilliance and bullshit, not
| that he'd know the difference, at least not right now, and
| sometimes the pages bear trace logics of association or sequence
| but mostly, you think, they're random. _This and that and that
| and that and this._ The painstaking editing and revision will
| happen (eleven drafts of "Jokerman," _forty_ of "Dignity," twenty
| pages of potential lyrics for "Like a Rolling Stone"), but for
| now it's all he can do to bottle the lightning as it strikes.
| _How does it feel?_ To you, it feels like the inexhaustibility of
| being Bob Dylan in any given minute must be exhausting. Now
| imagine doing it all day every day for eighty-three years.
| Imagine you're doing it right now.
|
| I think that's a lesson anyone can get from Bob Dylan, regardless
| of one's opinion of his work. Focus on your thing(s) for a long
| time and the payoff from that sustained effort can be
| significant. I know that's not some new idea, but even a
| legendary figure who seems to be inherently more talented than
| most actually benefits from something just like others do. See?
| Dylan's just a regular person.
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