I got Dylan's autobiography, Chronicles Volume One, for Christmas, having restrained myself from buying it when it came out in the autumn. Given his track record (musical and non-musical) and his recent erratic form, I feared the worst. But it turns out that, no, it is not as bad as it could easily have been, nor as bad as might reasonably be expected, nor even good considering remembering his past has never been one of his interests or strengths and writing prose didn't suit his style; no, it's actually good full stop. He writes tangentially and episodically, concentrating on establishing the mood of a particular time and place economically. He describes the Minnesota communities' repsonse to fallout shelters: "But salesmen hawking the bomb shelters were met with expressionless faces".
His account of songwriting and recording is prosaic and matter-of-fact (and unenthusistaic compared to his treatment of books and people); you can see in his description of the New Morning and Oh Mercy! sessions his growing frustration that the sounds they were making were getting further away from the sounds he had envisioned, and that he, as well as his critics, was unhappy with the final result. So, surprisingly, the book takes a dip in interesty the closer it comes to "the work".
The only groanworthy moment is the appearance of Bono and the two-page eulogy Dylan gives to Bono's genius, knowledge and wisdom. But as Dylan says himself, noone should rely on his judgement! Otherwise, it's clear that, despite fears to the contrary, he is still sane and capable.
Whether Volume Two will cohere as well as this does is doubtful, since it will inevitably cover better-documented parts of his life, and will also have to deal with a lot of touring and recording, but I'd recommend Volume One to anyone with an interest in Dylan.
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Written in your heart - a radio play
I have mounted the script for an unproduced radio play at http://locock2.blogspot.com
I think it's quite funny, but the BBC didn't. Or not funny enough.
I think it's quite funny, but the BBC didn't. Or not funny enough.
When ruthless megalomaniacs turn bad
A university historian complained recently that these days undergraduates only know about two things: Hitler and Stalin. Apparently, everones does them, first for GCSEs, and then again for A levels. So people who are interested enough in history to take a degree in it arrive with no eal knowledge of anything that happened before 1900.
You can see why this happens, though: the Second World War and related matters seems to be the one reliably-popular period, reflected in TV series, like Timewatch, whose remit is broad in both time and space, but chooses WW2 at least every second programme, and indeed entire channels: if you took WW2 and Egypt out of UK History (which would be no bad thing), you'd be left with just the adverts (which would). And there is a steady stream of semi-popular biographies of Hitler, Stalin, and Hitler-and-Stalin, presumably because they are in demand. Not by me, though. The biographical approach to history tends to emphasise narrative at the expense of analysis. Even if one could examine people's motives, this would be unsatisfying, as unsatisfying as the parlour game these biographies become: who was the maddest? most evil? My snap answer would be that Stalin was maddest because he was prepared to act directly contrary to his long-term interests: imprisoning or executing all of he army officers just before a war. I'm not sure about evillest, since it covers both the moral content of your intentions and the acceptability of the means used to carry them out.
There is a much more interesting moral question to be addressed, though. Hitler and Stalin were unique, generating massive suffering. But they didn't do it alone. It is conveneient to see their actions as a one-off (or two-off). This would be wrong. The 20th century is full of genocides, from the Armenians to Pol Pot and Rwanda. Genocide is not an aberration in modern politics - it seems endemic. More important than the issue of what a dictator thought, or did, is the issue of how so many other sane, reasonable, people, helped them. And helped them with gusto. Even if it difficult to stand up to a totalitarian regime and say "no", it is much less difficult to work inefficiently in carrying out its more repellent instructions. Or so you'd think.
There is a genocidal rhetoric which makes it easier for people to do things that they would otherwise find deeply troubling. The key element is the denial of the humanity of the target group: literally 'demonised', 'inhuman', 'bestial'. If they are outside the pale, incurable, not susceptible to reason, all you can do is lock them up, or kill them. Otherwise you will always be threatened.
When the first photos from the Iraqi miltary prison appeared, there was, as well as shock and disgust, a general feeling of surprise: why did they even think of doing it? To me, it wasn't surprising, since it fitted in with the rhetoric of the war on terror, and the treatment of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. If you start off by saying a group of people cannot be afforded human rights, then it takes only a small step to say that they are hardly human at all.
There's a pernicious piece of Jesuitry from Lenin : ""Liberty is precious, so precious that it must be rationed." http://encarta.msn.com/media_461577172_761562790_-1_1/Vladimir_Ilich_Lenin_Quick_Facts.html Who is doing the rationing? Do you trust them?
You can see why this happens, though: the Second World War and related matters seems to be the one reliably-popular period, reflected in TV series, like Timewatch, whose remit is broad in both time and space, but chooses WW2 at least every second programme, and indeed entire channels: if you took WW2 and Egypt out of UK History (which would be no bad thing), you'd be left with just the adverts (which would). And there is a steady stream of semi-popular biographies of Hitler, Stalin, and Hitler-and-Stalin, presumably because they are in demand. Not by me, though. The biographical approach to history tends to emphasise narrative at the expense of analysis. Even if one could examine people's motives, this would be unsatisfying, as unsatisfying as the parlour game these biographies become: who was the maddest? most evil? My snap answer would be that Stalin was maddest because he was prepared to act directly contrary to his long-term interests: imprisoning or executing all of he army officers just before a war. I'm not sure about evillest, since it covers both the moral content of your intentions and the acceptability of the means used to carry them out.
There is a much more interesting moral question to be addressed, though. Hitler and Stalin were unique, generating massive suffering. But they didn't do it alone. It is conveneient to see their actions as a one-off (or two-off). This would be wrong. The 20th century is full of genocides, from the Armenians to Pol Pot and Rwanda. Genocide is not an aberration in modern politics - it seems endemic. More important than the issue of what a dictator thought, or did, is the issue of how so many other sane, reasonable, people, helped them. And helped them with gusto. Even if it difficult to stand up to a totalitarian regime and say "no", it is much less difficult to work inefficiently in carrying out its more repellent instructions. Or so you'd think.
There is a genocidal rhetoric which makes it easier for people to do things that they would otherwise find deeply troubling. The key element is the denial of the humanity of the target group: literally 'demonised', 'inhuman', 'bestial'. If they are outside the pale, incurable, not susceptible to reason, all you can do is lock them up, or kill them. Otherwise you will always be threatened.
When the first photos from the Iraqi miltary prison appeared, there was, as well as shock and disgust, a general feeling of surprise: why did they even think of doing it? To me, it wasn't surprising, since it fitted in with the rhetoric of the war on terror, and the treatment of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. If you start off by saying a group of people cannot be afforded human rights, then it takes only a small step to say that they are hardly human at all.
There's a pernicious piece of Jesuitry from Lenin : ""Liberty is precious, so precious that it must be rationed." http://encarta.msn.com/media_461577172_761562790_-1_1/Vladimir_Ilich_Lenin_Quick_Facts.html Who is doing the rationing? Do you trust them?
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Unreasonably funny jokes
Two motorways are drinking in a bar. One says 'Watch out for him in the corner - he's a real cyclepath!'.
Did you hear about the anarchist who went to the toilet?
He was crushed by the cistern.
What's brown and sticky?
A stick.
Did you hear about the anarchist who went to the toilet?
He was crushed by the cistern.
What's brown and sticky?
A stick.
Into the silent prison
The closing gates muffle the sounds
No cries can be heard
I enter the halls
Where slippered guards pace
Led to my solitary cell
I'm invited to reflect and repent
Notes
All based on fact. The silent system was one of the bright Victorian ideas for prison reform. Instead of leaving prisoners to rot for years in hulks or on hard labour with their fellow-criminals, the silent system was supposed to reform, quickly. By keeping everyone separate and (as it says) silent. Even when taken to the exercise yard, proisoners were forced to walk a measured 5 yards from their fellows, and wear a peaked hat that obscured their face. Guards would call prisoners by number, not name, and wore slippers so as not to distract them from their self-examination. It wasn't a great success, since there were many sent insane or suicidal, but few were reformed. A bit of medieval cruelty might seem like a holiday in comparison- which goes to prove the old rule - sadists are dangerous, but zealots are worse.
No cries can be heard
I enter the halls
Where slippered guards pace
Led to my solitary cell
I'm invited to reflect and repent
Notes
All based on fact. The silent system was one of the bright Victorian ideas for prison reform. Instead of leaving prisoners to rot for years in hulks or on hard labour with their fellow-criminals, the silent system was supposed to reform, quickly. By keeping everyone separate and (as it says) silent. Even when taken to the exercise yard, proisoners were forced to walk a measured 5 yards from their fellows, and wear a peaked hat that obscured their face. Guards would call prisoners by number, not name, and wore slippers so as not to distract them from their self-examination. It wasn't a great success, since there were many sent insane or suicidal, but few were reformed. A bit of medieval cruelty might seem like a holiday in comparison- which goes to prove the old rule - sadists are dangerous, but zealots are worse.
He smiled ironically
It's not just me that hates emoticons : c
Irony alert!: the emoticon at the end of the first sentence was used ironically; )
The online world has its own cliches and truisms, none so haggard as the belief that reliable written communication is impossible without frequent use of
>
emoticons, better known as the "smileys."
...
Irony, it seems, is like nitroglycerin: too tricky to be good for much, and so best left in the hands of fanatics or trained professionals.
...
It is as if the written word were a cutting-edge technology without useful
precedents. Some hackers actually go so far as to maintain, with a straight face
(:-I), that words on a computer screen are different from words on paper--implying that writers of e-mail have nothing useful to learn from Dickens or Hemingway, and that time spent reading old books might be better spent coming up with new emoticons.
Read it all at http://kumo.swcp.com/synth/text/text.smileys
Irony alert!: the emoticon at the end of the first sentence was used ironically; )
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Elvis (Costello) is king
"She told me she was working for the ABC news
It was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use"
'Brilliant mistake'
"Somewhere in the Quisling clinic
There's a smart young typist taking seconds over minutes
She's listening in to the Venus line-
She's picking out names: I hope none of them are mine"
'Green skirt'
It was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use"
'Brilliant mistake'
"Somewhere in the Quisling clinic
There's a smart young typist taking seconds over minutes
She's listening in to the Venus line-
She's picking out names: I hope none of them are mine"
'Green skirt'
Friday, December 03, 2004
The joy of cliche
There was a report from the Plain English Campaign http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/pressrelease.html bemoaning the prevalence of cliche, particularly in broadcasting. Particular hates were footballer-ese like "a game of two halves" "at the end of the day" etc, "Don't go there". I must admit I don't really share this complaint. Eloquence is a rare thing. I am not at all sure what feats of Churchillian rhetoric it is reasonable to expect when you ask someone how they have managed to run 100m a little bit faster than the others, or how they feel after having scored more or fewer goals than the other team.
It's not that the language is misused so much that the topic is not sufficiently complex to merit more than this. And in any case, cliches are what people say; all people. Much better this than the sort of ponderous circumlocutions favoured by those in the past who were placed in greater public prominence than normal for their class and education, such as trade union leaders, taking refuge in long words to sound more like their "betters".
And anyway, the language is changing. These days the buzzword for web design is usability: designing user interfaces so that people can use them (as opposed to the old way, create an immaculate site that users find impossible to navigate, use, and in extreme cases, even load!). As a result, the focus is on making text as universally readable as possible, by using simple short sentences and avoiding esoteric terminology (when Madonna was preparing her pornography book and album, at the very last minute they changed the title to Sex, since they found a large part of their target audience didn't know what 'Erotica' was). FAQs ought to be genuinely frequent, rather than the spurious ones like "How can I send a message to Tony Blair congratulating him on his stance on Iraq?" or "Can you make sure you give my email address out to spammers?".
Much more pernicious than popular usage is what passes these days for educated prose. I glanced at a paper about standards in Law education, and was horrified to see that it was all about 'evaluated outcomes' and 'acquired skills' and 'performance criteria'. This style of writing is usually adopted when people wish to either soften their judgement (poorly-performing schools, challenging behaviour) or else to make what is obvious sound more complex and worthwhile. It is sad to think that the best legal minds have to tolerate this rubbish just as much as market researchers into a new dog food. They should have put a red line through the report and sent it back with the note "translate into English".
I'm not very good at committees because I don't have the patience to "say the words that must be said" - "It's a good draft except for sections 1-10 and the appendixes"; "Thank you for your witless and interminable contribution to the debate; I didn't want to get home before midnight anyway"; "I think the main point here is that everything you've said is wrong".
When reading Eric Partridge's Usage and Abusage, I'm amazed how many contemporary hates have been around for years (for example, the usage of "infer" for "imply" and "refute" for "deny", which I had though a modern horror, is in fact current from the 18th century and therefore arguably equally correct); I am also amazed at the long articles about abuses where I have absolutely no idea what the problem is. You almost conclude that you only need grammar for Latin - anything will do in English! (perhaps one could amend a quote I had as a Geography essay title once: "England has no climate, only weather"; "English has no grammar, only words").
It's not that the language is misused so much that the topic is not sufficiently complex to merit more than this. And in any case, cliches are what people say; all people. Much better this than the sort of ponderous circumlocutions favoured by those in the past who were placed in greater public prominence than normal for their class and education, such as trade union leaders, taking refuge in long words to sound more like their "betters".
And anyway, the language is changing. These days the buzzword for web design is usability: designing user interfaces so that people can use them (as opposed to the old way, create an immaculate site that users find impossible to navigate, use, and in extreme cases, even load!). As a result, the focus is on making text as universally readable as possible, by using simple short sentences and avoiding esoteric terminology (when Madonna was preparing her pornography book and album, at the very last minute they changed the title to Sex, since they found a large part of their target audience didn't know what 'Erotica' was). FAQs ought to be genuinely frequent, rather than the spurious ones like "How can I send a message to Tony Blair congratulating him on his stance on Iraq?" or "Can you make sure you give my email address out to spammers?".
Much more pernicious than popular usage is what passes these days for educated prose. I glanced at a paper about standards in Law education, and was horrified to see that it was all about 'evaluated outcomes' and 'acquired skills' and 'performance criteria'. This style of writing is usually adopted when people wish to either soften their judgement (poorly-performing schools, challenging behaviour) or else to make what is obvious sound more complex and worthwhile. It is sad to think that the best legal minds have to tolerate this rubbish just as much as market researchers into a new dog food. They should have put a red line through the report and sent it back with the note "translate into English".
I'm not very good at committees because I don't have the patience to "say the words that must be said" - "It's a good draft except for sections 1-10 and the appendixes"; "Thank you for your witless and interminable contribution to the debate; I didn't want to get home before midnight anyway"; "I think the main point here is that everything you've said is wrong".
When reading Eric Partridge's Usage and Abusage, I'm amazed how many contemporary hates have been around for years (for example, the usage of "infer" for "imply" and "refute" for "deny", which I had though a modern horror, is in fact current from the 18th century and therefore arguably equally correct); I am also amazed at the long articles about abuses where I have absolutely no idea what the problem is. You almost conclude that you only need grammar for Latin - anything will do in English! (perhaps one could amend a quote I had as a Geography essay title once: "England has no climate, only weather"; "English has no grammar, only words").
Thursday, November 25, 2004
Inspirational verse: some favourite song lines
"I see a magazine designed for the successful woman
And look for one for the unsuccessful man"
Graham Parker, 'Big man on paper'
"I hate myself for loving you
But I'll soon get over that"
Bob Dylan, 'Dirge'
'The way you stared so aimlessly into space
Don't you know I felt like saying
Put your contact lens back in'
Nils Lofgren, 'I'll cry tomorrow'
'I'm stark naked but I don't care
I'm going to the woods- I'm hunting bear'
Bob Dylan, 'Honest with you'
'You told me again you preferred handsome men
but for me you would make an exception'
Leonard Cohen, 'Chelsea Hotel #2'
'I'm losing ground, I don't know what I'm doing
My software's not compatible with you'
Neil Young, 'Without rings'
And look for one for the unsuccessful man"
Graham Parker, 'Big man on paper'
"I hate myself for loving you
But I'll soon get over that"
Bob Dylan, 'Dirge'
'The way you stared so aimlessly into space
Don't you know I felt like saying
Put your contact lens back in'
Nils Lofgren, 'I'll cry tomorrow'
'I'm stark naked but I don't care
I'm going to the woods- I'm hunting bear'
Bob Dylan, 'Honest with you'
'You told me again you preferred handsome men
but for me you would make an exception'
Leonard Cohen, 'Chelsea Hotel #2'
'I'm losing ground, I don't know what I'm doing
My software's not compatible with you'
Neil Young, 'Without rings'
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Two Classical poems
The Aeneid
Aeneas turned to face the shore,
Strode to the waiting ship,
his love for Dido forgotten-
Her second album really wasn't very good
A pomegranate seed
Aeneas turned to face the shore,
Strode to the waiting ship,
his love for Dido forgotten-
Her second album really wasn't very good
A pomegranate seed
Persephone,
going underground,
crossed the chill fields
crusted with snow
to be swallowed
by the
cave
Notes
Persephone, daughter of Demeter, goddess of the fields, was dragged off to the underworld Hades to be his wife. Zeus forced Hades to allow her to return to the world, on condition that Persephone had not eaten any of the food of the Underworld. Although she had fasted since her abduction, she had eaten seven pomegranate seeds. It was therefore agreed that she would spend 9 months on earth and 3 months in the underworld.
Friday, November 05, 2004
Monster Sarcasm Rally
Strange stories from Toronto with a refreshing take on office life: http://monstersarcasmrally.blogspot.com/
and a very funny story about Jimmy Dean sausage adverts
and a very funny story about Jimmy Dean sausage adverts
Hairstyles and attitudes
Are they connected?
How well do we use the freedom to choose the illusion we create?
Scientists say your hair never lies
There's been lots of research - it may be just hype,
But the latest results cause me to tremble;
Classify us into three basic types
By which of the Three Stooges we most closely resemble.
(Timbuk 3, 'Hairstyles and attitudes')
which is, in itself, enough to show that Timbuk 3 deserved to be more than a one-hit wonder (to get the full effect you have to know what the Three Stooges looked like: http://www.threestooges.com/
I'm an outside observer on the vast range of porducts and devices that these days offer to change any type of hair into another. You could see this proliferation as sad, implying that nobody wants to look like they do, but conversely it is liberating: there isn't, despite everything, a single perfect look to which all aspire; people want to play with changing their look without going to the mad extremes of surgery.
My choices are more limited, and have been for as long as I can remember. Even the arrival of grey hair was a side issue: rather than getting hung up on hwether this makes you look old, or mature, or distinguished, I don't care what colour it is as long as it's there. I have become used to observing the gradual retreat of my hairline and the corresponding expansion of my forehead; fortunately, it's a slow process, so only the forlorn single survivals showing where it used to be bring home the reality.
But the lonely and unwinnable battle with hair loss is one thing - even more annoying is the simultaneous explosion of hair everywhere else: chest, back, legs, nose, ears. Perhaps in time I will go for an Elton John transplant by using a skin graft from one of the luxuriantly foliated areas where I don't want them. Or not. I suppose I can still choose my image (from a choice of two).
How well do we use the freedom to choose the illusion we create?
Scientists say your hair never lies
There's been lots of research - it may be just hype,
But the latest results cause me to tremble;
Classify us into three basic types
By which of the Three Stooges we most closely resemble.
(Timbuk 3, 'Hairstyles and attitudes')
which is, in itself, enough to show that Timbuk 3 deserved to be more than a one-hit wonder (to get the full effect you have to know what the Three Stooges looked like: http://www.threestooges.com/
I'm an outside observer on the vast range of porducts and devices that these days offer to change any type of hair into another. You could see this proliferation as sad, implying that nobody wants to look like they do, but conversely it is liberating: there isn't, despite everything, a single perfect look to which all aspire; people want to play with changing their look without going to the mad extremes of surgery.
My choices are more limited, and have been for as long as I can remember. Even the arrival of grey hair was a side issue: rather than getting hung up on hwether this makes you look old, or mature, or distinguished, I don't care what colour it is as long as it's there. I have become used to observing the gradual retreat of my hairline and the corresponding expansion of my forehead; fortunately, it's a slow process, so only the forlorn single survivals showing where it used to be bring home the reality.
But the lonely and unwinnable battle with hair loss is one thing - even more annoying is the simultaneous explosion of hair everywhere else: chest, back, legs, nose, ears. Perhaps in time I will go for an Elton John transplant by using a skin graft from one of the luxuriantly foliated areas where I don't want them. Or not. I suppose I can still choose my image (from a choice of two).
Friday, October 22, 2004
Dylan's "Highlands"
Highlands is usually called the best song on Time out of Mind (=TOOM) (even by those who would say there are only 3 other good ones on it), and has generated a lot of analysis and discussion on the message boards of www.bobdylan.com - which seem to have been removed, possibly in an attempt to increase world GDP by getting thousands of people to stop surfing and get on with their work. Although it lasts 16 minutes (longer than it took the world to end in 'Desolation Row'), it is vague enough in specifics to be open to different readings. Essentially it is a song of dislocation and loss, contrasting a realistic urban landscape with an imagined, and probably mythical, Highlands; interspersed with a long and inconclusive conversation with a waitress.
The song has usually been interpreted as a depiction of breakdown as loss-of-moral-worth (in contrast to the 'downer' albums Planet Waves and Blood on the Tracks, which, despite their desperation, affirm the redemptive power of love, TOOM explores damnation as a result of past rejection of love), with the waitress episode as a lighter moment.
But before we get there, he says:
"I'm listening to Neil Young, gotta turn up the sound
Someone's always telling me to turn it down"
which is a situation familiar to any NY fan in a non-fan household. If this is Bob talking (and it sounds like it), it makes you wonder what he's listening to - my bet would be the title track from On the Beach, the third (and least obviously doomy) of his Doom trilogy: this long, flowing, eloquent exposition of urban breakdown contrasted with an imagined escaped to the beach is similar both musically and lyrically:
"The world is turning, I hope it don't turn away"
"I need a crowd of people, I can't face them day-to-day"
"I came to the radio interview, ended up alone at the microphone"
"Though my problems are meaningless, that don't make them go away"
One of the first verses to "Highlands" includes:
"Don't want nothing from no-one, ain't much to take
Wouldn't know the difference between a real blonde and a fake"
These lines have been criticised as poor, part of the lazy versifying that crops up elsewhere on the album (by Michael Gray in his usually-sound Song and Dance Man III). Technically, it's a bit strange: you have an awkward first line and a weak second line, or vice versa; in his delivery, Dylan has to hurry to fit the second line in with the tune, when it could lose some syllables instead. As an example of indifference it is specific without being very enlightening.
But I'd turn this around. It was the second line Dylan wanted, even if it didn't fit: the first line is the make-weight, although it does in fact reinforce the theme, which echoes the line in TOOM's 'Not Dark Yet':
"I'm not looking for nothing in anyone's eyes"
Because what IS the difference between a real blonde and a fake? The answer is that fake blondes only dye the hair on their heads. [on both TOOM and Love and Theft he has re-discovered his liking for including obscene and sexually explicit references, often derived from blues usage]. So what he is saying is that he is unlikely to be in a position to find out whether any blondes he meets are fake or not, because he feels cut off from sexual / romantic contact. In this context, the chat with the waitress is the opposite of flirting: it is sparring leading nowhere because he wouldn't want it to, going through the motions.
And so where are the Highlands? I think that they represent the state where he has cut himself off from life and love, and has come to terms with it, almost a regression to a pre-adolescent sexless state in which a hunting trip looking for deer in the woods was as good as it got.
And therefore, by re-interpreting this line the song can be seen to fall in with the main theme of the album, finding out how to live without love.
The song has usually been interpreted as a depiction of breakdown as loss-of-moral-worth (in contrast to the 'downer' albums Planet Waves and Blood on the Tracks, which, despite their desperation, affirm the redemptive power of love, TOOM explores damnation as a result of past rejection of love), with the waitress episode as a lighter moment.
But before we get there, he says:
"I'm listening to Neil Young, gotta turn up the sound
Someone's always telling me to turn it down"
which is a situation familiar to any NY fan in a non-fan household. If this is Bob talking (and it sounds like it), it makes you wonder what he's listening to - my bet would be the title track from On the Beach, the third (and least obviously doomy) of his Doom trilogy: this long, flowing, eloquent exposition of urban breakdown contrasted with an imagined escaped to the beach is similar both musically and lyrically:
"The world is turning, I hope it don't turn away"
"I need a crowd of people, I can't face them day-to-day"
"I came to the radio interview, ended up alone at the microphone"
"Though my problems are meaningless, that don't make them go away"
One of the first verses to "Highlands" includes:
"Don't want nothing from no-one, ain't much to take
Wouldn't know the difference between a real blonde and a fake"
These lines have been criticised as poor, part of the lazy versifying that crops up elsewhere on the album (by Michael Gray in his usually-sound Song and Dance Man III). Technically, it's a bit strange: you have an awkward first line and a weak second line, or vice versa; in his delivery, Dylan has to hurry to fit the second line in with the tune, when it could lose some syllables instead. As an example of indifference it is specific without being very enlightening.
But I'd turn this around. It was the second line Dylan wanted, even if it didn't fit: the first line is the make-weight, although it does in fact reinforce the theme, which echoes the line in TOOM's 'Not Dark Yet':
"I'm not looking for nothing in anyone's eyes"
Because what IS the difference between a real blonde and a fake? The answer is that fake blondes only dye the hair on their heads. [on both TOOM and Love and Theft he has re-discovered his liking for including obscene and sexually explicit references, often derived from blues usage]. So what he is saying is that he is unlikely to be in a position to find out whether any blondes he meets are fake or not, because he feels cut off from sexual / romantic contact. In this context, the chat with the waitress is the opposite of flirting: it is sparring leading nowhere because he wouldn't want it to, going through the motions.
And so where are the Highlands? I think that they represent the state where he has cut himself off from life and love, and has come to terms with it, almost a regression to a pre-adolescent sexless state in which a hunting trip looking for deer in the woods was as good as it got.
And therefore, by re-interpreting this line the song can be seen to fall in with the main theme of the album, finding out how to live without love.
Monday, October 04, 2004
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
The wrong sort of railway
After the series of train crashes, people are understandably worried about the quality of maintenance work on the system. But whenever I travel by train, I am impressed by the sidings filled with glistening hi-tech specialist survey units, cranes and welding carriages.
On the other hand, I have never seen them move, and the work that actually takes place seems to be done by three men in greasy fluorescent jackets, sharing a broken sledgehammer.
On the other hand, I have never seen them move, and the work that actually takes place seems to be done by three men in greasy fluorescent jackets, sharing a broken sledgehammer.
Friday, September 10, 2004
A non-anorak's guide to the music of Neil Young
One of the great benefits of the Internet is that it prevents people becoming obsessives. You might argue that, on the contrary, what it shows is that the world is full of them. But in fact, there’s only room for a few thousand. I can see that there might be some strange pleasure in knowing that you are the world’s greatest authority on the B-sides of Genesis singles (well, bad example, but you know what I mean), but surely anyone would see that there is no pleasure in being the third- or fourth- or ninety-ninth-most expert on a topic. Certainly, I’ve found that the discovery that there are sadder, more pedantic, more committed (and committable) fans out there as curiously liberating. I’m happy that the job of being No. 1 Neil Young fan is being done, not by me, but by hyperrust.org/ ; these leaves me free to listen to things I like, and have a life.
I recommend reading Jimmy McDonough Shakey: Neil Young’s biography (Vintage, 2003). Although it is authorised by NY, it is not a hagiography, and provides a real insight into the subject. It is a study of the man not the work, so is focused on the mechanics of recording and touring rather than analysing songs, but allows you to appreciate them much better all the same.
It’s funny, too: he can hardly find a pleasant word to say about CSN&Y at any time, and marshals a range of opinions on the technical competence of Crazy Horse (p. 269): Joni Mitchell says “If I would go into a little bar, … I’d say ‘What a great band’. But presented in concert?... That should not be elevated to the concert level.”
Johnny Rogan has written an album-by-album critical study, Neil Young, 0-60 (2000), which I think errs on the side of charity to Neil’s dumber and duller moments (he had a bad time in the 1980s, but then who didn’t?). Incidentally, Neil has said himself he doesn’t like all his stuff, and would be very worried to hear of anyone who claimed they did.
I therefore nominate:
major masterpieces
Everybody knows this is nowhere (1969) sounds like it was recorded in an afternoon in a backroom, but brilliant; Tonight’s the night (1974) Dazed by drink and drugs, but still coming out on the side of life and love; Rust never sleeps (1978) Half acoustic, half electric, all brilliant; Ragged glory (1990) With Crazy Horse, fast and loud throughout; Sleeps with angels (1994) A new direction; strange sounds, strange tunes, modern life
minor masterpieces
After the Goldrush (1970); On the Beach (1974); Zuma (1975); Decade (1977); Comes a time (1978); Live Rust (1979); Freedom (1989); Harvest Moon (1992); Unplugged (1993) (not exactly revelatory, since many were acoustic in the first place, but a good selection); Broken arrow (1996); Silver and gold (2000); Greendale (2003)
good, but
Neil Young (1968) some good songs but a bit directionless; Harvest (1972) hardly straight country, despite what people say, but “Are you ready for the country?” and “There’s a world” spoil a side each; Time Fades Away (1973) live recordings of a set of new songs; raved about by NY fans but rough and messy, and not in a good way; Hawks and Doves (1980) good acoustic side, unspectacular country rock side; Old Ways (1985) as mainstream country as he gets; has aged well; Mirrorball (1995) grunge with Pearl Jam; musically relentless; Are you Passionate? (2002) soul-tinged, with Booker T and the MGs; let down by songs [saw a review which said “You’re my girl” is a love song, but since it says “You’re my girl/ and you’re showing me now/ how grown up you are” I think it’s probably addressed to a relative not a lover; hope so, anyway]
anoraks only
American Stars’n’bars (1976): goodish country rock side, patchy other side; Journey Through the past (1972): mostly poor retreads/live versions, there are, though, nice long versions of 'Southern Man', 'Alabama' and 'Words' and a very nice CSN&Y 'Find the cost of freedom'; Trans (1982): mostly voice-synthesised… those scary computers are going to take over the world! (whoops, too late!); Everybody’s Rockin’ (1983): 50’s rock n roll – not as bad as it could be, but still…; Landing on water (1986): just to show 80’s rock can be as bad
Having said that, I must confess to having listened to all of them over and over with pleasure, so perhaps I’m an anorak after all.
Sponsored link: You can buy any of these albums (or certainly the recommended ones) by going to a shop, and giving them some money, and taking them home again the same day, and listen to them. Or you can spend a week trying to order them online, no we've just run out, we'll have to ship them from China, you weren't in a hurry, were you?
I recommend reading Jimmy McDonough Shakey: Neil Young’s biography (Vintage, 2003). Although it is authorised by NY, it is not a hagiography, and provides a real insight into the subject. It is a study of the man not the work, so is focused on the mechanics of recording and touring rather than analysing songs, but allows you to appreciate them much better all the same.
It’s funny, too: he can hardly find a pleasant word to say about CSN&Y at any time, and marshals a range of opinions on the technical competence of Crazy Horse (p. 269): Joni Mitchell says “If I would go into a little bar, … I’d say ‘What a great band’. But presented in concert?... That should not be elevated to the concert level.”
Johnny Rogan has written an album-by-album critical study, Neil Young, 0-60 (2000), which I think errs on the side of charity to Neil’s dumber and duller moments (he had a bad time in the 1980s, but then who didn’t?). Incidentally, Neil has said himself he doesn’t like all his stuff, and would be very worried to hear of anyone who claimed they did.
I therefore nominate:
major masterpieces
Everybody knows this is nowhere (1969) sounds like it was recorded in an afternoon in a backroom, but brilliant; Tonight’s the night (1974) Dazed by drink and drugs, but still coming out on the side of life and love; Rust never sleeps (1978) Half acoustic, half electric, all brilliant; Ragged glory (1990) With Crazy Horse, fast and loud throughout; Sleeps with angels (1994) A new direction; strange sounds, strange tunes, modern life
minor masterpieces
After the Goldrush (1970); On the Beach (1974); Zuma (1975); Decade (1977); Comes a time (1978); Live Rust (1979); Freedom (1989); Harvest Moon (1992); Unplugged (1993) (not exactly revelatory, since many were acoustic in the first place, but a good selection); Broken arrow (1996); Silver and gold (2000); Greendale (2003)
good, but
Neil Young (1968) some good songs but a bit directionless; Harvest (1972) hardly straight country, despite what people say, but “Are you ready for the country?” and “There’s a world” spoil a side each; Time Fades Away (1973) live recordings of a set of new songs; raved about by NY fans but rough and messy, and not in a good way; Hawks and Doves (1980) good acoustic side, unspectacular country rock side; Old Ways (1985) as mainstream country as he gets; has aged well; Mirrorball (1995) grunge with Pearl Jam; musically relentless; Are you Passionate? (2002) soul-tinged, with Booker T and the MGs; let down by songs [saw a review which said “You’re my girl” is a love song, but since it says “You’re my girl/ and you’re showing me now/ how grown up you are” I think it’s probably addressed to a relative not a lover; hope so, anyway]
anoraks only
American Stars’n’bars (1976): goodish country rock side, patchy other side; Journey Through the past (1972): mostly poor retreads/live versions, there are, though, nice long versions of 'Southern Man', 'Alabama' and 'Words' and a very nice CSN&Y 'Find the cost of freedom'; Trans (1982): mostly voice-synthesised… those scary computers are going to take over the world! (whoops, too late!); Everybody’s Rockin’ (1983): 50’s rock n roll – not as bad as it could be, but still…; Landing on water (1986): just to show 80’s rock can be as bad
Having said that, I must confess to having listened to all of them over and over with pleasure, so perhaps I’m an anorak after all.
Sponsored link: You can buy any of these albums (or certainly the recommended ones) by going to a shop, and giving them some money, and taking them home again the same day, and listen to them. Or you can spend a week trying to order them online, no we've just run out, we'll have to ship them from China, you weren't in a hurry, were you?
The benefits of exercise
I used to be very dismissive of people taking exercise for the sake of it. partly, perhaps, because of what sportspeople were usually like. Dame Edna Everage was asked to explain the sporting success of Australians: she said it was down to "the total lack of mental distraction". And as someone else said, while watching a rowing team, "Eight men sharing one thought - if that". My view used to be that exercise was mindless and pointless; perhaps I was encouraged in this view since my work kept me fit enough anyway. But more recently I have found that my work does not keep me fit, and also that the prospect of tedium seems less awful. After all, there are plenty of other things I do which are equally futile, like tidying up a room containing three children, or cutting the grass, or washing the car. And there is a sort of calming effect, since you are taken away from any other calls on your time, in a way that a "Do not disturb" sign, or a sulky frown, does not. So you could say that it is a sort of meditation (not, perhaps, a very productive one, since it comprises a mixture of pointless counting and pointless timings); certainly it is easier afterwards to take intellectual debate as a sort of game rather than a deadly struggle, seen from the Olympian heights of post-adrenalin euphoria.
Candles on the table: short story
Stephen first noticed her one October evening as he was driving home from work. The re-laying of sewers along the Swansea road had been a constant feature of his journey for months. That day, the temporary traffic lights had moved again, and he was stuck in his car waiting for light to go green, looking around in the gathering gloom of dusk. It had got to the stage where people were turning lights on in the houses, but hadn't yet started to close their curtains. Stephen looked to the far side of the road, and saw a small neat cottage; one of the downstairs rooms was lit, and he could make out, with intrusive clarity, a woman setting cutlery on the table. Two candles were already burning in elegant simple candlesticks. On the wall behind the table there were small framed pictures and blue-and-white plates. He was enchanted, as much by the room as the figure; he had once thought that he would occupy such a house, everything just so.
The light changed to green, and he arrived home shortly afterwards. That night, Stephen was short with his wife, who was rushing around preparing a meal now that she had come back from work, and he shouted at the kids, quarreling on the sofa while Neighbours flickered on, ignored.
Stephen had always enjoyed commuting; he valued the solitude and order of the self-contained world, such a contrast to the chaos and demands of home and the tedious misery of work. But he found over the succeeding week that he was looking forward to the view through the window as the highlight of his day; he came to know the cottage well. He though of the woman as ‘Laura Ashley’; she had long dark hair, with a headband and pearl earrings. She radiated self-possession; it was a joy to watch her concentrating on setting the table as though it were the most important thing, perhaps the only thing, in her mind; this habitual seriousness masked her beauty. He also saw her daughter, smart in her school uniform, helping her mother, or sometimes playing the recorder. This model of contentment pierced Stephen to the heart, and he found himself wondering how he had ended up with his life, his family, his job.
There had been a time when he had assumed that this would be his lot. Until finishing his law degree, he had expected to end up a wealthy and sleek solicitor dealing with businessmen; but somehow he had gone down a different path, and was now working for a local practice specialising in deserving (i.e. poor) divorces, conveyancing and small legacies. Now he had become entrapped in a whirl of lack of time, lack of money, lack of peace. Correspondingly, his mood deteriorated as autumn passed, and he found himself losing patience with his wife and children, a symptom of his dissatisfaction. He was no longer troubled by a daily advertisement of another life: as the days shortened, all the houses had their curtains closed as he drive home, but each journey past the cottage disturbed his mood and ruined his day.
In the week before Christmas, he had a shock. He was just shutting the door of his office at the end of the day when he saw ‘Laura’ coming out of his partner’s office, across the hall. She was muffled by scarf and hat, but he recognised her quickly enough. She walked off down the hall; Stephen glanced into Cassie’s room through the still-open door, and saw her tidying her desk. She looked up and smiled slightly. “Still here?”
Stephen went in. “Just putting off the awful hour - you know what my place is like.”
Cassie looked more serious. “Did you see that last client - the woman?”
“Yes- what was she here for?”
“The usual: a divorce. Her husband's a workaholic and an obsessive; when he gets home in the evening, he does a sort of inspection of the house, her, the girl; if anything is out of place he flies into a rage, throwing furniture about and shouting. The last straw had been last night: she spilled some wine on the tablecloth, and he had beaten her up.”
Stephen paused in shock, then nodded slowly. He said, almost to himself, “I wondered why she had covered her face so well”.
Cassie shook her head “God, imagine living like that! We’re well out of it”.
The drive home seemed less gloomy than usual; Stephen as he pulled up outside the house. The kid's bedroom lights were on, and he could make out their shouts and laughter above the music from their rooms as he walked up to the door. He greeted his wife with a hug, discarding his longing for an ordered existence.
The light changed to green, and he arrived home shortly afterwards. That night, Stephen was short with his wife, who was rushing around preparing a meal now that she had come back from work, and he shouted at the kids, quarreling on the sofa while Neighbours flickered on, ignored.
Stephen had always enjoyed commuting; he valued the solitude and order of the self-contained world, such a contrast to the chaos and demands of home and the tedious misery of work. But he found over the succeeding week that he was looking forward to the view through the window as the highlight of his day; he came to know the cottage well. He though of the woman as ‘Laura Ashley’; she had long dark hair, with a headband and pearl earrings. She radiated self-possession; it was a joy to watch her concentrating on setting the table as though it were the most important thing, perhaps the only thing, in her mind; this habitual seriousness masked her beauty. He also saw her daughter, smart in her school uniform, helping her mother, or sometimes playing the recorder. This model of contentment pierced Stephen to the heart, and he found himself wondering how he had ended up with his life, his family, his job.
There had been a time when he had assumed that this would be his lot. Until finishing his law degree, he had expected to end up a wealthy and sleek solicitor dealing with businessmen; but somehow he had gone down a different path, and was now working for a local practice specialising in deserving (i.e. poor) divorces, conveyancing and small legacies. Now he had become entrapped in a whirl of lack of time, lack of money, lack of peace. Correspondingly, his mood deteriorated as autumn passed, and he found himself losing patience with his wife and children, a symptom of his dissatisfaction. He was no longer troubled by a daily advertisement of another life: as the days shortened, all the houses had their curtains closed as he drive home, but each journey past the cottage disturbed his mood and ruined his day.
In the week before Christmas, he had a shock. He was just shutting the door of his office at the end of the day when he saw ‘Laura’ coming out of his partner’s office, across the hall. She was muffled by scarf and hat, but he recognised her quickly enough. She walked off down the hall; Stephen glanced into Cassie’s room through the still-open door, and saw her tidying her desk. She looked up and smiled slightly. “Still here?”
Stephen went in. “Just putting off the awful hour - you know what my place is like.”
Cassie looked more serious. “Did you see that last client - the woman?”
“Yes- what was she here for?”
“The usual: a divorce. Her husband's a workaholic and an obsessive; when he gets home in the evening, he does a sort of inspection of the house, her, the girl; if anything is out of place he flies into a rage, throwing furniture about and shouting. The last straw had been last night: she spilled some wine on the tablecloth, and he had beaten her up.”
Stephen paused in shock, then nodded slowly. He said, almost to himself, “I wondered why she had covered her face so well”.
Cassie shook her head “God, imagine living like that! We’re well out of it”.
The drive home seemed less gloomy than usual; Stephen as he pulled up outside the house. The kid's bedroom lights were on, and he could make out their shouts and laughter above the music from their rooms as he walked up to the door. He greeted his wife with a hug, discarding his longing for an ordered existence.
Dylan's protest and peace
As someone who discovered electric Dylan first, I always found it hard to engage with the earlier material; there seems something missing not just in the music, but in the words. It was only when listening to the Bootleg Dylan album that I began to understand why. Everyone always said that the quintessential 'protest' period anthem was 'Blowin' in the Wind'; the Bootleg Dylan includes his performance of a Civil War-era spiritual, 'No More Auction Block', from which Dylan has admitted lifting the tune for "Blowin'…" I now think he lifted more.
Considering its iconic status in peace movements and folk music even today, and considering it was written by the most articulate poet of a generation, "Blowin' in the wind" is actually full of awkward phrases.
"How many roads must a man walk down,
Before you call him a man?"
This is the first line of the most important song of a generation… yet look at it. The man/man repetition is technically maladroit, creating an unwanted internal rhyme. But worse than that, it is actually using the same short word in two different senses in the course of the same line: "a man" first is "someone" or perhaps "anyone" or "me", while seven words later "a man" is used as "a grown person" or "someone whose opinion should be listened to". The answer presumably is some but not many.
"How many miles must the white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?"
The answer here, to "how long before the dove can sleep having delivered its message of hope" is presumably too many.
"Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they are forever banned?"
This line is perhaps the point at which you can start to unravel the song. The song was written in 1962, 6 years after the first Hydrogen bomb was detonated, just before Vietnam brought modern technology to the battlefield. The answer to the question is none: cannonballs no longer fly, and in fact haven't since the supremacy of rifled artillery was established in the American Civil War in the 1860s. As an image of 20th century warfare, it is not just weak but wrong. This is a sentiment that belongs to the 19th century.
So does the second half of the line. Banning is what headteachers do: earrings, bleached hair, fluorescent socks. The more honest modern peace protestors say "Not in My Name". The Western students of the 1960s, rather than saying "ban the bomb", might with more justice have said "renounce the bomb": telling their (democratic) government that they did not wish it to use the threat of nuclear war as an instrument of foreign policy, while willing to admit that other governments did not face similar pressures and wouldn't have listened if they did.
"The answer, my friend
Is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind"
The sense of the song must be not that the wind has the answer, but that there is no answer; this is how things are and how they will stay.
How can it be that this message has been adopted as one of hope, even triumph? It could be that people aren't listening to the words, in the same way that the American Right adopted Springsteen's "Born in the USA" as an anthem, assuming it reflected their simplistic patriotism, rather than questioning it. But I think the truth is that what has sold this song as an optimistic one is Dylan's delivery of it, which makes it sound as if the answer is "not yet, but soon".
So we have a curious mixture of archaism in technology and a belief that banning (or not banning) is in someone's power as a possible outcome. To return to the 1860s, and "No More Auction Block":
"No more auction block
No more, no more,
No more auction block
Many thousands gone
No more driver's 'lash for me
No more, no more
No more driver's whiplash for me
Many thousands gone"
The song is one of mournful triumph, an expression of release, of gratitude for the liberation of the slaves delivered in 1865 after the Civil War, regretting the terrible cost in pain and sorrow through all the years of trial, but looking forward in sombre optimism. Or to put it another way "How many times on the auction block?" "Too many , but no more".
Dylan's delivery of this song is clearly the blueprint for "Blowing"; he sounds dignified: wearied, but thankful. Thus undercutting the message of the words as "Who knows when anything will change" is the feeling, more properly belong to "Auction Block", of "Something will change".
"How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
How many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
I think that 'seeing the sky' here is noticing what would have been obvious to any normal observer (i.e. slavery being wrong). The second line, if you can avoid the bathetic image of people needing more ears, rather than better ears, makes the same point: how can you ignore all the suffering?
"How many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?"
This is another 'banning' line; it's actually paradoxical (in modern terms): you can't allow people to be free; they either are free, or they're not. There was, of course, a major historical action which really did allow people to be free… in 1865.
My doubts about the song were based on a vague feeling that somehow the rhetoric was misplaced and ineffective; at face value, in 1962, it is at best a bit of wishful thinking on behalf of a generation deprived of political influence. By noticing how much of this perceived lack of impact derives from the parallels with a song one hundred years older, most of these doubts are washed away. And you can see that Dylan, looking around for examples of good overcoming evil after a long period of darkness and sorrow, might latch onto the emancipation of the slaves as one with deep resonances. He probably didn't have time to notice that the moral was equivocal: after all, there was a war fought at least partly to resolve the issue: was that a good thing or not?
Considering its iconic status in peace movements and folk music even today, and considering it was written by the most articulate poet of a generation, "Blowin' in the wind" is actually full of awkward phrases.
"How many roads must a man walk down,
Before you call him a man?"
This is the first line of the most important song of a generation… yet look at it. The man/man repetition is technically maladroit, creating an unwanted internal rhyme. But worse than that, it is actually using the same short word in two different senses in the course of the same line: "a man" first is "someone" or perhaps "anyone" or "me", while seven words later "a man" is used as "a grown person" or "someone whose opinion should be listened to". The answer presumably is some but not many.
"How many miles must the white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?"
The answer here, to "how long before the dove can sleep having delivered its message of hope" is presumably too many.
"Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they are forever banned?"
This line is perhaps the point at which you can start to unravel the song. The song was written in 1962, 6 years after the first Hydrogen bomb was detonated, just before Vietnam brought modern technology to the battlefield. The answer to the question is none: cannonballs no longer fly, and in fact haven't since the supremacy of rifled artillery was established in the American Civil War in the 1860s. As an image of 20th century warfare, it is not just weak but wrong. This is a sentiment that belongs to the 19th century.
So does the second half of the line. Banning is what headteachers do: earrings, bleached hair, fluorescent socks. The more honest modern peace protestors say "Not in My Name". The Western students of the 1960s, rather than saying "ban the bomb", might with more justice have said "renounce the bomb": telling their (democratic) government that they did not wish it to use the threat of nuclear war as an instrument of foreign policy, while willing to admit that other governments did not face similar pressures and wouldn't have listened if they did.
"The answer, my friend
Is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind"
The sense of the song must be not that the wind has the answer, but that there is no answer; this is how things are and how they will stay.
How can it be that this message has been adopted as one of hope, even triumph? It could be that people aren't listening to the words, in the same way that the American Right adopted Springsteen's "Born in the USA" as an anthem, assuming it reflected their simplistic patriotism, rather than questioning it. But I think the truth is that what has sold this song as an optimistic one is Dylan's delivery of it, which makes it sound as if the answer is "not yet, but soon".
So we have a curious mixture of archaism in technology and a belief that banning (or not banning) is in someone's power as a possible outcome. To return to the 1860s, and "No More Auction Block":
"No more auction block
No more, no more,
No more auction block
Many thousands gone
No more driver's 'lash for me
No more, no more
No more driver's whiplash for me
Many thousands gone"
The song is one of mournful triumph, an expression of release, of gratitude for the liberation of the slaves delivered in 1865 after the Civil War, regretting the terrible cost in pain and sorrow through all the years of trial, but looking forward in sombre optimism. Or to put it another way "How many times on the auction block?" "Too many , but no more".
Dylan's delivery of this song is clearly the blueprint for "Blowing"; he sounds dignified: wearied, but thankful. Thus undercutting the message of the words as "Who knows when anything will change" is the feeling, more properly belong to "Auction Block", of "Something will change".
"How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
How many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
I think that 'seeing the sky' here is noticing what would have been obvious to any normal observer (i.e. slavery being wrong). The second line, if you can avoid the bathetic image of people needing more ears, rather than better ears, makes the same point: how can you ignore all the suffering?
"How many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?"
This is another 'banning' line; it's actually paradoxical (in modern terms): you can't allow people to be free; they either are free, or they're not. There was, of course, a major historical action which really did allow people to be free… in 1865.
My doubts about the song were based on a vague feeling that somehow the rhetoric was misplaced and ineffective; at face value, in 1962, it is at best a bit of wishful thinking on behalf of a generation deprived of political influence. By noticing how much of this perceived lack of impact derives from the parallels with a song one hundred years older, most of these doubts are washed away. And you can see that Dylan, looking around for examples of good overcoming evil after a long period of darkness and sorrow, might latch onto the emancipation of the slaves as one with deep resonances. He probably didn't have time to notice that the moral was equivocal: after all, there was a war fought at least partly to resolve the issue: was that a good thing or not?
A glossary for job adverts
Self-motivated You won't see your manager for weeks on end
Innovative We have no idea how to achieve this- you'll have to come up with the answer
Familiar with Office 2002 We've just upgraded and no-one here knows how to use it
Family environment Rows, tantrums and sulking
Relaxed environment No-one else will do any work
Office location:
City centre No parking
Rural No sandwich shops
Business park No parking and no sandwich shops
Innovative We have no idea how to achieve this- you'll have to come up with the answer
Familiar with Office 2002 We've just upgraded and no-one here knows how to use it
Family environment Rows, tantrums and sulking
Relaxed environment No-one else will do any work
Office location:
City centre No parking
Rural No sandwich shops
Business park No parking and no sandwich shops
Saturday, September 04, 2004
Biographical note
I was born in Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire (now Cumbria), England, in 1962. My father was originally from Plymouth, Devon, and worked as a naval engineer for the Ministry of Defence. This involved moving quite regularly, so that at the age of 6 months I moved to Bath, then at 3 or so to Gillingham, Kent, then at 11 back to Bath. I attended King Edward VIth School at Bath, a private boys school with a strong tradition of academic success. Largely thanks to their efforts, I got a place at Cambridge, where I divided my time between the unsuccessful pursuit of artistic/ and creative activities and the more successful study of Archaeology and Anthropology; oh, and an awful lot of time talking.
In 1984 I graduated and started working as an excavator on rescue sites in England and Scotland; after a couple years of this, I became an excavation supervisor at Dudley Castle as part of a large Manpower Services Commission job creation scheme. This was wound down in 1989, as the government focused more on training, and I then worked for three years at Castle Bromwich Hall, carrying out excavations in advance of the restoration of the 18th century garden (it’s open to the public: they have a website, but the archaeology’s not mentioned http://www.cbhgt.colebridge.net/ ) .
In 1991 I started work for the Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust ( http://www.ggat.org.uk ), based in Swansea, and moved to Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen, a mining village on the southwest edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park. My role at the Trust developed into management, and included preparing and editing large numbers of technical reports on work done for the planning process. This work is responsible for my obsession with accuracy and brevity in writing. My work also included field survey and site visits (I walked the entire southern coastline of Wales from Gower to Chepstow over a period of three years, looking at archaeological sites and assessing how likely they were to be eroded) which inevitably entailed long periods of quiet thought, and this awakened a renewed interest in writing poetry – but this time (unlike at Cambridge), poetry that made clear sense without irritating, boring or confusing the reader (and was therefore much harder to write).
In 2002, after being involved in GGAT’s work on the Newport medieval ship project, I looked for other areas where I could exploit and develop my skills at management, outreach, and web development, and so in January 2003 I started work at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, for the Archives Network Wales project ( http://www.archivesnetworkwales.info ).
In 1984 I graduated and started working as an excavator on rescue sites in England and Scotland; after a couple years of this, I became an excavation supervisor at Dudley Castle as part of a large Manpower Services Commission job creation scheme. This was wound down in 1989, as the government focused more on training, and I then worked for three years at Castle Bromwich Hall, carrying out excavations in advance of the restoration of the 18th century garden (it’s open to the public: they have a website, but the archaeology’s not mentioned http://www.cbhgt.colebridge.net/ ) .
In 1991 I started work for the Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust ( http://www.ggat.org.uk ), based in Swansea, and moved to Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen, a mining village on the southwest edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park. My role at the Trust developed into management, and included preparing and editing large numbers of technical reports on work done for the planning process. This work is responsible for my obsession with accuracy and brevity in writing. My work also included field survey and site visits (I walked the entire southern coastline of Wales from Gower to Chepstow over a period of three years, looking at archaeological sites and assessing how likely they were to be eroded) which inevitably entailed long periods of quiet thought, and this awakened a renewed interest in writing poetry – but this time (unlike at Cambridge), poetry that made clear sense without irritating, boring or confusing the reader (and was therefore much harder to write).
In 2002, after being involved in GGAT’s work on the Newport medieval ship project, I looked for other areas where I could exploit and develop my skills at management, outreach, and web development, and so in January 2003 I started work at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, for the Archives Network Wales project ( http://www.archivesnetworkwales.info ).
Company culture
Someone (probably Tolstoy) said that every happy family is the same but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way (I've also come across the lazy journalist rule that all unsourced quotations are from Mark Twain), but I think the opposite applies to work; certainly US companies sound very familiar:
http://www.lonsteins.com/management_techniques.html
http://www.lonsteins.com/management_techniques.html
Big brother
1984 used to be a cultural touchstone; everyone understood that Big Brother was a menacing, omniscient figure, and was used in references to excessive government data-collecting about individuals. These days, of course, there is the Other Big Brother. In recent coverage of the planned biochip identity cards, this has led to some unintentional comedy: when I saw a headline "Big Brother fears over biochip plans", my first assumption was that Stu, Michelle and the other housemates had been having an argument about whether they were a good thing, and expressing concerns about the erosion of personal liberty. It took a few seconds of disbelief before I realised that this has nothing to do with reality TV.
Friday, September 03, 2004
Comments on "Cogito ergo sum"
This (posted earlier) slightly mis-represents Descartes.
Firstly, he was not in fact in a state of epistemological doubt: although modern philsophers would say that you can legitimately doubt the evidence of your senses about whether there is a world out there, he was merely proposing to establish that the Universe, and God, existed, by reasoning from first principles.
Secondly, people tend to take Cogito ergo sum to mean "I think therefore I am", (as I do here) implying that being a thinking being is a prerequisite of existence at all (and thus effectively a re-wording of Socrates' argument that the unexamined life is not worth living). His point was more subtle: "I think (there is an I that is thinking) therefore I am (since there is an I thinking then there is an I that exists).
Firstly, he was not in fact in a state of epistemological doubt: although modern philsophers would say that you can legitimately doubt the evidence of your senses about whether there is a world out there, he was merely proposing to establish that the Universe, and God, existed, by reasoning from first principles.
Secondly, people tend to take Cogito ergo sum to mean "I think therefore I am", (as I do here) implying that being a thinking being is a prerequisite of existence at all (and thus effectively a re-wording of Socrates' argument that the unexamined life is not worth living). His point was more subtle: "I think (there is an I that is thinking) therefore I am (since there is an I thinking then there is an I that exists).
Cogito ergo sum
In the mind of Rene Descartes
Doubt comprised the main part
But he knew that he was
And this was because
He thought, which at least was a start
Archaeological publications (author Martin Locock except where noted)
A dated type-series of hand-made bricks from Dudley Castle, 1550-1950. West Midlands Pottery Research Group Newsletter 11 (1988), 18-23.
Medieval floor tiles from Dudley Castle. West Midlands Pottery Research Group Newsletter 12 (1989), 1-8.
The use of the video-camera for archaeological recording. Scottish Archaeological Review 7 (1990), 195-198.
The 18th century brickmaking industry in the Forest of Arden. Warwickshire History 8 (1990), 3-20.
18th-century brickmaker's tally-marks from Castle Bromwich Hall, West Midlands. Transactions of the Birmingham and Warwickshire Archaeological Society 95 (1990), 95-98.
The finds. In C K Currie, "Excavation of an early 18th-century garden pond: the West Pond, Castle Bromwich Hall", Post Medieval Archaeology 24 (1990), 93-123; 117-120.
Animal bone. In M A Hodder, "Excavations at Sandwell Priory and Hall, 1985-1988", Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society 35 (1990), 1-227; 103-104, 181-184.
Recent research on medieval floor tiles in the western Midlands. West Midlands Pottery Research Group Newsletter 14 (1990), 6-11.
M Locock and C K Currie, Castle Bromwich Hall: excavations directed by P Twigg, 1985-1988. West Midlands Archaeology 34 (1991), 19-26.
C K Currie and M Locock, An evaluation of archaeological techniques used at Castle Bromwich Hall, 1989-90. Garden History 19.1 (1991), 77-99.
The development of the building trades in the west midlands, 1400-1850. Construction History 8 (1992), 3-19.
Finds reports. In C K Currie and M Locock, "Trial excavations in the North Garden, Castle Bromwich Hall, 1991", Transactions of the Birmingham and Warwickshire Archaeological Society 97 (1992), 77-85; 83-85.
M Locock, C K Currie and S Gray, Chemical changes in buried animal bone: data from a post-medieval assemblage. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 2 (1992), 297-304.
C K Currie and M Locock, Archaeology on historic garden sites: a maze of confusion. The Field Archaeologist 17 (1992), 332-334.
Excavations in the walled garden, Bescot Hall, Walsall. Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society 33 (1993), 49-56.
Book review: A E Brown (ed.) Garden Archaeology (CBA Research Report 78). CBA Wales Newsletter (Spring 1993), 9-10.
C K Currie and M Locock, Excavations at Castle Bromwich Hall, 1989-91, Post Medieval Archaeology 27 (1993), 111-199.
Meaningful architecture; Spatial analysis of an 18th century formal garden; Postscript: the death of meaning? In M Locock (ed.) 1994, Meaningful Architecture: Social interpretations of buildings (Avebury, Aldershot: Worldwide Archaeological Series 9), 1-13; 231-252; 308-309.
Excavations behind Bank Street, Chepstow, 1992. Monmouthshire Antiquary 11 (1994), 57-70.
Scratch below the surface: archaeology and development. South Wales Evening Post Business Matters (March 1994), 16.
The Neath valley defences. Loopholes (Journal of the Pillbox Study Group) 7 (March 1994), 17-21.
The effectiveness of dowsing as a method of determining the nature and location of buried features on historic garden sites. Archaeological Prospection 2 i (1995), 15-18.
Project management in a changing world: redesigning the pyramid. In M A Cooper, A Firth, J Carman and D Wheatley (eds.), 1995 Managing Archaeology (Routledge, London: EuroTAG series), 208-215.
A Second World War anti-aircraft battery near Newport, Gwent: an archaeological survey. Fort 23 (1995), 127-137.
A quiet word: Independents Day? The Field Archaeologist 23 (September 1995), 34.
M Locock and M Lawler, Brean Down sea defences: field evaluation. Archaeology in the Severn Estuary 6 (1995), 23-28.
C K Currie and M Locock, The formal cascade at The Gnoll. Welsh Historic Gardens Trust Newsletter 8 (1995), 72-79.
P J Lennox, “Excavations at Belmont Road, Hay-on-Wye”, Brycheiniog 27 (1995), 25-42 (M Locock ed.).
Old Vic Hotel, Wolverhampton: animal bone. West Midlands Archaeology 38 (1995), 121-122.
Book review: M Parker-Pearson and C Richards (eds.) Architecture and Order: approaches to social space. Post-Medieval Archaeology 29 (1995), 213-214.
Bethel Square, Brecon: excavations in the medieval town. Brycheiniog 28 (1996), 35-80.
The archaeology of the Second World War in Gwent. Monmouthshire Antiquary 12: Essays in honour of Jeremy K Knight (1996), 68-72.
Hill Farm, Goldcliff: a field evaluation on the proposed Gwent Levels Nature Reserve, 1996. Archaeology in the Severn Estuary 7 (1996), 59-66.
Animal bone. In P F Wilkinson, "Excavations at Hen Gastell, Briton Ferry, West Glamorgan, 1991-92", Medieval Archaeology 39 (1996), 1-50; 30-33.
Iron; Tile; Animal bone. In J J Hall, "Excavation at Attlebridge, 1989", Norfolk Archaeology 42 iii (1996), 296-320; 316; 318; 318-319.
R Newman and P F Wilkinson, "Excavations at Llanmaes, near Llantwit Major, South Glamorgan", Post-Medieval Archaeology 30 (1996), 180-226 (M Locock ed.).
C K Currie, M Locock and L Howes, Fishpond Wood Cascade, The Gnoll, West Glamorgan. Archaeologia Cambrensis 146 (1996, for 1994), 236-271.
C K Currie and M Locock, The development of garden archaeology. In M Locock (ed.) IFA Yearbook 1997, 23-25.
IFA Annual Report, 1996-7 (M Locock ed.)
A prehistoric trackway at Cold Harbour Pill. Archaeology in the Severn Estuary 8 (1997), 9-12.
Gwent Levels Wetlands Reserve, Hill Farm, Goldcliff: Excavations 1997. Archaeology in the Severn Estuary 8 (1997), 55-65.
Rockingham Farm, Avonmouth, 1993-1997: moated enclosures on the North Avon Level. Archaeology in the Severn Estuary 8 (1997), 83-88.
M Lawler, M Walker and M Locock, A cairnfield at Cefn-yr-Esgyrn: an archaeological and palaeoenvironmental study. Studia Celtica 31 (1997), 83-105.
M J C Walker, M Lawler and M Locock, Woodland clearance in medieval Glamorgan: pollen evidence from Cefn Hirgoed. Archaeology in Wales 37 (1997), 21-26.
Book review: Stephen Rippon The Severn Estuary: landscape evolution and wetland reclamation. Medieval Archaeology 42 (1998), 198-199.
Garden archaeology in South Wales. Welsh Historic Gardens Trust Newsletter (Spring 1998), 6-7.
Dignity for the dead. The Archaeologist 27 (winter 1998), 11.
Animal bone. In N Nayling, 1998 The Magor Pill medieval wreck (CBA Research Report 115), 44.
The Goldcliff stone and Roman drainage on the Caldicot Level: an evaluation at Hill Farm, Goldcliff, 1996. Britannia 29 (1998), 329-336.
Animal bone. In A G Marvell and D J Maynard, “Excavations south of the Legionary fortress at Usk, Gwent, 1994”, Britannia 29 (1998), 247-267; 261.
The work of the Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust in Avon, 1993-1998: from sites to landscapes. Bristol and Avon Archaeology 15 (1998), 67-70.
P F Wilkinson, M Locock and S Sell, A 16th-century saltworks at Port Eynon, Gower. Post-Medieval Archaeology 32 (1998), 3-32.
M Locock, S Robinson and A Yates, Late Bronze Age sites at Cabot Park, Avonmouth. Archaeology in the Severn Estuary 9 (1998), 31-36.
M Locock and M Walker, Hill Farm, Goldcliff: Middle Iron Age drainage on the Caldicot Level. Archaeology in the Severn Estuary 9 (1998), 37-44.
Book review: J D Hurst (ed.) A multi-period salt production site at Droitwich: Excavations at Upwich (CBA Research Report 107). Post-Medieval Archaeology 33 (1999), 303.
The analysis of historical animal bone assemblages: is big beautiful? In S Anderson (ed.), Current and recent research in osteoarchaeology 2 (1999), 8-11.
Animal bones and the urban economy: thirty years of archaeozoology in Coventry. In S Anderson (ed.), Current and recent research in osteoarchaeology 2 (1999), 12-16.
Buried soils of the Wentlooge Formation. Archaeology in the Severn Estuary 10 (1999), 1-10.
M Locock, B Trett and M Lawler, Further late prehistoric features on the foreshore at Chapeltump, Magor, Monmouthshire: Chapeltump II and the Upton trackway. Studia Celtica 34 (2000), 17-48.
Book review: M Johnson Archaeological Theory: an introduction. Post-Medieval Archaeology 34 (2000), 414-415.
Objects of brick, tile and fired clay; animal bone. In A M Yates “Excavations of a Roman site south of Great Pencarn Farm 1997: Coedkernew, Newport”, Studia Celtica 34 (2000), 49-80; 64, 65-66.
R Thomas and M Locock, Food for the dogs? The consumption of horseflesh at Dudley Castle in the 18th century. Environmental Archaeology 5 (2000), 83-91.
M Locock and M Lawler, Moated enclosures on the North Avon Level: survey and excavation at Rockingham Farm, Avonmouth, 1993-1997. Transactions of the Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 118 (2000), 93-122.
An Auxiliary Unit ‘hide’ (Operational Base) at Cilybebyll, Neath Port Talbot. Archaeology in Wales 40 (2000), 57-59.
M Lawler, "Archaeological evaluation at South Quay, Pembroke, 1994". Archaeologia Cambrensis 147 (2001, for 1998), 159-180 (M Locock ed.).
Archaeological prospection and evaluation in the Severn Levels, 1989-1999: developing a methodology. Estuarine Archaeology: the Severn and beyond (Archaeology in the Severn Estuary 11) (2001), 131-143.
A Later Bronze Age landscape on the Avon Levels: settlement, shelters and saltmarsh at Cabot Park. In J Brück (ed.), Bronze Age landscapes: tradition and transformation (Oxbow Monograph, Oxford) (2001), 121-128.
M Locock and B Noddle, Animal bone. In A G Marvell (ed.), Investigations along Monnow Street, Monmouth (BAR British series 320, Oxford) (2001), 113-115.
Medieval floor tiles from St James Priory, Dudley. In I Soden (ed.), True as Coventry Blue: papers presented to Margaret Rylatt (City Archaeologist, Coventry 1973-2000) (Northamptonshire County Council, Northampton) (2002), 36-51.
Coastal management. In A Davidson (ed.), The coastal archaeology of Wales (CBA Research Report 131, York) (2002), 116-128.
Animal bone. In A Yates, R Roberts and M Walker, "The archaeology of the Wentlooge Level: investigations along the Wentlooge sewers, 1998-9", Archaeology in the Severn Estuary 12 (2002), 55-77, 61-62.
The Registered Archaeological Organisations scheme. The Archaeologist 46 (winter 2002), 12-13.
Researching the familiar past: priorities and opportunities in post-medieval archaeology. In S Briggs (ed.), Towards a research agenda for Welsh archaeology: Proceedings of the IFA Wales/Cymru conference, Aberystwyth, 2001 (BAR British Series 343, 2003), 145-152.
Mammal bone; Bird bone. In N Nayling and S McGrail, The Barland's Farm Romano-Celtic Boat (CBA Research Report 138, York, 2004), 78-80; 80.
First post
This blog is being created as place for me to share my comments on current events, literature, and reading, and also to dump stuff that interests me about archives (old documents, not computer archives), like 'my' web resource http://www.archivesnetworkwales.info/ , and about archaeology, and about poetry (some of mine is mounted at http://mysite.freeserve.com/locock_poetry and there's a couple at http://www.nmgw.ac.uk/mwl/2004/e-steddfod/results/index.en.shtml (nos. 14, 16, 18).
UPDATE: October 2010 - I have removed the dead links above. The best starting place to finding my stuff is my home page.
UPDATE: October 2010 - I have removed the dead links above. The best starting place to finding my stuff is my home page.
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