Blog for 30th January…
Well – I’m late. Again. So much for deadlines!! (See last week’s post…) 🙂
I’m going to take a different tack from February, I’ve decided. Instead of using the space as my personal rant-fest, I’m going to tell stories – and focus on things I’m interested to research. We find ourselves fascinating, don’t we, as humans?
So this is the last spot where I’m going to be self-indulgent, and I take as my theme, Bob Dylan. More specifically, his song ‘Make you feel my love’. Composed in 1997 (it seems) this song has been covered so many times its influence continues to be profound. It was the subject of BBC Radio 4’s Soul Music last week – a programme that explores the effects of a song on human lives.
A song released into the word harvests for itself a multiplicity of stories. And the ownership of these stories exists somewhere between the song and the person – it’s a co-construction of meaning that exists in so many dimensions. This is the case I think for all music, but when the stimulus, the impetus for a song is Dylan, I think there is an added power.
I’ve never been a huge fan of contemporary music, to lay my cards on the table. I respect a lot of it, perhaps, but I don’t own any. Although I’ve always thought Dylan is a genius, this is the first of his songs that I’ve actually bought. Why?
The same Soul Music featured a song related to this fairly recently – Joan Baez’ Diamonds and Rust. It was written in 1974 after an unexpected phone conversation she had when Dylan rang her after a twenty year hiatus. In it, Baez reflects on their tumultuous relationship – she acknowledges that he was the love of her life.
When I was young, I used to hate songs about loves that were lost, hearts broken, grieving souls. Now I still feel the depth of the ache but not so despairingly, somehow. Is the greater tragedy never having felt this pain? Possibly.
What amazes me always is music’s capacity to engage at this level and to address the pain. Dylan is a master of the craft, as is Baez. This song, with its haunting intervals, does it all. There’s a madness here – perhaps they both feel it still.
So I leave you with both these songs – they’re difficult to listen to – at last I found them so – but the intense humanness of them leaves us all the richer.
Diamonds and Rust
https://youtu.be/1ST9TZBb9v8?si=wv1Mwhptn0yrbxwF
Make you Feel my Love
https://youtu.be/fdWto-AUM3Q?si=kBDvnnliJwxoVbOu