Seeking Mirth and Beauty Substack #8
“Feel the pulse and vibration and the rumbling force”
“While we seek mirth and beauty” is a line from “Hard Times Come No More”, an American parlor song by Stephen Foster that Bob Dylan covered on his 1992 record of songs called Good As I Been To You. Dylan’s work has been good to us, and the world is a better place for that work having been brought to light.
There have been many books written about Bob Dylan that are based on his life, on gossip about his life, or on guess work. Those books have little to do with the work that Dylan’s brought to the world. There are writers and critics who have tried to explicate Dylan’s songs and lyrics, trying to figure out for themselves, and to explain to interested listeners just what it was that Bob Dylan really meant. That is a way to approach Dylan’s work—but it’s not the way that he seems to approach his work and it’s never been particularly insightful.
There are no convoluted or secret meanings to the songs that Bob Dylan writes, sings and records. The songs are just what they are—although admittedly, there is no simple category for just what that might be. That is certainly true. It is also true that Dylan’s life story reveals little or nothing about the work he has produced. And so, the focus in my book is not on Bob Dylan the man or on what any particular song might mean, but rather how and why some songs work. And how some things might come to be. Dylan’s work is of particular interest because there is something in it that resonates with our own experience of the world—or that resonates with something deep inside of us. And that’s enough.
Dylan is an anomaly—and his work is in some ways outside of the traditional parameters of writing and music and art. He is as much an abstract-expressionist artist as he is a traditional songwriter—though what he produces are always and only songs. His work is as demanding, complex, and as enigmatic as he seems to be— though we are fooling ourselves to think that we know much about him. Knowing how very private Dylan has been over the years, for a public figure—and so unwilling to offer easy explanations of his life’s work—it was surprising to read a posting he made one time on his official Bob Dylan website.
“Everybody knows by now,” Dylan wrote, “that there’s a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I’m encouraging anybody who’s ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them.”
It’s impossible to know whether that posting was facetious or not, but he did make the suggestion. And so I took that encouragement as Bob Dylan’s personal okay, even though I started this project some time before he wrote that. What I wanted to know, to figure out, is what exactly it is that makes Dylan’s work so moving for so many people—and so very unlike any other singer/songwriter I had ever come across. What exactly are the qualities that make Dylan songs what they are? And why do those qualities—whatever they are—work so well? Why are there so few songwriters or artists working the way Dylan does? And why has this songwriter, performer and cultural icon, winner of every award possible, and on every critic’s short list of honorees to be included if there was ever a rock stars’ Mount Rushmore, never had a number one hit song on American radio? Not a single one. It’s a good question.
On Dylan’s “Empire Burlesque” album, he confesses, “I can’t provide for you no easy answers.” Well, neither could I. But in “Seeking Mirth and Beauty”, I sure gave it try!
Seeking Mirth and Beauty is the title of a new book about songs and art, centering on the songs of Bob Dylan, from which this essay is lifted.