When Bob finally won the Nobel Prize last year, I was intensely sad, sickeningly sad - almost frowning at myself in the mirror in disgust. "Hey Bob, that sick ball of shiny metal's not for you, Sartre compared that bag of shit to a sack of potatoes, and Barrack Obhamma won it for no reason in 2009...Bob,don't...no." I earned a chance to interview an Irish musician who was contextually actually very impressed by that Gothic, almost spiritually ambivalent article o' mine. Now, let me tell you the truth about that article. That was a formal piece of my eloquent arrogance I just couldn't pen down in frustration back then. Now I know, now that I have the patience and the containment, now I'd want to.
So, I used to walk around this mighty yet petite, dying river of ours and I would imagine how the moon could melt down into its bosom straight from the core of the sky, leaving a vacuum - an unfathomable, spirited, reverberating sense of vacuum. That was when I was just climbing the ladder of his music, I was listening to 'Dark Eyes' very often, coupled with 'Like A Rolling Stone' and other tracks. At this point of time, I was also developing into a woman, I could see the bodily changes, and even though I was confused whether or not to be too fond of whatever was happening (cause I didn't understand what, at the first place was happening), I chose to grasp the music instead, the elan vital, the progression, the hunger for passion.
Often at night, I would feel like unlocking the walls and heading straight to the river, and closer, closer to the water still.
As I grew up into a more mechanical, apparently tidier, posh being, the instincts clung to music, arts and especially of the revolutionary kind. Dylan was a magician to me, a man with a spine, as straight as the rectilinear motion of light - a messiah, a saviour, a different creature in the times of nothing altogether. This was when I was 14 and by the time I was 15, I was in love for the first time, possibly. And succeeding heartbreak like an expelled citizen, I dwelled inside his songs. 'Daddy You Been on My Mind', 'It Ain't Me Babe' in Joan Baez's voice, 'Don't Think Twice It's Alright' among others.
It took me time to age this much, that now his revolution turns into love every time I listen to these songs on loop, every time the eerily long lines around the stores on his birthdays over the past 50 years, maybe. Idols are as fragile as remnants of a decapitated civilization, waiting for the worms. It reminds you of visions from Dali's 'Destino', the lucid eloquence of time, of gravity, of portrayal, of truth and of the portrayal of the several kinds of truth that persist like an eternal air of vicinity around your naked palm. Dylan now would also mean a reminisce of what ceased to be from times before I was born, but have subsequently developed ideals about (which, contextually are not as fragile as idols). That hurts, deep down in the core - that stings the heart and the soul and the mind. It makes me want to find refuge in Joan Baez's life, only to find her accept lesser sins than Dylan himself. It is sad that now she too, would choose to walk the stage with someone as much of a nothing as Taylor Swift whereas Sinead O'Connor would anyday refuse to and instead shave her head and sing 'Oró sé do bheatha 'bhaile' with as much arrogance as burning pain, rage, spirit, and love.
The last nail on the coffin was his acceptance of the Nobel Prize in 2016. It tore me apart, honestly. It reminded me of the Vietnam war, it reminded me of Joan's broken heart, it reminded me of Barrack Obhammaa receiving it in the name of peace in 2009, it reminded me of unfed children in Afghanistan and how "the saviours of the world" sit in the Pentagon and operate joysticks to terminate millions of lives - human as well as the several diverse species that constitute the flora and fauna, in a word - life on this planet. It reminded me of Guantanamo Bay and it reminded me of Kashmir. It reminded me of Syria,Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Gaza strip and Nigeria. It reminded me of Ghana and it reminded me of Kenya. It doomed me, it took away most of the love I had so securely stored in my heart for the poet whose poetry now belongs to millions of people. It reminded me of the time I'd spent in the north-eastern part of this country, it reminded me how pop-culture can be sculpted in the favourable sense, coupled with the dynamism and beauty of the eloquence of original, spirited poetry. It reminded me how, this generation never is or would be able to find out a path, an illuminance that sparked between words, in intellect, in understanding, in compassion and empathy
even in the second half of the last century that the immediate generation that biologically gave birth to us have now forgotten. How loathesome it is that we live in confused, perplexed, nervous times as this.
It still reminds me how Joan sang 'Farewell Angelina', 'The Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' and 'To Bobby'. It still stings how Bobby never returned. Deep inside, it always does. In hiraeth, in reminisce. In poetry. In love. In the bodily essence. In beauty. In unrest. In unrest.
So, I used to walk around this mighty yet petite, dying river of ours and I would imagine how the moon could melt down into its bosom straight from the core of the sky, leaving a vacuum - an unfathomable, spirited, reverberating sense of vacuum. That was when I was just climbing the ladder of his music, I was listening to 'Dark Eyes' very often, coupled with 'Like A Rolling Stone' and other tracks. At this point of time, I was also developing into a woman, I could see the bodily changes, and even though I was confused whether or not to be too fond of whatever was happening (cause I didn't understand what, at the first place was happening), I chose to grasp the music instead, the elan vital, the progression, the hunger for passion.
Often at night, I would feel like unlocking the walls and heading straight to the river, and closer, closer to the water still.
As I grew up into a more mechanical, apparently tidier, posh being, the instincts clung to music, arts and especially of the revolutionary kind. Dylan was a magician to me, a man with a spine, as straight as the rectilinear motion of light - a messiah, a saviour, a different creature in the times of nothing altogether. This was when I was 14 and by the time I was 15, I was in love for the first time, possibly. And succeeding heartbreak like an expelled citizen, I dwelled inside his songs. 'Daddy You Been on My Mind', 'It Ain't Me Babe' in Joan Baez's voice, 'Don't Think Twice It's Alright' among others.
It took me time to age this much, that now his revolution turns into love every time I listen to these songs on loop, every time the eerily long lines around the stores on his birthdays over the past 50 years, maybe. Idols are as fragile as remnants of a decapitated civilization, waiting for the worms. It reminds you of visions from Dali's 'Destino', the lucid eloquence of time, of gravity, of portrayal, of truth and of the portrayal of the several kinds of truth that persist like an eternal air of vicinity around your naked palm. Dylan now would also mean a reminisce of what ceased to be from times before I was born, but have subsequently developed ideals about (which, contextually are not as fragile as idols). That hurts, deep down in the core - that stings the heart and the soul and the mind. It makes me want to find refuge in Joan Baez's life, only to find her accept lesser sins than Dylan himself. It is sad that now she too, would choose to walk the stage with someone as much of a nothing as Taylor Swift whereas Sinead O'Connor would anyday refuse to and instead shave her head and sing 'Oró sé do bheatha 'bhaile' with as much arrogance as burning pain, rage, spirit, and love.
The last nail on the coffin was his acceptance of the Nobel Prize in 2016. It tore me apart, honestly. It reminded me of the Vietnam war, it reminded me of Joan's broken heart, it reminded me of Barrack Obhammaa receiving it in the name of peace in 2009, it reminded me of unfed children in Afghanistan and how "the saviours of the world" sit in the Pentagon and operate joysticks to terminate millions of lives - human as well as the several diverse species that constitute the flora and fauna, in a word - life on this planet. It reminded me of Guantanamo Bay and it reminded me of Kashmir. It reminded me of Syria,Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Gaza strip and Nigeria. It reminded me of Ghana and it reminded me of Kenya. It doomed me, it took away most of the love I had so securely stored in my heart for the poet whose poetry now belongs to millions of people. It reminded me of the time I'd spent in the north-eastern part of this country, it reminded me how pop-culture can be sculpted in the favourable sense, coupled with the dynamism and beauty of the eloquence of original, spirited poetry. It reminded me how, this generation never is or would be able to find out a path, an illuminance that sparked between words, in intellect, in understanding, in compassion and empathy
even in the second half of the last century that the immediate generation that biologically gave birth to us have now forgotten. How loathesome it is that we live in confused, perplexed, nervous times as this.
It still reminds me how Joan sang 'Farewell Angelina', 'The Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' and 'To Bobby'. It still stings how Bobby never returned. Deep inside, it always does. In hiraeth, in reminisce. In poetry. In love. In the bodily essence. In beauty. In unrest. In unrest.
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