A Voyage into a Complete Unknown Known
An Absurdist Review
Edward Curtin

“Every time I ask what time it is, I get a different answer”
Henny Youngman
I don’t know about you, but I find some movies useful and even entertaining because, like dreams, they exercise my imagination. They project onto my mind horizon-framed memories, my soul into a visual brigantine seeking its Ithaca where I will finally open my eyes and grasp the reality of so many reflections.
As the French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Celine once said about travel being useful because it exercises the imagination, “All the rest is disappointment and fatigue. Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength. It goes from life to death.”
Dr. Celine, M.D. was leading us into a “journey to the end of the night,” which was the title he gave his 1932 first novel. Like much ground-breaking art, it received mixed reviews. This was because of its dark perspective and unique use of slang and working-class language. Traditionalists were outraged. Eventually, however, it was considered one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. As someone once said, and repeated numerous times, so it goes.
But first we had to go through all the good old days of mass slaughter and mayhem. Celine learned about these shenanigans while riding a wooden horse for the French Cavalry during World War I and watching the bodies flop and twitch and bleed ketchup on the barbed wire and in no man’s land. He noticed it was the first war to go high-tech with machine guns, flamethrowers, air warfare, and other modern improvements. You know, the inevitability of progress.
Rather than giving up, the traditionalists still sang “Our life is a journey / Through Winter and Night; / We look for our way / In a sky without light,” the alleged old Swiss Guard song passed down through the folk tradition. They were angry and languishing but could still sing the old way and their lyrics inspired Celine’s title. The times changed but sort of didn’t. People were still lighting candles as they switched on the lights.
It’s very cold here in the north country. My wife’s beautiful long hair tantalizes me, and I use a manual typewriter, but she almost fell down in the icy driveway and died. It wasn’t the way I wanted to remember her, so I ran out to help her and the howling wind almost blew my wig off. Don’t ask me why. The wind has its ways.
This isn’t a coverup, all I do is tell the truth while trying to cover my ass, but the wig at least covered my addlepated head from which I try to spring the thoughts that really tie my brain in knots and disturb me, but that you won’t hear in this life movie, this dream.
My work has always been about death, he said, ever since I was young. He said that in an interview I read.
Last night I dreamed I was walking in town with my wife after taking a shower. I only had a towel to clothe me, which I wrapped around my waist. I felt exposed and wished to hide, to flee in the dark night. To stand naked in front of strangers on Main St. would have really bothered me. Some kind soul pointed me in the direction of a guy with a camera who gave me a long gold coat that extended to the ground. I put it on and went into a men’s room to dry my wet hair, which I did, and when I looked in the mirror, my hair had turned to golden curls.
Only a dream you say, but I was appalled. It was not a flattering picture. Although I looked as though I had metamorphized into Euphorbus, the golden curly-headed hero of Greek myth, I felt like a packaged commodity in the mirror. Too many images. Too many people rearranging their faces in triple mirrors. Somewhere in my unknowing mind the inner mirror flashed people, places, streets I once set my feet upon, going or coming in the old days when I first set foot in the village in the city.
I was after something, something deep drove me from place to place, I was very restless and felt I was always rushing. I felt guilty too.
Kippus was the name of my high school English teacher. What he did to me rankles still. I had spent hours writing a paper for his course on the connection between two famous murders in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Virgil’s Aeneid. I was very proud of it and felt that all the reading I had imbibed over the years served me well in its composition. But when he was handing out the corrected papers, he waved mine in the air with a supercilious look on his face and took me out into the hall where he accused me of plagiarism, which was completely false. He said I couldn’t have written something so good and ripped my paper up in my face. I probably shouldn’t confess, but immature as I was, and despite his pleas for mercy, I choked him to death on the spot and quickly fled. I am still running.
François Truffaut said once “film lovers are sick people.” They love magic and the beautiful fraud that movies create. One flick of a switch and they are gone.
Yet nothing moves and unsettles me more than great songs, especially when their winged words rise and fly out on tunes that stick in the mind. Why do they unsettle me and why does one write them?
I agree with Jean-Luc Godard’s statement, although slightly altered: “All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl.”
Maybe all you need is a guy, a guitar, and a bunch of girls.
It makes for quite a voyage into the unknown known from which you return not giving a damn or knowing anything new about some “me” named Dylan. He’s not there.
Yeah, so it goes.
Farewell.
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Bob Dylan is woke.
Many lives lost thinking they can be something they will never be lusting this fake as fuck contrived image sunglasses persona sold to the lost youth that it is possible to be walking down a street busking and one day you get signed to a major record label and tour the world like this x factors manufactured twat Dylan.
They’ve been playing this game for ever.
Each gen fools for it.
‘Hey Mr. E.Man … Play a song for me’
For Laughs , Miles Mathis’s entertaining but highly implausible, “FAKE” take down of Bob Dylan
https://theresearchofmilesmathis.substack.com/p/bob-dylan?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
Click on the pdf link , Mathis throws in Everything but the Kitchen Sink
spot on.
Alright, musical geniuses. Here’s some real music Bob Dylan never heard of in his wildest dreams. (Incidentally, a miracle of diversity and inclusion:)
Under a Willow — Russian folk song – YouTube
Yeah if only Bob had recorded that instead of Like a Rolling Stone.
A beautiful song Edwige, but where are the skimpy costumes, flashing lights, dancers and s t r e t c h e d notes.
As I said, you dont have a clue Edwige.
Here is the real stuff with regard to Russia: Anna https://youtu.be/g0Kcg7WEJME .
Popular Folk song? Here is the real stuff from Azerbaidjan https://youtu.be/gAvgsxWZLI8
Tsk.tsk.
You reply to your self that so creepy.
“Come hear the music play, life’s a cabaret old chump…come taste the wine, come hear the music play”.
Liza https://vkvideo.ru/video-226220636_456239568
Amazing. Thanks for linking this.
I was tickled when Mr Zimmerman had the chutzpah to completely dis those wankers in Stockholm who decided to canonize him into their nerdy technocratic pantheon
of course, I suspect it was not out of any Puckish disdain for Authority, but merely because he was actually more pompous and narcissistic than them
More autocratic than technocratic I reckon.
Here’s some real music, Philistines:
Blind Willie Johnson – Dark was the night… – YouTube
At last, we meet a music expert.
And not a minute too soon.
BTW, I don’t know about anyone else here, but I don’t live in ‘Philistine’. I don’t even know where it is.
You wouldn’t recognize the kingdom of the Philistines because Israel has incorporated it into their own schtick. David (who stole Jerusalem from the Jebusites) killed Goliath while Samson took down the Philistines and their entire civilization in one fell swoop. You gotta hand it to those Biblical guys!
As per the Brave Search AI synopsis:
“Blind Willie Johnson was a significant influence on Bob Dylan. Dylan covered Johnson’s song “Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed,” which became “In My Time of Dying.” This song showcases Dylan’s respect and admiration for Johnson’s work. Additionally, Dylan referenced Johnson in his song “Blind Willie McTell,” although the connection between the two artists is more subtle and interpretive. Dylan’s work often draws inspiration from the blues and gospel traditions, and Johnson’s powerful vocal delivery and religious themes resonated deeply with him.”
The real stuff is better.
There is no “real stuff”.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HcHalo4lViI
Dylan is part of the real stuff, right in the line of succession.
Led Zeppelin, Ripped of “Jesus Gonna make up My Dying Bed” too , and Dylan’s retitling , but then they ripped of so many little known Artists … Blind Willie recorded a handful of songs , barely 35 minutes Worth , and died a terrible death by Fire… A Mysterious figure .Even Robert Johnson without whom quite possibly there would have been no Chicago Blues or Rock and Roll … Came and went recording only by chance . Then dissapeared just as Mysteriously .
Yeah!!
For those confused, a reading of Dylan’s great influence, Baudelaire, especially his poem The Voyage, his great songs Girl from the North Country and Restless Farewell, the ridiculous accusations against him for plagiarism, the influence of Roman poetry upon him, and the allusions throughout in my word usage might help. Of course surrealism still lives, and I hope humor. Dylan is a musical genius, and while the film A Complete Unknown is entertaining and has some fine acting together with the great songs, it is superficial, and fails to even try to grapple with his core motivations. From Restless Farewell –
“Oh, every thought that’s strung a knot in my mind
I might go insane if it couldn’t be sprung
But it’s not to stand naked under unknowin’ eyes
It’s for myself and my friends my stories are sung
………………………………………………………………..
So I’ll make my stand and remain as I am
And bid farewell and not give a damn”
He never does interviews and the mystic made him more desirable.
‘Dylan On Dylan’ edited by Jonathon Cott, has thirty one interviews with Dylan. They were done between 1962 and 2004.
Fascinating stuff.
The FAN-atics wore him out.
Dylan couldn’t sing a pleasant sound to save his life. Politically-edged lyrics were his only forte. Plus perhaps that rare capacity to play more than one instrument at the same time.
No voice but plenty of impact. He resembles Russia’s Viktor Tsoi in that respect.
Виктор Цой – Бошентумай
Apologies, that’s the whole album. The link should have been
Виктор Цой – Бошентумай
Russian rock n roll!
Well I’ll be Vladivostoked!
I need to get out more.
Thanks Vagabard.
Awful music.
Dylan not only had a great voice but it changed with every album.
While it’s true that politically edged songs make up a huge part of Bob Dylan’s repertoire, he also penned one of the most beautiful love songs of the entire pop era: Tomorrow Is A Long Time. I haven’t heard him sing it (and would prefer not to). But Judy Collins had a wonderful version of it.
Nice song.
Further proof that you only need three chords (G, C and D) to write something beautiful.
“Couldnt Sing a pleasant sound” Here’s Dylan’s other more ” Pleasant”Voice, opens with Girl from the North Country a duet with J.Cash…..https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F46sJv2iYoo
Never understood the fuss about Dylan.
We all have blind spots. Here are three of mine:
Elvis (Presley that is) For me the original pub singer. “Old Hubba Hubba” as my Dad used to call him.
Disney – the most glutinous blatantly contrived sentimental bullshit of all time.
Sport (especially football) “And here’s the sport followed by the sport with sporting updates! Look at all those balls getting kicked around a field!”
Remembering shivering in the goal mouth.
Goal keepers were always the last to be picked at school.
Let’s watch a game of kick the ball between the posts. Or touch the ball over the line. Lol.
Dean Martin was one of Elvis’s heroes. To Elvis’s credit, he couldn’t stand Robert Goulet.
Ah Dean Martin! NOW you’re talking. Hell, this could be Bob!:
Bob covers Dino.
I’m in tears. So there was at least one good thing that came out of the inexplicably overrated Sopranos.
Don’t know why Elvis didn’t like him but Goulet had a gorgeous voice.
I believe it was the mustache.
They aren’t blind spots. You see what the m(asses) don’t.
“If you are looking for trouble, you came to the right place. I was born to stand up.” Elvis https://youtu.be/IxfmfnZgtxE
Didn’t Rik Mayal do a version of that where he wanted to show his wiilie to Princess Ann? I seem to recall Bill Wyman accompanying on bass and looking decidedly unimpressed.
Im not that much into the gossip magazines in the rock’n roll circles.
Only remember the King’s many songs. For me he did just fine. https://dzen.ru/video/watch/6240d4676e599c56a3d9d60a jailhouse rock
Regarding Elvis: the story was that he would NEVER appear on the same stage with Carl Perkins, whose singing put him to shame.
“With the chief commander…. on this world and in the world we can’t see”:
He’s obviously having a joke at the interviewer’s expense.
Probably fed up to the gills with inane, bullshit questions from empty headed journalists.
So they can tell it to your face – and you still won’t believe it?
Are there no Faustian pacts? Why do these performers “keep on keeping on” when people in every other job have long since put their feet up? Is it more plausible they love it so much… or it was in the terms of a contract they signed long ago?
That’s not even to get into the question of whether these are the same people who first appeared using these names. I haven’t looked at Dylan in any detail – although I know there are people convinced he’s not the same – but I have looked at Paul McCartney and Keith Richards and they are manifestly being played by different men. The original of the former was shorter and had a rounder face (it’s quite a shock to see him c.1964 we’re so used to how the new guy looks); the latter was replaced 1979-80 by someone who looks very little like the original. And then there’s the question of John Lennon – try watching ‘How I won the war’ and it’s clearly not the original him (indeed the original “him” with his very distinct gait appears briefly). His nose shape went through some interesting changes….
The “baby boomers” were the most psy-opped generation and their beloved music “stars” were one of the major weapons. The whole rock’n’roll mythos must be propped up until they’ve checked out. The controllers have known for centuries there will always be a cohort who think they’re rebels for hating all those in power and that this group can be controlled through the ‘soft’ power of cultural manipulation by pied pipers (a very deliberate metaphor).
Performers keep performing because it’s addictive. I can confirm that from personal experience.
One gets a natural high from singing and making people smile.
As for ‘star swapping’, why would they bother when they can be conveniently ‘consigned’ to the 27 club.
“They tell it to Your Face and You still cant believe it” has it occured to You that perhaps the Chief Commander Dylan is talking about isn’t Satan but God , the Creator ! ..
All successful ‘entertainers’ strike a bargain with the devil. Dylan was no exception. He clearly wasn’t joking.
Mammon = Devil.
The Chief Commander is God: God told him to go on. I admit it is not obvious from the interview but I found out he didnt made a deal with the devil no. The Chief Comander was God. https://ok.ru/video/2749382396667 the slow train.
Then why did he refer to him with such a rueful tone? Besides that, the bible makes it clear that ‘on the earth’ the commander is Satan not God.
Several years down the road after starting on Big Pharma drugs is one of the great unknowns. Here’s the MSM suddenly discovering some interest after wall-to-wall radio silence on the matter 2020-22:
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/what-happens-when-you-ve-been-on-ozempic-for-20-years
Most of their medical stories like this are about the effort to rebuild their credibility (it’s why they keep running new virus stories that don’t seem to go anywhere). That horse has jumped the fence and is over the horizon. Watch them forget all about it when the ‘100 days vaccine’ is rolled out….
Ozempic is just another illusion medic:
“If you weight doesn’t go down, you will get high blood pressure, get high blood sucker, get high cholesterol, which will ……after some years lead to heart attacks.
But what made your system to fuck up in the first place? All the medic that you eat and believe in. You believed in it……………………………LOL.
I have been an on-and-off fan of Dylan for most of my life. What I greatly respect him for is that he has never really tried to go mainstream, dumb down his lyrics, or cash in on his enormous reputation. He appears true to himself as a musical artist.
It’s sad when one of your heroes disappears up his own arse in a single tweet:
https://x.com/Jonathan_K_Cook/status/1878636503682691404
That is unbearably dumb on so many levels.
Incredulity is not an argument – it’s a sophistry technique.
It also shows us something about ourselves. That maybe we have trusted the wrong heroes.
We believed they were heroes but they werent. We were and are the dummies, and this knowledge all lead to only one hero over them all. The Morning Star.
So sad but in the End we moved. It made us wiser.
Mudslime kowtowing devotee Barrett: “The ultimate free-speech podcast”. Kippers crawl symbolically like the lowest worms in the dust.
Kevin James Barrett, the most liberal humanoid not under the warming sun, but under the gloomy crescent moon, following his American spiritual tradition.
There, the “most radical truth jihad” is carried out on the net: all comments are murdered, only his own are published.
https://kevinbarrett.heresycentral.is/2025/01/live-radio-ron-unz-and-jim-haslam-discuss-covid-origins-kenaz-filan-on-the-public-myth-of-donald-trump/
By “truth”, this deranged and confused “Truth Jihadist” [sic], married to a Moroccan woman, means the insane garbage that can be read in his “Quran”.
Islam means “submission to the will of Allah”, especially symbolized in the prostrate stooping of these Mudslimez in deafening worship of their idols of death.
The methods of these sectarian victims also include takkya, i.e. the deliberate deception of non-Muslims, also known as kafir, who are forced to pay “taxes”, but only if they belong to one of the two other “Abrahamic” religions, otherwise they are subjugated, enslaved or murdered.
As in Judaism, however, not only two-legged but also four-legged dogs are despised and condemned as “dirty”. 9/11 was of course not psychopathic Muslims, but a US Israeli “inside job”.
His pedophile “prophet”, married to a child, had already cut off the heads of hundreds of Jews, just like the animals they cut the necks of before cooking them (halal “slaughtering”, Dhabihah).
You have to realize that this delusional ant “religion” (see Mecca, where they trample each other to death every year in a psychotic run around their night-black cube), never accomplished anything except to parasitize on everyone else and oppress them with murder and terror.
Just as the moon has no energy of its own (apart from the “black gold”, the crude oil, on which they unfairly and coincidentally “squat”), this death cult has chosen the gloomy, cold crescent moon (i.e. not even the full moon) as its representative symbol, and not the radiant, warming sun.
The moon does not produce any light or energy of its own, but merely reflects the light of the sun at night as a dead debris orbiter. The “Prophet” Muhammad received his “vision”, recorded in the Quran, in a feverish night-time “dream”.
“Honor killing”, i.e. the slaughter of one’s own family members, is the order of the day in this inhumane, misogynistic cult, in which ‘72 virgins await as a reward’ in ‘paradise’ for a mass murder.
Pedophile child marriages are just as widespread, not to mention the barbaric genital mutilation of girls. In Europe, millions of slaves were abducted, stolen and “bought” by mudslimes over the centuries.
Western foster homes are stuffed with mentally ill Mudslime children who are the offspring of inbred relative marriages, all at the expense of the “infidels”, of course.
I downvoted your comment primarily because it’s so completely off topic in this particular forum. And secondly because, as with most religious practices, there actually is a benign aspect.
Not to mention that few societies (if any) place a taboo on marriage of teenage girls outside of most Western societies. Remember, too, that many societies still have a low life expectancy; so procreating at an early age is a survival mechanism for the society.
So now, its all about using technology to make the richest richer – create weapons of mass destruction to kill people in foreign lands..whilst I am trying to keep our house warm 3 adults and 3 young Grandchildren
People say Dylan is a terrible singer. I demur. He’s a FANTASTIC singer. As he himself said, “I don’t know why people say I can’t sing; I’m always on key.”
Not only is he on key, he knows how to do something that many singers with better, multi-octave voices don’t know how to do, which is to phrase things. He knows how to express things, with feeling, and meaning. There’s having a “great voice,” and there’s knowing how to sing and put things across. A lot of singers with great voices are sterile as artists. Whitney Houston comes to mind, as an example. Ten octaves, but no depth.
Dylan. As a human being, I won’t judge him. As an artist he’s great and unique.
Bob Dylan’s Dream. I seldom listen to the record this song came from anymore — The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan — but it’s a desert Island disk for me.
I can’t stand singers like Whitney Houston I.e. these big overwrought bellowers. I think their performances are based on a fraud. Their songs seem to say “I love you” but what they REALLY say is “Look at how much I love you! Look at ME!” Indeed she sang a song called “The greatest love of all” which turns out to be self love. So in that song she is at least honest!
Vocal gymnastics I call it.
So many of them do it and it’s painful to hear.
They should listen to Tony Bennett or this bloke:
Wha?
Hey Admin.
Has your site has gone bonkers?
I posted Jamie Cullum on my comment, not The Residents.
Fixed now.
WTF?
I’m with you.
Unneccessary key changes are my bug bear.
“I want to be the only one” by Eternal is a masterclass in annoyance.
Agreed that “singers like Whitney Houston” often overdo it. They don’t seem to realize how effective a soft touch can be. One of the best singing voices I’ve ever head is/was Kathy Kirby, a Brit from the 60s. Her “The Way of Love” is a masterpiece of pacing.
I suspect the ‘pacing’ of this song was set by either the songwriter, the producer or the pianist.
Nice anyway.
From the time when men were men and women were women. Tammy Wynette,”Stand by your man, after all he is just a man”…………..LOL.
People can say what they want but they had something in ancient times we dont have today. https://youtu.be/DwBirf4BWew
People say Dylan is a terrible singer. I demur. He’s a FANTASTIC singer. As he himself said, “I don’t know why people say I can’t sing; I’m always on key.”
Does he fuck.!!!
He has a team of studio wizards making sure his image sounds and is created to sell you the illusion.
Phil Spector said that Dylan has never been produced. What you hear is him unprocessed. At least in everything up to the 80s.
No. What you described is modern production techniques; auto-tune and pitch modulation and that kind of crap. Dylan never needed it or wanted it. His musical hero was Woody Guthrie, for Pete’s sake!
So over this guy. He may be well read, but he strike me as a poser culturally. And Mr Hayen as well. Poser of the mind sciences. It strikes me that very little actual living is in those paragraphs, at least that’s my sense of it. And some others. Speaking strictly for myself, I get nothing from these guys. I was really only ever here because of the succinct and to the point analysis of Ms Black and Mr Knightly, and their editing, of which Black seems to be so often missing, and except for quite recently, Mr Knightly as well. Because of that past gift, I have supported them ever since. I think around 5 yrs now. However, on top of all else, the commentary has gone mostly down hill for quite some time. Let me say that this sight, and what they brought to the table during “The Plague Years”, which I can attest had helped greatly with my ability to retain my sanity during that time, well, I am deeply grateful for. Perhaps it’s time to move on. I am well past just reflecting on it. I may wait a bit. Well see. It’s in your hands OG. Please forgive the disjointed sentences. Editing a paragraph in this place really sucks as well.
We should all probably try to keep our spirits up a bit. You never know when Offg might be of use to you again, and meanwhile our amazing authors and staff will work hard to keep this place going, to offer some solace to those terminally disillusioned by the world! 😄 A2
You do know you don’t have to agree with every author or commenter ?
His magic light source is gone, he wants to drift through the night,
to find another source of light, but his light here has turned to fright,
ergo his candle here, is no longer alight.
So over
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – I’m Sorry, Dave Scene (3/6) | Movieclips
The world is more religion based now than it was at the supposed time of The Birth of Jesus Christ, who was almost certainly Horus Reunited with Elon Musk???
Biggest Scammer of the lot
Yes, We want World control..
Sorry Sunshine – none of your robot cars, and computers, nor your AI can Reproduce.
They have neither the intelligence, nor the capability to dig holes in the earth and do everything that is required to reproduce themselves
Whilst us humans fall in love and make Babies.,,and teach our kids how to Build stuff.
Humans 1 Robots 0
You want a Complete Unknown Known?
Try Joe Biden, not a lame duck president at the sunset but a malicious mallard flying in your face. As son Hunter, so father; the tree is not far from the apple.
Could be wrong, but I reckon the woke globalists, have lost their mojo Most of them should be in jail, for lockdowns, jabs, wars and trying to freeze and starve us to death with windmills and solar panels. They do not work, when the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine.
NEXT
“Alex Harvey Band – Next”
Well, they’ll stone you when you’re trying to read a blog
They’ll stone you when you’re looking for a job
They’ll stone you when you call them on their lies
Then they’ll stone you when you dare to criticize
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned
I know a few Folks who used to get stoned regularly. They’ve given it away now. It messed with their minds.
We need clarity these days so we can see the train wreck/s coming.
I guess most young people will not be able to understand, that the kids, born during or shortly after WWII, and became very famous were writing and singing about the horrors of war and evil, not promoting it.. Almost all of us had lost a brother, sister, mum or dad during WWII
“According to Black Sabbath’s guitarist and founding member Tony Iommi, the group’s debut album was recorded in a 12-hour session on 16 October 1969.[8][nb 1][10] Iommi said: “We just went in the studio and did it in a day, we played our live set and that was it. We actually thought a whole day was quite a long time, then off we went the next day to play for £20 in Switzerland.”[11] Aside from the bells, thunder and rain sound effects added to the beginning of the opening track and the double-tracked guitar solos on “N.I.B.” and “Sleeping Village”, there were virtually no overdubs added to the album.[8] Iommi recalls recording live: “We thought, ‘We have two days to do it and one of the days is mixing.’ So we played live. Ozzy was singing at the same time, we just put him in a separate booth and off we went. We never had a second run of most of the stuff.”[12]”
For a Heavy Metal band Black Sabbath played some beautiful melodies.
Such as:
If you are feeling real bad, and at times we all do, just accept its all over now,,cry yourself to sleep, and look in the mirror in the morning and say oh ffs I must stop crying..I look like shit and put on this before you go back to work…things aren’t that bad – and do not tell your mum or your sister. and Do Not Mention The RESIDENTS. – They will not like it.
I Need a New Girlfriend who likes Both HAWKWIND and The RESIDENTS (Surprisingly Good Live)
“The Residents – Third Reich”
I always thought other musicians were much better playing his songs like Jimi Hendrix – but he did write them, just had a sad boring voice, unlike Neil Young “Heart of Gold” on the record player, when you’ve got a date, and she comes home with you. Never tried Bob Dylan. I wanted to make love…not commit suicide with Leaonard Cohen.
So back to Burnley on Netflix
“Bank of Dave is returning to Netflix with a second film following Dave Fishwick (played by Rory Kinnear) as he shifts his focus to payday loan companies. Teased as being bigger and better than the first film, the plot raises global awareness about financial justice.
The new story takes place two years after Dave successfully set up his community bank. Dave, along with an American journalist and Citizen’s Advice counselor, embark on a journey to confront influential payday loan companies in the States.”
To try and explain…if you are watching it on a screen, it is highly unlikely, no matter how engrossed you are with the story – that the actors are going to jump out of the screen and terrify you in the audience…
So we had just arrived in London from Up North..and we were walking along The Thames like you do..and she says “man in the moon theatre” -we will ask – couple of seats left to see A Clockwork Orange Live (probably the original actors having a laugh) but we didn’t know that…
Some of the actors jumped off stage, and terrified us The Audience..with enormous white bats…
We were not expecting that.
Books, Films, Internet, Live TV can be Brilliant
But you can’t beat being there at a Live Performance ..
Not just because of the Feedback between the Performers and the Audience….but because you never know what is going to happen next..
“Mr. Tambourine Man (Live at the Newport Folk Festival. 1964)”
Ed, I hope you are well.
“I don’t know about you, but I find some movies useful and even entertaining because, like dreams, they exercise my imagination”
Yeh, me too, but about 30 years ago, I stopped watching TV, and since then, would only go to the cinema, if my wife convinced me, and got really excited – ” You have just got to come to the cinema with me – to see this…I says O.K., but can we first go to The Italian Restaurant First – and have a pint in the pub Second”
” What are We Going to See ”
and so we try not to cry as if we were teenagers
Our cat has found it so hard. She is trying her best, but the Garden is Frozen Solid, but no snow.
But still, its good to have a solid Date and such a beautiful wife and Grandchildren…
Our youngest (2), not only plays my guitar and African Drums better me, but she insists – Granddad – come and play ball with me in the kitchen
I say OK.
I think things are getting better, and there some excellent new films made in Lancashire just been released.
7 cons posts!? Seriously!? WTF Mr operation mockingbird?
What is this? Art? PHilosophy? “Beautiful” writing? Humor? Dilletantism?
One of the side-effects, un-intended consequences of the
Trump Derangement Syndrome Era… Aint no vaxx for it !!
Ed Curtin is a Brilliant Writer. I think he is promoting a new film about Bob Dylan.
‘Absurdist review’ should give you a clue.
A little fun must be had https://www.perplexity.ai/search/hello-H9j5jL96Q_2TAHodaY9MMA
https://lyricfluent.com/lyrics_translation/roberto_blanco_ein_bisschen_spass_muss_sein_lyrics_english_translation
The movie, ‘Insider’. with Pacino and Crowe.
All about the corrupt tobacco industry.
Crowe was a scientist at a major tobacco company and spilled the beans proving that cigarettes were a means to inject nicotine into the system using cancerogenic chemicals.
Crowe previously worked at Pfizer, Johnston, etc., and stated that they were credible companies using science for the benefit of mankind.
Then there was the Washington Post, New York Times and CBS. Spilling the truth reluctantly.
Now this movie was made after Big Tobacco had had its day. The movie portrayed the other corporate criminals mentioned as the good guys. Are they fk.
If its in the news, tv or in movies you are guaranteed its bullshit propaganda.
I did not like the movie, it does not go deep enough. I strongly agree that many industries are corrupt, but surely the cigarette is by far the deadliest product of them all?
Sucrose is in the same league…
The primary difference between Raskolnikov and Aeneas was that one discovered a conscience and the other never did.
Did Dylan discover a conscience years after labeling a fellow human as a “complete unknown”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Like_a_Rolling_Stone#Themes
In a healthy society, only the so-called “arms-bearing bodies”, i.e. the army and police, should have the right to own and use weapons, and otherwise only hunters and foresters. The same applies to drugs, which do not belong in the hands of irresponsible private individuals, and certainly not in the hands of children and adolescents, but only in the hands of doctors and geriatric nurses (“drug store”, in German “Drogerie”).
In a so-called “democracy” (which is as democratic as Hitler’s party was “socialist”), which is not, like dictatorship, oriented towards community (of whatever kind) but towards the narcissistic-egoistic individual, legitimate gun ownership naturally means permanent abuse by incompetent and malicious individuals (also known as criminality). From the Mafia (which Mussolini drove into “individualistic” America) to migrant gangs/clans.
“Mr. Taylor has done great things for our side.”
Yes, that’s what they always say. There’s an unspoken consensus not to target him, he has the (self-knitted) nimbus of an “untouchable”. Unlike the Dalit of India, he does not belong to the lowest, but highest caste. Thanks to this status, he has air sovereignty that not only dominates the discourse, but paralyzes, freezes and cements it.
So perhaps it’s just a misconception, and Mr. Taylor is in fact an inhibitor who keeps and binds people on the wrong side? I dare to put this thesis up for debate, at least for once. I really have silently observed and accepted his approach for years. But my sympathy for him has now completely melted like soft ice cream in the midday sun.
One could almost speak of an infatuation with him that is largely based on the belief in authority and the search for a (substitute) father figure that is widespread in right-wing and conservative circles. This makes Taylors feel smug; he is unable to conceal his vanity behind feigned modesty.
He uses his almost “sophistical” eloquence primarily to blunt sharp arguments, wrap them in absorbent cotton and remove them from the conversation as “absurd and useless”. I am convinced that he is diverting the revolutionary energy that is fizzling out into an intellectual void, and from the cause (Jews) to the consequences (“POCs”).
In this way, he in turn provides the Jews with a template to continue to accuse Whites of their “racial hatred” and to deprive them more and more of their rights. Consistently thought through, this is, in my opinion, Taylor’s deliberate intention, which means that he himself is aware that his supposed “strategy” must fail for the sake of the whole.
And btw: Hitler had also initially “done more for the movement than anyone else”, but when he passed his mental and physical zenith, from then on he only messed everything up. And because of all those who didn’t dare to defy his “omniscient authority”, they were dragged into the abyss with him.
Things went downhill with increasing speed. Many companies even went bankrupt simply because “nobody dared to criticize the boss’s pet project”. Sometimes it’s just mindless old-age stubbornness behind all this “cult of personality”. One has to take a look at organizational psychology.
However, comparing Hitler to Taylor is too much of an honor (for whom, you can choose).
The Atlantic magazine currently has an article on how the Nazis dismantled democracy in a little over 53 days. The article is particularly interesting because it references a couple of Atlantic articles from 1932/3 where you can read a factual description of Nazism that predates all the historical grooming that we have of that period.
The articles are both factual and chilling.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-germany-constitution-authoritarianism/681233/
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1932/03/hitler-and-hitlerism-a-man-of-destiny/308960/
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/if-you-draw-a-historical-compa-UeKgPL4iSeyYPj_5K3K9PQ
Reading this review for a second time (it was in globalresearch.ca) sheds as much light on it for me as the first time. I’m lost. I went to Mr. Curtin’s website to read the comments, thinking maybe they would help me understand. But that only stoked my confusion all the more.
The essay reads like a review of the French novelist Celine, so I trudged over to Wikipedia to read about him. But then the comments on edwardcurtin.com spoke of a biographical movie about Bob Dylan. Even the commenters here realized the essay was about Dylan – not Celine.
I will admit the name Celine piqued my interest because, years ago, I read a piece in the Guardian (I know: hiss hiss) which referenced him. The tenor of the piece made me think he was Jewish; but not only was he not Jewish, he was apparently quite antisemitic.
This is a case where unknown knowns should remain unknown. (Where is Donald Rumsfeld when you need him?)
Same here. Didn’t get the film — review connection. Possibly encrypted in one of the personal anecdotes or implied by the ‘absurd’ subheading. Either way, I missed it
Hagbard Celine was one of the heroes in the ‘Illuminatus’ trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea.
But at least, you are “confused at a higher level”.
I read this piece and concluded that the title was perfect, because its meaning or destination remain 100% unknown to me.
As a long time Bobby fan, I feel uneasy about his latest “canonization”. Now maybe this new “Complete Unknown” movie is a masterpiece. But this verse from an old song comes back to me:
Will Bob Dylan or any songwriter/artist surpass the poetic power of “Murder Most Foul”?
https://youtu.be/3afm8a4hv1I?si=UVL6PFKoY9sO1C6-
Later on they tell you, they do not believe anything on the news and immune to propaganda and youve just seen them cry to bambi being shot in a movie.
😀
By extrapolation that would make all novels, poems, sculptures and art as redundant.
Really?
Movies don’t make books/novels/ poems/song lyrics redundant. ‘Lord of the Rings’ is a good example. I read book 1 when I was 9, and many times since. And though the Peter Jackson movie was tolerable, the ensuing shit was/is a catastrophe.
And I don’t watch them anymore since the 1980s. We can see the predictive programming all around us. ‘Eyes Open,’ as Ben from Suspicious Observers likes to say about solar events.
I’m not a fan of fiction and haven’t watched a movie in decades. I used to subscribe to cable TV for The Weather Channel and baseball. I cancelled cable after Ben opened my eyes to the climate change fraud and I could no longer watch the fiction on TWC.
I’d say you’ve got it back to front.
The people I know who go to cinemas, (I don’t) will happily watch a film about international espionage or global ambitions of a cabal or some such entertainment.
They will later rave about how realistic the action and the story was and I will look at them and say that they wasted their money because it’s all happening in real time all around them.
Then they will make that snorting noise they like to make.
Because when they cry for Bambi they know they won’t ever be expected to do anything.
Being an individual, it’s all that’s left after all the excluded…
It’s like, if there’s a church in the town the town is not a community…
(A church being a place where you try to re-establish what’s absent)…
In May 1989 I saw Bob Dylan live in Stockholm: the public was appreciative but on the very second his contract stage time was over he stopped, in the middle of a song.
I lost interest in that person.
Thanks Ed.
Very much looking forward to seeing it in a couple of weeks.
Story goes that Leonard Cohen said to Dylan “You’re number one Bob, but I’m number two”
When asked about Cohen, Dylan said: ‘Leonard had a special gift for beautiful melodies that weren’t given enough recognition’
Correction!
It was another famous songwriter (name not revealed) that told Bob he was number one, etc.
(That’s what happens when you skim a piece).
What Dylan did say to Cohen was that he regarded Leonard as the ‘number one’.
Not that rankings mean anything.
It comes down to personal taste of course.
More here:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/17/leonard-cohen-makes-it-darker
I wonder if Dylan or Cohen ever gave a nod to the nameless, faceless, fanless souls through the ages who created all the folk tunes so much Western music is based on?
Those folk songs are so much better than these hacks. Honed razor-sharp by the centuries.
‘Based on’ is the salient point Howard.
There are only about a dozen chords to work with in music.
All music is based on variations and rearrangements of those chords.
A lot of Blues music hovers around the E, A and B chords, while a lot of country music hangs around the G, C, and D chords.
One can throw in a few minor or seventh chords to alter the sound slightly, but in the end a composer- songwriter has a small ‘palette’ to choose from.
Ed Sheeran, a modern street busker turned ‘Megastar’ recently fought a breach of copyright court case where he proved that point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcCKlsTgjeM
Even the likes of Mozart, Beethoven and Vivaldi ‘borrowed’ chord patterns from other composers, as well as reusing some of their own melodies.
Postscript.
In a 2004 interview with Robert Hilburn of the LA Times, Dylan admitted he was not a ‘melodist’.
He added: “My songs are based on old Protestant hymns, Carter Family songs, or variations of the Blues forms”
https://youtu.be/WdIHKI1jR7I?feature=shared
Hendrix nailed that song.
I think even Dylan acknowledged that.
Thanks for nailing my conclusions, too. No matter how, Jah_ Jimi Kinda’ ‘owned’ that song of Bob’s, after this rendition in my eyes. Brilliant song writing merited Hendrix ‘s Soul & truly unique Style of Expression…
Which parallels ironically with the following example as a ‘cover’ version, with the songwriter participating: whereby, Sting just cannot quite DO what Stevie does & did, that makes this live jived performance of Soul so spectacular, coz’ , you can see it in Sting’s eyes…
So, to conclude: a bootleg of Stevie (wonderful) on Drums & Hendrix on guitar, once existed in Ventnor I.o.W. before the fire in the apartments that became, The Spyglass Inn. Point ?
I still rate Stevie as the greatest Combo: Musician.Songwriter.Singer.
SoulMan Human Sense… For me, it flies without qualifications.
https://youtu.be/gnZgNYoZkeU?si=bozssIE7J4IHfSi7
Greetings. HNY.
Balky
Thank you Balky.
Superb.
And perfect harp playing as well.
Chuckle: resonant Frequencies. You got me . . .
Keeping things Whole & musically on topic:
* Jemima Phillips, *
https://youtu.be/zL9H75Hm6gI?si=G3av3c106bmQ7Eq2
Deserves big respect for this ‘Waterfall’ moment of perfection in Tuning, first, before she Nails it,
In every Sense. A tiny teaser: – one minute’s Bliss.
N’JOY…
Balky
Interesting. But isnt it the same as with the colour scale? There are only 7 basic colours, but endless variations between them.
Music has only “a dozen” chords, but endless variations between them. Even the same tone can be played in three-tones, soft, weak, fine up on the scale to stark, sharp, strong, forceful, short abrupt, long fading out.
One example of this simplicity and eternity is the Chine bamboo flute.
Yes there are ony 6 holes but…………….https://youtu.be/ctde5yosbYY .
But, what about Green, man, in Africa? Or Green 💚 Lands like Denmark , who finally created flights from Copenhagen to the white landscape of natural resources, only VERY late, last year… ? 😔 For the first time ever, direct Flights 🛫
Cheers, to Wonderment; like the Danes were not Forewarned… Waiting for F_35ers, so long, they had to do a plastic pseudo mock_Up of future expectations… Actually costing millions…
Lego ‘Greenland’ Bites, post Northstream Sabotage…
Kill more Mink ?