November 15, 2016 edition
We in this country live with politics that is frantic but trivial. There are no fundamental things contestedthings fundamental because they stir the hearts, minds and lives of virtually everyone.
There was a time when politics could roar like a tempest: politics was antagonism that made an established power quake in body and soul. Today that kind of politics is absent. Solid truthwhich resounds not only in a partisan way, but also in the consciousness of friends and foesis obsolete nowadays. It cannot exist. Today there is contestation solely because of opinion, and with opinion.
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November 8, 2016 edition
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October 25, 2016 edition
I don't understand Bob Dylan. Maybe that's how it should be: something that fascinates is something that does not have to be, or cannot be, understood. I read Dylan's book of poetry, Tarantula, which he wrote in 1966 when he was twenty-five. In it, words move not like letters, not like vessels of meaning, but as sound, in their repetition, consonants, emphasis, and syllable length:
mother say go in That direction & please
do the greatest deed of all time & say i say
mother but it's already been done & she say
well what else is there for you to do & i say
i dont know mother, but i'm not going in That
directioni'm going in that direction & she
say ok but where will you be & i say i dont
know mother but i'm not tom joad & she say
all right then i am not your mother
do the greatest deed of all time & say i say
mother but it's already been done & she say
well what else is there for you to do & i say
i dont know mother, but i'm not going in That
directioni'm going in that direction & she
say ok but where will you be & i say i dont
know mother but i'm not tom joad & she say
all right then i am not your mother