"Humane motion"... "time is your soul mate"... and "vice destroys"... the Bob Dylan AARP interview.

In the middle of the night — between sleeps — I read this interview Bob Dylan gave to — of all places — AARP Magazine. I made a mental note of 2 things I wanted to blog when I made it to the other side of the second sleep: 1. time, and 2. virtue.

1. Time. Bob says "Life has its ups and downs, and time has to be your partner, you know? Really, time is your soul mate." You need to have a good relationship with time, and that acknowledging what belongs to the past and what still belongs in your life. The Frank Sinatra songs Bob is covering on his new album are always vital:

So a song like “I’m a Fool to Want You” — I know that song. I can sing that song. I’ve felt every word in that song. I mean, I know that song. It’s like I wrote it. It’s easier for me to sing that song than it is to sing “Won’t you come see me, Queen Jane.” At one time that wouldn’t have been so. But now it is. Because “Queen Jane” might be a little bit outdated. But this song is not outdated. It has to do with humane motion. There’s nothing contrived in these songs. There’s not one false word in any of them. They’re eternal.

Humane motion. Did AARP put the space in the wrong place?
"Human emotion" is a familiar word pairing, but "humane motion" is new. I'd like to think Bob Dylan is slyly demonstrating his ease with his place in time, conceding the outdatedness of one of his old monuments, ostensibly bowing to eternal Sinatra lyrics that are phrases too common even to call hackneyed — "Take me back, I love you, pity me, I need you"— and then effortlessly, in real time, delivering the poetic gem "humane motion."

And he also makes me want to fight for "Queen Jane": "When... you want somebody you don’t have to speak to/Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?" That's a line that's lived in my head for a half century. But maybe the power of "plastic" has faded, and it is hard to sing "When all of your advisers heave their plastic/At your feet to convince you of your pain..." Maybe some people today would picture Jane's advisers throwing credit cards at her! Looking up "plastic" at Urban Dictionary, I see that the word "plastic" got some play in the movie "Mean Girls," and some younger folk might picture the advisers shoving overly-lipped-glossed girls at Queen Jane.

2. Virtue. Bob says that Frank Sinatra's songs are "songs of great virtue. That’s what they are."

People’s lives today are filled with vice and the trappings of it. Ambition, greed and selfishness all have to do with vice. Sooner or later, you have to see through it or you don’t survive. We don’t see the people that vice destroys. We just see the glamour of it — everywhere we look, from billboard signs to movies, to newspapers, to magazines. We see the destruction of human life. These songs are anything but that. 

He begins and ends talking about the Sinatra songs, but in the middle there's some commentary that isn't about songs at all. Vice destroys and the media only show the pre-destruction phase of vice. They show the glamor. They lure us into vice and don't show us a way out or even reveal that we're going to need a way out. Is Bob saying that songs "of great virtue" — Sinatra songs! — are the way out of vice?

Bob gets back to the topic of virtue in the end of the interview when he's asked about happiness. This is also the part where he says "time is your soul mate." He says happiness is "like water — it slips through your hands."

How can a person be happy if he has misfortune? Some wealthy billionaire who can buy 30 cars and maybe buy a sports team, is that guy happy? What then would make him happier? Does it make him happy giving his money away to foreign countries? Is there more contentment in that than in giving it here to the inner cities and creating jobs? The government’s not going to create jobs. It doesn’t have to. People have to create jobs, and these big billionaires are the ones who can do it We don’t see that happening. We see crime and inner cities exploding with people who have nothing to do, turning to drink and drugs. They could all have work created for them by all these hotshot billionaires. For sure that would create lot of happiness. Now, I’m not saying they have to — I’m not talking about communism — but what do they do with their money? Do they use it in virtuous ways?... [T]here are a lot of things that are wrong in America, and especially in the inner cities, that they could solve. Those are dangerous grounds, and they don’t have to be. There are good people there, but they’ve been oppressed by lack of work. Those people can all be working at something. These multibillionaires can create industries right here in America. But no one can tell them what to do. God’s got to lead them.

Before writing this post, I read the comments on the last post and saw that Jose_K was saying "Words of wisdom" about a Breitbart piece about the Dylan interview: "Bob Dylan: 'People have to create jobs' because government won't." That's the part of the interview that appeals to right-wing media: it's the private sector, not the government, that creates jobs. Of course, there's just as much in that paragraph to hearten a lefty: Big piles of wealth don't bring happiness, and everyone's better off if the wealth is spread around. I don't think Bob's too interested in politics, though. He's talking about the human spirit, the soul, virtue, the power of song, and the power of God.