But last night, while watching Martin Scorcese's new documentary, No Direction Home, aired this week on PBS, I found myself deeply moved. This Dylan retrospective on the singer's early years, from 1963-66, is truly revealing, troubling, and completely inspiring. Such inspiration of course will not make me a fan of Dylan's music; nor shall I run out to purchase his complete works. And I will not turn anti-war activist or some such protester, not because I am pro-war but because I am already a protester. I just protest different things. But what it will do is make me hold more firmly to my convictions.
What inspired me is that Dylan simply wanted to be an artist, and not in the self-absorbed, self-promoting way so common among the rotters who pose so deftly in the galleries of pop-culture. Yes, Dylan was clearly a pop-icon, but it never was his intent to be popular let alone an icon. Things just happened, as he said. It was never anything he sought, he just wanted to write and sing. But this alone was not enough to inspire me. It was Dylan's resistance to conformity that set my heart afire. Whether it was his reluctance to answer absurd questions, or to be confined by Pete Seeger's constricted sense of folk music, or his refusal to conform to Joan Baez' expectations of what a protest artist should look, sound and act like; Dylan's commitment to his own artistic convictions has led me to respect the man immeasurably. That respect would stand even if I were to discover that he and I disagree on just about everything.
I have felt the pressure of conformity, and that from all sides. You have too. In my case, I've had Christians, whether liberal or conservative, Catholic or Protestant, expect certain things from me. And I have non-Christian friends, friends thoroughly un-religious, who likewise expect a certain allegiance and conformity, even, in fact, claiming that they even know my prejudices, prejudices to which I am blind and that they apparently see. This past weekend I saw a dear friend on the steps to the local town hall, flanked by fellow war-protesters, and I felt the battle between us in a mere glance: she wondering if I damn her for conforming to something other than my own worldview (I do not); I, certain she damns me for not conforming to hers. To many, I am too partisan. Some suggest that I am too religious, while others find that I am not religious enough. One minute I am too partisan; another minute, I am too intellectual, or too argumentative, or too apologetic.
Of course, conformity, or at least the desire of it, is driven almost entirely by the fear of being lonely. Of being isolated. And I have to say that Dylan, standing on stage in Newport and London, and being booed for daring to use an electric guitar and a backup band, represents the absolute isolation of integrity: You WILL be alone if you hold on to your convictions. Seeing Dylan surrounded by fans and his entourage, and yet looking thoroughly desolate, is a striking even haunting image. And I love him for it.
There was a "Christian phase" in Dylan's life, and he wrote a song called "Gotta Serve Somebody" (I think I have that right). It was the early 1980s when he penned that song, and, to me, it represents the epitome of Dylan's view of life. Each of us indeed has to serve somebody. Dylan's work from beginning to end clearly asks, "Who is it going to be?"
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A Clarification: In You Cannot Make This Stuff Up, I took to task a fellow blogger, The Language Guy, for committing the very errors he set out to detect in others. I mentioned one particular fallacy which I called–facetiously–the Inverse-Vegetarian Fallacy, and the Coffee-Hour Fallacy:
... please note The Language Guy's fallacious comparison in the second sentence about "Pro-Lifers" being "Pro-Death" when it comes to capital punishment. The writer equates abortion with capital punishment, which no reasoned person, particularly no reasoned pro-lifer, would do. He commits what might as well be called the The Inverse-Vegetarian Fallacy, which we've all heard before: I see you won't eat meat because you disapprove of killing, but I notice you don't mind killing apples, prunes and pine nuts. Or maybe it's the Coffee-Hour Fallacy: You don't do drugs, or so you say, but I see that you are drinking caffeine.
Alas, I noticed in housekeeping at Contratimes that I committed the very same fallacy in this essay, which I wrote in August. Then I wrote:
I would say that pro-choicers are as passionate about living as the most strident pro-lifer. Such passions are not without their contradictions, as most pro-lifers support the death penalty for serious crimes, whereas most pro-choicers do not. It is hard to be consistent; it is hard to be balanced.
What to do? First, I should apologize to the Language Guy, though in doing so I would merely be pointing out the obvious, that we all make mistakes. Thus, I apologize for my fallibility.
But I would also point out I had not earlier noticed that the equating of death-penalty support with abortion is in fact fallacious. In short, I was blind to it. The only way the thing makes sense is if I build a case from "Thou shall not kill." With that premise, I can make the connection: Killing a baby and a criminal is "killing", and thus forbidden. But using "killing" in this way leads us blindly nowhere, particularly if we reduce a fetus to a "tiny cellular mass", as the thought-policeman The Language Guy did. For if to be consistently pro-life means NOT to kill anything, as the fallacy suggests, then we are doomed to accept that to be consistently pro-life we must not "kill" cancer cells and sundry viruses and infections, as these are living "tiny cellular masses."
All this to say that I promise to be more careful.
Contratimes
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
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