If it were now to die, ‘Twere now to be most happy, for I fear My soul hath her content so absolute That not another comfort like to this Succeeds in unknown fate…
Dylan is coming on a tour of Australia!! *insert sighs, screams and fainting spells*
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Archive for the 'Culture' Category
Again not official Wo! business (my justification Anna- is that subversive ideas need to be accompanied by/is good art and music)…
So need to share this gorgeous song i’ve already played a thousand times on Dylan’s bootleg series. This stuff is glorious. Dylan sings it with former lover-singer-collaborator Joan Baez (who substitutes Mama for Daddy). It works either way (and let’s not get into a whole Freudian thing about this…)
(”If you gotta go, go now” on the Bootleg series is also pretty hot. It’s up there with “All i want do (is baby be friends with you) in terms of my favourites.)
Ok so this is not really related to Wo! business but it will interest die-hard Dylan fans out there.
A symposium for Dylan obsessives has convened for a fan meeting in America.
Except these are no ordinary obsessives but groups of scholars and academics (or Dylanologists as they call themselves), including dons of Oxford and Harvard, who are meeting to rapturously gush on the poetry, romance and beauty of Dylan’s stunning body of work.
On Tuesday, a whole crowd of them wrapped up a four-day symposium, billed as the largest ever of its kind, at the University of Minnesota in the state where Dylan was born.”Dylan has entered my day job,” said Richard Thomas, a professor of Greek and Latin at Harvard University who lectured on Dylan’s similarity to ancient epic poets like Ovid and Virgil.
“I’ve come to see him as someone as worthy as the great poets on whom I’ve been fortunate enough to work.”
The article goes on to muse on the Dylan’s reaction to his analysts:
And what does the cryptic singer think of this kind of attention?
Well, he once famously derided Dylanologists who “dissect my songs like rabbits.”
But that is not likely to stop the dissecting.
Take British literary critic Christopher Ricks, a 73-year-old professor of poetry at Oxford University who in 2003 published Dylan’s Visions of Sin, a 500-page examination of biblical themes in Dylan’s music.
“I should think people need to explain themselves if they’re not intrigued, enthralled and obsessed with Dylan,” Hicks said during a lecture at the symposium.
“Those of us who are, we don’t have any explaining to do.”
Vindication at last!
discovered a gorgeous band “Outlandish”- an amazing Danish band with beautiful songs that will make you shiver. This stuff confirms my belief in Pain and dislocation as the crucible for Art and Beauty.
The band form a web of complex identities, two of them - Danish-Moroccan Sam Bachiri Azouaoui and Danish-Pakistani Waqas Ali Qadri are both devout muslims and the third Lenny Martinez from Honduras is a strict Catholic. The combination is an explosive synergy of rap, desi punk, arab melody and latin-spanish sounds.
My favourite:
“Fatima’s Hand”
Fatima is 21
And around here - when your 21
u gotta start thinking about getting a man
getting a son - getting it done
just like her mom when she was 21
but even though Fatima’s not ready for it
she not gonna say some
she feels she gotta do this for the parents
cuz they’ve been on her for the last 5 years
a lotta men from motherland
came up here hoping she say yeah
but she ain’t down
wants somebody that can make her feel alive
chill every time she wanna cry
the one in a million type of guy
but her mom keeps telling her
“compromise, this ain’t no fairy tale my child
do not waste your time
u’ll regret u didn’t say yes to this guy”
everyday is the same
like a battlefield
she gets the blame
bringing shame on the family name
just cuz the streets be babbling
like a Bedouin in a dessert storm
she lays low from all their songs
try to make’em understand
but it’s like talking to the wall
her desire’s burning to change her ill state
it’s strange - for the first time
in a long time - she sees the light in the end
A diplomatic incident has nearly broken out over allegations of racist abuse on British reality show ”Celebrity” Big Brother.
We all know the show is hardly a conduit for good taste- as can be attested by the “turkey slapping incident” last year on Australian Big Brother which created a huge debate in Sydney newspapers about sexual harassment, even prompting calls from the Prime Minister to ban the show.
But what Big Brother does reveal with its massive ratings and its potential to create public controversy is a rare insight into the lives and minds of ordinary and ‘public’ figures at their most uninhibited.
The dynamics of the house are revealing about a whole spectrum of issues- including attitudes to gender relations, racism, culture and sexuality in modern life.Â
In this way the show has an ability to uncover a little of the nation’s psyche- mirrored in all its ugliness.Â
The victimised housemate- Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, was apparently ganged up upon by four of the housemates, one whose claim to fame was being a member of the defunct band “Steps”, and singling her out to bullying.
Shetty was apparently referred to as “the Indian”, a “cunt”, made fun of her for her accent, with suggestions made that Indians were so thin because they ate “undercooked” food.
The B-grade starlet has now become a heroine in India and Britain with thousands sending emails complaining to the show’s producers in support of the embattled actress.
The situation has created a firestorm in the UK highlighting simmering racial tensions. Shetty’s experience has obviously struck a huge chord with the British public.
The controversy has touched upon the raging debates that have characterished modern British society- on issues of race, culture, religion, multiculturalism and integration. To the extent that politicians have come to the fore to address the issues in the House of Commons.Â
In these debates it has always been the minority groups which have been castigated for their inability to “integrate”. The deluge of complaints reveal the deep chord the Shetty debacle has struck with the immigrant experience.
If “integration” is called for- than this is also a two way street. “Integration” is only possible when people feel welcomed as equals in their society to be their very best. These efforts are severely undermined when you’re being called a dirty “Paki”.
The ”Empire” obviously needs to straighten things out. It’s “subjects” are in revolt. Â
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