TUMBLR

A SCRAPBOOK OF STUFF I'M READING / LISTENING TO / LOOKING AT.

Apr 08, 2009

“The truth is just a plain picture”

Bob Dylan, Interview with Time Magazine

I’m always fascinated by this part of D.A. Pennebaker’s fantastic documentary of Bob Dylan’s 1965 British Concert Tour. Dylan is 24—a year or two younger than I am right now. A gnarly Jewish kid from Minnesota who walked out of the Midwest and reinvented himself as a myth. He’s absolutely arrogant and absolutely brilliant.

I’ve never been in Time magazine, and yet this hall’s filled twice….I don’t need Time magazine….If I want to find out anything, I’m not going to read Time magazine, I’m not going to read Newsweek. I’m not going to read any of these magazines. I mean, because they’ve just got too much to lose by printing the truth. You know that….Really the truth is just a plain picture. A plain picture of, let’s say, a tramp vomiting in the sewere. You know, and next door to the picture Mr. Rockefeller or Mr. C. W. Jones on the subway going to work. You know, any kind of picture. Just make a collage of pictures.

Dylan had it figured out from the very beginning: art is primarily about entertainment. He was a musican. A performer. A carnival sideshow. A trickster.

Who wants to go get whipped? And if you do want to go get whipped, aren’t you really being entertained? So do you think that anybody who comes to see me is coming for any other reason than entertainment?

The clip just blows my mind.