Bob Dylan in Copenhagen in 1966. Photo: IBL
Bob Dylan has the ability to penetrate directly into the heart. SvD’s Erika Hallhagen writes about a nobel Laureate who has followed her through life. And if the music’s revenge on literature.
It is one of my very first memories. I stand there, below my uncle’s endless skivhylla in his apartment in Vadstena, sweden. High above me I can see how he and the father nods to each other in front of the stereo. Then the short trumintrot and the winding mouth-harp that does not end where you think it should stop, but the howls on some desolate.
The guilty undertaker sighs
The lonesome organ grinder cries the
The silver saxophones say I should refuse you
And I stretch the hands up in the air, I want to up in his arms, dancing in daddy’s arms to the chorus that I know will. And he lifts me up and we dance all three and I never saw my dad happier than those times.
I am crying when I write this, and I cried after the announcement that Bob Dylan be awarded the nobel Prize in literature. It sounds like a buzzword that my legs shook so that I had to put myself down, but it was the way it was.
And I think that the reaction is a little about the difference between music and literature. While the literature always passes through the brain, music has the ability to penetrate directly into the heart. In the best cases the words can also take the shortcut, but rarely as clear as with the music’s help.
For me, the Bob Dylan throughout his life been a security blanket. A kind of a womb to crawl into when the world is hopeless. And it was not the words, that he is being rewarded for, which first came to me. It was the hammond organ, his släpiga voice and gitarrplockandet on "Just like a woman". (Had I been able to understand the text I am not entirely convinced that this particular song had been my favorite…) It was the music and the feeling that this was mine and dad’s thing. Mother thought that Dylan sounded like a gnisslig door and I thought always, just like mummy, but not in this case.
When I write it here there is a small fear that my Dylan-worship should not be approved by the other kalenderbitande the fans. It should not be counted, since I just inherited it from my father. For irrespective of whether I have been on every single visit to sweden since 1998 and although I have the unofficial record of fastest recognize the songs he plays, it is sufficient as well as not to. There is always someone who thinks he, for it is almost always a he, is a more legitimate fan.
But now ignore me in and soothes me by all the feelings that are rushing through me right now is proof as good as any.
And when I stopped to sob giggling I of the reaction, both on our editorial staff, but also at the old stock exchange, and in SVT’s tv-sofa as Sara Danius read Bob Dylan’s name. So surprised it was. This is despite the fact that the poetry that is woven together with music is one of the most sublime forms of culture available.
And how should it go when Bob Dylan comes here? If he will, but not even Dylan can well resist to be busy so here in finrummet? Will you remember how truligt he went behind the fiolspelande folk musicians when he was awarded the polar music prize, 16 years ago? It is there that we fans love – we do not want to have any kind of Willie Nelson thanking the entire audience after the shows. Or a klämkäck Bruce Springsteen. We get a small curtsey at the knees, we are happy. If he smiles a fleeting smile cheering throughout the salon.
the Concert at the Globe on June 9, 1998 was my first time with Bob Dylan. For dad, it was the last. On the day two months later he died of cancer. He smiled rarely that last time, but when Dylan played "Every grain of sand" where far down in the stage then my dad at me and beamed with his eyes.
In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There’s a dyin' voice within me reaching out somewhere,
Toiling in the danger and in the moral of despair
Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake,
Like Cain, now behold this chain of events that I must break
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master’s hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand
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