On Thursday I was at Apocalypse in ART : The Creative Unveiling, a CenSAMM conference at which I spoke along with Christopher Rowland, Kip Gresham, Elena Unger, Michelle Fletcher, Michael Takeo Magruder, Alfredo Cramerotti, Eleanor Heartney, Rebekah Dyer, Lilla Moore, Natasha O’Hear, Massimo Introvigne, and Matthew Askey.
The word ‘apocalypse’ originally indicated an ‘unveiling’, and the speaker in the Book of Revelation is a ‘seer’. This is perhaps one of the reasons that this ancient text (and others like it) have generated such a ferment of creative responses in the visual arts – as well as those other non-visual strands of the arts which have their own way of engaging our mind’s eye.
The rich variety of types of artistic unveiling (visual, musical, dramatic, literary) makes an engagement with the creative arts a deeply valuable way of understanding and appreciating the idea of apocalypse, alongside more traditionally academic modes of enquiry.
The conference sought to explore our relationship to art, its practice, its study and what the arts unveil to us. As artists or as audiences of art we can be profoundly transformed by our encounters with artistic creativity; indeed, we can find ourselves using the language of revelation to describe such encounters, regardless of our individual faith, religion or beliefs. Mark Rothko is quoted as saying, “the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.”
I spoke about apocalyptic influences and imagery in the work of Bob Dylan:
‘I was born in 1941,’ Bob Dylan reminded his audience at a concert in 2009, ‘that was the year they bombed Pearl Harbour. I’ve been living in a world of darkness ever since.’
What did he mean? After all, he grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota, Which was a ‘perfectly fine, respectable, middle-class, civic-pride sort of place’, ‘conventional, mainstream, solid,’ most of all, quiet (David Kinney, 2014 ).
What he meant was that, in those Cold War days, ‘in addition to the normal fire and tornado drills [you] had from time to time to crawl under your desk in order to shield yourself from the imagined explosion of an atomic bomb.’ (Robert Cantwell in Greil Marcus, 2010)
In Chronicles Dylan writes that, ‘In 1951 I was going to Grade School. One of the things we were trained to do was to hide and take cover under our desks when the air raid sirens blew because the Russians could attack us with bombs. We were also told that the Russians could be parachuting from planes over our town at any time.’ Andrew McCarron notes that, ‘In Dylan's case, the terrifying experience of hearing the air raid sirens as a ten year old and having to take cover under his desk left a lasting mark.’
McCarron goes on to say that, ‘Of his childhood and its anxieties, Dylan writes in Chronicles: “Back then when something was wrong the radio could lay hands on you and you’d be all right.” His most steadfast sense of identity was guided by the imaginative worlds that came to life through the blues, gospel, Appalachian, and country music that he heard and ended up playing himself.’ Howard Sounes notes that, ‘His musical influences included gospel, and much of the American folk and blues music that proved to be so formative was infused with biblical imagery as well.’
Much later Dylan was to state that, ‘Those old songs are my lexicon and prayer book … All my beliefs come out of those old songs, literally, anything from "Let Me Rest on that Peaceful Mountain” to “Keep on the Sunny Side.” You can find all my philosophy in those old songs. I believe in a God of time and space, but if people ask me about that, my impulse is to point them back toward those songs. I believe in Hank Williams singing “I Saw the Light.” I’ve seen the light, too.’
It was religion that also gave the young Robert Zimmerman a language in which to express his sense of living in a world gone wrong. Bert Cartwright argues that he first explores ‘the Bible's apocalyptic imagery from an artistic perspective of potent symbol’ and then, as a result of his Christian conversion, ‘adopted a quite literal understanding of the way God would get even with and, with his chosen few, prevail.’
His knowledge of the Bible came, of course, from his Jewish upbringing, as well as from the music to which he listened. Sounes notes that, ‘While Bob was not brought up in an Orthodox home, he did receive a grounding in the Bible - an important source of imagery for his song lyrics long before his Christian conversion of the 1970s.’ Cartwright expands, writing that his ‘understanding of history wells up from the depths of a Jewish heritage that rehearsed each year within the family the liberating exodus of God's people from bondage.’ It was this ‘understanding of history embedded deep in Dylan's Jewish heritage that haunts him with questions of justice in the face of a growing despair for the human transformation of the world.’
There is one more key influence to explore; again musical, as you would expect. ‘In September 1960, Bob Dylan borrowed a copy of Woody Guthrie's autobiography Bound for Glory from a college classmate and became obsessed.’ ‘Dylan started mimicking his hero's speech patterns and even told the crowd at the Cafe Wha? when he arrived in New York for the first time the following January: "I been travellin' around the country, followin' in Woody Guthrie's footsteps."'
Dylan hunted Guthrie out at ‘Greystone Park Psychiatric hospital in New Jersey, suffering from Huntingdon's disease, which finally led to his death in 1967. Dylan wrote, and played to his idol, a new piece of his own called ‘Song to Woody’ which states that ‘Hibbing, Minnesota’s Bobby Zimmerman had escaped his past to reinvent himself as a lonesome hobo drifter’, like Guthrie, ‘like the best folk singers hopping off and on railroad cars destination anywhere’:
‘I’m out here a thousand miles from my home
Walkin’ a road other men have gone down
I’m seein’ your world of people and things
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings
Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song
’Bout a funny ol’ world that’s a-comin’ along
Seems sick an’ it’s hungry, it’s tired an’ it’s torn
It looks like it’s a-dyin’ an’ it’s hardly been born’
Ross Altman notes that, ‘Listening to that first published Dylan song today, written when he was just twenty years old, one is struck by how world-weary the young troubadour already sounds … as he evokes a world that seems sick and it's hungry, tired and torn / it looks like it's a-dyin' and it's hardly been born.'
When you put all those influences together it becomes clear that what we have in the best of Dylan’s work is a contemporary Pilgrim, Dante or Rimbaud on a compassionate journey, undertaken in the eye of the Apocalypse, to stand with the damned at the heart of the darkness that is twentieth century culture. It’s there, at the beginning in ‘Song to Woody’ and it’s still there in ‘Ain’t Talkin’’, the last track on what is to date the penultimate set of original Bob Dylan songs:
‘Ain't talkin', just walkin'
Through this weary world of woe
Heart burnin', still yearnin'
No one on earth would ever know
Ain't talkin', just walkin'
Up the road around the bend
Heart burnin', still yearnin'
In the last outback, at the world's end’
In between these two markers, Dylan’s songs document where his pilgrim journey in the eye of the apocalypse has taken him; often with imagery of storms lighting his way. He has travelled the paths of political protest, urban surrealism, country contentment, gospel conversion and world weary blues. On his journey he: saw seven breezes blowing around the cabin door where victims despair ('Ballad of Hollis Brown'); lightning flashing for those who are confused, accused and misused ('Chimes of Freedom'); surveyed 'Desolation Road'; talked truth with a thief as the wind began to howl ('All Along the Watchtower'); sheltered with an un-named woman from the apocalyptic storm ('Shelter from the Storm'); felt the idiot wind blowing through the buttons on his coat, recognised himself as an idiot and felt sorry ('Idiot Wind'); found a pathway to the stars and couldn't believe he'd survived ('Where Are You Tonight? Journey Through Deep Heat'); rode the slow train up around the bend ('Slow Train'); was driven out of town into the driving rain because of belief ('I Believe in You'); heard the ancient footsteps join him on his path ('Every Grain of Sand'); felt the Caribbean Winds, fanning desire, bringing him nearer to the fire ('Caribbean Wind'); betrayed his commitment, felt the breath of the storm and went searching for his first love ('Tight Connection to My Heart'); then at the final moment, it's not quite dark yet but he’s walking through the middle of nowhere trying to get to heaven before the door is closed ('Tryin' To Get To Heaven'):
‘The air is getting hotter, there's a rumbling in the skies
I've been wading through the high muddy water
With the heat rising in my eyes.
Everyday your memory grows dimmer.
It don't haunt me, like it did before.
I been walking through the middle of nowhere
Tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door.’
As Frank Davey writes, ‘Dylan's vision is essentially apocalyptic; again and again he tells of an evil world which is soon to be both punished and replaced tomorrow, perhaps, when the ship comes in.’ Songs like 'When The Ship Comes In' and 'The Times They Are A-Changin' both deal with rapidly approaching change described in apocalyptic terms. When the apocalyptic moment arrives, it is clear that some will be on the positive side of the change and others not. Dylan may well be speaking, as has been suggested by many critics, about young versus old and freedom versus rules but, on the basis of the lyrics themselves, it is not possible to be definitive because the language Dylan uses is deliberately unspecific. In neither song does he identify the specific nature of the change that is to come and it is this generality which gives these songs universality and continuing relevance because they can be applied to different circumstances at different times.
What can definitively be said about both songs however is that they are warnings about a coming apocalyptic change and the warning concerns on which side of that change we will find or place ourselves. Cartwright suggests that, ‘In his early songs of protest [Dylan] optimistically expressed a prophetic view of history in which an old order will fade, giving way to a more just and righteous existence. With the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the disillusionment of good causes becoming easily corrupted, Dylan became markedly more pessimistic.’
From ‘Slow Train Coming’ onwards Dylan equated the apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ (also known as the Second Coming). The return of Christ in judgement is the slow train that is coming around the bend and in the face of this apocalypse he calls on human beings to wake up and strengthen the things that remain. According to Clinton Heylin this reflected the influence of Hal Lindsey, through the Vineyard Fellowship whose Bible classes he attended post-conversion. Heylin writes, ‘Aside from the scriptures, the classes sought to provide a grounding in the works of Hal Lindsey, the man to whom God in his infinite wisdom had revealed the true code of Revelation. . . . His book, The Late Great Planet Earth (1970), became Dylan's second Bible and added an apocalyptic edge to his worldview, allowing Christ Come Again precedence over Jesus the Teacher.’
So, with 'The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar', Dylan sees the apocalypse coming as a curtain which is rising on a new age but not yet here, while the Groom (Christ who awaits his bride, the Church) is still waiting at the altar. In the time that remains he calls on human beings to arise from our slumber: 'Dead man, dead man / When will you arise? / Cobwebs in your mind / Dust upon your eyes' ('Dead Man, Dead Man').
In the light of this thread in Dylan's songs throughout this period, it seems consistent to also read 'Jokerman' from Infidels as another song in this vein; as a song depicting the apathy of humanity in the face of the apocalypse and one which is shot through with apocalyptic imagery drawn from the Book of Revelation. There is much in the song that is negative about humanity: we are born with a snake in both our fists; we rush in where angels fear to tread; our future is full of dread; we are doing no more than keeping one step ahead of the persecutor within; we are going to Sodom and Gomorrah only knowing the law of the jungle (the law of revenge from the Book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy - 'an eye for an eye'). But these negatives are not the whole story as we also experience freedom, dance to the nightingale tune, fly high, walk on the clouds, and are a friend to the martyr. We have an inherent dignity and beauty to which only the greatest of artists such as Michelangelo can do justice. In 'Jokerman', Dylan captures well the Biblical portrait of humanity as made in the image of God but marred by our rejection of God with our potential for beauty and compassion perverted into a selfish search for self-aggrandisement.
The final verse comes straight from the Book of Revelation and describes the birth of the AntiChrist who will deceive humanity into following him rather than Christ. The accusation and challenge that Dylan puts to us in the final lines of this final verse is that we know exactly what is happening (after all, it has all been prophesied in the Book of Revelation) but we make no response; we are apathetic in the face of the apocalypse. Our lack of response is what is fatal to us because it is only through repentance and turning to Christ that we will be saved from the coming judgement. These final lines are both an accusation and a challenge because, in line with the prophecy of Revelation, Dylan clearly believes that humanity as a whole will be apathetic and unresponsive but they must also be a challenge because, if there is no possibility that any of us will respond, why write the song at all!
Yet for much of his career, while consistently writing in the face of a coming apocalypse, Dylan did not specifically equate that apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ. Apocalyptic change in Dylan's work can be understood as generational conflict, Cold War conflicts, nuclear holocaust, Civil Rights struggles, and more. The generic message throughout is that apocalyptic change is coming and we need to think where we stand in relation to it. That message is as relevant today in terms of economic meltdown, climate change or peak oil, as to the Second Coming, whether imminent or not.
Dylan's manifesto for his work is 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall'; a song about walking through a world which is surreal and unjust and singing what he sees:
‘I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.’
John Gibbens states that, ‘By biblical analogy we take the flood to be a judgement upon all the things that have been listed in the verse, ‘and therefore a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.’’’
This is a song which has been interpreted as dealing with events that were contemporary to the time such as the Cuban missile crisis and, more generally, the threat of a nuclear holocaust. That may well be so, but I think a more straightforward interpretation and one that is closer to what the lyrics actually say is to see it as a statement by Dylan of what he is trying to do in and through his work. In the song he walks through a surreal and unjust world, ahead of him he sees a gathering apocalyptic storm (as Gibbens notes, the Biblical storm of judgement that is the flood) and he resolves to walk in the shadow of the storm and sing out what he sees:
‘I’m a-goin’ back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten,
Where black is the colour, where none is the number.
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect from the mountain so that all souls can see it ...’
43 years later, with ‘Ain’t Talkin’’, he was still writing songs where his central character is walking through an apocalyptic landscape. ‘Ain’t Talkin’’ reminds us of films such as ‘The Road’ and ‘The Book of Eli’ where flawed figures seek to protect and enable the survival of goodness – whether a son or a Bible – while travelling in violent licentious post-apocalyptic worlds:
‘Ain't talkin', just walkin'
Through this weary world of woe
Heart burnin', still yearnin'
No one on earth would ever know
They say prayer has the power to help
So pray from the mother
In the human heart an evil spirit can dwell
I'm trying to love my neighbor and do good unto others
But oh, mother, things ain't going well
Ain't talkin', just walkin'
Through the world mysterious and vague
Heart burnin', still yearnin'
Walking through the cities of the plague
All my loyal and much-loved companions
They approve of me and share my code
I practice a faith that's been long abandoned
Ain't no altars on this long and lonesome road’
The suffering in this situation is unending. The fire's gone out but the light is never dying. He challenges us to say that he can't still get heavenly aid. In the last outback, at the world's end, he walks in the mystic garden talking with the woman at the tomb who mistook Christ for the gardener. His heart is still burnin’, still yearnin’ for the coming judgement and the resurrection of the dead.
In the liner notes for Tell Tale Signs Larry Sloman signs off with a paragraph quoting a myriad of Dylan's lyrics:
'He ain't talking, but he's still walking, heart burning, still yearning. He's trampling through the mud, through the blistering sun, getting damp from the misty rain. He's got his top hat on, ambling along with his cane, stopping to watch all the young men and young women in their bright-coloured clothes cavorting in the park. Despite all the grief and devastation he's seen on his odyssey, his heart isn't weary, it's light and free, bursting all over with affection for all those who sailed with him. Deep down he knows that his loyal and much-loved companions approve of him and share his code. And it's dawn now, the sun beginning to shine down on him and his heart is still in the Highlands, over those hills, far away. But there's a way to get there and if anyone can, he'll figure it out. And in the meantime, he's already there in his mind. That mind decidedly out of time. And we're all that much richer for his journey.'
For more on these themes, see 'The Secret Chord', my co-authored book which is an accessible exploration of artistic dilemmas from a range of different perspectives seeking to draw the reader into a place of appreciation for what makes a moment in a 'performance' timeless and special.
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Bob Dylan - Ain't Talkin'.
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