Murder Most Foul and America’s Soul (Part III)

In previous essays we have looked at Bob Dylan’s place within the great musical and literary canons of Judeo-Christian civilization. In this third piece, we will now consider his psychological and spiritual maturity. This mature Dylan has created some wonderful art and lived well, setting an example for others to model.

The Mind of a Master

First, let’s look to Andrew McCarron and his psychological biography of Dylan. His interesting book breaks down our more usual one-dimensional readings of Man and history. This type of biography plays a role in showing the complex confluence of forces in Bob’s life and his distinct American form of redemption. [137]

McCarron details Dylan’s moves and maturity from his early days listening to Gospel and Blues on the radio after midnight, straight up the Mississippi from the Delta and New Orleans, to the mature Dylan of recent years.

McCarron’s merit lies in placing Dylan’s character in co-operation with redemption and destiny at different stages of his life. He focuses on the key ‘transfigurations’ in his life and shows how redemptive patterns have communicated the word ‘destiny’ to him and through him.

McCarron’s book does not rise to the Mosaic heights of Phil Mason’s biography or reveal enough about the character of the God in whom Dylan is ‘a true believer’, but deals with some ways Dylan has approached God and seen ‘The Master’s Hand’ at work. [138]

As a fellow ‘true believer’, or at least I hope so, I wish to follow Mason paint a picture of God and Dylan on one canvas.

In his book, McCarron mentions the philosopher Paul Ricouer and his ‘dialectical tension’ between our ‘personas’ and ‘teleology’ or ends. The One God to whom Dylan has remained faithful offers fulfilment by placing this ‘tension’ and ‘resolution’ at the center of life. In The Trinity, we find ‘personas’ acting, but becoming more than they are or ever were. This character of love has guided Dylan in his art and life like other Christian artists of different media: Such as Tarkovsky and Van Gogh [139] This is ‘being as communion’ according to Zizioulas. [140]

This becoming something more, Bob’s ‘transfiguration’ is given direction by love. Phil Mason persuasively places love at the crossroads of Dylan’s oeuvre alongside Ricks’s central motif of ‘sin’. This is right. [141]

As we saw, our troubadour has overturned Robert Johnson’s enigmatic crossroads myth [142] by making a bargain with ‘the chief commander’ of ‘this world and the one that can’t be seen’ bringing a new chapter to American music and lore. [143]

Despite silly claims online that Dylan has sold his soul to the devil, the gloss about the chief commander can clearly be seen as referring to God and highlights the subtle power of this old trickster.

Bob Dylan, who grew up in Hibbing listening to The Staple Singers, knows that ‘low is the way’ but that the road doesn’t end there. [144] The Dylan of Murder Most Foul goes through the pain but doesn’t lose faith. While he laments the loss of ‘Faith, Hope and Charity’, he stands in the adversarial Hope that they will return and answers with a deep love for his unfailing foundations. After all, he knows ‘despair is not the last word, only the penultimate word’. [145]

In a documentary about the late Robert Johnson, the seminal blues musician and influence on Dylan, one interviewee passes off a mistaken conceit that claims The Blues come to us from ‘the fields’ and Gospel from ‘The Church’. This either/or won’t do and is the kind of crude sacred-secular binary that Dylan has blown apart in his life and work. He knows well the deep Biblical soul of African American music styles and plays the folk traditions of the fields and churches in one chord. ‘Pay in Blood’ is the perfect example of the deep Christian foundation behind Blues and Gospel. This song combines the earthy quality of the blues, aching for exodus from the fields with the heavenly lyrics of Gospel and finding Canaan. This is a marvelous late work of cultural appreciation. [146]

Bob Dylan knows the God who is in involved with ‘every grain of sand’ and that He is the air that great American Music breathes. The incarnate God of The Bible is a God of fields and churches, who stays with His people through it all. Dylan has seen ‘The Master’s hand’ in both and the city too. Bob knows the Christ who was crucified outside the city walls but who set up His church inside. [147]

God’s cruciform ‘dominion’ is present there in the buildings and the fields of American music, through words, feelings and stories of Exodus. [148] In the lyrics and structure of the songs as well as the people. [149] (Raboteau and Turner)

Dylan knows The Man from Galilee who stood incarnate in the garden even when His church was asleep.

‘When He rose from the dead, did they believe?
When He rose from the dead, did they believe?
He said, “All power is given to Me in heaven and on earth.”
Did they know right then and there what that power was worth?
When He rose from the dead, did they believe?
When He rose from the dead, did they believe?’ (In the Garden) [150]

Dylan is familiar with the poetic depths of life and death contained in The Parable of the Farmer Scattering Seed and still sees ‘The Master’s Hand’:

3 He told many stories in the form of parables, such as this one:

“Listen! A farmer went out to plant some seeds. 4 As he scattered them across his field, some seeds fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate them. 5 Other seeds fell on shallow soil with underlying rock. The seeds sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow. 6 But the plants soon wilted under the hot sun, and since they didn’t have deep roots, they died. 7 Other seeds fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants. 8 Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted! 9 Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand. [151]

Loss and Love Again

Psychologist Robert L Moore continues to remind us of the central power of archetypes in the process of personal transfiguration: “The “death” of the Hero is the “death” of boyhood, of Boy psychology. And it is the birth of manhood and Man psychology. The “death” of the Hero in the life of a boy (or a man) really means that he has finally encountered his limitations.’ By dying as the voice of a generation and protest singer, Dylan has emerged a mature Man for many generations and prophetic singer and artist.

Over the years, ‘He has met the enemy, and the enemy is himself. He has met his own dark side, his very unheroic side.’ Again, Dylan’s willing ability to shine a light on Christ and Anti-Christ in one breath has brought a death to his dark side, especially of the sixties and his painful divorce in the seventies, to give birth to a higher historical and literary hero.

Moore would say, ‘He has fought the dragon and been burned by it; he has fought the revolution and drunk the dregs of his own inhumanity.’

In Bob Dylan’s many failed romantic relationships we have seen his lamentable incapacity to ‘love the princess’ combined with a transcendent desire to do so rightly as a Man. These feelings of love and longing show in ‘Spanish Boots of Spanish Leather’ and other gorgeous love songs. [152]

‘Ah, but I just thought you might want somethin’ fine
Made of silver or of golden
Either from the mountains of Madrid
Or from the coast of Barcelona

Well, if I had the stars from the darkest night
And the diamonds from the deepest ocean
I’d forsake them all for your sweet kiss
For that’s all I’m a-wishin’ to be ownin’

Well I might be gone a long old time
And it’s only that I’m asking
Is there somethin’ I can send you to remember me by
To make your time more easy passing

Oh, how can, how can you ask me again
It only brings me sorrow
The same thing I would want today
I want again tomorrow

I got a letter on a lonesome day
It was from her ship a-sailin’
Sayin’ I don’t know when I’ll be comin’ back again
It depends on how I’m a-feelin’

If a-you, my love, must think that-a-way
I’m sure your mind is a-roamin’
I’m sure your thoughts are not with me
But with the country to where you’re goin’

So take heed, take heed of the western winds

Take heed of the stormy weather

An yes, there’s somethin’ you can send back to me

Spanish boots of Spanish leather.’ (Boots of Spanish Leather) [153]

Like biographer Andrew McCarron, Robert L Moore shows us why we must go beyond the hero Dylan of nostalgia and the sixties. ‘He has overcome the Mother and then realized his incapacity to love the Princess. The “death” of the Hero signals a boy’s or man’s encounter with true humility. It is the end of his heroic consciousness.” [154]

The humility which arrived on the other side of Dylan’s earlier painful experiences now shines from the top of the mountain as a light of mature Man. The ‘hero’, or ‘voice of a generation’ pictured on Highway 61 Revisited with his lost love Suze Rotolo, has become a more iconic man and good king. [155]

Moore reminds us that, “The good king delighted in noticing and promoting good men to positions of responsibility in his kingdom. He held audience, primarily, not to be seen, but to see, admire, and delight in his subjects, to reward them and to bestow honors upon them.”

Dylan, the jester who became king, has long noticed and promoted the greats of his realm and delighted in his ‘subjects’. [156] To return to the new beginning of Murder Most Foul, we see how he graciously assumes his royal position in American lore and calls us to:

‘Play Jelly Roll Morton, play “Lucille”

Play “Deep In a Dream”, and play “Driving Wheel”

Play “Moonlight Sonata” in F-sharp

And “A Key to the Highway” for the king on the harp

Play “Marching Through Georgia” and “Dumbaroton’s Drums”

Play darkness and death will come when it comes

Play “Love Me Or Leave Me” by the great Bud Powell

Play “The Blood-stained Banner”, play “Murder Most Foul” (Murder Most Foul) [157]

While our American troubadour can be read at several levels, we can see now why his central role must be as one ‘a spiritual poet’. Bishop Barron is right, as is so often the case. [158]

Dylan as a Priest, a Prophet and a King

The team at Word on Fire describe the triune vocation of a mature Man as a priest, a prophet and a king. Our subject serves as a model of all three: ‘A priest fosters holiness, precisely in the measure that he or she serves as a bridge between God and human beings. In ancient Roman times, the priest was described as a pontifex, bridge-builder, and this remains a valid designation in the Christian context.’ This universal vocation is the fulfilment our former shamanism mentioned by Maxwell and the ‘transfiguration’ of Thomas. How fitting that we return to Rome.

They go on to ask, ‘What does it mean for the average baptized person to be a prophet?’ Suggesting that, ‘A person is a prophet in the measure that he or she bears the truth of God.’ [159]

The great trickster GK Chesterton shows how the jester role is fulfilled in the prophet, ‘…in an upside-down world such as ours, the prophet is the one who stands on his head so that he might see things aright.’’ [160]

This speaks to the prophetic history of our Jokerman and ‘This is why, of course, prophets have always appeared more than a little insane.  In fact, the Hebrew word for prophet, “nabi“, has the overtone of madman.’

In our decentered world only re-centered on idolatrous lies, this comes as no surprise:

They make the point clear again, ‘Well, of course:  in a world that has lost its bearings, those who speak the divine truth will, perforce, appear unhinged.’

Dylan has cultivated his special salutary madness by farming the great fields of history to separate the wheat from the chaff.

We might ask, ‘How does one cultivate this salutary madness?’ Like Dylan, ‘Baptized prophets should exercise their brains by studying philosophy, theology, spirituality, church history, and the lives of the saints.’

We conclude by asking, ‘Finally, what does it mean for the ordinary Catholic (Christian) to be a king? In the theological sense, a king is someone who orders the charisms within a community so as to direct that community toward God.’

Ring them bells!

Our American king surely serves his republic well in place of an established monarchy.

Dylan inherits his artistic throne and acts accordingly, ‘In this way, he is like the general of an army or the conductor of an orchestra:  he coordinates the efforts and talents of a conglomeration of people in order to help them achieve a common purpose. Baptized kings who refuse to reign are like a hilltop city covered in clouds.’ [161]

‘Well I’m pressing on
To the higher calling of my Lord.

Many try to stop me, shake me up in my mind,
Say, “Prove to me that He is Lord, show me a sign.”
What kind of sign they need when it all come from within,
When what’s lost has been found, what’s to come has already been?’ (Pressing On) [162]

We agree with Bishop Barron and his subjects that, ‘The key to the renewal of our society is a recovery of the deepest meaning of baptism, to become priestly, prophetic, and kingly people.’ [163]

‘I was blinded by the devil
Born already ruined
Stone-cold dead
As I stepped out of the womb
By His grace I have been touched
By His word I have been healed
By His hand I’ve been delivered
By His spirit I’ve been sealed
I’ve been saved
By the blood of the lamb.’ (Saved) [164]

A key part of priesthood of mature Man is preaching from the mountain of transfigured light. Pastor Timothy Keller describes this vocation by first asking, ‘What, then, is good preaching?’

He affirms, ‘It is “proclaiming the testimony of God” (1 Corinthians 2:1)—preaching biblically, engaging with the authoritative text.’

The bard who has been ‘tangled up in The Bible’ has long engaged with the authoritative text.

Keller suggests, ‘This means preaching the Word and not your opinion. When we preach the Scriptures we are speaking “the very words of God” (1 Peter 4:11).’ We can understand the claims about Dylan’s Prophetic Oracles in Phil Mason’s extraordinary book under this clarifying light.

Keller doesn’t stop there, ‘You need to make clear the meaning of the text in its context—both in its historical time and within the whole of Scripture.’

This is what Dylan has done by returning to the ancient sources, ever new, breaking down the barriers between worlds and re-ordering our experience of time in holy non-order.

‘This task of serving the Word is exposition’ according to Keller, ‘which is to draw out the message of the passage with faithfulness and insight and with a view to the rest of biblical teaching, so as not to “expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another.” [165]

We serve The Word by transfiguring ‘secular’ language and taking our place within the pantheon of gods pointing to the one true God.

‘Ring them bells St. Peter
Where the four winds blow
Ring them bells with an iron hand
So the people will know
Oh it’s rush hour now
On the wheel and the plow
And the sun is going down
Upon the sacred cow.’ (Ring them Bells) [166]

Keller cautions against those same ‘sacred cows’ which twist time and place: ‘Cultural engagement in preaching must never be for the sake of appearing “relevant” but rather must be for the purpose of laying bare the listener’s life foundations.’

Dylan brings us back to ‘the cornerstone that the builder refused’ [167] and like St Paul, has been ringing the bell of good news for ‘the lost sheep’. [168]

Let’s see what Keller says about former Jew Paul, as this will help us see some key similarities in Dylan: ‘Paul says, “As I proclaimed to you the testimony about God . . . I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:1–2).’

Keller shows the power of Jewish Paul’s meeting with the Messiah, Yeshua. This casts a light on Dylan’s own version of the Damascus conversion to Christ:

‘At the time Paul was writing, the only Scripture to preach from was what we now call the Old Testament. Yet even when preaching from these texts Paul “knew nothing” but Jesus—who did not appear by name in any of those texts.

How could this be? Paul understood that all Scripture ultimately pointed to Jesus and his salvation; that every prophet, priest, and king was shedding light on the ultimate Prophet, Priest, and King.’ [169]

Like Paul with the Old Testament, Dylan sees all of creation in new light and its point in Yeshua. [170] He preaches now from the top of the mountain in the language of American folk music, ancient poetry and in his own unique voice to point us back to the center of history as a good priest, prophet and king:

‘I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea

Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me

I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man

Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.’ (Every Grain of Sand) [171]

Notes

137- McCarron, Andrew (2017) Light Come Shining: The Transformations of Bob Dylan, USA: Wetware Media.

138- Dylan, Bob (2020) Every Grain of Sand, Available at: https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/every-grain-sand/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).

139-Like Stories of Old Like Stories of Old (2020) Praying Through Cinema – Understanding Andrei Tarkovsky, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNezdOlS-aw (Accessed: 4th April 2020) and Edwards, Cliff (1989) Van Gogh and God: A Creative Spiritual Quest , USA: Loyola University Press.

140-Zizioulas, John (2004) Being as Communion, New edition edition edn., USA: Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd.

141- Mason, Phil (2018) A Voice From On High: The Prophetic Oracles Of Bob Dylan, USA: Independently published.

142- Netflix (2019) ReMastered: Devil at the Crossroads, Available at: https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80191049 (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).

143- Ibid.

144-The Staple Singers (2017) Low Is the Way , Available at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Low-Is-the-Way/dp/B06XHKH127 (Accessed: 4th April 2020).

145-Shestov, Lev (1977) PENULTIMATE WORDS AND OTHER ESSAYS [Beginnings and Endings], Available at: http://shestov.phonoarchive.org/all/all_0.html (Accessed: 4th April 2020).

146-Ibid.

147- Ibid.

148-Raboteau, Albert J. (2004) Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South, Updated edition edn., U.S.A: Oxford University Press.

149-Turner, Steve (2010) An Illustrated History of Gospel, New edition edition edn., UK: Lion Hudson Plc.

150- Dylan, Bob (2020) In The Garden, Available at: https://www.metrolyrics.com/in-the-garden-lyrics-bob-dylan.html (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).

151-Matthew 13:1-23 New Living Translation (NLT) (2020) Parable of the Farmer Scattering Seed, Available at: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+13%3A1-23&version=NLT (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).

152-Dylan, Bob (2020) Boots of Spanish Leather, Available at: https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-boots-of-spanish-leather-lyrics (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).

153- Ibid.

154- Ibid.

155- Ibid.

156- Ibid.

157- Ibid.

158- Barron, Bishop Robert (2009) Bishop Robert Barron on Bob Dylan, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF0JNwud9K0

159-Barron, Bishop Robert (2014) Priest, Prophet and King, Available at: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/column/priest-prophet-and-king-2818 (Accessed: 2nd April 2020).

160-Chesterton, G.K. (2017) Orthodoxy, USA: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

161- Ibid.

162- Dylan, Bob (2020) Pressing On, Available at: http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/pressing/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).

163- Ibid.

164-Dylan, Bob (2020) Saved, Available at: http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/saved/ (Accessed: 4th April 2020).

165- Keller, Timothy (2015) Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Scepticism, USA: Hodder & Stoughton.

166- Ibid.

167-Knowing Jesus (2020) 11 Bible Verses about Cornerstone, Available at: https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Cornerstone (Accessed: 4th April 2020).

168- Ibid.

169- Ibid.

170- Ibid.

171- Dylan, Bob (2020) Every Grain of Sand, Available at: https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/every-grain-sand/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).

Further Recommended Reading:

Begbie, Jeremy (2000) Theology, Music and Time (Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine), UK: Cambridge University Press.

Barron, Bishop Robert (2020) Centered: The Spirituality of Word on Fire, Available at: https://wordonfire.institute/centered (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).

Schwartz, Debora B. (2005) Shakespeare’s Plays:Tragedy, Available at: http://cola.calpoly.edu/~dschwart/engl339/tragedy.html (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).Jazz

Guinness, Os (2003) The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life, USA: Thomas Nelson.

Milosz, Czeslaw (2012) The Witness of Poetry: Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, USA: University Press Audiobooks.

Twilightdawning (2018) Bob Dylan, sloppy analysis and hearing what we want to hear, Available at: https://twilightdawning.com/2018/07/26/bob-dylan-sloppy-analysis-and-hearing-what-we-want-to-hear/ (Accessed: 2nd April 2020).

Warnock, Daniel (2017) Is Bob Dylan a Modern-Day Prophet? A New Theological Book Explores the Likelihood, Available at: https://www.lightworkers.com/a-voice-from-on-high-the-prophetic-oracles-of-bob-dylan/ (Accessed: 3rd April 2020).

Additional Notes

-Dylan plays with time, in a playful non-order which is intentional and layered. This is not the same thing as disorder. Disorder equals chaos. Non-order equals improvisation.

-Dylan learned how to paint many years ago so he could think in images where many different impressions are being made at once. This is a feature of his work, which moves between past, present and future to draw the listener into another world. A world free from one-dimensional, and linear, thinking and acting. I have tried to paint a sketch of his work by following the master’s technique.

-I use Man to represent humankind where possible as I think the points made should speak to women and men (Or intersex) in equal measure.

This is the final of three parts with parts one and two available.

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