Sting Live au Bataclan 2016
Música
A Medal on the Tower of Song
viernes, 18 de noviembre de 2016
A Medal on the Tower of Song
Awarding a Nobel Prize for literature is always a polemical decision, given that competition is stiff, and so many candidacies are being pushed forward by so many enthusiasts. Old glories and self-evident choices will be criticised by the advocates of other old glories and self-evident choices, while discoveries of decent and well-meaning authors from minority or remote literatures will be received in the Western community with a mixture of respect, puzzlement and low mumblings.
Now, Bob Dylan’s award this year has had more than a mixed reception, not least by Dylan himself. It is not yet clear whether he will give a speech at all, and apparently he will not be present at the ceremony. One can only suppose that Dylan was as puzzled as his detractors at his getting the prize, but really one never knows with him. It is clear that the award might have met a warmer reception and a more grateful nominee almost anywhere else, and to that extent the choice was a screw-up.
Reactions from the world of media and journalism were mixed; those from the literary world were mostly outraged. Fernando Sánchez Dragó was quite vocal on the issue here in Spain—and many more sounded as if the Nobel Committee had taken the prize away from them on purpose, in order to throw it away down the gutter. Even Hitler had a say on the matter, in a version of the famous meme from Downfall.
Now, it is funny to note that so many baffled advocates of a "more literary" prize would voice their rejection of the Dylan award, only to say in the next mouthful that at least they might have chosen Leonard Cohen. Which sounds like a complete rejection on the grounds of principle, followed by a quite contradictory, mere preference of taste.
Cohen himself, sadly deceased since, would no doubt have attended the ceremony and received the prize with a better grace and exquisite politeness than the unpredictable Dylan (we got a taste of that when he received the Príncipe de Asturias award some years ago). But he was hardly critical of the Nobel Committe’s decision. Elegant to the last, he wryly observed that "giving the Nobel Prize to Bob Dylan is like placing a medal on Mount Everest." But as it turns out there would have been no speech to the Nobel Academy anyway.
Cohen or Dylan, the Nobel Prize for literature might have easily gone one way or the other, and would have been equally justified. Advocates of a more "literary" choice (i.e. a novelist, or a printed poet) seem to forget that song came before novels and printed poetry— and that poetry was song, and rhythmic narrative, "blowing in the wind" before it became anything else. We are lucky that it is still going strong, with singer-songwriters as excellent as any that have ever lived—and that we have lived to hear the likes of Dylan and Cohen in our own time, while the future will have to be content to hear them a hundred years from now, or a hundred floors above them,
singing from a window,
In the Tower of Song.
In the Tower of Song.
—oOo—
Things Have Changed:
—oOo—
Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker
Leonard Cohen - Songs from The Future
Bob Dylan at Providence, Rhode Island
lunes, 14 de noviembre de 2016
Bob Dylan at Providence, Rhode Island
Hey, look at this piece of Bob Dylan's 1978 US tour, Live at Providence. I was at Providence too, I spent some months there ten years later—but we were all so much younger then.
Leonard Cohen: The Early Years
Singing to the End of Love
Hoy tocan a muerto por Leonard Cohen. Desde la Torre de la Canción. Y si no todos, muchos morimos un poco con él, y él sigue viviendo un poco con nosotros.
(2016)
Estoy oyendo el último disco de Leonard Cohen, que compré anteayer, You Want It Darker. Y es un disco de vocación prepóstuma. Murió Cohen el día 7—ya era el disco póstumo cuando lo compré, pero no lo sabía; hoy nos hemos enterado. En Luco de Bordón me acordaba de él, andando por un camino a la ermita desierta. Lo vi y oí una vez, a Cohen, en un concierto en Zaragoza, primera y última vez en vivo. Desde los años 70 me sonaba el hombre, y en los noventa el último LP que compré, al acabar aquella era en la que comprábamos LPs, fue de Cohen—The Future. Ya estamos en ese futuro que él había visto, al final siempre nos alcanza—it’s a deadline.
Tampoco es que le siente especialmente mal la muerte, a Leonard Cohen. As he becomes death, death suits him. Es, después de todo, el hombre que dijo de sí mismo, "Nací de traje". Al igual que para muchos el divorcio no es el fin del matrimonio, sino su prolongación en fase póstuma o infernal, así la vida para Cohen pasa sólo a una fase póstuma, esperando una muerte más definitiva cuya silueta aún no se ve en el horizonte. Lo seguiremos viendo y oyendo en las ventanitas de YouTube, "that tower down the track". Yo también hablo bajito desde el sótano de esa torre, y oigo toses, cien pisos más arriba.
Now I bid you farewell, I don’t know when I’ll be back
They’re moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track
But you’ll be hearing from me baby,
Long after I’m gone
I’ll be speaking to you sweetly from a window
In the tower of song.
—oOo—
Leonard Cohen, still alive, in London and elsewhere:
—oOo—