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You've Been with the Professors and Th Volume II, 04 August 2010 “You’ve been with thethe professorsprofessors AndAnd they’vethey’ve allall likedliked youryour looks”looks” so many people to thank. The One Village Project’s annual Global Youth Peace Summit brings refugee and immigrant [email protected] youth who have survived war and the hardships of extreme poverty to the area for a week-long 512.538.4115 overnight conference from Aug. 7 - Aug. 14 at Wimberley’s John Knox Ranch. Uniting youth and supporters from around the globe, www.facebook.com/todo.austin the summit creates a model global village that builds cultural understanding. More info at www. amalafoundation.org. www.twitter.com/todo_austin ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As summer winds down, cool down with the kids contributors at the 4th Annual Ice Cream Festival at Waterloo Park on Saturday, Aug. 14. The event includes The poet KURT games, activities, contests and live entertainment, all HEINzELMAN is also for $5 (12 and under free with an adult. Doors open a translator, editor, scholar, and cultural at 10 a.m.). Contests include ice cream making, observer (see Dylan, eating, screaming and Popsicle stick sculpture. For page 9)--a lot of “er”- more info see www.roadwayevents.com. sounding things that ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- rhyme with “error.” Austin Museum of Art hosts its ongoing Second Saturdays for families on Aug. 14, 12-4 p.m. Chill UT Classics professor out by discovering an eco-friendly way to make TOM PALAIMA art by painting with ice cubes. At 1 p.m., join Bea writes regularly for Love Yoga for a family yoga class. $7 per family; the Austin American- members $5. For more info, www.amoa.org. Statesman, The ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Texas Observer, and Bemba Entertainment and KUT have been the Times Higher instrumental in developing Austin’s thriving Education. His take Worldbeat scene and celebrate the one year on Bob, page 8. anniversary of World Music Night at Momo’s on Saturday, Aug. 14. (618 W. 6th St.). Fifteen acts, RICHARD THOMAS $10: El Tule, Atash, 1001 Nights Orchestra, Aciable, is Professor of Greek Buscando El Monte, Huerta Culture, Manga Rosa, and Latin at Harvard, Rattletree Marimba, Wino Vino, Anne Simoni, La writes and teaches Guerrilla, Austin Piazzolla Quintet, Frederico7 & The on Virgil and other Hashashin, Oliver Rajamani, Azul. (Story on pg 11.) classical poets and ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- runs a freshman The Hispanic Network of Austin, along with seminar on Dylan (see Tri-Swag Entertainment are hosting a fundraiser page 9). for Manos de Cristo to provide backpacks to thousands of underprivileged children in Austin on BREANNA ROLLINGS Aug. 20, 6 p.m. at MoJoe Room Bar & Grill (6496 enjoys beaches, N IH 35). Four vacation package giveaways, gift brunches, red wine, baskets and more for those who bring a backpack. and British comedy. Details at www.manosdecristo.org. She writes for local websites Austinist ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (see story on page Batfest!, Austin’s 6th annual bat shindig, is back 12) and on Congress Avenue Bridge Saturday, Aug. 21, Austin Eavesdropper. from 1 p.m. - midnight. The event features arts & crafts booths, music, food, children’s activities, CAROL STALL is an educational displays and of course, prime bat erstwhile investigative watching (8 p.m.) against a scenic backdrop. Over reporter cum 20 bands on two stages and millions of Mexican multimedia artist, free-tailed bats. Free! jeweler and ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- photographer. Barsana Dham’s acres of scenic land represent the Yoga made ESY for You. Occasionally she holy district of Braj in India, where each year, in the glances up from midst of the rainy season, the festival of Hariyali multiple projects Teej is celebrated with swings placed in shrines. 1050 East 11th St. #150 ~ 512.779.8543 www.eastsideyoga-austin.com to wield a pen. She Help carry on the same tradition at Jhulan Leela profiles artist Jonny (400 Barsana Rd.) Aug. 21-22, 7:30 - 9 p.m. Info at Slie on pages 6 and 7. www.barsanadham.org. In this golden age when American popular culture is a From Osaka, Japan to Oslo, Norway, from Rio de Janeiro to worldwide culture, Bob Dylan is in many ways its fons et origo the Rubber Bowl in Akron, Ohio, from Istanbul to the Isle of (its spring and source). “It’s an immense privilege to live at the Wight, Dylan has performed his unique distillation of American same time as this genius,” states British literary critic and former musical traditions. His music transcends time and place and Oxford Professor of Poetry, Christopher Ricks. crosses cultural boundaries. Around the world and up and down Highway 35, Dylan remains the most important artist On the eve of his August 4th concert date in Austin-a alive today, “anywhere and in any field,” to quote England’s community which has adopted Dylan as one of its own-TODO Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion. Austin has invited three American scholars to reflect on Dylan’s wide cultural impact. I had the honor of presenting the key to the City of Austin to Dylan on February 24, 2002, Bob Dylan Day. In our short visit, One sure sign of Dylan’s influence is that all three scholars, a Dylan expressed then to the mayor pro-tem and me how noted University of Texas at Austin English professor and poet, happy he was to have been made an honorary Texan by the a UT MacArthur fellow who studies ancient Greek culture and previous Governor. the human response, including song, to war and violence, and a Harvard professor who is the world’s foremost authority Welcome, home, Bob. on the Roman poet Virgil and the later influence of classical literature and culture, include Dylanology among their prime areas of interest. David Gahr SONY/BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT Back on December 5, 2004, “60 Minutes’” Ed Bradley asked Bob And so it emerged that one of the other things Dylan can do, That of course is also Dylan in the final line of “Ain’t Talkin’,” the Dylan where a song like the 1965 masterpiece “It’s Alright, Ma good Jack of Hearts that he is, is steal. “Immature poets imitate,” final song of “Modern (get it?) Times,” what sounded at the time (I’m Only Bleeding)” came from. Dylan came across as genuinely wrote T. S. Eliot in 1920, thinking mostly of himself; “mature poets like a final album. This turns out to be one of more than 20 of puzzled as the rest of us. “I don’t know how I got to write those steal . The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling the Roman poet’s lines, spread across “Spirit On The Water,” songs,” he replied, seemingly at peace with the mystery of it all. “I which is unique, utterly different from that from which it is torn . “‘Workingman’s Blues #2,” “The Levee’s Gonna Break” and “Ain’t did it once,” he added, “and I can do other things now. But, I can’t . A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or Talkin’” (see http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/22i/ do that.” alien in language, or diverse in interest.” Thomas.pdf). There are none on “Thunder On The Mountain,” though there Dylan does give us a tell-tale sign: “I’ve been sittin’ “Bringing It All Back Home,” “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Blonde The sort of theft on “Lonesome Day Blues” makes the song down studyin’ the art of love” (Ovid also wrote the Ars Amatoria On Blonde” came out in the fourteen electrically charged, “thin timeless, universal, and literary, though Dylan’s cowboy band “Art of Love”). If Dylan can visit the childhood home of Neil wild mercury” musical months right before Dylan’s 25th birthday, and his menacing “I’m gonna tame the proud” keep it out of Young, why not a statue in Ovid’s place of exile? between March 1965 and May 1966. Once we heard them, the library stacks and on the streets. What might have seemed nothing was the same; everything else retreated to the shadows. a Vietnam era song — “My brother got killed in the war” — With Ovid, Dylan steals successfully, his settings much changed Dylan changed too, but as he said, he went on to do “other becomes through its intertexts a song for all time and for all wars: as Eliot wanted. Ovid is talking to the emperor: “My cause things.” is better: no-one can claim that I ever took up arms against Virgil’s and Twain’s civil wars, and the Chinese-Japanese War of you”; the singer of Workingman’s Blues #2’ is talking to a lover, Flashing forward past many of those things to three days before “Confessions” — not unlike how the absence of time and place mysterious and vague though she be: “No-one can ever claim the September 11, 2001 release of “Love and Theft,” we find helps make “Masters Of War” the greatest and most undying of all / That I took up arms against you.” Ovid also addressed his wife, Dylan talking to the Italian paper La Repubblica in Rome—the anti-war songs. back in Rome: “May the gods grant … / that I’m wrong in thinking place matters. “My songs are all singable,” he says at one point. This creative and allusive writing is not really new. One of Dylan’s you’ve forgotten me!” Dylan’s lover is back in time: “Tell me now, “They’re current. Something doesn’t have to just drop out of the am I wrong in thinking / That you have forgotten me?” air yesterday to be current.” How further back than yesterday very first original songs, “Bob Dylan’s Dream” did the same with becomes clear in another part of the exchange: “You’ve got the “Lord Franklin” (aka “Lady Franklin’s Lament”) mixing in other And hanging over it all is Ovid in exile, a backdrop that works for Golden Age, which I guess would be the Age of Homer.” He then traditional songs, maybe picked up at Izzy Young’s Folklore Dylan, off into northern exile himself in “Highlands” and “Thunder runs through the Silver, Bronze and present Iron Age, the Greco- Center soon after Dylan arrived in the Village.
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