Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs

but there is nothing you can do

Bob Dylan wrote propaganda Songs. Well, most of them. My two favorite Dylan songs are cocaine fueled sha-la-las. The Man in Me and Sarah Jane. All of this Bob Dylan talk is seemingly inescapable, or maybe it is just my algorithm that has me trapped in a Dylan doom loop.

I will not watch the Chalamet/Dylan movie, not to be a contrarian, but because it is really just all kind of sad. Seriously, all music biopics are embarrassing. But it had me thinking. I’m not ready for the Springsteen one — Deliver Me From Nowhere, that hits this year.

Based on the recently released Warren Zanes book that recounts the most lusted after Springsteen era, post The River and pre-Born in the U.S.A. — when Bruce, most notably, went off the deep end — shunned the spotlight, and fell in love with the band Suicide. From there he retreated to a rented suburban home in Colts Neck, New Jersey to record the bleakest album ever put to tape, Nebraska.

It is fashionable to say Nebraska is your favorite Springsteen album. Truthfully, it’s how you spot a fraud. It is a perfect album, but it cannot be your favorite, although reportedly, it is Springsteen’s. But that tracks, it is the most direct and honest reflection in a period of intense longing.

Jeremy Allen White is going to be portraying Bruce Springsteen and it is inevitable, New Jersey will be the center of the universe once again. There is nothing you can do.

In other news:

We all need to party more.

I just read two Nabokov novels, Despair and Laughter in the Dark. Super entertaining, maybe the most stylish writer ever. I can’t get enough, 75 years late. That’s the breaks.

My second poetry collection Entrance to a Descent will be out in March, here are a few that did not make the final cut.

I am reading Butcher’s Crossing, and I am about to go Skiing. Wish me luck.

Go birds 🦅