The Philosophy of The Philosophy of Modern Song
Why Dylan's The Philosophy of Modern Song is a Tool for Killing Time
This June I was honored and delighted to participate in a panel on Bob Dylan’s recent book The Philosophy of Modern Song with esteemed Dylanologists Graley Herren and Laura Trechert for the World of Bob Dylan conference. As an academically-trained philosopher, it was only natural that I gave a presentation on “The Philosophy of The Philosophy of Modern Song” I had originally planned to discuss notions of authorship, responsibility, and accountability, but as what usually happens my eyes were bigger than my pen and while I was researching and writing the piece it developed into something slightly different, although those notions still came into play in a restricted sense. In my talk I argued that Dylan’s authorship in The Philosophy of Modern Song (hereafter PoMS) should be understood within the American pragmatist tradition, which emphasizes the practical consequences of how we think and talk. A pragmatist reading also places Dylan’s work alongside other American authors such as Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Richard Rorty, and William James, to name a few. In other words, I think the issue isn’t so much what Dylan is “saying” in PoMS but in what he is “doing” - and this challenges assumptions about the role and responsibility of the audience.
Critics found the work “baffling” and many objected to what Dylan either said in the book or what he didn’t say. The Guardian viewed the work as a playful blending of genres, while others such as The Los Angeles Times, objected to its misogynistic content and “pretentious” title (I do wonder if it is the first book with ‘philosophy’ in the title that includes the word ‘cunt’). The Slate review declared the book, “Brilliant, Nonsensical, and Misogynistic” while the New York Post found the work lacking due to the absence of female artists, references to his own songs, and lack of engagement with more recent genres such as rap. Notably, in addition to questionable observations about women and lawyers, some essays don’t even discuss the song in question, while others use the song merely as a starting point. There are also stream-of-consciousness “verses” prefacing many of the essays that are often written in the second-person, as well as a curated selection of images without any accompanying explanation. All in all, critics were in agreement that the book is “incoherent” and a “jumble”: there isn’t a clear organizational principle that unifies the essays and explains why certain songs (or images) are included while others are omitted.
In other words, PoMS challenges conventional assumptions about literary classification, coherence, and authorial intent. What exactly is Dylan trying to communicate or achieve? What should the audience takeaway from reading it? If it’s “philosophy” then ought it offer us insight into the fundamental truths regarding Modern Song? Viewed through conventional literary or philosophical criteria the book appears to be, at best, a minor work of philosophy, and at worst a failure, which would be injurious to Dylan’s reputation as a writer/wordsmith. After all, this is his first book since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature!
Critics, and perhaps the general public as well, appeared to treat PoMS as autobiographical, as communicating what Dylan “really” thinks or believes, or offering his “philosophy” of modern songs and songwriting. Of course, audiences were seemingly justified in treating Chronicles Vol. 1 as autobiographical, given the book was classified and promoted as an autobiography. According to literary conventions, an autobiography is testimonial - the author offers us truths about their experiences, beliefs, and/or values. Testimony is justified when it is true, when it accurately reflects the events or the author’s beliefs - “No honey, I was out late working in the office!” The revelation that passages in Chronicles Vol. 1 were appropriated lines pulled the testimonial rug out from under us. Consequently, this brought into question the classification of the book as well. But this essay isn’t about Chronicles (I have a series of essays on this here Substack that deal more extensively with Chronicles and the question of appropriation). Here it seems to be the fact that “philosophy” is in the title suggests that Dylan is going to offer his thoughts on what really makes a song, or melody, or whatever. However, it isn’t clear or obvious that “philosophy” is necessarily testimonial, either.
To wax metaphilosophical, it is an open question, and a topic of debate within academic philosophy itself, just what does or should “count” as philosophy. When a philosopher claims that a statue is “composed” of its clay, how do we evaluate this claim? We cannot “observe” the differences between “composition” and “constitution,” which causes some philosophers to diagnose debates regarding the relationship between a statue and its clay as “mere verbal disputes:” verbal disputes are actually pseudo-problems because they ultimately turn on how we use words, rather than anything substantial or “out there” in the world. This is all to say that what counts as “philosophy” isn’t given or agreed upon. Some so-called pragmatist philosophers, such as Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, or Carnap, take philosophy to be closer to poetry than scientific observation, which of course makes it harder to know how to assess or verify philosophical claims. Pragmatism is considered a (or perhaps the only) distinctly American philosophical tradition, and it is often associated with 19th century thinkers William James and C.S. Pierce. James and Pierce rejected the conventional philosophical model of truth, which is a property that holds between thoughts or words that accurately reflect or represent the non-linguistic world. For pragmatists, ‘truth’ was not a relation between words and the world, but a matter of usefulness. For James and Pierce, truth = useful, which means that the “truth” can change over time.
Contemporary “neopragmatists,” most notably Ludwig Wittgenstein, Richard Rorty, Amie Thomasson, and Robert Brandom are pluralists about language. Pluralists resist the identification of ‘truth’ with usefulness and argue instead that language serves multiple legitimate functions in addition to describing or representing non-linguistic reality (as well as a speaker’s mental states, beliefs, or values). Their pluralism is motivated in part by an emphasis on the practical upshots of our thought and talk. For example, parents will often tell a misbehaving child “if you keep making that face it will stick that way” this is not a description of a truth, but instead a way of using language to reinforce social norms about appropriate behavior. For pragmatists, what matters is the point or purpose of what we are saying, not merely its accuracy or inaccuracy. So, pragmatism comes in many flavors, but its unified in virtue of its emphasis on the practical.
Pragmatists are also pluralists about philosophy; philosophy is not so much a series of texts, truths, or theses, or even a set of questions. Instead, philosophy is a tool or better yet (like language), a collection of tools suited for different purposes. In some cases, philosophy is a tool to help us discover and extract bad assumptions or beliefs, for others its a tool to help us improve our psychological well-being, still others take philosophy to be inquiry into the fundamental features of reality, or to paraphrase Marx, not to merely explain the features of our social conditions but to change them. Wittgenstein characterized his own philosophy as a “ladder” that one ought to climb and then toss aside, an analogy borrowed from the Ancient Greek skeptic Pyrrho. To claim that a work is a ladder to climb and then toss it to suggest that the work is not to be digested or accepted as universal “truths” - but instead a tool we use to reach new and different heights. Now, I’m not suggesting that climbing a ladder to new heights means we find ourselves somewhere “better” than where we began, that’s to sneak truth back into the picture. Instead, think of “new” as “other” - to become something other than what we were before. So, perhaps the title of my essay is misleading, it’s not so much “the” philosophy of PoMS but “the philosophies” of PoMS.
Okay, so a pragmatist might reframe my earlier points about PoMS being treated as autobiography and ask instead: What is the point of an autobiography? Consider how (published) autobiographies are a type of public writing, which invokes the public/private distinction encountered in political discourse. For a statement (or set of statements) to be public entails one has the responsibility to defend or justify themselves to others - if I propose a public policy that affects members of my community, then I have a responsibility to justify or defend why that policy is in their best interests. This is a cornerstone of democracy: persuading you through reason rather than brute force or manipulation. The private realm does not entail the same set of obligations. Consider love. Love is a paradigmatic private emotion - I am not under any obligation to defend or justify to others why I love who I love. It would be mistaken to ask someone “justify to me why you love this person” (though at the same time, not having any reasons for loving someone also seems mistaken, but that’s a different issue). If autobiography is a public text, then it requires statements that can be justified for others, but this makes one’s inner thoughts (feelings, etc) public property. But, wouldn’t this amount to something like a public journal? Isn’t that a paradox?
he assumptions that PoMS is offering something testimonial, in addition to criticisms that the work is incoherent, remind me of criticisms against Mark Twain’s autobiographical works, specifically Life and The Autobiography of Mark Twain. Twain’s autobiography is incoherent and unconventional, especially for a work in the early 20th century. In fact, Twain’s Autobiographical works are notoriously “jumbled” : composed of fictional cases, excerpts from others’ works, from Twain’s other works, newspaper clippings, and the like. Twain is also, I argue elsewhere, a pluralist about language. He has an essay defending the “art of lying” where he criticizes so-called “truth mongers” who hold that the truth is a universal obligation, even when it is at the detriment of others’ well-being. Consider a so-called “white lie” - you ask if you look fat in that outfit, and while it’s true that the outfit is unflattering I say “you look great” because I don’t want to hurt your feelings at the fancy dinner. I lied in order to preserve your dignity (although of course a white lie could be done out of cowardice as well). A “truth monger” is someone who prioritizes the truth over others’ feelings. Twain’s autobiography was (and is) largely considered a failure. According to Lou Renza’s 1987 article ”Killing Time with Mark Twain's Autobiographies”, Twain’s autobiographies lack an “organizational principle” that lets the readers passively digest the text as a work of public writing (as representation of Twain’s private thoughts, experiences, and values). Twain was notoriously suspicious of confessional or testimonial works - he believed that it was a law of human psychology that we care about what others think of us, which influences what we are willing to express publicly. In other words, the promise of a public journal is impossible.
As Twain observes in the first volume of his Autobiography, “What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself...The mass of him is hidden - it and its volcanic fires that toss and boil, and never rest, night nor day. These are his life, and they are not written, and cannot be written.”
Likewise, Dylan once claimed that, “I want to write from inside me, and to do that I’m going to have to get back to writing like I used to when I was ten—having everything come out naturally. The way I like to write is for it to come out the way I walk or talk.”
Like Dylan, Twain’s autobiographical works appear to be a failure when evaluated by established literary criteria or conventions (e.g., they do not present events in chronological order, do not represent the past faithfully). However, according to Renza, Twain was self-conscious of the assumptions and demands of his audience (both present and future) and sought to produce a text that existed wholly in the present and thus as authentic. Twain’s use of “overexposed styles” functions to present an “obtrusive appearance” that “interferes with the reader's conventional demand for a representationally thematic autobiographical story of self-progression or regression” as well as offering a “stylistic exhibitionism” that invites the reader to “rationalize as a series of mere literary jokes.” Of course, Twain’s status as a humorist encourages audiences to adopt a self-conscious relation to the text – actively interpreting rather than passively digesting it as testimony (like jokes). Renza suggests that Twain’s presentism entailed a “principle of pleasure” one that facilitated a private relation to an otherwise public text. As such, Twain’s seemingly disorderly references constitute a a compositional praxis that functions as a forerunner to stream of consciousness prose. Sound familiar?
Ultimately, Twain’s maintains an authentic relation to his writing by producing works that distinguish themselves from the (American) literary mainstream. His autobiographical works thus exhibit a “pastoral” mode of representation, which replaces literary labor with that of play (the pleasure principle). As such, Renza claims that the point of the text is not to “discover” what Twain “really” thinks, but to “kill time” – in one sense through juxtaposing past and present with stream of consciousness prose which allows the text to avoid collapsing into (mere) historical testimony, and in another sense because its point from the perspective of the audience is to “kill time” rather than discover facts about Twain or Twain’s inner thoughts. To paraphrase yet another pragmatist philosopher, Richard Rorty, one ought to let the work “wash over you” rather than treat it as a series of observations or confessions. In his most systematic work, The Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche proposed a genealogy of the social role of the philosopher - a role that descended from religious ascetics or Sadhus. According to some religious scholars, the social role of the religious ascetic or Sadhu came about with the rise of mercantilism in Southeast Asia, where individuals did not have to directly contribute to society, and could “live off” the charity of others. So, the philosopher is the figure of leisure extraordinaire. As such, it seems fitting to consider the work both as a work of philosophy and as unified by the goal of killing time. One should read PoMS as a tool for “killing time” – as a form of literary play, a self-conscious “minor” literary (or philosophical) work that allows Dylan to operate in the pastoral mode of representation - thus maintaining a private relation to an otherwise public work.
Renza likens the pastoral mode of representation to a “fugitive” mode of writing, which is keeping in the spirit of Dylan as a public figure. As Dylan’s character fugitive cinematic figure Jack Fate muses at the end of Masked and Anonymous: “All of us in some way are trying to kill time. When it's all said and done, time ends up killing us.” I think PoMS operates as a self-conscious rebellion against the literary conventions which commodify and thus forge writing into a form of commodified labor, which is existentially alienating and creatively stifling. Readers will have a richer and more rewarding experience if they approach PoMS in terms of its practical implications, assumptions, and presuppositions – as doing multiple different things, rather than transmitting truths or representing what “Dylan really believes.” This is to suggest that audiences adopt a dynamic rather than static relationship to the work – that what matters is what we are doing with the text. In other words, the book, as philosophy, is a collection of tools rather than (merely) the transmission of truths.
Crucially, some of the same outlets that published criticisms of the book also published pieces that dealt with the point of the image on the cover - but they then abandoned this approach when engaging with its inner content. Perhaps this is in part due to the nature of language versus images… Regardless, it isn’t impossible that we can “do” things with the text beyond treating it as a public journal. For example, my esteemed panelists Graley and Laura serve as exemplars of this pluralist and pragmatic - using the book as a tool to explore issues of authorship, the music industry, gender, and the nature of literary traditions, more broadly. In the end, what we take from PoMS is what we bring to it, which is what philosophy is all about.
(part two of the reply..)
"I had just heard the song New Morning on the playback and thought it had come out pretty good. New Morning might make a good title, I thought and then said it to Johnston. "Man, you were reading my mind. That'll put 'em in the palm of your hand—they'll have to take one of them mind-training courses that you do while you sleep to get the meaning of that". Exactly. And I would have to take one of them mind-training courses to know what Johnston meant by what he just said."
I thought this an interesting 'recollection' .. of course as reading it, I wouldn't think it's even likely this scene happened, if Bob Johnston said this (and Bob would recall that), more what Bob is doing by saying this (maybe a version of the exchange did happen), either way I find it interesting that it is in the book. To me it seems like truths hidden within shadows, and then even just after this, he seems to refer to what he has just done with in the same paragraph. Just further down he says that he did have a book in relation to this type of thing, and
"I thought that the book might help me to continue freeze-framing my image, help me in learning how to suggest only shadows of my possible self."
I suppose part of my enjoyment of reading the book, is the glimpses of something I relate to who Bob Dylan is, lines here and there. Sometimes I sense that he is saying the opposite of how he is, sometimes not. Just opening the book now, the first chapter I turn to. Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood.
"This is a song of crossed wires and false ideas."
I suppose one thing about reading the book, I was barely considering the songs whilst reading the chapters. I'm not sure I even considered the chapters to be 'about' the songs. Each chapter is different though. I sense that some added in later. Some added after the idea of the 'Philosophy' title.
Jesse James. Outlaw.
Certain chapters seem to closer to the John Trudell chapter that I wrote about a few days ago. Truckin'. His words on The Grateful Dead. The words about Townes Van Zandt.
From the 'I've Always Been Crazy' chapter
"Sometimes songs show up in disguise. A love song can hide all sorts of other emotions, like anger and resentment. Songs can sound happy and contain a deep abyss of sadness, and some of the saddest sounding songs can have deep wells of joy at their heart"
Parts like this come here and there in the book. There is chapter where he speaks of people who 'study' music compared to listening to it and 'feeling' it. Which in a way is referring to the the idea of having a book about the 'philosophy' of songs. I think this links to something I wrote a recently about the 'audiobook' of the book, coming out at the same time, all the different people reading the chapters, Bob reading the more 'strange' parts. This is unusual. I think it says something about how Bob Dylan sees the book. The book, with all the photographs in, almost seems like an 'accompaniment' to the audio release of the work.
Sometimes a book shows up in disguise?
When you said, "..in one sense through juxtaposing past and present .."
This reminded me of the last lines of the book
"Though we seldom consider it, music is built in time as surely a sculptor or welder works in physical space. Music transcends time by living within it, just as reincarnation allows us to transcend life by living it again and again."
and at the start of that chapter,
"I feel like I've already written about this song before. But that's understandable because "Where or When" dances around the outskirts of our memory, drawing us with images of the familiar being repeated and beguiling us with lives not yet lived."
To me it seems like the book is referring to itself in ways within the book. The idea of there being a 'philosophy of modern song'. Related to this, I like what you said about, "So, perhaps the title of my essay is misleading, it’s not so much “the” philosophy of PoMS but “the philosophies” of PoMS. "
I also liked the last line of your essay.
nm.
(part one of the reply..)
I found your essay really interesting to read. Many parts reflected some ideas that I would partly sense sometimes, without explaining — how I would read something, and how others might read something, but how you lay them down here, It definitely gives me a sense that I am glad that I read your words. Towards the end you mention the 'fugitive' way of of writing, rebellion, washing over (mentioned earlier) ~ watching the river flow — I also found interesting the links that you made to Mark Twain "Sought to produce a text that existed wholly in the present and thus as authentic." There is an interview with Bob where he is speaking about writing Chronicles Volume One, compared to writing a song. I found that interesting, and reading parts of your essay reminded me of this. He speaks of carrying a song with him, in full, or a sense of it, and then he would go into the studio. With a book like Chronicles, he would have to keep 'going back' to see what he had written previously, which was something that didn't like to do.
Recently I posted a few words on one of the chapters that I recorded my self reading last Autumn.
(https://nightlymoth.substack.com/p/doesnt-hurt-anymore-john-trudell)
I mentioned briefly why I think I had a sense of why that is what I wanted to do. I think part of that is related to how I saw the book, the way I would look at it, but I suppose many of this aspects would happen 'quickly' and just be 'natural' .. But I find it interesting to read something written by an academically-trained philosopher, and relating these to some of these half visions glanced here and there. The reference to a 'ladder', taking me in some way to a different place, to then from that place make something new myself, might link to how I would hear a song, and read this book, or even how I first read Chronicles.
Your last line, "In the end, what we take from PoMS is what we bring to it, which is what philosophy is all about." .. and also earlier when you mentioned discussions of what counts as 'philosophy' — I was glad to read this, as in the few words that I put up recently, after briefly explaining my recording of chapters, I typed a little more about how I see the book ~ the descriptions are a little odd, I suppose, but it's the best I could do. I typed out more initially, and then took it out, as I really wanted the piece to be more about how I saw the chapter 'standing alone', not the book as a whole. The parts I took out, included my brief mention of 'what is 'philosophy'?', without any background into the academic side of this, what has been said by others, the definitions. How others might 'expect' something with that in the title. How of course Bob knows this. I also linked this to his choice of album titles previously, 'Self Portrait' in particular, his Nobel Prize for Literature, his first book since then (I noticed reading back, that you referred to that), a sense of this being a wry nod to that possibly .. (this links to the way I would see the book.. when I first saw the title, the cover). I then found myself looking up if there is a 'Nobel Prize for Philosophy', and read about one philosopher receiving the one for literature, but turning it down. At this point I took that segment out, as the piece was really just about this particular chapter.
I will get to the little part I wrote about how I would 'see' the book, how it seems related some of the aspects of your essay here, but just up there I typed the word 'odd', and it reminded me of something else in your essay (Oh, by the way, it's really great that you went to that conference) —
"Consider love. Love is a paradigmatic private emotion - I am not under any obligation to defend or justify to others why I love who I love. It would be mistaken to ask someone “justify to me why you love this person” (though at the same time, not having any reasons for loving someone also seems mistaken, but that’s a different issue). "
Reminded me of the line from I'll Keep It With Mine,
"I can't help it, if you might think I am odd, if I say I'm loving you, not for what you are, but what you're not"
https://youtu.be/R40kA5uIVNM
I typed this,
"If I received each of these chapters on notepaper, under the door, inside a strange envelope from who knows where — I opened them, read them, one by one … well this is how I read the book. I think. Something like that anyway. "
I recall I wrote this late at night, and to me this made sense. The next morning I read it back, I suppose reading it in a way with a sense of how others might read it, and it seemed like it would likely not be too clear to some people.
I also wrote,
"I suppose I read each chapter in a way similar to how I would listen to a song. Maybe that is linked to why I recorded these. A way find the music inside the lines. Inside the rain. I hold these lines in my hand, and ask you to defy it."
This reminded me of you saying that he once said, “I want to write from inside me.. "
"Nobody feels any pain / Tonight as I stand inside the rain"
.. and from the same song, which a line that I somehow haven't taken much note of, until now,
"It was raining from the first / And I was dying there of thirst / So I came in here"
Either way, my mention of receiving each chapter after sundown, under the door — I’ll hear your footsteps, you won’t have to knock ... Led me to the idea about this selection of chapters being written, and at a later point in time, being placed inside a book titled 'The Philosophy of Modern Song'
.. The idea I had of how 'others' might begin reading with the idea, the expectation of 'philosophy', a clear lay out of what he is doing here, conclusions drawn upon the wall (Does anyone with any sense of Bob Dylan really expect that? I haven't read any reviews of the book, and made sure I didn't read anything before the book was released, avoided any posts on Bob Dylan forums, and have tended to avoid what others were saying. I was enjoying the book, and that type of thing changes things, when you read all these other peoples ideas.. when you haven't read the book yourself, and read it at different times, when you are different yourself. I suppose I am similar with albums, prefer to listen without knowing what others have been saying. Either way, was it around 1976, The Rolling Thunder film, in a telephone interview, Bob says something like, 'Anyone who expects anything from me at this point must be insane'
Anyway, I mentioned I could imagine some people maybe quickly reading the shorter, note like parts, flicking through, looking for the 'philosophy', the 'meanings', ..and on writing this I considered that I had never strived to even consider what philosophy is, a defintion, other than it could mean a lot of different things.. (I didn't have a set idea what a book with that in the title would be.. even before I get onto the other factors, it being a book by Bob Dylan), so I was interested to see your mentions of this here in your essay, you said that certain philosophers,
"..take philosophy to be closer to poetry than scientific observation, which of course makes it harder to know how to assess or verify philosophical claims."
I did have a sense that in modern times many people might 'over use' the word 'philosophy'. "My philosophy for making toast" and so on. I have noticed this, and I would tend to not use the word. I would rarely, if ever say, 'my philosophy is ..' (I suppose I have an idea of something being philosophical in nature. To me Leonard the Blackbird oftentimes seems quite philosophical..), and yet I have got nothing against 'philosophy' or to read what 'philosophers' are writing, although I think you referred to it in your essay, more about philosophy being a tool, the ladder, whether a 'better' rung or not
".. May you build a ladder to the stars / And climb on every rung " (Or iron folk art monkey bars)
.. about doing something, using something. Going back to the 'use' of the word 'philosophy' .. I sense that Bob would have a similar sense of the word. Have you ever heard him speak of the philosophy of his songs? Can you imagine if an interviewer over the years asked him about to describe the philosophy of this or that. "Why do you right the songs?" . . "Because I want to" .. So to me, when I see the book is titled this way, I get a sense that this isn't of course like one of these modern day phrases .. the over use of the word philosophy. (This is possibly even partly a nod to that). This is Bob Dylan. Although of course maybe something changed. Who knows. I recall in Chronicles Volume One, there is a part where he is discussing and album title. Possibly New Morning. Either he, or the person suggests it, and either Bob or the other person says... (actually I will just get the exact quote, as I think it links quite lot to my theory about the title)