life is but a joke

Most of yesterday I spent surrounded by a sharp white sea of academic spume: papers, books, reports flowing over every available surface. Occasionally I would reach for one, wonder why it was in my hand, squint at the tiny type and big words, and grope at its (over-)intellectualisations, before taking to gazing out the window. And as my gaze drifted, I wondered why I couldn’t be doing some sort of job where I got paid just to kind of sit about looking out the window wondering about things without having to try to understand random strangers’ turgid abstractions of the world and be required to spew something equally incomprehensible back out at my contemporaries. In other words, yesterday was a day where I wondered whether I can or want to spend the rest of my working life doing this academic thing. Maybe I could become an ice-cream seller? I remember someone once saying that the ice-cream van business was a good and uncomplicated affair: someone gives you money and you give them something that makes them smile and walk away happy. What could be better than that? I imagine a world where everyone is an ice-cream seller and there is no more war or suffering or pain or disease or religious conflict. We are all tolerant of one another’s different preferences and lifestyle choices – I’m an Orange Fruitie man (or Callippo otherwise), that you are a Mr Whippy is not a threat to my world-view, and that’s the way it should be.
After several pointless bouts of such navel gazing, in the evening we went to Cardiff to see one of the finest and most important song-writers and poets of all human history, Bob Dylan, in concert. It was indeed a privilege to hear this epoch-defining man singing some of the greatest songs ever: he did Rainy Day Women, Like A Rolling Stone (best one of the evening), Tangled Up In Blue, All Along The Watchtower, Blowin In The Wind, Mr Tambourine Man and possibly one or two other classics that have slipped my mind. For me, when he was playing his harmonica was when I felt the ‘real’ Bob Dylan was there (rather than the actual real Bob Dylan); it made the hairs stand up, meant a lot, type of thing.
On the other hand, there was something perhaps a little weird about going to see one of the most important and finest song-writers and poets of all human history, where what you actually get is a man in a big white hat mainly mumbling and creaking incoherently into a microphone that is not even facing the audience, the existence of whom he appears to have very little awareness. Such is Bob Dylan live. In fact, some of even his classics were performed so oddly that you often had to make guesses about whether you knew them, and hope that a glimpse of a lyric told you you were on the right lines. (hmmmnum-mm-mmm-dur-nurm tamboureeeeen mmmnn hurmmm hee urm hurr mmm.) He kind of talk-sings these days, shouting out each line (not necessarily in the original order) with a kind of exaggerated raised pitch and emphasis at the end. I chewed it over anyway, wondering why, when he is more established than pretty much any living musician, he still keeps touring – apart from saying ‘thanks, friends’ near the end we might as well not have been there – but in the end I decided that actually the fact the performances and tours don’t seem in any way a mega-star’s ego-trip was actually really quite heartening, and I like Bob Dylan even more for it. He must want to perform and be pleased people come to see him, he just does it in his own quiet way. Well done Bob.
This evening ran 6.75 miles in an hour. Was nearly sick. Made fajitas and put so much chilli in the salsa that Anne was nearly sick. HHHHooooeeeuuurrrghhhhh.
Decided to change the name of my blog to a Bob aphorism. Far better than some stupid made-up pretentious word.