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From: [e-mail] (Michael Rapp)
Newsgroups: rec.music.dylan
Subject: Desirer liner notes by Allen Ginsberg
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Date: 22 Dec 93 12:13:22 GMT
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This is the essay Allen Ginsberg wrote on the inside sleeve of Desire. I've
fairly carefully proof-read this and what may appear to be typographical
errors (such as sentences starting with lower-case letters, upper-case
letters in the middle of words, words without spaces between them, etc.)
are exactly the way it was originally written. Because my text editor can't
underline words, the only change I've made from the original text is to
indicate underlined words by enclosing them in asterisks. As with most of
Ginsberg's writing, this sounds better if read aloud:



                                SONGS OF REDEMPTION


*Hurricane*, the only innocent Hurricane. protest song: Pro (in favor) -
Attest (testify for) the character case of Boxer Mr. Carter framed on bum
rap Passaic County N.J. whom Dylan minstrel visited in jail. Doctor Poet
W.C. Williams dying nearby said "A new world is only a new mind." & spent
life redeeming pure NorthJersey language so later poets could sing "tough
iron metal" talk rhymes
             "They want to put his ass in stir
     They want to pin this triple mur-
            der on him
    ...He coulda been the champion of the
            wooorld-"
& end plain as day
            "Shame!
    to live in a land where Justice is a game!"
so every Patterson kid will know News furthermore that
    "Rubin sits like Buddha in a 10 foot cell."
Big daily Announcement. song'll hit the streets
Supreme Courts'll have coughed & weeped.
Rubin Carter sprung pray God if there's One in America - familiar harmonica
pierces ears that just heard about
    "criminals in their coats & ties..."
    Old bards & Minstrels rhymed their years' news on pilgrimage road -
Visitations town to town singing Kings' shepherds' cowboys' & lawyers'
secrets - Good Citizen Minstrel truth's instantaneously heard. Big Sound in
conscious generations. Local newsboy-prophet song echoes old youthful
idealistic William ZanZinger poem. amplified alive. 1975. Dead protest?
Woody Guthrie lineage road bard'll still make us weep where there's
suffering to be sung.
    Dylan's Redemption Songs! If he can do it we can do it. America can do it.
"It's all right Ma I can make it." Yes! with tough gold metal compassion.
he's giving away Gold again - but remember. good Anarchists. "To live
outside the Law you must be honest." Drunken aggressive beer bottles'll
never redeem anybody - But clear conscious song can. every syllable
pronounced. every consonant sneered out with lips risen over teeth to
pronounce them exactly to a T in microphone. snarled out NOT for bummer ego
put-down but instead for egoless enunciation of exact phrasings so everyone
can hear intelligence - which is only your own heart Dear.
    *Isis* here recorded. the singer later developed onstage sung for weeks
whiteface, big grey hat stuck with November leaves & flowers - no
instrument in  hand. thin Chaplinesque body dancing to syllables sustained
by Rolling Thunder band rhythm following Dylan's spontaneous ritards &
talk-like mouthings for clarity. "It's only *natchural*." So you can *hear*
it! With two-part dialogue! Big discovery. these songs are the culmination
of Poetry-music as dreamt of in the 50's & early 60's - poests
reciting-chanting with instruments and bongos - Steady rhythm behind the
elastic language. poet alone at microphone reciting-singing surreal-history
love text ending in giant "YEAH!" when minstrel gives his heart away & says
he wants to stay. Dylan will stay here with us! "You may not see me
tomorrow." So he now lets loose his long-vowel yowls & yawps over
smalltowns' antennaed rooftops, To Isis Moon Lady Language Creator Birth
Godess. Mother of Ra. Saraswati & Kali-Matoo. Hecate. Ea.
Astarte. Sophia & Aphrodite. Divine. Mother.
    Oh *Sister*. who's he talking about? Eternal sister? Good citizen sisters.
he's still tender friend - lost alone loved like a thin terrified guru by
every seeker in America who's heard that long-vowelled voice in heroic
ectasy triumphant. "How does it feel?" And now come down from that Mountain
of Sound. singing like a Biblical mortal
           "Oh sister am I not a brother to you
    And one deserving of affection?
    And is our purpose not the same on this Earth
    To love and follow his direction?
                                             ....
    We grew up together from the cradle to the grave
                                             ....
    Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore.
    You may not see me tomorrow."
    Follows the first City Narrative. solid facts beating foreward with drums
& violins - like a jagged short story. ballad sung by hero making hero of
unlikely sensitive gangster Gallo. hard iron metal Villonesque stoicism &
sympathy, with long lamenting refrain over name anonymous in 25 years
*Joey*. with dialogue movie panoramoc cold suns over Brooklyn - and your
inside news the papers didn't interpret for the murdered outlaw.
    *Black Diamond Bay*'s also a short novel in verse. oldfashioned Dylan
surrealist mind-jump inventions line by line. except D. says he's reading
Joseph Conrad storyteller. so hear continuous succession of Panama Hat
Necktie details,exploding boilers & characters disappearing in tornados -
Suddenly a big dissolve & you're sitting with minstrel Dylan in L.A.
household watching the same poem Cronkited on TV news: bard sings the awful
movie where everybody loses & what can you say? My father age 80 also bowed
his head & said, "What can you do?" under his breath. Interesting, this
long real-life spy hallucination tale opening the mind - suddenly put back
into the Samsara tube with a cynic lament. it's hopelessness - the
condition of World on its own bummer. not ours or Dylan's - we're only 25%
responsible the Crazy Wisdom Lama says.
    By the time Dylan made the great disillusioned national rhyme *Idiot Wind*
    "... Blowing like a circle round your skull
    From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol..."
he must've been ready for another surge of unafraid prophetic feeling - odd
weeks seeking community he'd gone back to Other End Bleeker Street music
house & jammed & drunk with ancient friend song improvisor Bob Neuwirth &
also anonymous genius street studio guitarists drummers violin prodigies
Rob Stoner, Howie Wyeth & Botticelli-faced little David Mansfield from New
Jersey - stopped his red car in East Village for ravenhaired Scarlet Rivera
walking with her violin case - giant adolescent T-Bone Burnett materialized
from Texas. Steven Soles from Blues New York - Half-month was spent
solitary on Long Island with theatrist Jacques Levy working on song facts
phrases & rhymes. sharing information seriousness - Lots of high rhythmic
art. like the fast Mexican 11 syllables beginning *Durango* "Hot Chili
Peppers in the blistering sun" masterpieces emerged - Song became conscious
poetry. the best you can say in total rhythm. allowing for mother's
radiotalk. allowing for the singer to open his whole body for Inspiration
to breathe out a long mad vowel to nail down the word into everyone's heart
- That's where you get the funny syncopation - waiting to pronounce the
line just right as the music marches by. free. hopeless. jumping in and out
the fatal chords. "We not make it through the night."
    "But he's still like an electric bullet." the Buddhist boy said. where's
the great slowdown tenderness where everyone knows where Dylan's at under
his minstrel Hat? Two songs his own heart-life sings alone. total. *One
More Cup of Coffee for the Road* - voice lifts in Hebraic cantillation
never heard before in U.S. song. ancient blood singing - a new age, a new
Dylan again redeemed. at ease - A little bit like America now. not paranoid
any more. it's the real Seventies - (every generation-decade flowers in the
middle. Poetry Renaissance 1955. Peace Vietnam Berkeley 1965) - for now the
congregation of poets sings across the land with new old soul-joy. shit
burned out. ego recognized & allow'd its place. pleasure-lust put aside
with suicidal pain. heart stilled & singing clear. cantillating like
synagogue cantor. "'fore I go down to the Valley below."
    How far has he gone? All the way from scared solitude inner prophetics -
building on that mind-honesty strangeness - to openhearted personal
historical confession. As *Coffee for Road*'s Semitic mode. *Sara*. is
profound ancient tune revealing family paradigm - telling Wife & World the
last secrets of solitary weeping art:
    "Staying up for days in the Chelsea Hotel
     Writing Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowland for you"
Who woulda thought he'd say it. so everybody'd finally know him. same soul
crying vulnerable caught in a body we all are? - enough Person revealed to
make Whitman's whole nation weep. And behind it all the vast lone space of
NoGod. or God. mindful conscious compassion. lifetime awareness. we're here
in America at last. redeemed. O Generation. keep on working!

__________________

Allen Ginsberg
Co-Director Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics
Naropa Institute
York Harbor, Maine
10 November 19750