Showing posts with label genius. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genius. Show all posts
Sunday, October 14, 2018
Thursday, December 1, 2016
Monday, October 17, 2016
Einstein disguised as Robin Hood: or, why Dylan is a freaking genius
They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row.
Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning,
"You belong to Me I Believe."
And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend
You'd better leave."
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row.
Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortune-telling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row.
Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah's great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row.
Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
NOW, he looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
You would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row.
Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They ARE trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She's in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy on His Soul"
They all play on the penny whistle
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row.
Across the street they've nailed the curtains
They're getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
In a perfect image of a priest
They are spoon-feeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls
"Get outta here if you don't know"
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row.
At midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row.
Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
Everybody's shouting
"Which side are you on?"
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row.
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
About the time the door knob broke
When you asked me how I was doing
Or was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row.
They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
Here Dylan immediately establishes a macabre atmosphere of heartless exploitation. Human execution has become the subject of postcards, a cheap and superficial means of communicating usually associated with vacations. Passports are similarly associated with travel (being "transported") and escape, a theme running through the entire lyric. That the passports are painted brown means that they are blurred, defaced, shat upon, or otherwise rendered invalid. Might it also be a weird twist on "painting the town red'?
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
The sailors swarming the beauty parlour might be there to ogle women, or to become them, transforming themselves in garish drag. It's our first hint of a sense of dislocation: no one seems to be in the right place. "The circus is in town" is a familiar cliche (and let's not forget he grew up in a small town, in which the circus was a very big deal), which Dylan turns on its head: this motley parade will lead us to a hellish place from which there is no escape.
Here comes the blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
It's worth mentioning that "they" are never identified. I remember hearing someone say, "They've shot John Lennon." Facelessness and blank masks and constantly-shifting identities inflame the lyric's rampant paranoia. The "blind commissioner" is some sort of deposed authority figure reduced to dragging along helplessly behind a circus performer walking a tightrope, while simultaneously masturbating.
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row.
The police are out there and looking for trouble, hoping for a good riot. Like juvenile delinquents, they're hanging around waiting for something to happen. Desolation Row seems forever on the point of exploding in apocalyptic violence. "They need somewhere to go" speaks of a lost traveller, one of the many figures in this song who is dislocated and "a stranger everywhere". "Lady and I" adds a sudden incongruous but very Dylanesque romanticism: or is it Our Lady, Mother of God that he speaks of?
Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
Cinderella portrayed as good-time girl is remeniscent of a line from an Auden poem: "And Jill goes down on her back." Bette Davis gives her a touch of old Hollywood glamour, but we can see her posturing as if her body is for sale. And hey, how about that line "it takes one to know one"? Just what is she implying about the songwriter - has he similarly sold himself to the public - or does it have nothing to do with him?
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning,
"You belong to me I believe."
And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend
You'd better leave."
Enter Romeo, stage left. But doesn't he belong with Juliet? Apparently not, but he doesn't belong here either. "Someone", that notorious "they", is telling him to leave. Wrong play, perhaps? And doesn't Romeo end up dead? Whereas Cinderella ends up transformed. In a manner of speaking. And who is the "someone" telling Romeo to get lost? Some stray Prince who's just as much out of place?
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row.
"Ambulances" implies twenty-nine harrowing violent movie scenes that we never get to see because we don't have to - it's all condensed down into a couple of lines, a few sirens wailing (and after the fact - they've already gone). "Something" has happened, but we're never told what. Cinderella is like the fairy tale in reverse: she ends up sweeping the street, back to her rags and tatters, and tricks.
Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortune-telling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
Dylan does this, he suddenly and dramatically varies the tone so that the lyric is shot through with beauty. The fortune-telling lady is a magical, almost paranormal figure, her palm-readings and Tarot cards (more about that later) predicting a future that seems, at best, uncertain. But it's so late, so dark, so spooky out that even she has to protect her wares.
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
Impenetrable lines, but they inexplicably work, like all genius does: Biblical references pop up constantly in Dylan's writing, so Cain slew Abel, perhaps raising Cain in the process, and the hunchback is just another grotesque soul seeking "sanctuary". And the next two lines are Dylanisms just as surely as "he not busy being born is busy dying". They seem to say: choose life/Eros, or choose dullness and the conventional life with its boring expectations, where everything is "right as rain". Or is this really about Noah's flood and its inevitable culling of the sinful?
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row.
Another Biblical reference, but a sardonic one: the figure whose name is synonymous with selfless help and even personal risk is now reduced to just another performer, donning the motley for the "show". And Biblically, the Samaritan was at the bottom of the heap socially, almost an untouchable, which is what gave Jesus' parable such punch.
Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
This is a strange one, but then, the characters on Desolation Row just get stranger. Unlike Cinderella who turns tricks, Ophelia goes crazy while Hamlet seduces his mother. And 'neath the window - is that some sort of weird inversion of Romeo and Juliet? (By the way, what DID happen to Romeo?) This is someone who has apparently died before she even had a chance to live.
To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
"Lifelessness is the Great Enemy & always wears a hip guard—he is very hipguard," Dylan wrote in Tarantula, and if you can figure THAT out, you've nailed these lines. The iron vest sounds like medieval torture, or else kinky. This whole poem/song is about the sin of lifelessness or, perhaps, the deathwardness of the eternal Show. "Her profession's her religion" is a little too opaque for me to fathom, as her profession isn't the same as Cinderella's.
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah's great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row.
Ah, Bob! You know more about the Bible than the average monk or Catholic priest. "Expecting rain" may well be a reference to the Great Flood, but here the flood is over and the rainbow has appeared. "Peeking into" means that Ophelia has been cast out and has to "peek in", as in some great existential peep show. Funny that both she and Romeo stand beneath windows, on the outside looking in.
Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
You can try to pull this apart or leave it alone, but it pulls apart like a wishbone and spills weirdness like a cornucopia.
Einstein, being the ultimate enigmatic genius, is headed for the carnival dressed up like Robin Hood, some sort of ancient folk hero who fires arrows, robs from the rich and gives to the poor. But he's already gone, folks, he passed this way an hour ago and you missed him. Memories in a trunk - another version of the iron vest, the lifelessness of self-suffocation? And why is his friend so jealous, and of what (and why is he a monk? Maybe it just scanned, we don't know.)
Now, he looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
This implies some sort of hobo in disguise, a fraud, somebody who gets off on sniffing sewer gas or else is a kind of health inspector. Reciting the alphabet implies childishness, or the failure of the greatest mind in human history.
You would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row.
Interesting that Einstein really was a quite gifted violinist. That line "famous long ago", three little words, Bobby, you really can spit them out, became the title of a book, and everybody knew where the title came from, it was just self-explanatory. The author of e=mc2 is now nothing but a musician standing on a street corner in a neighborhood which might be called degraded.
Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They are trying to blow it up
This stanza really chills me. It is past grotesque: it's harrowing. Who the fuck is this Dr. Filth, why are his patients (like Ophelia) so sexless? Where is the riot squad when you need them? Is the leather cup sort of like Baudelaire's image of a woman's vagina (so stomach-turning I can't reproduce it here)? For surely the literate Dylan would have read Baudelaire. And it's obvious that sexlessness is next to lifelessness.
Now his nurse, some local loser
She's in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy on His Soul"
There are those who would say this is Joan Baez, the great unnamed saint of the Row. Even Joan Baez thought it was Joan Baez. Calling her "some local loser" (and what in fuck's name is a "cyanide hole"? That's quite possibly the worst thing I ever heard of) seems harsh, but then come those two impossibly tender lines, which Baez quoted in Daybreak as "I also keep the cards that read have mercy on his soul". She might also be the same person as the fortune-telling lady taking all her things inside (because it might rain?). In the song She Belongs to Me, which as usual might be about Baez or might be about his first wife Sara Lowndes, Dylan portrays a lady full of mystical power ("she can take the dark out of the nighttime and paint the daytime black").
They all play on the penny whistle
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row.
"Blow" could be taken a couple of ways. Sexual? A drug reference? Or just "blow"? Pennywhistles imply innocence, childhood, and being too poor to afford a real instrument. Pennywhistles are irritating, shrill and unmusical. It's also never clear whether we are ON Desolation Row, looking INTO Desolation Row, or trying to get the hell OUT of Desolation Row. Dylan's camera darts all over the place.
Across the street they've nailed the curtains
They're getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
In a perfect image of a priest
Who is whom here, and whom is who he appears to be? No one. The curtains are already nailed up for this ghastly dumbshow (and remember how in old gangster movies they say "it's curtains for you"?) Nailed-up curtains certainly aren't fancy and won't open and close like normal ones. They're crude, and - nailed in place like so many of the crippled characters. But it is also, as in the Catholic Church, a feast day, a holy celebration. And thus the Phantom, some sort of spiritual kin to the aforementioned Hunchback of Notre Dame, is wrapping himself in priestly raiment. Enough clergy here to start a monastery.
They are spoon-feeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
The cast of this thing grows ever bigger, and each character is somehow laden. Spoon-feeding Casanova might allude to cooking heroin, or it might not. It might allude to feeding a baby, or it might not. He is traditionally a legendary lover and seducer. There's a weird take on sexuality in the song, of exploitation (the blind commissioner whacking off, Cinderella selling herself, Ophelia in her kinky iron maiden) and the uglifying of something that should be beautiful, even sacred. (Dylan is nothing if not a romantic.) And we're back to that amorphous, vaguely disturbing "they". Whoever they are, they are not too damn friendly.
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls
"Get outta here if you don't know"
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row.
If Romeo has been cast out, if he's in the wrong place, my friend, then surely Casanova is going to be out on his ass soon. The skinny girls are - what? Models? The Andy Warhol crowd Dylan hung out with? I wonder if this whole thing isn't about being tossed out of Eden, except that this is nobody's idea of the garden. Or if Casanova really is a heroin addict, perhaps the law has caught up with him?
At midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Here we get into the most delicious paranoia, a macabre vision straight out of a sweating, gasping film noir/spy movie. Who ARE these people - part of the unnamed "they"? Agents of WHAT? And I love that line "come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do". Are these people - "everyone" - really smarter? Or do they just carrying a burden of subversive, secret knowledge?
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row.
The heart-attack machine is the most sadistic thing I have ever heard of: not a defibrillator, but the opposite, something that GIVES you a heart attack. And then the kerosene. . . This is like "after the ambulances go", a couple of words slamming us against the wall. No mention of a fire or of someone starting a fire, but we don't need that, we already know. Insurance men in their dull facelessness seem to foreshadow the infamous, soulless figure, Mr. Jones, the epitome of the "establishment'. And let's not get into "escaping to", it's just too convoluted.
Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
Everybody's shouting
"Which side are you on?"
Nero is the one who fiddled while Rome burned. The Titanic is a mite obvious, but like all of this bizarre imagery, it works. "Everybody" is "nobody" and could be anybody, and the question they're shouting, "which side are you on?", is one Dylan heard and had to try to answer or ignore for his whole life. And is no doubt still dealing with. (What do the lyrics mean?)
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
This seems like a blatant contrast of intellectual elitism with simple, life-loving joy, not so much a mockery as a dismissal of violence and hate: so that yes, even in this song there is some sort of breath of hope. I see the fishermen and calypso singers all jumbled in with the mysterious ugly horrific vivid incendiary images of the song as in a Picasso painting, where everything is happening at once. But if you really want to dig (man), the singers do the same thing Bob does, and the fishermen echo Jesus' famous words, "I will make you fishers of men." Holding flowers is either a hippie thing, or a garden thing, take your choice.
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row.
Unlike Ballad of a Thin Man, this song does have unexpected beauty strewn through it. Is Desolation Row a choice, a punishment, a purgatory leading on to greater glory, or to eternal damnation? Is it just the bizarre baffling imagery of a genius on acid who hadn't slept in about 45 days? We know it is compelling, and hard to get away from. But it's not over yet. As with all great works of music, there is a coda.
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
About the time the door knob broke
When you asked me how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
I am virtually certain, though I cannot provide proof, that he chose "broke" to rhyme with "joke". But then, a broken doorknob does imply not being able to get in or out. "Was that some kind of joke?" dismisses all possibility that the asker even cares, or only cares in order to get something. The question has a sardonic Positively Fourth Street feel to it. What's it to you? You got a lotta nerve.
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Thus does the artist casually create and destroy his own universe, so that all the characters come out looking like versions of himself. As for "give them all another name", remember his nickname in high school was Zimbo. The old saw "all the characters are really me" is even more of a stretch than what I'm doing here.
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters, no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row.
It's well-known that Bob really can't read very well, he's always been blind as the proverbial fruit bat, so maybe this is one line we can take literally. Don't forget "here comes the blind commissioner/They've got him in a trance." But "don't send me no more letters, no" means he's cutting himself off from contact with people. And - oh, this is a good one! - what was in the very first line of this thing? POSTCARDS. But typical of Dylan, they aren't sending postcards, but selling them. So the old saw "I'll send you a postcard" becomes, sardonically, "I'll sell you a postcard."
Bob Dylan's masterpiece, if that's what this is, reflects his profound ambivalence about the vertiginous and devouring carnival of fame, his own fame in particular: he lied about working in carnivals as a boy, then found himself IN one, magnetically attracting a horde of sycophants, sociopaths and losers.
But which character IS he, anyway? The most likely contender, in my mind (and this is MY essay, so I can surmise if I want to) is Einstein disguised as Robin Hood: genius in the guise of folk hero. Costumed poseur, lost troubadour shifting from identity to identity, the figure comes closer than any of the others to a self-portrait of the most unlikely Nobel winner in the history of the prize, that enigmatic gift to the world, Bob Dylan.
They're painting the passports brown
Here Dylan immediately establishes a macabre atmosphere of heartless exploitation. Human execution has become the subject of postcards, a cheap and superficial means of communicating usually associated with vacations. Passports are similarly associated with travel (being "transported") and escape, a theme running through the entire lyric. That the passports are painted brown means that they are blurred, defaced, shat upon, or otherwise rendered invalid. Might it also be a weird twist on "painting the town red'?
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
The sailors swarming the beauty parlour might be there to ogle women, or to become them, transforming themselves in garish drag. It's our first hint of a sense of dislocation: no one seems to be in the right place. "The circus is in town" is a familiar cliche (and let's not forget he grew up in a small town, in which the circus was a very big deal), which Dylan turns on its head: this motley parade will lead us to a hellish place from which there is no escape.
Here comes the blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
It's worth mentioning that "they" are never identified. I remember hearing someone say, "They've shot John Lennon." Facelessness and blank masks and constantly-shifting identities inflame the lyric's rampant paranoia. The "blind commissioner" is some sort of deposed authority figure reduced to dragging along helplessly behind a circus performer walking a tightrope, while simultaneously masturbating.
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row.
The police are out there and looking for trouble, hoping for a good riot. Like juvenile delinquents, they're hanging around waiting for something to happen. Desolation Row seems forever on the point of exploding in apocalyptic violence. "They need somewhere to go" speaks of a lost traveller, one of the many figures in this song who is dislocated and "a stranger everywhere". "Lady and I" adds a sudden incongruous but very Dylanesque romanticism: or is it Our Lady, Mother of God that he speaks of?
Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
Cinderella portrayed as good-time girl is remeniscent of a line from an Auden poem: "And Jill goes down on her back." Bette Davis gives her a touch of old Hollywood glamour, but we can see her posturing as if her body is for sale. And hey, how about that line "it takes one to know one"? Just what is she implying about the songwriter - has he similarly sold himself to the public - or does it have nothing to do with him?
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning,
"You belong to me I believe."
And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend
You'd better leave."
Enter Romeo, stage left. But doesn't he belong with Juliet? Apparently not, but he doesn't belong here either. "Someone", that notorious "they", is telling him to leave. Wrong play, perhaps? And doesn't Romeo end up dead? Whereas Cinderella ends up transformed. In a manner of speaking. And who is the "someone" telling Romeo to get lost? Some stray Prince who's just as much out of place?
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row.
"Ambulances" implies twenty-nine harrowing violent movie scenes that we never get to see because we don't have to - it's all condensed down into a couple of lines, a few sirens wailing (and after the fact - they've already gone). "Something" has happened, but we're never told what. Cinderella is like the fairy tale in reverse: she ends up sweeping the street, back to her rags and tatters, and tricks.
Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortune-telling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
Dylan does this, he suddenly and dramatically varies the tone so that the lyric is shot through with beauty. The fortune-telling lady is a magical, almost paranormal figure, her palm-readings and Tarot cards (more about that later) predicting a future that seems, at best, uncertain. But it's so late, so dark, so spooky out that even she has to protect her wares.
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
Impenetrable lines, but they inexplicably work, like all genius does: Biblical references pop up constantly in Dylan's writing, so Cain slew Abel, perhaps raising Cain in the process, and the hunchback is just another grotesque soul seeking "sanctuary". And the next two lines are Dylanisms just as surely as "he not busy being born is busy dying". They seem to say: choose life/Eros, or choose dullness and the conventional life with its boring expectations, where everything is "right as rain". Or is this really about Noah's flood and its inevitable culling of the sinful?
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row.
Another Biblical reference, but a sardonic one: the figure whose name is synonymous with selfless help and even personal risk is now reduced to just another performer, donning the motley for the "show". And Biblically, the Samaritan was at the bottom of the heap socially, almost an untouchable, which is what gave Jesus' parable such punch.
Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
This is a strange one, but then, the characters on Desolation Row just get stranger. Unlike Cinderella who turns tricks, Ophelia goes crazy while Hamlet seduces his mother. And 'neath the window - is that some sort of weird inversion of Romeo and Juliet? (By the way, what DID happen to Romeo?) This is someone who has apparently died before she even had a chance to live.
To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
"Lifelessness is the Great Enemy & always wears a hip guard—he is very hipguard," Dylan wrote in Tarantula, and if you can figure THAT out, you've nailed these lines. The iron vest sounds like medieval torture, or else kinky. This whole poem/song is about the sin of lifelessness or, perhaps, the deathwardness of the eternal Show. "Her profession's her religion" is a little too opaque for me to fathom, as her profession isn't the same as Cinderella's.
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah's great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row.
Ah, Bob! You know more about the Bible than the average monk or Catholic priest. "Expecting rain" may well be a reference to the Great Flood, but here the flood is over and the rainbow has appeared. "Peeking into" means that Ophelia has been cast out and has to "peek in", as in some great existential peep show. Funny that both she and Romeo stand beneath windows, on the outside looking in.
Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
You can try to pull this apart or leave it alone, but it pulls apart like a wishbone and spills weirdness like a cornucopia.
Einstein, being the ultimate enigmatic genius, is headed for the carnival dressed up like Robin Hood, some sort of ancient folk hero who fires arrows, robs from the rich and gives to the poor. But he's already gone, folks, he passed this way an hour ago and you missed him. Memories in a trunk - another version of the iron vest, the lifelessness of self-suffocation? And why is his friend so jealous, and of what (and why is he a monk? Maybe it just scanned, we don't know.)
Now, he looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
This implies some sort of hobo in disguise, a fraud, somebody who gets off on sniffing sewer gas or else is a kind of health inspector. Reciting the alphabet implies childishness, or the failure of the greatest mind in human history.
You would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row.
Interesting that Einstein really was a quite gifted violinist. That line "famous long ago", three little words, Bobby, you really can spit them out, became the title of a book, and everybody knew where the title came from, it was just self-explanatory. The author of e=mc2 is now nothing but a musician standing on a street corner in a neighborhood which might be called degraded.
Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They are trying to blow it up
This stanza really chills me. It is past grotesque: it's harrowing. Who the fuck is this Dr. Filth, why are his patients (like Ophelia) so sexless? Where is the riot squad when you need them? Is the leather cup sort of like Baudelaire's image of a woman's vagina (so stomach-turning I can't reproduce it here)? For surely the literate Dylan would have read Baudelaire. And it's obvious that sexlessness is next to lifelessness.
Now his nurse, some local loser
She's in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy on His Soul"
There are those who would say this is Joan Baez, the great unnamed saint of the Row. Even Joan Baez thought it was Joan Baez. Calling her "some local loser" (and what in fuck's name is a "cyanide hole"? That's quite possibly the worst thing I ever heard of) seems harsh, but then come those two impossibly tender lines, which Baez quoted in Daybreak as "I also keep the cards that read have mercy on his soul". She might also be the same person as the fortune-telling lady taking all her things inside (because it might rain?). In the song She Belongs to Me, which as usual might be about Baez or might be about his first wife Sara Lowndes, Dylan portrays a lady full of mystical power ("she can take the dark out of the nighttime and paint the daytime black").
They all play on the penny whistle
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row.
"Blow" could be taken a couple of ways. Sexual? A drug reference? Or just "blow"? Pennywhistles imply innocence, childhood, and being too poor to afford a real instrument. Pennywhistles are irritating, shrill and unmusical. It's also never clear whether we are ON Desolation Row, looking INTO Desolation Row, or trying to get the hell OUT of Desolation Row. Dylan's camera darts all over the place.
Across the street they've nailed the curtains
They're getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
In a perfect image of a priest
Who is whom here, and whom is who he appears to be? No one. The curtains are already nailed up for this ghastly dumbshow (and remember how in old gangster movies they say "it's curtains for you"?) Nailed-up curtains certainly aren't fancy and won't open and close like normal ones. They're crude, and - nailed in place like so many of the crippled characters. But it is also, as in the Catholic Church, a feast day, a holy celebration. And thus the Phantom, some sort of spiritual kin to the aforementioned Hunchback of Notre Dame, is wrapping himself in priestly raiment. Enough clergy here to start a monastery.
They are spoon-feeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
The cast of this thing grows ever bigger, and each character is somehow laden. Spoon-feeding Casanova might allude to cooking heroin, or it might not. It might allude to feeding a baby, or it might not. He is traditionally a legendary lover and seducer. There's a weird take on sexuality in the song, of exploitation (the blind commissioner whacking off, Cinderella selling herself, Ophelia in her kinky iron maiden) and the uglifying of something that should be beautiful, even sacred. (Dylan is nothing if not a romantic.) And we're back to that amorphous, vaguely disturbing "they". Whoever they are, they are not too damn friendly.
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls
"Get outta here if you don't know"
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row.
If Romeo has been cast out, if he's in the wrong place, my friend, then surely Casanova is going to be out on his ass soon. The skinny girls are - what? Models? The Andy Warhol crowd Dylan hung out with? I wonder if this whole thing isn't about being tossed out of Eden, except that this is nobody's idea of the garden. Or if Casanova really is a heroin addict, perhaps the law has caught up with him?
At midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Here we get into the most delicious paranoia, a macabre vision straight out of a sweating, gasping film noir/spy movie. Who ARE these people - part of the unnamed "they"? Agents of WHAT? And I love that line "come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do". Are these people - "everyone" - really smarter? Or do they just carrying a burden of subversive, secret knowledge?
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row.
The heart-attack machine is the most sadistic thing I have ever heard of: not a defibrillator, but the opposite, something that GIVES you a heart attack. And then the kerosene. . . This is like "after the ambulances go", a couple of words slamming us against the wall. No mention of a fire or of someone starting a fire, but we don't need that, we already know. Insurance men in their dull facelessness seem to foreshadow the infamous, soulless figure, Mr. Jones, the epitome of the "establishment'. And let's not get into "escaping to", it's just too convoluted.
Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
Everybody's shouting
"Which side are you on?"
Nero is the one who fiddled while Rome burned. The Titanic is a mite obvious, but like all of this bizarre imagery, it works. "Everybody" is "nobody" and could be anybody, and the question they're shouting, "which side are you on?", is one Dylan heard and had to try to answer or ignore for his whole life. And is no doubt still dealing with. (What do the lyrics mean?)
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
This seems like a blatant contrast of intellectual elitism with simple, life-loving joy, not so much a mockery as a dismissal of violence and hate: so that yes, even in this song there is some sort of breath of hope. I see the fishermen and calypso singers all jumbled in with the mysterious ugly horrific vivid incendiary images of the song as in a Picasso painting, where everything is happening at once. But if you really want to dig (man), the singers do the same thing Bob does, and the fishermen echo Jesus' famous words, "I will make you fishers of men." Holding flowers is either a hippie thing, or a garden thing, take your choice.
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row.
Unlike Ballad of a Thin Man, this song does have unexpected beauty strewn through it. Is Desolation Row a choice, a punishment, a purgatory leading on to greater glory, or to eternal damnation? Is it just the bizarre baffling imagery of a genius on acid who hadn't slept in about 45 days? We know it is compelling, and hard to get away from. But it's not over yet. As with all great works of music, there is a coda.
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
About the time the door knob broke
When you asked me how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
I am virtually certain, though I cannot provide proof, that he chose "broke" to rhyme with "joke". But then, a broken doorknob does imply not being able to get in or out. "Was that some kind of joke?" dismisses all possibility that the asker even cares, or only cares in order to get something. The question has a sardonic Positively Fourth Street feel to it. What's it to you? You got a lotta nerve.
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Thus does the artist casually create and destroy his own universe, so that all the characters come out looking like versions of himself. As for "give them all another name", remember his nickname in high school was Zimbo. The old saw "all the characters are really me" is even more of a stretch than what I'm doing here.
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters, no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row.
It's well-known that Bob really can't read very well, he's always been blind as the proverbial fruit bat, so maybe this is one line we can take literally. Don't forget "here comes the blind commissioner/They've got him in a trance." But "don't send me no more letters, no" means he's cutting himself off from contact with people. And - oh, this is a good one! - what was in the very first line of this thing? POSTCARDS. But typical of Dylan, they aren't sending postcards, but selling them. So the old saw "I'll send you a postcard" becomes, sardonically, "I'll sell you a postcard."
Bob Dylan's masterpiece, if that's what this is, reflects his profound ambivalence about the vertiginous and devouring carnival of fame, his own fame in particular: he lied about working in carnivals as a boy, then found himself IN one, magnetically attracting a horde of sycophants, sociopaths and losers.
But which character IS he, anyway? The most likely contender, in my mind (and this is MY essay, so I can surmise if I want to) is Einstein disguised as Robin Hood: genius in the guise of folk hero. Costumed poseur, lost troubadour shifting from identity to identity, the figure comes closer than any of the others to a self-portrait of the most unlikely Nobel winner in the history of the prize, that enigmatic gift to the world, Bob Dylan.
Saturday, October 15, 2016
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Up in smoke: what happened to George Gershwin?
George #1: dredged out of rare archival footage, in turn dredged up by documentarians. Here we see the godlike, melancholy Gershwin portraits come to life. The guy looks like Basil Rathbone on the surface of things. The pipe, the regal bearing. I assume he's either courtside or At Home, or at the home of some bigwig like Schoenberg.
George #2. This one reveals so much: the godlike creature casually stretching, the playfully rough character grabbing the neck of some poor unfortunate female (who doesn't look too happy about it), the jauntily histrionic piano-playing with whoever-it-is. Not Oscar Levant, we know that much.
When you keep seeing the same 10 or 15 seconds played over and over again, it either drives you crazy or helps you see more and more in these tiny moments, these gestures, the setting of what looks like director's chairs in front of a massive, flat-trimmed hedge. This really happened, it did, and it spins on your hand, a few seconds of reality played over and over as no one ever dreamed it could be.
George #3. This might be Schoenberg, but then again, I think S. was older than this at the time (early '30s?). Whoever it is, they're playing piano four hands, and goofing around facing the camera like little kids.
George #4. The long and lanky man with the bearing of royalty Walks Out on the Patio, jerks a treat away from the dog, unfolds a chaise.
George #5, my least-favorite, but perhaps the most revealing. When the dog, which he has already deprived of a treat, won't jump up on the chaise with him (reminding me of Hitler's cowering Blondi), he jerks it up forcefully by the scruff as it resists him with a flinch. I am reminded of a magician yanking a rabbit out of a hat.
George #6: again, in slow, and fade to black.
Given how world-famous he was, why don't we have more archival footage of Gershwin performing? The last gif (below) of GG racing through I Got Rhythm and bowing like a jerky puppet was all I found, and it was described as "extremely rare". He lived until 1938, for God's sake. This wasn't the Stone Age. By that time Oscar Levant (usually seen as a much lesser light) had a solid career as a composer and pianist, and had already written a book and appeared in a couple of movies. Where was George?
And after that, a fade to nothingness. A brain tumour carried him off, horribly, at age 37. His life sprang wildly out of shape, his behaviour became crazed, he smeared chocolate all over himself (though he was surely not the first - or last - to do that; it was just that no one expected George Gershwin to do it. My theory is that he was making himself up in blackface, and missed.)
His sister-in-law Lee Gershwin had a hate on for George, and as he fell out of his chair in restaurants and endured agonizing headaches, she pushed him away in disgust, banishing him from friends and family. It was all psychosomatic, you see, a result of the strain of being a Great Composer. Never did anyone think to look under the hood, where a golf-ball-sized malignant tumor was destroying his temporal lobe. By the time they looked, it was too late, there was nothing they could do. His temperature shot up to 106.5 degrees, and he soon died, going up in flame hotter than the fires of his genius.
I have only barely begun to touch Gershwin, though like most afficionados I used to think I knew him pretty well. I am becoming fascinated now (oh boy, look out, here comes another obsession that will take up a couple dozen posts!) as I wait for a bio I ordered from Amazon. Not the 900-page one - I'm waiting to see if the shorter one whets my appetite for more, or puts me off. I bogged down in two massive Twain biographies when it all got to be too much.
I always felt GG was snobby, cool, asexual, full of himself, if vital and driven and full of energy. The music always struck me as a bit crazy, and sometimes excruciatingly beautiful. It was as if the composer and the rest of George were two beings. His death was just plain godawfully horrible, no one deserves to die like that, exiled even from one's own mind. So what was going on there, were things just burning too hot to carry on in in any state of health?
More will be revealed.
APPENDA (UM, IX). I remembered a story from maybe 40 years ago, when my brother Walt, a professional musician, told it to me. At the time I thought, oh, this is what musicians talk about around the water cooler or at the bar or wherever. But it's a damn good story, and as usual I wondered if I dreamed it. I looked it up, and, yes, here it is! I found several versions of it (in fact I just deleted one that stunk), but I like this one best, embedded in a story in the Wall Street Journal. There are various versions, of course - and sometimes the teller is actually in the car with Gershwin, or even driving it. If it never happened, then perhaps it should have.
Not F. Scott Fitzgerald but George Gershwin may have been the reigning figure of the Jazz Age. Gershwin holding forth at the piano at parties in Manhattan, everyone gathered around as if by magnetic force—these scenes were among the symbolic tableaux of the 1920s. Samuel Behrman, the playwright and memoirist, described his reaction when he first heard Gershwin at one such party: "I felt on the instant, when he sat down to play, the newness, the humor, above all the great heady surf of vitality. The room became freshly oxygenated; everybody felt it, everybody breathed it."
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
How not to do a search (or find anything)
Listen, I was just trying to find something on a site called, I think, SilentComedyMafia.com. So I thought I'd see what they had on Harold Lloyd. Their system seemed designed to help me NOT find ANYTHING EVER. I have no idea what a wildcard is. I will never look up this site again.
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The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words: harold lloyd.
You must specify at least one word to search for. Each word must consist of at least 3 characters and must not contain more than 14 characters excluding wildcards.
SEARCH QUERY
Search for keywords:
Place + in front of a word which must be found and - in front of a word which must not be found. Put a list of words separated by | into brackets if only one of the words must be found. Use * as a wildcard for partial matches.
Search for all terms or use query as entered
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(Oh-but-there's-more. There's always more. Poking a little deeper into the site, I found just ONE page of about 15 pages of regulations you must follow before even looking at the site, let alone posting a message. Don't read this, please - I use it only as an example of how a web site can drive you into the woods before you even use it.)
SILENTCOMEDYMAFIA.COM WEBSITE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF USE
Last Updated: July 2009
PLEASE READ THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF USE CAREFULLY. BY ACCESSING OR USING THIS WEBSITE, YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS DESCRIBED HEREIN AND BY ALL TERMS, POLICIES AND GUIDELINES INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO ALL OF THESE TERMS, DO NOT USE THIS WEBSITE.
These terms and conditions of use ("Site Terms") apply to your use of this website (the "Site"). By using this Site, you represent and warrant that you are lawfully able to accept these Site Terms.
Ownership of the Site and its Contents
This Site is owned by SilentComedyMafia.com (SCM). Unless otherwise indicated, all of the content featured or displayed on this Site, including, but not limited to, text, graphics, data, photographic images, moving images, sound, illustrations, software, and the selection and arrangement thereof, is owned by SilentComedyMafia.com, its members, or its third-party associates.
All elements of the Site, including the SCM name and logo, are protected by copyright, trademark and other laws relating to the protection of intellectual property.
Use of the Site
This Site is intended for members and associates of The Silent Comedy Mafia. You may not use this Site or the content for any purpose without the express written permission of SCM administration and / or the posting author. You are specifically prohibited from: (a) downloading, copying, or re-transmitting any or all of the Site, data or the content, for any non-educational use, without written license or agreement with SCM or the posting member; (b) using the Site or the content other than for its intended purpose. Such unauthorized use may also violate applicable laws including without limitation copyright and trademark laws, the laws of privacy and publicity, and applicable communications regulations and statutes.
You represent and warrant that you will comply with all applicable laws and regulations, including, without limitation, those relating to the Internet, data, e-mail, privacy, and the transmission of technical data exported from the United States or the country in which you reside.
Copyright Infringement Policy
In accordance with applicable laws, SCM has adopted a policy of terminating, in appropriate circumstances and at SCM's sole discretion, account holders who infringe the intellectual property rights of SCM or any third party.
Copyright Complaints
If you believe that any material on the Site infringes upon any copyright that you own or control, you may file a notification of such infringement with "SCM Admin" via this board.
We may give notice of a claim of copyright infringement by means of a general notice on the Site, electronic mail to a user's e-mail address, or by written communication sent to a user's address.
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The Site may include discussion forums or other interactive areas or services, including blogs, chat rooms, bulletin boards, message board or other areas or services in which you or third parties create, post or store any content, messages, comments, materials or other items on the Site ("Interactive Areas"). You are solely responsible for your use of such Interactive Areas and use them at your own risk. By using any Interactive Areas, you agree not to post, upload, transmit, distribute, store, create or otherwise publish through the Site any of the following:
a. Any message, comment, data, information, text, music, sound, photos, graphics or other material ("User Content") that is unlawful, libelous, defamatory, obscene, harassing, threatening, fraudulent or otherwise objectionable;
b. User Content that would constitute, encourage or provide instructions for a criminal offense, violate the rights of any party, or that would otherwise create liability or violate any local, state, national or international law.
c. User Content that may infringe any trademark, copyright or other intellectual property or contract right of any party. By posting any User Content, you represent and warrant that you have the lawful right to transmit, distribute and reproduce such User Content.
SCM takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any User Content posted, stored or uploaded by you or any third party, or for any loss or damage thereto, nor is SCM liable for any mistakes, defamation, slander, libel, omissions, falsehoods, obscenity, or profanity you may encounter. Your use of Interactive Areas is at your own risk. As a provider of interactive services, SCM is not liable for any statements, representations or User Content provided by its users in any public forum or other Interactive Area. Although SCM has no obligation to screen, edit or monitor any of the User Content posted in any Interactive Area, SCM reserves the right, and has absolute discretion, to remove, screen or edit any User Content posted or stored on the Site at any time and for any reason without notice. You are solely responsible for creating backup copies of and replacing any User Content you post or store on the Site at your sole cost and expense. Any use of the Interactive Areas or other portions of the Site in violation of the foregoing violates these Site Terms and may result in, among other things, termination or suspension of your rights to use the Interactive Areas and/or the Site. You represent and warrant that (a) you own and control all of the rights to the User Content that you post or you otherwise have the right to post such User Content to the Site; (b) the User Content is accurate and not misleading; and (c) use and posting of the User Content you supply does not violate these Site Terms and will not violate any rights of or cause injury to any person or entity.
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You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless SCM, its members and associates against any claims, damages, costs, liabilities and expenses arising out of or related to any User Content that you post, store or otherwise transmit on or through the Site, your conduct, your use or inability to use the Site, your breach or alleged breach of the Site Terms or of any representation or warranty contained herein, your unauthorized use of the Content, or your violation of any rights of another.
Disclaimer
THIS SITE AND THE CONTENT ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND SCM AND ITS MEMBERS, ASSOCIATES, CONTENT PROVIDERS, AND AFFILIATES EXCLUDE, TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, ANY WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. SCM WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OF ANY KIND ARISING FROM THE USE OF THIS SITE OR THE CONTENT, OR THE UNAVAILABILITY OF THE SAME. THE FUNCTIONS EMBODIED ON OR IN THE MATERIALS OF THIS SITE ARE NOT WARRANTED TO BE UNINTERRUPTED OR WITHOUT ERROR. YOU, NOT SCM, ASSUME ALL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY OUTCOME DUE TO YOUR USE OF THIS SITE OR THE CONTENT.
Limitation of Liability
IN NO EVENT SHALL SCM, ITS MEMBERS, OR ASSOCIATES BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, OR ANY OTHER DAMAGES OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF USE, LOSS OF DATA OR OTHERWISE, ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH THE USE OF THE SITE, THE SERVICES, THE CONTENT OR THE MATERIALS CONTAINED IN OR ACCESSED THROUGH THE SITE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY DAMAGES CAUSED BY OR RESULTING FROM RELIANCE BY USER ON ANY INFORMATION OBTAINED FROM SCM, OR THAT RESULT FROM MISTAKES, OMISSIONS, INTERRUPTIONS, DELETION OF FILES OR EMAIL, ERRORS, DEFECTS, VIRUSES, DELAYS IN OPERATION OR TRANSMISSION OR ANY FAILURE OF PERFORMANCE, WHETHER OR NOT RESULTING FROM ACTS OF GOD, COMMUNICATIONS FAILURE, THEFT, DESTRUCTION OR UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO SCM RECORDS, PROGRAMS OR SERVICES. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AGGREGATE LIABILITY OF SCM EXCEED ANY COMPENSATION YOU PAY, IF ANY, TO SCM FOR ACCESS TO OR USE OF THE SITE.
Changes to Site Terms
SCM reserves the right to change any of the terms and conditions contained in the Site Terms or any policy or guideline of the Site, at any time and in its sole discretion. Any changes will be effective immediately upon posting on the Site. Your continued use of the Site following the posting of changes will constitute your acceptance of such changes.
© 2009 SilentComedyMafia.com. All rights reserved.SCM AdminSite Admin Posts: 3Joined: Sun May 17, 2009 4:05 pm
(Post-blahhhg thoughts: hmmmm, the word Mafia may apply here, in some obscure way. But I don't know how.)
Search for keywords:
Place + in front of a word which must be found and - in front of a word which must not be found. Put a list of words separated by | into brackets if only one of the words must be found. Use * as a wildcard for partial matches.
Search for all terms or use query as entered
Search for any terms
Search for author:
Use * as a wildcard for partial matches.
(Oh-but-there's-more. There's always more. Poking a little deeper into the site, I found just ONE page of about 15 pages of regulations you must follow before even looking at the site, let alone posting a message. Don't read this, please - I use it only as an example of how a web site can drive you into the woods before you even use it.)
SILENTCOMEDYMAFIA.COM WEBSITE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF USE
Last Updated: July 2009
PLEASE READ THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF USE CAREFULLY. BY ACCESSING OR USING THIS WEBSITE, YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS DESCRIBED HEREIN AND BY ALL TERMS, POLICIES AND GUIDELINES INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO ALL OF THESE TERMS, DO NOT USE THIS WEBSITE.
These terms and conditions of use ("Site Terms") apply to your use of this website (the "Site"). By using this Site, you represent and warrant that you are lawfully able to accept these Site Terms.
Ownership of the Site and its Contents
This Site is owned by SilentComedyMafia.com (SCM). Unless otherwise indicated, all of the content featured or displayed on this Site, including, but not limited to, text, graphics, data, photographic images, moving images, sound, illustrations, software, and the selection and arrangement thereof, is owned by SilentComedyMafia.com, its members, or its third-party associates.
All elements of the Site, including the SCM name and logo, are protected by copyright, trademark and other laws relating to the protection of intellectual property.
Use of the Site
This Site is intended for members and associates of The Silent Comedy Mafia. You may not use this Site or the content for any purpose without the express written permission of SCM administration and / or the posting author. You are specifically prohibited from: (a) downloading, copying, or re-transmitting any or all of the Site, data or the content, for any non-educational use, without written license or agreement with SCM or the posting member; (b) using the Site or the content other than for its intended purpose. Such unauthorized use may also violate applicable laws including without limitation copyright and trademark laws, the laws of privacy and publicity, and applicable communications regulations and statutes.
You represent and warrant that you will comply with all applicable laws and regulations, including, without limitation, those relating to the Internet, data, e-mail, privacy, and the transmission of technical data exported from the United States or the country in which you reside.
Copyright Infringement Policy
In accordance with applicable laws, SCM has adopted a policy of terminating, in appropriate circumstances and at SCM's sole discretion, account holders who infringe the intellectual property rights of SCM or any third party.
Copyright Complaints
If you believe that any material on the Site infringes upon any copyright that you own or control, you may file a notification of such infringement with "SCM Admin" via this board.
We may give notice of a claim of copyright infringement by means of a general notice on the Site, electronic mail to a user's e-mail address, or by written communication sent to a user's address.
Forums & Other Interactive Services or Areas
The Site may include discussion forums or other interactive areas or services, including blogs, chat rooms, bulletin boards, message board or other areas or services in which you or third parties create, post or store any content, messages, comments, materials or other items on the Site ("Interactive Areas"). You are solely responsible for your use of such Interactive Areas and use them at your own risk. By using any Interactive Areas, you agree not to post, upload, transmit, distribute, store, create or otherwise publish through the Site any of the following:
a. Any message, comment, data, information, text, music, sound, photos, graphics or other material ("User Content") that is unlawful, libelous, defamatory, obscene, harassing, threatening, fraudulent or otherwise objectionable;
b. User Content that would constitute, encourage or provide instructions for a criminal offense, violate the rights of any party, or that would otherwise create liability or violate any local, state, national or international law.
c. User Content that may infringe any trademark, copyright or other intellectual property or contract right of any party. By posting any User Content, you represent and warrant that you have the lawful right to transmit, distribute and reproduce such User Content.
SCM takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any User Content posted, stored or uploaded by you or any third party, or for any loss or damage thereto, nor is SCM liable for any mistakes, defamation, slander, libel, omissions, falsehoods, obscenity, or profanity you may encounter. Your use of Interactive Areas is at your own risk. As a provider of interactive services, SCM is not liable for any statements, representations or User Content provided by its users in any public forum or other Interactive Area. Although SCM has no obligation to screen, edit or monitor any of the User Content posted in any Interactive Area, SCM reserves the right, and has absolute discretion, to remove, screen or edit any User Content posted or stored on the Site at any time and for any reason without notice. You are solely responsible for creating backup copies of and replacing any User Content you post or store on the Site at your sole cost and expense. Any use of the Interactive Areas or other portions of the Site in violation of the foregoing violates these Site Terms and may result in, among other things, termination or suspension of your rights to use the Interactive Areas and/or the Site. You represent and warrant that (a) you own and control all of the rights to the User Content that you post or you otherwise have the right to post such User Content to the Site; (b) the User Content is accurate and not misleading; and (c) use and posting of the User Content you supply does not violate these Site Terms and will not violate any rights of or cause injury to any person or entity.
Indemnification
You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless SCM, its members and associates against any claims, damages, costs, liabilities and expenses arising out of or related to any User Content that you post, store or otherwise transmit on or through the Site, your conduct, your use or inability to use the Site, your breach or alleged breach of the Site Terms or of any representation or warranty contained herein, your unauthorized use of the Content, or your violation of any rights of another.
Disclaimer
THIS SITE AND THE CONTENT ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND SCM AND ITS MEMBERS, ASSOCIATES, CONTENT PROVIDERS, AND AFFILIATES EXCLUDE, TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, ANY WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. SCM WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OF ANY KIND ARISING FROM THE USE OF THIS SITE OR THE CONTENT, OR THE UNAVAILABILITY OF THE SAME. THE FUNCTIONS EMBODIED ON OR IN THE MATERIALS OF THIS SITE ARE NOT WARRANTED TO BE UNINTERRUPTED OR WITHOUT ERROR. YOU, NOT SCM, ASSUME ALL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY OUTCOME DUE TO YOUR USE OF THIS SITE OR THE CONTENT.
Limitation of Liability
IN NO EVENT SHALL SCM, ITS MEMBERS, OR ASSOCIATES BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, OR ANY OTHER DAMAGES OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF USE, LOSS OF DATA OR OTHERWISE, ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH THE USE OF THE SITE, THE SERVICES, THE CONTENT OR THE MATERIALS CONTAINED IN OR ACCESSED THROUGH THE SITE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY DAMAGES CAUSED BY OR RESULTING FROM RELIANCE BY USER ON ANY INFORMATION OBTAINED FROM SCM, OR THAT RESULT FROM MISTAKES, OMISSIONS, INTERRUPTIONS, DELETION OF FILES OR EMAIL, ERRORS, DEFECTS, VIRUSES, DELAYS IN OPERATION OR TRANSMISSION OR ANY FAILURE OF PERFORMANCE, WHETHER OR NOT RESULTING FROM ACTS OF GOD, COMMUNICATIONS FAILURE, THEFT, DESTRUCTION OR UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO SCM RECORDS, PROGRAMS OR SERVICES. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AGGREGATE LIABILITY OF SCM EXCEED ANY COMPENSATION YOU PAY, IF ANY, TO SCM FOR ACCESS TO OR USE OF THE SITE.
Changes to Site Terms
SCM reserves the right to change any of the terms and conditions contained in the Site Terms or any policy or guideline of the Site, at any time and in its sole discretion. Any changes will be effective immediately upon posting on the Site. Your continued use of the Site following the posting of changes will constitute your acceptance of such changes.
© 2009 SilentComedyMafia.com. All rights reserved.SCM AdminSite Admin Posts: 3Joined: Sun May 17, 2009 4:05 pm
(Post-blahhhg thoughts: hmmmm, the word Mafia may apply here, in some obscure way. But I don't know how.)
Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!
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