(December 9, 2023)
Video Transcript:
So this is piggy backing off of my other recording about how I want Bob to basically write smut.
But like, Bob style smut. Because it’s hot and I want more.
But here’s my thing.
If you know about that super mega freaking creepy (in my opinion) letter that Bob apparently wrote to Joan Baez’s mother…
I think it was really just to Joan Baez under the guise of being to her mother…
Because that’s even more warped and sick and twisted in that context because of what it said.
And I’m sure you can find this letter online, it was in Joan Baez’s book, “And a Voice to Sing With.”
It was just like… sooo creepy though. Like, not hot. Just creepy.
And one of the reasons I wanna talk about this is, first of all…
When Bob gives us smut? Please, Bob, don’t do it like that. Cuz that’s not cool.
What perplexes me about Bob is the writing style.
I get that Bob came up in the days of typewriters, it wasn’t computers, it wasn’t on the internet.
The typewriter is kind of like an instrument in and of itself.
And in that way I can see how somebody might develop multiple writing styles, almost like different characters.
But I noticed the Joan Baez letter was all lowercase, terrible punctuation and grammar, almost like Bob was writing in a certain voice. Like a character.
It was also kind of like the same way that “Tarantula” was written.
And my mind is just flooding, rivulets of thought up in here.
Fuckin’ Tarantula, I’ve gotta make an entire recording about Tarantula because…
Well do I even need to explain why Tarantula deserves its own recording?
So that was like a massive troll, Bob was clearly trolling with that, but here’s what bothers me…
Again with the ghostwriting theory…
What if Tarantula and the Joan Baez letter…
The lowercase clusterfuck writings, what if those are the REAL Bob Dylan?
And all of the lyrics and books, what if those really were ghostwritten and the real Bob Dylan is Tarantula?
Is that not a terrifying thought?
Cuz I mean, think about it…
Back in the ’60s at the beginning of his career, there were pictures of him with typewriters.
He was on typewriters in various scenes in the documentaries, so we know he was writing something, but…
What if he was just tormentedly pounding out Tarantula in those pictures?
What if that’s what he was writing? Where are the pictures of Bob Dylan writing throughout the years?
If you’re that prolific, you’d think you’d have a typewriter connected at the hip or something.
Somebody who is supposedly as prolific as Bob Dylan has been…
You would think there would be a bunch of pictures throughout the decades of Bob writing stuff.
Like writing on napkins and stationery, writing with typewriters…
Like what the hell does Bob write on? Is Bob writing?
And this man. The freaking enigma of Bob Dylan is endless.
There’s Chronicles Vol. 1, Philosophy of Modern Song…
It just seems like Bob has all of these different voices and it’s unusual.
I theorize it has to do with typewriters basically being an instrument…
There wasn’t a screen, your device wasn’t connected to the internet to open up a world of distractions.
You were alone with a blank page and mechanical keys, and you had to reach into your imagination and come up with things.
Maybe he exhibits all of these different writing styles because of the era he came up in.
Typically people only have one writing style. Especially in the era of the internet.
You can recognize people by their writing styles even if they try to change it up…
If you’re observant and skilled enough, you can recognize people through the written word.
You can still sense the person behind the writings, or at least I can.
That’s one thing I find really interesting about Bob.
He seems capable of writing in all these different voices…
But then again, books are typically proofread and edited, maybe the rough drafts look a lot different than when they’re published.
Maybe it all starts out looking like Tarantula before the editors get at it.
Like I was talking about with the liner notes of “World Gone Wrong”…
Those are not completely perfect on a punctuation/grammatical level.
I think that’s a little closer to what Bob Dylan’s writing is actually like.
In PhMoSo, the punctuation is very interesting, sometimes there are almost run-on sentences.
I can relate to some of those oddities because I write in the same way.
Whoever edits Bob’s books seems to keep some of these elements intact…
Which I really appreciate, I really like that a lot. It’s a quirk.
I write a lot and I have certain ways of doing things. My usage of punctuation is not by the books.
I’m aware of that and I know how to do it the right way, I just don’t care.
To me, it’s stylistic… it’s art, it’s a mode of self expression.
This is the way it looks good to me.
And that’s why I write that way.
I’m just curious about what Bob’s rough-drafts look like…
How cleaned up are the end products that we see?
