Shadows in the Afternoon

This article was published at expectingrain.com on July 26, 2021.

I sat in one of my favourite Los Angeles haunts a couple of days ago as the shadows lengthened and drew me towards the evening. Speaking of shadows, I’ve been thinking about many things but Shadow Kingdom which I watched in the middle of the usual chaos of Sunday afternoon has been sitting centre stage. Somehow the topsy turviness seemed fitting for such an occasion. Crazy enough to be preparing to watch His Bobness from the jumble of my living room, crazier still to be about to view a live stream, which we already knew was pre-recorded from a venerable artist whom one had presumed was above such antics. 

As the black mirror of the screen shattered into the shapes and sounds of the master and his musicians, my heart fell slightly when I saw that neither Tony nor Charlie, not any of the dearly familiar guys from the Never Ending Tour were present. Nonetheless, I was instantly blown away into a long ago world of smoke and shadows. The advertising had promised an intimate setting and it was true to its word. A small smoky dive bar that was anyone’s dream venue to watch Mr Dylan perform manifested on the screen. But of course nothing here was as it seemed. As I watched the opening song, When I Paint My Masterpiece, it became clear that by some stroke of magic the fleeting essence of a vanishing America was in the room. It’s the power that Bob often conjures in his songs. The audience were obviously actors and so we were instantly in the realm of metatheatre. I grinned inwardly as I realised the man of many masks was up to his usual Jack of Hearts trickery.

Jack of Hearts or the Roving Gambler he may be but as I’ve said before when commenting on his visual art, if there’s one thing you can say about this conjuror of our modern age it is that his love for the land of his birth runs deep, straight and true. In his Kingdom of Shadows it was the audience who were the medium through which he showed us this affection, this affinity, this communion. It’s as though he can synthesise the spirits of the tough men and women whose sweat, blood and tears built this wild land which was and is ruled over by gangsters. As with the land, so with the human fabric of this nation. Bob sees the tracks of the tears of all who have laboured and died in this vast place; he bears witness to them all.

The women wore stylised outfits, cigarettes were smoking throughout the performance and the males in the audience ranged from wise guys to hard working men. In some ways, the audience gave the anchor to the entire endeavour, whether they were in the shot or not. Their sturdily silent presence, world weary, a little indifferent, the women aloof, seductive at times but never stooping to outright flirtation allowed Dylan and his band to take to the stage as shape shifters, players of old if you will. On the breath of the silent viewers I could hear the chain gang on the highway, the cracking of the whip, I could smell the sweet magnolia of the plantations and I could see the slavery ships. And I remember now those lyrics which always make me sigh with tears at the compassion on display

‘Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song

Bout a funny ol’ world that’s a-comin’ along

Seems sick an’ it’s hungry, it’s tired an it’s torn,

It looks like it’s a-dyin an it’s hardly been born’ (Song to Woody)

While he stands in a lineage of modernist poets, Bob is far more than that. Due to his longevity and faithfulness he has become part of the very material of this world of America. He is able to summon its essence with his fingertips and channel all of its colours through the media of song and painting. And I suddenly think of the Greek tragedy Ajax by Sophocles and of how those Homeric warriors often became protectors of their territory after death and were worshipped as such by the local people. Bob sings for all of us who come with the dust and will be gone with the wind. As the smoke drifted through each person, and as the masked players mimed and the maestro switched jackets I reeled with the intensity of the magic show on display.

In the centre of such a world of shifting smokiness Dylan delivered some of the most beautiful renditions of a select number of his songs that I can remember. Mimed they might have been but wasn’t that exactly the point? Bob turned and gave answer to those who want live streaming, a medium entirely incapable of conveying anything of power. How could anyone have thought that this hero of the road, who understands exactly what is happening in a concert hall would deliver anything close to such a thing? Instead we were given a performance within a performance, a play within a play, mimed, masked and recorded months earlier. In the midst of making such a clear point Bob took an unfamiliar situation and created something beautiful, with deep meaning.

I deliberately chose to only watch Kingdom of Shadows once. I was mesmerised by What Was It You Wanted, a song which has haunted me ever since I first heard it on vinyl. Every nuance of uncertainty, suspicion and pain were captured and brought forth as if Bob was carving an ice sculpture before us. Tombstone Blues, delivered almost as if a poem, was fascinating, exploding all of my assumptions about this song and bringing it firmly out of the Highway 61 album landscape and depositing it somewhere else entirely. And finally, if I’m picking three I would turn my attention to Forever Young. It was sung with such poignancy and kind conviction that I wonder now if it was his farewell to all of us who love him. If that proves to be the case then Mr Dylan, it’s been one beautiful ride.

Image from the series ‘Koku’ courtesy of Ed Heckerman