It doesn’t surprise me that some people would see it that way. But these are people that aren’t familiar with the Book of Acts…
Sure, my music is always speaking to times that are recent. But let’s not forget human nature isn’t bound to any specific time in history. And it always starts with that. My songs are personal music; they’re not communal. I wouldn’t want people singing along with me. It would sound funny. I’m not playing campfire meetings. I don’t remember anyone singing along with Elvis, or Carl Perkins, or Little Richard. The thing you have to do is make people feel their own emotions. A performer, if he’s doing what he’s supposed to do, doesn’t feel any emotion at all. It’s a certain kind of alchemy that a performer has..
[When you talk about] transfiguration, you mean it in the sense of being transformed? Or do you mean transmigration, when a soul passes into a different body?
Transmigration is not what we are talking about. This is something else. I had a motorcycle accident in 1966… Now, you can put this together any way you want. You can work on it any way you want. Transfiguration: You can go learn about it from the Catholic Church, you can learn about it in some old mystical books, but it’s a real concept. It’s happened throughout the ages. Nobody knows who it’s happened to, or why. But you get real proof of it here and there. It’s not like something you can dream up and think. It’s not like conjuring up a reality or like incarnation–or like when you might think you’re somebody from the past but have no proof. It’s not anything to do with the past or the future.
So when you ask some of your questions, you’re asking them to a person who’s long dead. You’re asking them to a person that doesn’t exist. But people make that mistake about me all the time…
So live performance is a purpose you find fulfilling?
If you’re not fulfilled in other ways, performing can never make you happy. Performing is something you have to learn how to do. You do it, you get better at it and you keep going. And if you don’t get better at it, you have to give it up. Is it a fulfilling way of life? Well, what kind of way of life is fulfilling? No kind of life is fulfilling if your soul hasn’t been redeemed…
You said that you originally wanted to make a more religious album this time–can you tell me more about that?
The songs on Tempest were worked out in rehearsals on stages during soundchecks before live shows. The religious songs maybe I felt were too similar to each other to release as an album. Someplace along the line, I had to go with one or the other, and Tempest is what I went with. I’m still not sure if it was the right decision.
When you say religious songs…
Newly written songs, but one that are traditionally motivated.
More like “Slow Train Coming”?
No. No. Not at all. They’re more like “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.”…
Has your sense of faith changed?
Certainly it has, o ye of little faith. Who’s to say that I even have any faith or what kind? I see God’s hand in everything. Every person, place and thing, every situation…
Clearly, the language of the Bible still provides imagery in your songs.
Of course, what else could there be? I believe in the Book of Revelation. I believe in disclosure, you know?
There is more at The Transfiguration of Robert Zimmerman, or Just a Closer Walk with Dylan | Mockingbird.
The interview has other revelations, or at least disclosures, about Dylan and his work. For example, we see that he is still irked at the folk purists who charged him with betrayal when he started playing an electric guitar:
These are the same people that tried to pin the name Judas on me. Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you’ve been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. Yeah, and for what? For playing an electric guitar? As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified…
This comment about the relationship between the artist, emotion, and the audience is a revelation:
The thing you have to do is make people feel their own emotions. A performer, if he’s doing what he’s supposed to do, doesn’t feel any emotion at all. It’s a certain kind of alchemy that a performer has.
Exactly! And this is what many would-be artists don’t realize. Art of whatever kind is not about just vomiting up your inner emotions. Music, poetry, fiction, acting, painting, film, and other art forms require intense discipline, concentration, and objectivity. An artist can’t just go up and go berserk in front of an audience. (Performers who seem to do that are just acting.) Art does indeed involve emotion, but it isn’t primarily the artist’s. What all of those objective techniques do “is make people [the audience, the listeners, the readers] feel their own emotions“!
Thanks also to David Zahl for appending this sampler from Dylan’s new album, Tempest:
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