Why we listen

"La presenza della tua assenza" intitolava un suo articolo l'inventore del giornalismo rock, Paul Williams. "Perché ascoltiamo musica?" si chiedeva. "La solitudine è una verità universale. La musica, in tutte le sue accezioni, è uno dei tentativi dell'uomo di riempire questa assenza. E' la ricerca di qualcosa. Deliberatamente, intelligentemente, con passione e molte volte inconsciamente".

Da qualche parte su Internet ho trovato la bella e divertente recensione di un recente concerto di Bob Dylan chetrovate più sotto. L'ha scritta non so chi, una ragazzina americana andata da sola a vedere il grande bardo, probabilmente per la prima volta, da sola e con il cuore spezzato per una storia d'amore finita male. In fila per entrare nella sala, da sola in mezzo a sconosciuti tutti più vecchi di lei, piangeva. Dentro, non si è più sentita sola. "Quando ha suonato Highway 61 era come essere in chiesa". Questa recensione dice tutto quello che si può dire del perché ascoltiamo musica, perché andiamo ancora a vedere vecchi cantanti quasi senza voce, perché siamo fortunati che questi vecchi siano ancora in giro. Perché una ragazzina di vent'anni invece di fondersi il cervello con X Factor se ne va da sola, piangendo, a fare la fila per vedere Bob Dylan. Non troverete recensioni come queste sulle riviste musicali patinate. Là ci sono (ci siamo) i bioriosi critici soloni che vi spiegano perché Bob Dylan era meglio nel '66 o nel '75. Ma che non sanno dirvi perché abbiamo biosgno di ascoltare musica. Perchè ascoltiamo Dylan, gli Smiths, i Beach Boys e i Wilco.
L'ho lasciata in inglese perché non aveva senso tradurla: tradurre Bob fucking Dylan suonerebbe un insulto. Invece è una dichiarazione d'amore.

Grazie chiunque tu sia, Lindsay
(http://elohbee.tumblr.com/)

This is the shirt I bought. I’ve been trying to type how I feel about tonight like sixty different ways. I could tell you that he sounds fucking great, and he’s so handsome, and he dances A LOT, and that he still does that quick little awkward half smile that he does in all of those videos you’ve seen of him when he was young. I could tell you that actually listening to him play harmonica in real life is fucking surreal, and that his lead guitarist is a fucking WARLOCK, and that the whole band is really fucking great in general.

I could tell you that he opened with Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat, and that he played Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright, and Ballad of a Thin Man, and that when he played Highway 61 Revisited it felt like church, and that the first chords of Like A Rolling Stone have left me irreversibly changed. I could tell you that I was the youngest person there by a long shot, in a packed venue, surrounded by people from every corner of the world who have loved him for forty years, who call themselves “followers”, who took care of me when some drunk fucking asshole was breathing down the back of my neck and brushing up against my ass and when he spilled two drinks all over my bare legs and didn’t apologize.

I could tell you about Carol, who went to every stop on the European leg of this tour, who has seen him sixty times, who was standing right in front of him and was dancing and screaming like a teenager. I could tell you about how I cried the minute he walked on the stage. I was twenty feet away from Bob Dylan, Robert Allen Zimmerman, do you even fucking understand how fucking cool that is I don’t really it hasn’t really hit me yet but when it does I’ll probably have a fucking heart attack Bob fucking Dylan. I could tell you that I had my heart indelibly shattered a year and half ago, and that sometimes it feels like it hasn’t gotten any better. I spend so many days feeling sorry for myself. I cried waiting in the line tonight, because I went to this concert completely alone, as I do so many things these days. I felt very small. I thought of so many people I wanted to be with tonight.

All I do is think about how I wish everyone was here, with me everyday, so I don’t feel so alone all the time. I have completely forgotten how to be happy that I’M here, and that I’m not alone at all. I went to a Bob Dylan concert tonight. That’s a pretty big fucking moment in my life, you know? I went to a Bob Dylan concert with a thousand other people who love him just as much as I do. And maybe they also love people who have stopped loving them back, and that is just the loneliest feeling in the world. But we’ve all felt it, right? Bob Dylan felt it, too. He’s written songs about it. Joan Baez fucking felt it, am I right? And maybe when you’ve had your heart broken, and you’re pretty fucking sure it’s broken beyond repair, you sit in your room and put on your sad Bob Dylan records, or your sad Smiths records, or your sad Beach Boys records, or your sad Wilco records, and you really feel like it’s you, and your music, against the world. What else, besides music, does that? It has a way, like nothing else, of letting you know that you’re not even remotely alone, and even though you might be a little pathetic at the moment, that horrible, throbbing pain you’re feeling deep inside your very core isn’t mutant. It’s universal.

Heaven knows Morrissey is miserable now too, man. Ryan Adams got royally screwed over by this broad who fucked all of his friends and then stole all of his records just like you, dude. That’s why we listen to music in our darkest hours, because we’re able to say, “YES! That is EXACTLY right. That is EXACTLY how I’m feeling right now.” That’s music. I love music. I love it more than anything or anyone in the world. And it loves me back, I think. I figured all of this out standing in a room with Bob Dylan. Isn’t that crazy? So, that pretty much sums up how I feel about going to the Bob Dylan concert tonight. That’s a cool shirt, huh?