Ken's Newsletter Volume 10

"He not busy being born, is busy dying."
-Bob Dylan

The Fact Of The Day from Asimov's Book Of Facts:

In many countries, urine was used as a detergent for washing.

It's hard to discuss Bob Dylan with other people because, unlike my other favorite: Neil Young, people have strong opinions about Dylan. If someone has even heard of Neil, they either vaguely remember him as a folkie, or an old fart that sings "Rocking In The Free World". But either way they don't really know anything. However, most people have heard of Bob Dylan, and dismiss him as a '60's protest relic. And most have heard him sing at least once, which was enough for them to write off his voice as a horror. So it can be dangerous to bring him up among a neutral crowd.

A common survival method for Dylan fans is to say that he isn't much of a singer, but he's an amazing song writer. Or some may make a distinction between having a good voice, and being a good vocalist. I'm here to say that's all bunk. Bob Dylan is a great singer, has a great voice, and writes great songs. That of course is an opinion, but I feel the need to state it, for all the Dylan fans that haven't been cowed by the non-fans.

Yes, it is true that Dylan doesn't have a "beautiful" voice, he's not going to be a classical singer, or bump Mariah Carey off the charts. But I don't like those kinds of voices anyway, and very few rock singers have them. Dylan still has an amazing voice. It's apparently a voice that can be grating on some, but it's that very distinctive sound it has that makes it so great. The true test for me is that when I listen to Dylan sing, I often tell myself that I wouldn't want to be hearing anyone else in the world singing this song. His voice has a range of expression, and a range of emotion that I've never heard elsewhere. I love the rich tone of his earlier recordings, that were much clearer than his later ones, if a little flatter. And I love the gravelly tone that his voice has taken on in later years. It's the sound of a voice that's been through a hell of a lot. It comes through best on the Mtv Unplugged show. I can't listen to that music without being amazed at the power of his voice, it's beautiful. And I can't help thinking that people who can't stand it are being superficial. And they are the ones losing out. I guess it's useless to talk about something which takes listening, but I'll keep trying.

I love Dylan's voice, but it's true that his greater singing asset is his phrasing. There have been years during his career where his voice just died on him. But even then his singing can be a thrill, because of the way he can control the words coming out of his mouth. He twists and turns those words, changes their rhythm, spits them out. He adds as much to his songs through his vocal interpretations as he does through his writing. Songs that rested mostly on their lyrics in their studio incarnation, become even more haunting or powerful when done live, translated through his new vocal phrasings. He has songs that he's been singing for 30 years, but he can change them so easily with the power of his voice. Listen to two different versions of one of his songs, from different concerts in different time periods. You will find songs that have changed radically, just by the way he lets the words slip from his tongue.

Dylan is a legend because he is just as good a songwriter as a singer. He has written folk, rock, blues and christian, but he always writes as a poet. His songs evoke images. Some tell a direct story, but few should be understood literally. He paints wide images with his words, ones that evoke feelings but don't direct them:

"To dance beneath the diamond sky, with one hand waving free.
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands.
With all memory and fate, driven deep beneath the waves.
Let me forget about today until tomorrow."

"At dawn my lover comes to me
And tells me of her dreams
With no attempts to shovel the glimpse
Into the ditch of what each one means
At times I think there are no words
But these to tell what's true
And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden."

Many of Dylan's songs tell a story, as in the folk tradition. But with a liberal dose of rock and poetry thrown in. For example, "Hurricane" is the story of Rubin Carter, a fighter who was framed for murder, and put in prison for 15 years. "How can the life of such a man/ Be in the palm of some fool's hand?/ To see him obviously framed/ Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land/ Where justice is a game."

Dylan's songs are powerful, that's how I would characterize them. When he was younger, he wrote a lot of humorous songs. But whether his songs are ironic, wistful, romantic or damning, they always pack a punch. And he sings them with a punch.

And plays them with a punch. Dylan's musical abilities are a whole other debate. Some complain that Dylan isn't much of a guitar player, and I've seen complaints about the 'wheezing' that he passes off as harmonica playing. Of course, I will once again step in, and affirm that Dylan is a great musician. He's not a lead guitarist, but he has a jazzy-rhythm guitar method that's great. When playing with a band, he sort of improvises on top of their sound. It's noodling, but in my mind it's great noodling. It's not typical rock for sure, it's more of a jazz approach. As for his harmonica, let me say that Dylan originally survived in New York by being hired as a harmonica player. So he can't be that bad. I know nothing about proper harmonica technique, but I know that Dylan's harmonica is just as powerful a tool as his voice. He let loose with a solo when I saw him this winter, and I thought I'd pass out. That's good enough for me.

I think Dylan confuses those who aren't into him, that's why I hear so much criticism. Here's a guy who doesn't exactly sound like Elvis, who writes obscure songs, isn't much of a guitarist, doesn't have much harmonica technique either. Yet, he is considered a rock legend, and has a huge following. Well, I'm here to explain to the confused that Dylan's art isn't based on technique, whether it be guitar, vocal or harmonica. We love him because he has a way of connecting our hearts directly to his. He may not be playing the guitar well, but he's doing something right. He may not have a beautiful voice, but I don't know what else you should call a voice that reaches right in and touches me like no one else's. I don't care how he goes about creating the music he does, maybe he does it all wrong, maybe he stinks. But the result is music that *feels* right. And that's all I ask for.

Spotlight On......Legendary Concerts

Secret concerts. That's the cool idea of the week. Last week Neil Young & Crazy Horse played four nights at some bar in California under the name Travelling Echoes. This caused quite a bit of excitement on the Neil mailing list as you can understand. Obviously non-Neil-fans will not be too excited. But think of seeing your favorite band in similar circumstances and you will understand.

When Neil Young plays solo, the smallest place you'd be able to see him is probably a place like the Orpheum in Boston, which holds over 2000. If he plays with a backup band, it will be in a much larger venue, probably an arena (Great Woods in the Boston area). So you can see the excitement that ensues when Neil plays in a *bar*. A bar that holds about 150 people! Neil hasn't had that kind of crowd since he was a teenager. Not only that, but the stage was just a platform 6 inches above the floor, so the people in the front row had to lean back at times to avoid Neil's guitar.

Imagine being that close to a concert like this. The people in the front row, also known as the Spit Zone, were an active part of song selection as well. One fan told about Neil and the guys trying to decide what song to play. This guy kept yelling "Bite The Bullet" (a Neil song). And Neil looked at him, and then turned back to the band and said "Ya, let's do that one." And they did. That's about as good as a concert experience can get, unless they come and play in your living room. It certainly beats looking at them with binoculars, which would be the typical concert experience.

And thanks to the goodness of Neil fans, all four shows were taped by one person or another. So of course we're going to immediately run tape trees of them. So even though there was only a very small group of people at the shows, we all get to be a part of them.

Spotlight On Books.......John Holt

I just read another book by John Holt, a man who I consider to be the greatest writer on children, learning and education there is. He has an understanding of children that would be miraculous, if he didn't make it so clear that it came about from plain old observation. He writes about how children learn, and how they don't learn. Not from the evidence of a stack of textbooks, but from years and hours of watching them and dealing with them.

Holt wrote a lot of books over the years, but his belief has remained crystal clear: Learning takes place most often in the absence of Teaching; Learning is an act of discovery accomplished by the individual. Gradually through the years he lost faith in our school systems and our ability to renovate them. He came to realize that schools impeded learning more than they assisted.

The essence of Holt's beliefs lay in the enthusiasm and ability of children. They accomplish the astonishing task of learning to speak with little assistance from us, other than our example. He was fond of saying that if we attempted to teach children speech, as we do reading, they would all be mute. Children display the ability to observe us adults speaking to each other and thereby deduce that we are conveying information to one another. They then begin to piece together meanings to the sounds, and soon through trial and error arrive at a sense of grammar. Children have shown that they are far better learners than we are. Yet when it comes time to make the comparatively easy step to learning that writing is simply a form of semi-permanent speech, we decide that they need help. When we step in, we impede their natural learning abilities and instead thrust alphabets and boring primers at them. We break reading into individual skills, and teach them one at a time, hoping to create a reading machine out of our children. Meanwhile the children decide that reading is a boring series of exercises and tests which mean nothing, and tune out. That's the beginning of our problems at school.

These same arguments hold true for all the other things we try and implant in our children. Arithmetic, a logical piece of the universe, is presented as a series of facts that must be memorized. It's within any child's ability to understand that seven objects could be broken up into a group of two and a group of five. From that understanding it is only a few discoveries away to the fact that 5+2=7, 2+5=7, 7-2=5, 7-5=2. But instead of allowing kids to discover this fact of nature, we rush them into memorizing the symbols we've invented to describe it. Kids should understand the properties of arithmetic as they apply to real things before we teach them the shortcut of written arithmetic. But instead we throw this jumble of facts and symbols at them. Mostly because we've never thought long enough about it to understand how it all works either.

Holt had such a keen understanding of children because he took the time to pay attention to them, and to try and understand them. The book I just read was his last one, and in it he displays the proven belief that kids will learn anything if they are left alone to do it. When they need our help they will ask for it, if we will only pay attention and see it. When we give them more help than they want, we are not only confusing them, but we are telling them that we don't believe that they can discover it for themselves. And so they stop trying. That is the real reason our kids are not learning.

Holt's contention that kids will learn all these things we have so much trouble with is hard to accept. But before you dismiss it, read one of his books. You will find examples of kids that made up 9 years of lost learning in a single year. Kids that learned to read with less than 30 hours of help from an adult. And kids in high school who don't understand the basics of arithmetic, because of the warped way we have taught them. You'll discover that a kid is a machine built for understanding; a machine designed to put together a model of the world based on what they experience. And when we get out of the way, nothing can stop their powers of understanding.

Reccomendations:

I've read a few books by John Holt, and found them all to be excellent. His first was How Children Fail, written after years of observing public school classes. It shows how kids are able to get through school despite a patent lack of understanding, and why they don't understand what is being taught to them so vehemently.

Next was How Children Learn in which Holt finds examples of children who actually do understand things, and shows us how they accomplished that. From this we learn what children need in order to learn, and how we interfere with that.

Freedom and Beyond is the first Holt book I read. It's a more philosophical discussion of what children need. It is addressing the debate in the 70's over freedom in home and schools. The question is, how much freedom is good for kids, and how much hurts them.

Learning All The Time is the one I just read, and is intended to analyze how young children learn without being taught. It looks at speech, reading, math and other skills. It demonstrates that children learn these things naturally if they are given the chance.

What Do I Do On Monday? is a book that I've got, but haven't read yet. I believe it is a guide for teachers or anyone else who wants to know what they can do to help children learn, rather than hinder them.

Spotlight On The Movies......Rumble In The Bronx

My sister and I went to see Jackie Chan's Rumble In The Bronx this Monday. And then we went to see it again on Tuesday. That's right, it's fantastic. It's a fun movie. It's certainly not a powerful drama, so if that is all you are into, forget about it. But it's not a dumb martial-arts movie either. It's cinema: funny, exciting, cool and fun.

For those of you not in the know, Jackie Chan is a Hong Kong action movie director and star. He's done a million movies over there, but he's never been able to break into the states. Then Quentin Tarantino said he was cool, and Mtv gave him an award, and all of a sudden he's hot shit over here.

Jackie's claim to fame is his stunts. His movies are jam-packed with action scenes and amazing stunts, and he does them all by himself. He jumps off buildings, jumps out of airplanes, gets run over by cars, and generally throws himself around like a madman. He not only does his own stunts, he does stunts that make you say "Wow!" And stunts that sometimes send him to the hospital. As we saw during the credits of this movie, he filmed part of the movie with a huge cast on his foot.

More than the stunts, what impressed me was the choreography. I could spit on American action movies after seeing Jackie Chan. American movies have a few fistfights, shoot a score of people, and blow up a few large objects. Jackie's action scenes are a joy to watch. It's not about how many people can be blown up, but rather how many ingenious ways can Jackie fight off his attackers. It leaves you laughing and shaking your head like Tony Bennett. This is no cheesy martial arts movie, where someone karate chops 30 different people. Jackie fights 30 people at a time, and he uses a different move on each of them. And since this is a semi-realistic movie, people actually get back up after he knocks them down. So he uses quite a few moves in just one fight.

And the best thing is the moves he comes up with. He uses everything around him in a scene. He swings around posts, scales fences, knocks people over tables, knocks people with tables, and anything else you can think of. Each segment of an action scene is an improvisation with the props around him. In one scene he's standing next to a row of refrigerators and a shopping cart. He manages to hit one guy with the freezer door, one with the fridge door, jump on top of the fridge to avoid one attacker, kick another from up there, thrown one guy in the fridge, hit one guy with the cart, jump through the cart to avoid another guy, kick one guy from inside the cart, and I don't remember what else. After all the movies he's made, he must have fought with every object imaginable.

After watching the Oscars, with the tribute to Gene Kelly, I've decided that Jackie Chan is the Gene Kelly of action movies. The Kelly clips showed him dancing with a number of props, chairs, posts, curtains, even quartering a newspaper sheet with his feet. That made me think of Jackie Chan. They both are obviously well choreographed, but their moves have a spirit of improvisation that includes all of their surroundings.

One last great thing about the movie was that it wasn't lewd, filled with gore, or with gratuitous sex. It stuck to the point of the movie, which was non-stop excitement, and humor. Sure there was violence, but there was nothing disgusting, and it was realistically portrayed. I'm a big Jackie Chan fan now. I can only hope our video stores are smart enough to get their hands on more of his movies.

"Learning, to me, means making more sense of the world around us, and being able to do more things in it. Success in school means remembering the answers to the teacher's questions, getting clever about guessing what questions they will ask, and about how to fool them when you don't know the answers."
-John Holt

The End