For those of us who follow The Bard’s career, this seemingly self-penned posting on his official website (the first such announcement he’s ever made online), seeks to clarify the facts of his recent, brief Chinese tour - which earned him no small measure of scorn from pundits who assumed he had kowtowed to government pressure by censoring his song choices and/or lyrics in order to gain permission to play the notoriously repressive nation.
Dylan rarely if ever addresses any controversies surrounding himself in the press, choosing instead to let them fester and either bloom or rot without any “official” input.
That makes this concise and seemingly forthright (if a tad snarky toward the end) statement all the more surprising and enjoyable for some of us.
However, many who can’t seem to wrap their heads around the notion that Dylan would simply speak his mind on a situation that has obviously rubbed him the wrong way are insisting that it was not in fact written by him, but is instead some sort of group-think corporate concoction being passed off as a verbatim blog post from the famously tight-lipped songwriter.
Those theories prompted one wise Dylan enthusiast to make the following observation on a fan-site:
“If he does speak nobody believes it is him
If he does not speak he is accussed of not communicating
If he speaks clearly then it is not in his style
If he speaks cryptically then he should be clearer
If he tells the truth then there must be a hidden meaning
If he tells a story then it must be about himself
If he takes the piss out of people writing so many books then people believe it is the cue to write another book
I wonder why he does not communicate very often outside of the songs?”
EXACTLY.
