Saturday 26 May 2012

On Comments, and my Tendency to Overdo Them

I am not, nor may I ever be,  succinct.
I can't say things in a minimal way. I have words to spare.
And my mind meanders.

I was just responding to a post by Bulletholes, ( Fan Letter to Bob Dylan), in which he describes how he once stretched out a hand of friendship to the  truculent troubadour, and was rudely rebuffed.
I ended up laughing at his story, and then at myself (because the Red Dirt Girl keeps telling me I should stop worrying about not being able to think of new blog posts, and just make a blog of comments).

Here's one such comment, then, demonstrating how easily my mind gets derailed.


(comment)
"I've liked mister Dylan's music greatly over the years, and read and heard a lot about him.
Waaaay back in, I think, 1972? someone lent me a copy of Anthony Scaduto's biography of Dylan, which I read, cover to cover, because in those days I had some stupid internal rule that said I had to read any book that was presented to me. Now this idea fell by the wayside, when I incautiously, nay, stupidly, mentioned it, in confidence to a work-mate.
Oh foolish me. In about five minutes I was besieged by people proferring worthy tomes with titles like "The Population Ecology of the Water Vole", and " Old English Deverbal Substantives, Derived by Means of a Zero Morpheme", I kid you not. Dieter Kastovsky. I read it end to end, despite the fact that it was a book bigger than a refrigerator.
Tubingen. University of, I think it was his doctoral thesis. After that I was offered "A Brief Introduction To Stress-Concentrations Within the Core of the A1 Nuclear Reactor."



I gradually realised, probably half way through an exciting tome on the subject of slippage along shear planes in pacific abyssal ooze, that my friendly colleagues were betting on where I would break in my ongoing struggle to keep true to a foolish vow. Also, at the time, I was working at the National Lending Library for Science and Technology, so my tormentors had an endless supply of turgid texts.
It was something of a relief to be handed a doorstep-sized volume on Soviet Steam Locomotive Construction, in Russian.
It was clearly beyond me, as I have no grasp whatsoever, of Russian. I don't even know the cyrillic alphabet, so I had to content myself with looking at the engineering diagrams and the black and white photo-plates of triumphant sons and daughters of the revolution cheering brave locomotive crews as the sons of Genghis hurried thousands of tons of potatoes amidst thunder across the steppes.
Where was I? Oh.. I was replying to Bulletholes' post about Bob Dylan? Oh.
Yes, well. Scaduto. Biography... Oh yes. Well, I was amazed that there was a biography, after all, this was 1972, and Dylan had barely started. The thing I learned, and that none of the intervening decades has disproved is that the man's a great poetsingersongwriter, but an absolute arrogant asshole."

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