The Uneven Heart — Bob Dylan The Musician

Most of my posts begin “it’s been a while”, it seems, and so does this one. This time, it’s been a self-imposed silence, because I’ve been busy finishing a book on lauda singing in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries — perhaps not your cup of tea, but it’s what I do for a living.

Anyway, my real book is coming along as well — my collected writings about Dylan and his music — and I’ve wrapped up another article, this time an extended translation of the article I wrote for the Norwegian philosophical journal Agora last spring. It’s a survey of some traits of Dylan’s musical carreer, seen as a pulse of phases of appropriation, internalization, and moving on, almost like a heartbeat, hence the title “The Uneven Heart”.

The article is available as a separate pdf file or as part of the full book, Things Twice. There is also a plain HTML version, without the typographical niceties of the book version.

As always, I welcome comments. As always, too, there may be typos, errors, inconsistencies, the odd word in Norwegian which I’ve overlooked in the translation, etc. If you spot any such things, please let me know.

3 thoughts on “The Uneven Heart — Bob Dylan The Musician”

  1. You’re a hard man to reach, Østrem. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you via e-mail, i even put ‘Dylan’, int he Subject line. ;)
    Anyways, i’ll just take it here then. =)

    I’ve been working hard on this project for the last month:
    http://thebreeze.110mb.com/
    And i thought you’d might be interested in knowing about it, partly because i credit you and use your tablature, and partly because you might want to add my site as an “audio” link in your links section.
    Or rather–I’d appreciate it a lot if you added it. =D

    Thank you for your great site and everything.
    Have a good day.

    //Ilutzio

  2. Facinating read. I’ve read/skimmed through your book and think its really an excellent analysis of some of the undiscussed aspects of Dylan’s career. Some of the sections like the “court room” chapter, I thought a simultaneous creative and effective way of arguing your point. By the way, I want to say thanks for all of the tabulature/chord arrangements you’ve put up on dylanchords.info. Its always fun to play some of you favorite Dylan songs the right way.

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