Eyolf Østrem – Page 3

Why ABB Shouldn’t Be Roasted Over a Slow-Burning Fire

I’m outraged — by my own wish that Anders Behring Breivik be treated as a human being.

My basest instincts would love to see him fry in a very earthly hell. But although the though of him living on and perhaps even coming out into society 21 years from now, in principle cleared of his guilt, makes me angry, I still don’t think the frying pan is a very good idea after all.

Our civilization is based on a belief in a certain fundamental core of human-ness shared by all human beings. To this human-ness, we have added a set of rights.

Now, I think it’s sound to be clear that this is a belief and not an objective fact, because it gives us the opportunity — and in times of crisis, the obligation — to ask ourselves, individually and collectively, what we base that belief on.

Also, I don’t think of these rights as “universal” or “inalieanable” in any other sense than as a statement of interest: it’s something we, as a society of human beings, have established, because we believe society works better that way — not something that comes automatically, just from being a human being.

Those “rights” are being violated all the time, even in the most civilized societies. I don’t really believe that violating them once more, explicitly and consciously – e.g. by ripping the bastard apart limb by limb – would ruin the foundation upon which our society is based, nor that that would mean that he has won and “we” have lost. Letting the collective expose a person who has demonstrated un-human behaviour beyond belief to inhuman treatment, does not turn us all into a barbarian mob. Human rights is a contract, and a contract can be renegotiated in changing circumstances.

I also don’t believe in the solution that some have suggested: that he be forced to listen to the stories of the survivors and the families of the murdered ones until the day he dies. What would be the point of that? Tormenting his soul? Saving it by making him repent? Letting him realize his mistake and bringing him back into the fold of decent citizens again? Sorry, it won’t happen.

When I still don’t think it’s a good idea to roast him, it’s mainly because I believe the course staked out by the Norwegian prime minister (“We will retaliate with more democracy, more openness, but never naïveté”) and by one of the survivors of the massacre (“If one man can show this much hate, think how much love we can show together“) is a much more productive path to take.

Emphasising community, interdependence, embrace, is not only a way to improve our society — even and especially in extreme conditions — it is also an excellent way to prove him wrong.

If that thought tortures him, all the better.

The potential risk of turning him into some kind of martyr is also a reason — again, pragmatic, not ideological — to abstain from “medieval” treatment.

The problem still remains what to do with the beast in the meantime, but the best would perhaps be to ignore him completely — to wipe him off our collective memory and let his place be taken by communal values.

If we roast him, someone will hear him scream, metaphorically or literally.

He may have a contractual right to humane treatment, but not to be paid any attention.

He may have the right to speak, but not to be listened to.

A Monument of Civilization?

It now seems that the atrocities in Oslo and Utøya were commited by a single person. I think we can rule out completely any kind of organization. Apparently, the killer – a tall, blond native Norwegian, age 32, who speaks the local dialect – was taken to the island on the organizers’ own boat. Now, if there were more than one person involved, surely someone in the organization would have had a speedboat ready for him on the mainland?

Besides: Utøya? A summer camp for politically engaged youths?!

Granted, if terrorism is all about creating fear and terror, there might be some logic to it: strike where the shock will be greatest.

But still, I can’t in my wildest imagination come up with a scenario where a bunch of Mossad agents or al-Qaida sympathizers have sat around and discussed their next step and that idea has materialized – it’s just too weird.

Norway Cup (an over-sized symbol of Norwegian greatness), or some Confirmation Sunday (“all those pork-munching, cartoon-printing infidels celebrating their successful indoctrination of yet another generation”) — that I can imagine.

But a summer camp on an isolated island? No way.

So my hope is that the Norwegians are able to put aside all the national rhetorics, all the talk about threats to democracy and being a small country in a difficult world. And stay away from using words like “terror” and “terrorism”, at least for as long as these words are near- synonymous with “islamism”.

And this is where my headline comes in:

If this is the deed of a single madman, which seems to be the case, it is a sign of what a thin, thin, fragile varnish civilization is. It’s not that difficult to set an entire society on ends. All it takes is a van filled with explosives (which, I suppose, any construction worker can get hold of) and a convincing policeman’s shirt.

When we can still lead perfectly normal lives most of the time, and have so for hundreds of years (except for brief interludes of socio-economic and military madness), it is for the single reason that most of us, very nearly all of us, don’t do such things.

We’re civilized. We behave. I frankly don’t care if that’s because we’re all indoctrinated or something like that: we behave because that’s what we want to do anyway — that’s how we feel most alright. If it wasn’t for this collective “We behave”, there isn’t a terror plan or a millennium act in the world that could uphold civilization as we know it.

It’s a tragic day, of course, and nothing to celebrate. That something like this happens is — seen in isolation — a sign of failure.

But seen in a larger perspective — and here I mean: over hundreds of years, generations way beyond our own memory and the memory of those we remember — it’s a sign of success: that the glue that binds us together is so strong that something like this has never happened before.

That it is so easy to tarnish civilized life — and yet: nobody has done it.

Until now, that is. In Norway, that is. Now, where to go from here?

Guitar in Two Weeks, day 13: Open Tuning

Finally – it took more than a year, but here’s the next lesson: on open tunings.

I have had three life-changing epiphanies in my life as a guitar player. The first was the first time I tried a twelve-string guitar. I realized that the fullness of that sound was what I had been dreaming of all my life, I just hadn’t known it. Fifteen years later, I bought an old Ibanez twelve-string, and although it would be a lie to say that it’s the best guitar in the world, there is nothing wrong with that sound of twelve shiny strings.

The second was when I first tried a Martin guitar. I immediately realized that that was the sound I was after. Fifteen years later, my wife got me an HD-28, and I have bliss within reach whenever I need it (in more sense than one).

The third was when I first tuned to an open D chord.

On a side note, that was in a way the most life-changing experience of them all, because that’s when dylanchords started for real (and man, has that taken up a large part of my life in the fifteen years since then). I had alreadyput up on a little site a few tabs that I couldn’t find elsewhere, but it was when I made the tabs of the New York versions of Blood on the Tracks that the idea of a comprehensive site with exact chords to Dylan’s entire output was born for real.

Open and Alternate Tunings

Just so that the terms are clear: the “open” in “open tunings” means that all the strings are tuned to tones belonging to one particular chord, so that you’ll get a full chord if you play all the strings open.

“Alternate tunings” would then refer to all the other different ways one can tune the guitar. In principle, the dropped D, double dropped D, and Dropped C would count as alternate tunings, but because they are so relatively common, they have their own names.

General remarks

Before we go into the specific tunings, a few words about alternate and open tunings in general.

First, the reason to play in open tunings in the first place is not (or not only) to get simpler chords. One might think that playing with open tunings would be a huge advantage in general: there is at least one chord where one doesn’t have to do anything with the left hand.

But that one chord cannot outweigh all the potential disadvantages:

All the other chords become more troublesome. Of course, all the chords of the same kind as the chord you have tuned to (i.e. all the major chords if you play in open G or D) can be played with a simple barre chord at the appropriate fret. E.g. In open D, you will have the subdominant G major at the fifth fret and the dominant A at the seventh. But that’s just about all you can do with those chords: play them. No fancy bass runs, no hammer-ons and melodic finesse, no use of the open strings.
An open string is like a binary number: it’s either on or off, and beyond that, there is really nothing much you can do with it, whereas a skilled instrumentalist has far greater control of the tone quality once there is a finger on the string. You can bend it, you can apply some vibrato, you can slide up to it or down from it, you can mute it, you can release it — all those wonderful things that make the music breathe and sound natural; all those things that a binary number can’t.
Besides, the major chords may be easy to get at, but what about minor chords, seventh chords, other fancy chords? try to play a Cm6 chord — or a Dm7-5 chord for that matter — in open D tuning, and you’ll know what I mean. It’s not that it can’t be done, but it may just not be worth the effort.
Standard tuning is a quite wonderful invention in that respect: with strings tuned a fourth apart (with a major third thrown in for good measure, between the second and third strings), just about any combination is within reach.
And last but not least, one should not underestimate the value of having somewhere to place one’s fingers. A nice side effect of fingering a chord is that one also holds the guitar still . . .

All in all: in practice, in open tunings you’re limited to play in one main key. If you tune to open D, D is what you’ll be playing.

And that is OK: open tunings are for songs or arrangements where one chord dominates. Modal pieces, bluesy tunes, folk ballads — that’s where the open tunings shine.

“Modal” in this context means more or less a style where the “classical” hierarchy of tonic, subdominant, and dominant does not apply, but where other chord relationships dominate. Examples are “Masters of War” and “It’s Alright Ma” from Dylan’s repertory, and songs like “What Shall We Do With the Drunken Sailor” or just about any minor key song from the Irish tradition.

Joni Mitchell’s Naming System

Joni Mitchell is the Queen of altered tunings — she uses hundreds of them. In order to tell them apart, she uses a naming convention. First, the note of the lowest string, then five numbers that indicate the number of frets to the next string, i.e. on which fret to finger one string in order to find the tone of next.

Thus, standard tuning would be named E55545 and dropped D tuning D75545. I will use this convention in the following.

The Most Important Open Tunings

Enough talk — time to get our hands dirty.

There are two or three open/alternate tunings that are widely used, and a host of others that show up here and there. I will concentrate on open D, but the principles are the same in all of them.

Open D

in open D, the whole guitar is tuned to a D major chord,

D - A - d - f# - a - d'

To get there from standard tuning, tune down the lowest and the two highest strings one whole tone and the third string a semitone. The Ds on the outer strings should sound the same as the D you already have on the fourth string in standard tuning. Likewise, the second string should sound like the fifth.

In Joni-naming, this means: D75435. Tune the deepest string to D — one whole tone down from standard tuning. It should sound equal to the fourth string. Then check that the fifth string is equal to the sixth string fretted at the seventh fret and the fourth string equal to the fifth fretted at the fifth fret (they should, if you start with standard tuning). Go on with the remaining strings according to the Joni pattern.

When you’re done, you should hear a wonderfully rich and full chord when you strike all the strings.

A word about pure and tempered tunings: As I mentioned in lesson 6, an instrument like the guitar is always slightly out of tune. This is true for standard tuning, but in open tuning one actually has the option to tune closer to the pure intervals: since you’ll mostly be playing in/around one key, you don’t have to be as cautious as in standard tuning about the problems with temperament, and you can tune the third string to a pure f#, without worrying too much about what might happen if you need that string in an A flat major chord. You won’t.

What’s With The “Open D/E” Thing?

You may come across a label like “open D/E”, or you may see a song you know as an open D song referred to as being in open E. What’s up with that?

The answer is that open D and open E are essentially the same tuning, only at different pitch levels. That means: the intervals between the strings are the same, so you will use the same chord shapes. This becomes quite clear in Joni notation:

open D = D75435 open E = E75435

If you tune to open D and put a capo at the second fret, you are actually playing in open E.

Which of the two you choose, is up to you —

You may prefer the darker sound of open D, or the brighter of open E.
For open D, there are four strings you have to retune; for open E only three.
Open E may be harder on you strings, since three of them are tuned up from their usual position.

Open D Chord Shapes

Here are some of the most important chord shapes in open D tuning:

oooooo    o  ooo    o   oo    o o  o    o o oo
======    ======    ======    ======    ======    ------
||||||    ||||||    ||||||    |||1||    |||1||    111111
------    ------    ------    ------    ------   5------
||||||    ||||||    ||||||    |2||3|    |2||||    ||||||
------    ------    ------    ------    ------    ------
||||||    ||||||    |||1||    ||||||    ||||||    ||||||
------    ------    ------    ------    ------    ------
||||||    ||2|||    ||2|||    ||||||    ||||||    ||||||
------    ------    ------    ------    ------    ------
||||||    |3||||    |3||||      G         G         G
------    ------    ------
  D         D         D

 o   o     o  oo     o  o      o  oo       ooo
======    ======    ======    ======    ======    ------
|||1||    |||1||    |||1||    |||1||    ||||||    111111
------    ------    ------    ------    ------   7------
||2|3|    2|3|||    ||2||3    ||2|||    ||1|||    ||||||
------    ------    ------    ------    ------    ------
||||||    ||||||    ||||||    ||||||    ||||||    ||||||
------    ------    ------    ------    ------    ------
||||||    ||||||    ||||||    ||||||    |3||||    ||||||
------    ------    ------    ------    ------    ------
  A          A         A        A         A         A   

  o oo     o oo     o oo o
======   ======     ======
|||1||   ||||||     ||||||
------   ------     ------
23||||   ||||||     |2||3|
------   ------     ------
||||||   |||1||     ||||||
------   ------     ------
||||||   23||||     ||||||
------   ------     ------
  Em      F#m         Bm

I’ve included several versions of some of the chords, but the table is by no means complete. It’s in the nature of the open tuning that you can play around with it — play any of the tones in the chord anywhere on the fretboard for different shades of the sonority, or for different licks. So, the first chords in the New York version of Tangled Up In Blue are D [000897] — C [000675].

It should also be noted that most of these names are “wrong”. The Em chord isn’t a plain Em, but an Em7add4, and F#m is really F#m-6. The “A” chords are even worse: only the last one is actually a plain A. This has to do with the open character of the tuning: typically, there will be open strings sounding, and the exact name of the chord or the exact notes in it are not that important. All the A chords above fill the “A” slot, and that’s what matters.

Some of the chords above go together in groups:

D [054000]     D
a [042000]     G [020120]
G [020100]     A [x02120]

etc.

A few words about some of the chords:

D

You may ask: why bother with lots of fingerings, when I can get a D chord literally without lifting a finger (well, actually, the opposite: without placing a finger)? As I’ve indicated, it’s a matter of chord sequences, chord nuances, and preference.

The [054000] variant, e.g. has a full octave between the two lowest strings. This doubled bass tone is a powerful reenforcement of the key (inicdentally, this is the same sound as the Double Dropped C that Dylan favoured for a while in the mid-60s). Furthermore, the tone of the third string (g#) is doubled on the fourth string. This tone is the “third”, the tone that decides whether a chord is minor or major. Taken together, these two features give a very strong sense of the main tonality.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, one might play a shape like D [000300] or [050300], where there is no third at all — hence, the key is neither major or minor. If one adds one finger, one gets [000330], and one is well on the way toward a delta blues feeling.

G

I’ve talked earlier about establishing the key by having the main key note of the chord in the bass, and that the key note is usually heard on many strings, for reenforcement. The G chord in open D defies all these principles: the key note is heard on one string only, the third.

Instead, the chord is dominated by the tone D, on strings 1, 4 and 6. In fact, the G chord in this tuning is most of all an embellishing variant of the main D sonority. This is precisely the same function as the c chord has in Dylan’s most cherished figure: G-c/g-G (320003-3×2013-320003). This “embellished d” character is emphasized by the alternative fingering 020100, where the open second string adds yet another tone from the D major chord. You may also recognize the “physical” similarity between the two figures:

G-C-G     D-G-D
------    ------
320003    000000
3x2013    002010
320003    000000

A

If the G chord is merely a variant of D, the A chord in open D is merely a variant of G. It is basically a G chord with an A in the bass, which technically is an A11 (played x02120. This variant of the dominant is a quite rare guest in Dylan’s songs prior to blood on the tracks, but quite common after that album. Part of the explanation is that 11-chords are central in the gospel tradition, which Dylan dived into shortly afterwards, but it is not either impossible that he discovered its sweetness through the use of this A chord.

One-Finger Barre Chords

If one wants “genuine” versions of the G and A chords, one can use the barre forms: G = [555555] and A = [777777].Since these are one-finger barres, it is fairly easy to extend them with interesting embellishments, e.g. a simple but effective boogie shuffle:

D: 000000  020100   030300   020100 
G: 555555  575655   585855   575655
A: 777777  797877   7a7a77   797877
(a=10th fret)

Open G

The other main open tuning is open G, which is a preferred tuning among slide guitar players. It is also Keith Richards’ favorite tuning. (Actually, Keef removes the lowest string.)

Of course, most of what has been said about Open D applies to Open G as well. As a matter of fact, all the chord shapes apply too, if you just shift everything one string down. I will therefore just outline what I find to be the most interesting differences.

Tuning

Open G has a G major chord on the open strings:

D - G - d - g - b - d'

Joni tuning: D57543. Compare this to open D: D75435, and you will see that the intervals are the same, they just fall between different strings.

Bass vs. The Rest

In Open D, the key note is on the lowest bass string, as well as on the brightest string, and it naturally dominates everything.

In Open G, on the other hand, the key note is on the open fifth string, which means that you can’t just strike all strings and get that full-bodied sound as in open D.

This may seem like a disadvantage, and is in fact the reason why Keef removes his lowest string, but the gain is considerable:

With an extra string below the key note, you have a whole range of extra bass runs, figures and configurations available. In open D, everything centres around D. In open G, you can emphasise the subdominant (which has the deepest bass string, as opposed to open D, where it has none); and reach the key note from below, not just above.

The advantages require slightly more control than, say, in open D, to be realized. If Open D is the strummer’s dream, Open G is the fingerpicker’s or slide player’s dream come true. (oooh, very poetic!)

Chord Shapes

The differences with regard to the bass strings also means that the chord shapes you will mostly use, are slightly different than in Open D. A very useful feature of Open G is that the four lowest strings are in pairs: d on 4th/6th, g on 3rd/5th. This means that it is very easy to use the same patterns on both pairs. Many of the chord shapes have the two strings of a pair fingered at the same fret (e.g. 202010, 020210, etc.), and this shape becomes almost second nature.

Here are just a couple of the chords that differ from their open D counterparts:

 ooooo    o   o    o oo
======   ======   ======
||||||   ||||||   ||||||
------   ------   ------
||||||   ||||||   2|3|||
------   ------   ------
||||||   ||||||   ||||||
------   ------   ------
||||||   |||1||   ||||||
------   ------   ------
||||||   2|3|||   ||||||
  G        G        Em

o o  o    o o o   x  o
======   ======   ======
||||1|   ||||1|   ||||||
------   ------   ------
|2|3||   2|3|||   ||1|||
------   ------   ------
||||||   ||||||   ||||||
------   ------   ------
||||||   ||||||   ||||||
------   ------   ------
||||||   ||||||   |4||||
  D7       C        C

The second G above (505400) immediately shows the “paired strings” pattern. The shape is a way of overcoming the “I can’t use the deepest string” problem, by doubling the bass tone.

The D7 and C pair for me constitute the most distinctive difference between open G and open D. The equivalent chord shapes to the “standard” versions in open D would be C = [x02010] or [x02012] and D = [xx0210] or [xx0212]. As I mentioned above, this C is almost just a variant of G, and the D a variant of C; we’re almost never out of the control zone of the main key.

That would be a very un-open-G way to play it. Using the shapes C = [202010] and D = [020210] instead, with the distinctive paired strings pattern, we’re in a completely different sound world. The D here is emphatically a seventh chord, i.e. a very independent character from the main key, emphasising the difference rather than blurring it. And the C chord, while still not boasting a strong C character of its own, at least stands out from G (thanks to the doubled bass strings 4 and 6, with the tone e, absolutely not part of a G chord).

The last C shape, x520xx, remedies the lack of a key-note in the other C shapes. Obviously, it is not a shape particularly suitable for strumming, since one only plays on three strings in the middle. But for fingerpicking it is quite useful. Then, one can also use some of the x-ed out strings for embellishment.

Examples

Needless to say, there’s Blood on the Tracks – all the songs were first recorded in open D (well, open E, actually), and they are alle transcribed in that tuning.

Joni Mitchell should be represented. Her song “Hejira” off the album of the same title, is played in C77325-tuning and can be found here. The tricky part is to get the main picking pattern going: the pattern covers two measures instead of the simple one-measure patterns we have encountered so far. Once that is in place, the song is actually fairly simple to play.

Tallest Man on Earth: Where Do My Bluebird Fly

Then there’s the most recent star on altered tuning heaven: The Tallest Man on Earth. His guitar technique is exquisite, his musicality astounding, and his stage presence is breathtaking. The first song, “Where Do My Bluebird Fly”, is in open G minor (D57533), and it is actually not too difficult, once you master the two-measure picking pattern.

The Tallest Man usually capos his guitar far up the neck. Both this and the following song have a capo at the eighth fret.

Intro:
    :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
||------------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
||*-----0-----0-----|-0-----0---------|-----0-----0-----|-0-----0---------|
||------3-----3-----|-3---------3-----|-----2-----2-----|-2---------0-----|
||------5-------5---|-----5-------5---|-----4-------4---|-----4-------0---|
||*-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
||------------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|

                                     ____________________________________
                                    | 1.                                 |
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|------------------||
|-----0-----0-----|-0-----0---------|-----2-----2-----|-2-----2-----2---*||
|-----0-----0-----|-0-----0---0-----|-----5-----5-----|-5-----5-----5----||
|-----1-------1---|-----1-------0---|-----4-------4---|-----4-------4----||
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------*||
|-1-------1-------|-1-------1-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0--------||

 ____________________________________
| 2.
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----2-----2-----|-2-------0-------|
|-----5-----5-----|-5-------2-------|
|-----4-------4---|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------3-------|

|-----------------|-0---------------|-----------------|-1---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----0p2---------|-------------0---|-----2-----------|-------------0---|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----3-------3---|-----3-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|

|-----------------|-3---------------|-----------------|-0---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----0-----------|-------------0---|-----0p2---------|-------------0---|
|-----1-------1---|-----1-------1---|-----3-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-1-------1-------|-1-------1-------|-3-------3-------|-4-------4-------|

|-----------------|-0---------------|-----------------|-1---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----0p2---------|-------------0---|-----2-----------|-------------0---|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----3-------3---|-----3-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------| 

|-----------------|-3---------------|-----------------|-0---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----0-----------|-------------0---|-----0p2---------|-------------0---|
|-----1-------1---|-----1-------1---|-----3-------3---|-----3-------3---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-1-------1-------|-1-------1-------|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|
                                                            oh well, I 

|-----------------|-0---------------|-----------------|-1---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----0p2---------|-------------0---|-----2-----------|-------------0---|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----3-------3---|-----3-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
  know you shook the set-up baby,         of all the    leaves upon the
  know our song is all but healthy        as I see dry leaves fallin'

|-----------------|-3---------------|-----------------|-0---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----0-----------|-------------0---|-----0p2---------|-------------0---|
|-----1-------1---|-----1-------1---|-----3-------3---|-----3-------3---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-1-------1-------|-1-------1-------|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|
  ground                                                        And I
  down,                         oh

|-----------------|-3---------------|-----------------|-0---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----0-----------|-------------0---|-----2-----------|-------------0---|
|-----1-------1---|-----1-------1---|-----3-------3---|-----3-------3---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-1-------1-------|-1-------1-------|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|
      With all this fever in my       mind,                     I could 

|-----------------|-0---------------|-----------------|-3---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----3-----------|-------------0---|-----0-----------|-------------0---|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----1-------1---|-----1-------1---|
|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-1-------1-------|-1-------1-------|
  drown in your     kerosene          eyes        Oh,

|-----------------|-0---------------|-----------------|-0---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----0-----------|-------------0---|-----2-----------|-------------0---|
|-----1-------1---|-----1-------1---|-----3-------3---|-----3-------3---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-1-------1-------|-1-------1-------|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|
      you're just a riddle in the     sky         Oh,

|-----------------|-0---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----2-----------|-------------0---|
|-----3-------3---|-----2-------2---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-3-------3-------|-2-------2-------|
  where do   my     bluebird            fly?

And as the early sign of dawn of thunder
I see you stir the fog around
And when you find the voice and gears of sunset
we'll hear that high and lonesome sound, oh
And I will question every wind
if they gone through the glow of your eyes Oh,
you're just a riddle in the sky Oh,
where do my bluebird fly?

Oh, well I know you shook your feathers baby
upon the ghosts along my trail
And I know your lie was sold and buried
before I knew it was for sale, oh
With all this fever in my mind
I could aim for your kerosene eyes Oh,
you're just a target in the sky oh,
where do my bluebird fly?

Tallest Man on Earth: The Lion’s Heart

The second example, in Open G, is more tricky, especially at the breakneck speed of the album version. Check out the live video (and enjoy the mastery with which he kills the annoying clapping!), and give it a try:

  D6
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-0---------------|-----------------|-0---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----2-----------|-------------2---|-----2-----------|-------------0---|
|-----4-------4---|-----4-------4---|-----4-------4---|-----4-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|

  G                                   Gmaj7/f#
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|
|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-4-------4-------|-4-------4-------|

  Em7                                                   D7sus4
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-0---------------|-------0---------|-----------------|
|-0---------0-----|-------0---------|---0---------0---|-1---------------|
|-------2-------0-|-----------0-----|--0--------0-----|-0---------0-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----2-------2---|-----2-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-2-------2-------|-2-------2-------|-2-------2-------|-0-------0-------|

  G                                   Gmaj7/f#
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|
|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-4-------4-------|-4-------4-------|

  C/g                                 D7
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-0h2-0-----------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-1---------1-----|-------1---------|-----0h1---------|-0h1-------------|
|-0-----0-------0-|-----------0-----|-----2---------2-|-----------2-----|
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----0h1---------|-0h1-------------|
|-----2---------2-|-----------2-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
                            There's a

    G                                   Gmaj7/f#
    :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
||------------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
||*-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|
||------4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|
||------0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
||*-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
||------------------|-----------------|-4-------4-------|-4-------4-------|
    pa -    lace a - fallin'  There's a smoke   in   the sky      There's a
    catching     the train to where he's    heard you have been   He's a 

  C/g                                 D7
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-0h2-0-----------|-----------0-----|-------0----------||
|-1---------1-----|-------1---------|-----0h1---------|-0h1-------------*||
|-0-----0-------0-|-----------0-----|-----2---------2-|-----------2------||
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0----||
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------*||
|-----------------|-----------------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0--------||
  boy     running   downhill to the   lowlands     to - night.  And he's
  fool    now a -  mong us,     a     dreamer      with-in,     dreaming of 

  G                                   Gmaj7/f#
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|
|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-4-------4-------|-4-------4-------|
  you

  Em7                                                   D7sus4
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-0---------------|-------0---------|-----------------|
|-0---------0-----|-------0---------|---0---------0---|-1---------------|
|-------2-------0-|-----------0-----|--0--------0-----|-0---------0-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----2-------2---|-----2-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-2-------2-------|-2-------2-------|-2-------2-------|-0-------0-------|
                                                             And on that...

  G                                   Gmaj7/f#
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|
|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-4-------4-------|-4-------4-------|
  day     there was snowfall in the   street, yellow    light.  And they

  C/g                                 D7
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-0h2-0-----------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-1---------1-----|-------1---------|-----0h1---------|-0h1-------------|
|-0-----0-------0-|-----------0-----|-----2---------2-|-----------2-----|
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
  cleared the bill and rails just by those dark shimmer eyes    In that 

  G                                   Gmaj7/f#
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|
|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-4-------4-------|-4-------4-------|
land      there's a winter, In that      winter's a    day,     in  that 

  C/g                                 D
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-0h2-0-----------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-1---------1-----|-------1---------|-----------3-----|-----------3-----|
|-0-----0-------0-|-----------0-----|-----0-----------|-------0---------|
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------0---|-----4-------4---|-----4-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
  day     there's a moment    when it all     goes your way,    and you

  Em                C                 D7
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----------0-----|-----------1-----|-----0h1---------|-0h1-------------|
|-----0-----------|-----0-----------|-----2---------2-|-----------0-----|
|-----2-------0---|-----2-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-2-------2-------|-----------------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
  know it's a       lion's      heart                           That will

  Em                C                 D7
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----------0-----|-----------1-----|-----0h1---------|-0h1-------------|
|-----0-----------|-----0-----------|-----2---------2-|-----------2-----|
|-----2-------0---|-----2-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-2-------2-------|-----------------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
  tumble      and   tear a  -   part

                                      C                 D7
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----0h1---------|-0h1-------------|-5---------------|-1---------------|
|-----2---------2-|-----------0-----|-0---------0-----|-2---------2-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----5-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-5-------5-------|-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-0-------0-------|
                            when he's coming down the   hills      for      you.

But can you still now remember who's been hiding up there?
Through his howling at twilight all his songs of despair?
Do you remember the caller of a black and white crime?
Well he lives by that memory and falls from his mind

And you know it's a lion's heart
That will tumble and tear apart
When he's coming down the hills for you

Well he'll

    Bm6                                 C
    :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
||------------------|-0---------------|-----------------|-0---------------|
||*-----------3-----|-------3---------|-----------5-----|-------5---------|
||------0-----------|-----------0-----|-----0-----------|-----------0-----|
||------4-------4---|-----4-------4---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
||*-4-------4-------|-4-------4-------|-5-------5-------|-5-------5-------|
||------------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
  walk    in the    city        for - ever                  Oh,
  no      real goodbye         if you mean it               So I 

  G                                   D7
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-0---------------|-----------0-----|-------0----------||
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----0h1---------|-0h1-------------*||
|-----0-----------|-----------0-----|-----2---------2-|-----------2------||
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0----||
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------*||
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0--------||
  walk    in a      time    to be     gone                   Well there's
  guess   I'm for - ever        a  -  lone

:   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------0-----|-2-----0---------|
|-----0h1---------|-0h1-------------|
|-----2---------2-|-----------2-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
                      Now he's a

Now he's a stranger among us, he will die in the park
Where he hides from the statues and the weather remarks
In that land there's a winter
In that winter's a day
In that day there's a moment when it all goes away

And you know it's a lion's heart
That will tumble and tear apart
When it's coming down the hills for you

All the Lessons

[catlist name=Lessons numberposts=150 order=asc orderby=date excludeposts=419]

“I Stole A Song”

At last: I’ve found it!

Not the holy grail, not the place where lost pencils and single socks live, but the melody to Steel Guitars, James Damiano’s composition that Dylan allegedly stole and used for his song Dignity.

[see this if you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about (and this and this if you’re still hungry for more). Damiano’s own material in support of his case can be found here: http://christinejustice.yolasite.com/]

So – it is obvious to anyone who has heard Dignity and Steel Guitars, that Judge Simantle’s words:

To the ear of this court, there is no substantial similarity in the structure, instrumentation or melody of the two songs.

is a fairly precise judgement. The mystery that was beginning to nag me was where on earth Paul Greene had found the pitches that he presented in his court testimony as “The main melody of Steel Guitars”:

a'-g'-d'-e'-d'-b-g-a-b-a-g

How can it be that a trained musicologist can find enough identity between two melodies to support a claim of theft where common-sense judgement hears nothing of the kind?

Greene is courteous enough to define “melody” for us:

I define melody as the sequence or ordering of pitches in a single line of a musical composition.

But I could not for the life of me find any such “single line of a musical composition” in Steel Guitars.

One thing is the quasi-Schenkerian nonsense he presents — e.g. that

the notes (2) & (3) are just accompaniments of (1) when the note (2) or (3) precedes the note (1). […] Theoretically the (2) note or (3) note in reference to this melody line can be considered the same note.

But the melody itself seemed to have been taken out of thin air in the first place.

Hm.

The methodology is fundamentally flawed, the application is deceiving, bordering on fraudulent, but surely, he couldn’t be that bad — he did, after all, graduate magna cum laude from Haaaavard.

So I sat down and listened one last time. I slowed it down to half speed, and when I isolated the left channel and yanked up the volume to an audible level — there it was! In the barely audible first run-through of the verse, before the steel guitars enter, there is actually something, half picked, half strummed, from which the following can be isolated (not, mind you, reduced), which actually matches with Greene’s sequence (which is marked with red in the transcription):

  G
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .   
|-5---3-----3-----|---------------3-|-----------------|
|---------3-------|-3---5---5-3---3-|---5---3-5-3---3-|
|-----------------|---------------0-|-------------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|

                    D                                              
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----0-----0-----|---3-------------|-----------------|
|---0-----0-----0-|-2---2-2-4-2-0-2-|---2-2-2-4-2-0-2-|
|-0---0-----------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|

                G
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|---2-2-2-4-2-0-0-|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|

Right. So it wasn’t “a sequence of pitches in a single line” after all, as I had suspected all along, but pitches, chosen among many others to be the most important ones. Pitches that are not played in sequence (i.e. one after another), but which appear in this sequence over the course of the musical composition, sometimes as melodic fragments (as in the beginning) sometimes as a condensation of a long passage (as in the end), and sometimes, it seems, picked out just to have something to pick out (as at the end of the first line, where the doodling can hardly be claimed to have a melodic character but is merely harmonic filler).

OK.

Fine. So, if these are the rules: if you’re allowed to leave out things at will, and apply stupid “transformational rules” such as the “(2)=(3) if it comes before (1)”, regardless of the harmonic and rhythmic context, then it’s not very difficult to show that two unrelated melodies share the same “melody”.

I Stole a Song

So I wrote this little tune, to lyrics which just came to me. Careful analysis will show that my composition is in fact identical to the melody of Steel Guitars (and, hence, of Dignity). What’s worse, the melody actually appears not once but twice in this short tune. Actually, three times if you count the guitar outro, where the melody line can be heard in its raw form. And in fact, the melodic character of the sequence of pitches is even more pronounced here than in Steel Guitars, so the plagiarism should be even more apparent. I didn’t even use the (2)=(3) rule.

I recorded the song, of course, and it will be released on my next album, where I will shamelessly cash in on other people’s creative efforts:

Here’s a transcription of the stolen composition. Again, although it’s probably unnecessary, since the derivative nature is so obvious, I’ve marked the melodic line in red:

  Em                          Am            G
  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .  
|-------------|-------------|-0---2---3---|-5---3-------|
|-0---0---0---|-0-------0---|-------------|---------3---|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
 I  stole a   song,    I     took it from  someone who

  Cadd9         G/b           Am            D7
  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .  
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-5---3---0---|-5-3---------|-0---1---0---|-------------|
|-------------|---------0---|-------------|-2-----------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
 needed   the   money   more  dearly than   me

  B7            Em            D7            G  D/f# Em
  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .  
|-------------|---------0---|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-3---1---3---|-0-----------|
|-4---2---4---|-0-----------|-------------|-----2---0---|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
 I  was so    cruel    and   he  was a     fool, I make

  Am7           G             F             D7
  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .  
|-5-3---------|-------------|-5---3-------|-------------|
|-----------3-|-5-3---------|---------3---|-5-3---------|
|-------------|---------0---|-------------|---------0---|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
 millions   of dollars   and  he's left with nothing, I

  C#m7-5        B7            Fmaj7         E9
  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .  
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-5-------5-3-|-0-----------|-5-3-----5---|-0-----------|
|-------------|---------2-0-|-------------|---------0-2-|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
 swim in champagne,   I do  nothing  in   vain,   I don't

  A9            C9      B9-7  Em
  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .  
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-4-------2-0-|-3---2---0---|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-2-----------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
 care    I just tear out his soul.

I stole a song
I hate it when someone 
comes up with ideas 
more brilliant than mine
I used to be great
But now my muse is running late,
I'm a washed-out phenomenon,
a has-been in tailspin
I can't hold a tune
I can't croon to the moon
but I don't care,
I have a clear flair for fraud.

I swim in champagne, 
I do nothing in vain, 
I don't care 
I'm just baring 
and tearing out his soul

Yes, I know: it sounds exactly like both Dignity and Steel Guitars.

So now I’m just waiting to see who’s going to sue me first for this blatant theft: Dylan or Damiano.

Last Words on Dignity (the song, that is)

The story so far

I’ve been involved with the Damiano-Dignity “case” now for more than a decade. Here’s a summary, and my last words (I hope) on this matter.

Act One: Musicological Inquiries

When I first heard that Dylan had stolen “Dignity” from a poor songwriter, James Damiano, I was more sympathetic towards the victim than surprised about the theft.

Then, the victim started flooding the net with his case. Somewhere in the vast material, which mostly set out to prove — in tedious detail — the degree and kind of contact between Damiano and various persons somehow associated with Dylan’s organization, there was also one piece of musical evidence: a graph comparing Dignity” and “Steel Guitars”, the song Dylan allegedly had appropriated:

Graph showing similarities between Dignity and Steel Guitars

This piqued my interest — partly because the skeleton to which “Dignity” was reduced didn’t bear much resemblance to the melody itself, partly because this kind of reductive music analysis, which is still today, for mysterious reasons, en vogue at American universities, is demonstrably not able to reveal much of interest about the musical object, since — as has been shown by many scholars — widely different compositions can be reduced to the same pitch sequence.

I would have liked to hear “Steel Guitars”, but among the many hours of videotaped material Damiano presented on his webpage, that was the one item that was missing. The closest thing was a video from court, where Damiano’s crown witness, Dr. Paul Greene, plays the skeleton melody from the graph above, over the accompaniment of “Dignity”. (Sounds a lot like “Dignity”? Sure — it is “Dignity”, with some random notes added here and there.)

I then wrote a little piece about the questions this graph raised. My conclusion was that it was impossible, based on this graph, to say anything conclusive about possible similarities between the two songs, and that I would like to hear the un-reduced version of the song.

Damiano responded, variously calling my very existence into question and claiming that I was paid by Dylan to put forth such lies, that I was too much of a coward to face the truth (his favoured nickname for me over the past few years has been “The Weasel”), etc.

Act Two: Close Encounters

When he eventually threatened to start an email bombing campaign against me, I decided it was time to contact him directly:

What you’re describing in your mail amounts to a threat of email bombing, which, being a kind of denial of service attacks, is a federal crime in the States, and I could sue you for it. Your ISP probably wouldn’t like it either.

We then entered into a direct communication — a strange experience indeed. During our communication, I finally got to hear the song:

The Last Words: Musical and Psychological Analysis

The following is a revised and condensed version of what I wrote to James Damiano on that occasion (this was in August 2009). I present it here, not to put anyone on the spot, but to complete what I’ve written publicly about the case — most notably: the full musicological analysis of the two tunes:

*

I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but it doesn’t really matter how much effort you put into proving that Dylan — or someone in his ‘organization’ — has actually heard your material: if the songs don’t sound the same, what’s the point of proving it?

And they don’t.

If a song consists of harmony, melody, rhythm, and overall structure to bind them all together, I would say that:

(1) the harmony is different:

your song goes:

||: G . . . | . . . .  |
    D . . . | . . G . :||
    C . G . | C . G .  |
    C . G . | C D | G . . . |

whereas Dignity goes (transposed to the same key):

||: G . . . | . . .   . |
    C . G . | . . C/d G :||
    D . . . | C . G   . |
    C . G/d . | Am .  D . ||

The only thing they have in common is the first line — which is a single chord….

Do you have your own very special way of playing the same chord over long stretches, which Dylan then has stolen? Or is it something else?

Other than that, the harmonic structure, i.e. the arch of tension in the song, is virtually reversed: you start with a G-D alternation, i.e. a strong tonic-dominant polarity; Dylan starts with a G-C relationship, where the C hardly breaks out of the control of the G.

Your refrain — which is a true refrain with a tonal closure — is harmonically identical to the Everly Brothers’ Bye Bye Love (you haven’t stolen it, have you?). Dylan’s, on the other hand, is not a refrain, but a bridge, ending on the dominant, D, getting ready for the next pair of verses.

The above also implies that the overall harmonic structure is radically different between the two songs. And having heard a few of your songs, and having worked with Dylan’s music more extensively, I can say with some confidence that this is in fact a decisive factor: the differences I have pointed out above correspond closely to differences between your idioms, your musical directions.

(2) As for melody:

I can’t really find something to call a melody in any strong sense of the word in Steel Guitars, and I would have liked to see it pointed out where exactly you find the melodic similarities. Also, where exactly, among all the improvised doodling, Dr. Greene has found the notes that he picked out for his reductive analysis. It’s not that they jump in the eye (or: ear), and Dylan’s melody for “Dignity” is nowhere to be heard.

(3) Lastly, the rhythmical side

is also different, which makes it a nasty trick to play the melody of “Steel Guitars” — whatever it is — over the rhythmic accompaniment of “Dignity” in order to prove the similarity.

(4) Overall Structure

In fact, I would have a much stronger case for the claim that the refrain of your “song” is borrowed/stolen from the Everly Brothers’ “Bye Bye Love” than you have for your claim about Dylan stealing your tune.

I won’t make that claim, however, because all the songs I’ve heard so far on your site are extremely derivative. You’d have a hard time finding a single record in the history of popular music which didn’t have some song which showed similarities with some of your songs. Have they all stolen from you? No. Just as little as every poet who uses the words “love”, “and”, or “flower” have stolen from Shakespeare.

*

You know that scene in Don’t Look Back? Where the guy who is covering up for the one who threw the glass out of the hotel room window is comparing himself to Dylan? “You’re a big noise”, I think is what he says. “You’re a big noise, and I’m a little noise.” Something like that.

That’s the saddest scene I know, at least in any Dylan movie. Because it is so recognizable, somehow. There are some people around who want to be a big noise too. Some of them are — and some turn into it. But some people, like the guy in the movie, are happy to be a small noise (as long, perhaps, as they are allowed to spend some time in the big noise’s hotel room), and that’s the sad part.

Basically, I think we all want to be big noises — and so we should, at least in our own lives and the lives of those close to us.

But here’s the lesson to you: you can stand on a giant’s shoulders and see farther than the giant, but you can’t stand on a big noise and scream louder than him.

You have to figure out where your worth lies, independently of Dylan.

Have you ever tried to open up to the thought: maybe Dylan didn’t steal my song, maybe I’m not the little guy who’s been screwed by the big guy after all?

You may have been screwed — we all have, some way or another — but perhaps nobody in particular is to blame.

It’s nice to have someone to blame for one’s misery, but often things happen without them being anyone’s fault — they just happen.

I can understand it if you’d rather be a music star than paint people’s houses. But perhaps it’s not Dylan’s fault that things are the way they are?

Postscript

Our conversation came to a halt after I asked Damiano to comment, in his own words, on what I had written.

I’m still waiting.

I consider the case closed. And I urge anyone who still thinks Dylan has stolen “Dignity” to come forth with clear arguments.

I’ve pursued the case as far as I have, not to harm James Damiano, and definitely not to defend Bob Dylan, but mainly out of righteous, professional anger at the analysis of Dr. Greene, which is either just flawed or — more likely — simply fraudulent.

There are two intriguing things in all this.

One is that Dylan’s organization apparently is so musically incompetent that they have let it come as far as a court case — even one they won. I heard somewhere that Dylan had advised his son never to receive anything from his fans, partly because of the Damiano madness. Why not just contact some competent musicologist who could conclusively state what anyone can hear (even Judge Simandle): that there isn’t an ounce of similarity between the two songs?

The other strange thing is that all this fuss is about this song, “Dignity” — hardly Dylan’s most exciting song, I’d almost say: musically rather boring. If I wanted to claim authorship of a Dylan-song, I’d go for “Most of the Time” or something — not a simple three-(plus)-chord song.

Damiano’s material in support of his case can be found here: http://christinejustice.yolasite.com/

Ooops, I did it again (… and I like it!)

Yes, I’m into chess these days.

Another game, another opponent supposedly stronger than me. Unlike last time, I had only seen a couple of his previous games, so the only thing I had to go by was that he seemed to be quite happy to get pieces off the board. It’s not that he was playing for draws. I saw the exchanges more as a way to avoid complications.

In other words: I was playing against myself. I tend to do that too: either close the centre, or get rid of some Queens and Knights, or both. Keep the options limited for both players, and hope for a mistake to punish, or a brilliant idea. Admittedly, it’s a passive strategy. Call me a chicken, but sometimes, a whole board filled with unpredictable pieces and moves can bee too much to keep track of. I hate surprises, especially when they involve unexpected knight storms.

Kjeldgård, Lennart — Østrem, Eyolf

Faxe EMT (4) Faxe

2011.04.27 0-1 B20

1.e4 c5

I went for a Sicilian, not because I’m particularly good at it, but at least I know some of the main lines well enough to avoid some of the pitfalls. Again, this is passive thinking. I should have said: “I know it well enough to be able to develop nicely and presumably present the opponent with some problems.

2.Bc4 (D)

This seems to be his specialty: he had played the same in one of the earlier games I had seen too. In that case it all transformed into a plain ol’ Fischer/Scheveningen kind of Sicilian eventually, so I didn’t put too much effort into the preparations of this particular line.

2…e6 3.Nf3 d6 (D)

I’m not sure if this is the “correct” way to deal with the early Bishop version, but since I expected d4 cxd, Nxd4 Nf6, Nc3 anyway, I saw no reason not to play the standard moves.

4.d4 cxd4 (D)

5.Qxd4 (D)

Surprise #1.

5…Nc6 6.Bb5 (D)

6…Bd7 7.Bxc6 (D)

Suspicion confirmed: he was keen on exchanges.

7…Bxc6 (D)

… and since this is a good spot for the Bishop anyway, I didn’t mind.

8.Nc3 Nf6 9.Bg5 (D)

Dejá-vu?

9…Be7 10.O-O-O (D)

I thought for a while here. First of all, I went through the line 11.BxN BxB, 12.Qxd6 QxQ, 13.RxQ, which might seem to win a pawn, but after 13…BxN, 14.bxB, Bxe4, black would be much better off, so that line was nothing to fear.

When I chose

10…h6

over the presumably better 0-0 I did so in order to see if his willingness to exchange would go so far as to give me the advantage of two bishops vs. two knights.

11.Bxf6

Which it did! I wasn’t at all unhappy.

(11.Bh4 O-O 12.e5 dxe5

(12…Nd5 13.Bxe7 Qxe7 14.Ne4 dxe5 15.Nxe5 Rfc8 where the analysis engine tells me I stand a little bit better, but I’m not so sure…

)

13.Nxe5

(13.Qxd8 Rfxd8 14.Nxe5 Bxg2 15.Rhg1 Rxd1+ 16.Kxd1 Bh3

)

13…Qc7

(13…Bxg2 14.Rhg1 Qxd4 15.Rxd4 Bc6

)

14.Nxc6

(14.Bg3 Nh5 15.Nxc6 Qxc6 16.Qg4

)

14…Qxc6 15.f3

)

11…Bxf6 (D)

12.Qxd6

And after this move, I reckoned I had practically won the game already. The line I had calculated seemed inevitable, so apparently he hadn’t seen the BxN two moves ahead. Or did he have something up his sleeve that I hadn’t seen?

12…Qxd6 13.Rxd6 (D)

13…Bxc3 (D)

Apparently not. He spent a very long time on this move, even though it seems simple enough. After the numerous exchanges already, there simply isn’t enough material left on the board to create complications; capturing the Bishop is the only option.

14.bxc3 Bxe4 (D)

Not only has he come out of this with an isolated double pawn ready to attack, he will also have to move his knight to avoid getting another one of the same kind. And behind the knight is an unprotected pawn…

15.Nd2

I decided not to take the “poisoned” g-pawn and invite the other white Rook in after Rg1 and Rxg7. Fair enough, the position would probably be even more promising for me, but I decided to focus on the queen’s side.

15…Bd5 (D)

I must admit that when I made this move, I didn’t primarily think of the consequences it had for the advanced white Rook; I was aiming for the a-pawn and for a blockade of the c pawns.

(15…Bxg2 16.Rg1 Bd5 17.Rxg7 Ke7 18.Rxd5 exd5

)

16.c4 (D)

Seems to deal with both threats, and proving my previous move to be wrong. But wait…:

16…Ke7 (D)

The Rook is trapped. I had plenty of time on the clock, so I decided to let him sweat over the decision while I had a cup of coffee in the lounge.

17.Rxd5

I was a bit surprised to see him give up the exchange so easily, but again: I didn’t complain.

(17.c5 Would have put up a fiercer fight 17…Rac8 18.Nb3 Bxg2

(18…Bxb3 19.axb3 Rxc5 20.Rhd1 Rhc8 21.Rd7+ Ke8 22.c4 R8c7 23.Rxc7 Rxc7 with a slight advantage, but not an obvious win

)

(18…b6 19.Rd1 Rxc5 20.Nxc5 Kxd6 21.Na6 Ke7 22.f3 Bxa2 23.Nb4 Bd5 24.Nxd5+ exd5 25.Rxd5 Rd8 26.Re5+ Kd6 27.f4 a5 seems ok.

)

19.Rg1 Bd5 20.Rxg7 Rhg8 21.Rg3 Rxg3 22.hxg3 b6 23.Kd2 Rxc5 24.Nxc5 Kxd6 25.Nb3 Bxb3 26.cxb3 (D)

seems fairly winnable

)

17…exd5 18.cxd5 (D)

Those pawns ought to be pickable. Rooks on c8 and d8, the King to d6, etc.

18…Rac8

Perhaps over-complicating things. Rhd8 or Kd6 right away are probably better moves, but as long as the King is left on the c-file, the d pawn is not offered any real protection because of the pin. I figured that the lonesome pawn wouldn’t go anywhere, so I concentrated on activating my Rooks and passivating white’s Knight first. Hence the following few moves.

19.Kb2

(19.c4 b5 would not be much better.

)

19…b5 (D)

I wanted to keep the c pawn back, and avoid having the white Knight entering the play in interesting ways.

(ok, 19…Rhd8 is better: 20.c4 b5 21.Rd1 bxc4 22.Ne4 f5 23.Nc3 Rb8+ 24.Kc2 Kd6 25.Rd4 Kc5 26.Rf4 Rf8

)

20.Ne4

Not interesting enough, though, since I figured that:

20…f5 (D)

would force it back to d2, which would be excellent since I could now do Kd6 without having to consider any Knight threats, or to c3, where it would bury the c pawn if not forever, then at least for as long as it would take me to capture the d pawn.

(20…Rc4 is probably better, though.

)

21.Nc3 Rc5 (D)

Now, all I needed was to double rooks in the c file, and the Knight would have to go to some far-away place, and the d pawn woud finally fall.

22.Re1+ Kd7 (D)

The King has been headed for d6 for a while, so I almost auto-piloted there, but then realized that after Re6+, the King would have to go to d7 anyway, so why lose that tempo?

Today’s lesson: Don’t ever, ever switch on the auto-pilot!

(22…Kd6 23.Re6+ Kd7

)

23.Re6 Rhc8 (D)

Only one thing for white to do:

24.Rc6 R8xc6

(24…R5xc6 25.dxc6+ Kxc6

)

25.dxc6+ Kxc6 (D)

26.Kb3 a5 (D)

(26…Re5 would have been better, restricting the Knight completely and getting out of the way for the King. When I didn’t play it, it was because I didn’t like the way the Knight covered a lot of my Rook’s useful spots, and because I didn’t want to let the white King out of his confinement over b4-a5. That probably wasn’t much of a threat to consider anyway, though, so next time I’ll be less cautious… 27.Kb4 Re1

(27…a6 28.Ka5 Rc5 29.Kb4 Rc4+ 30.Kb3 Rd4 31.Ne2 Rd2 32.Nf4 Rxf2 33.g3 Kd6

)

28.Nxb5

(28.h4 a6 29.g3 Rf1 30.f4 Rf3 31.Ne2 Kb6 32.Nd4

)

28…Rb1+

)

27.Ne2 Rc4 (D)

This does almost the same as Re5 would have done anyway

28.c3 (D)

another square taken away from the Knight.

28…a4+

(28…Re4 would have been better, with the prospect of 29.Nd4+ Kc5 30.a4

(30.Nxf5 and a pawn hunt is no good: 30…a4+ 31.Ka3 Re2 32.Nxg7 Kc4 33.Nf5 Kxc3 34.Nxh6 Kc4 35.g3 b4+ 36.Kxa4 Rxa2#

)

30…bxa4+ 31.Kxa4 Kc4 32.f3 Re1 33.Kxa5 Kxc3 34.Nc6 Re2 35.g3 f4 36.Nb4 Kc4 37.Nc6 etc.; the white pawns will fall

)

29.Kb2 (D)

29…g6 (D)

To avoid the possibility of losing the f pawn through a Knight fork on d4 if the Rook leaves the fourth rank

30.f3

Looks very much like a waiting move.

30…b4 31.cxb4 Rxb4+ (D)

32.Ka3 Rc4 (D)

Maybe Rh4 or Rb1 were better moves, but I wasn’t in a hurry, and as long as the Knight is locked up, I would basically be more or less the whole Rook ahead, materially. Threatens Rc2 as well, so:

33.Kb2 Kc5 (D)

The most exhausting thing about this kind of endgame vs. a Knight, is that one has to bee watching for possible forks all the time. My plan was to move my King to the pawns on the king’s side, but the direct route Kd5 would have allowed N3 with check. It would not have been dangerous after all, and the King could have walked safely down the board, but I was being cautious. Again.

(33…Kd5 34.Nc3+ Kd4 35.Nb5+ Kd3

(35…Ke3 would not be good, since 36.Nc3 Kf2 37.Nd1+ Kxg2 would loose the Rook to the fork 38.Ne3+ 35…Kd3 would prevent the Knight’s reentry on the stage.

)

34.g3 g5 (D)

Preventing Nf4

35.h3

Waiting…

35…Kb4 (D)

36.a3+

The best response, and also the reason why I went to b4: now, the white King is locked up forever.

(36.Nc1 was the alternative, but after 36…a3+ 37.Kb1 Kc3 38.Nb3 Rb4 white is neatly tied up! Plenty of Zugzwang opportunities to exploit here. Trying to escape from the knot/pin with 39.Kc1 does not work:

(39.g4 f4 40.h4 gxh4 41.Kc1 h3 42.Kd1 h2 43.Ke2 h1=Q is no better.

)

39…Rxb3 40.axb3 a2 41.Kd1 a1=Q+ 42.Ke2

)

36…Kc5 (D)

37.f4? (D)

Since this gives my King e4, it is probably a mistake. I was a bit concerned that white might move the King back and forth in is jail, thus keeping d4 and e4 protected and the king’s passage blocked. However, I would quite easily have managed to break through on the king’s side, e.g.:

(37.Kb1 h5 38.Kb2 Kd6 39.Kb1 Ke5 40.Kb2 h4 41.gxh4 Rxh4 42.Ng1 Kf4 43.Kc2 Ke3 44.Kc3 Kf2

)

37…Kd5

This time, it would have been quicker to avoid the knight check on c3. On the other hand, the knight is hardly dangerous anymore.

(37…Kd6 38.fxg5 hxg5 39.Nc1 f4 40.gxf4 gxf4 41.Nd3 f3 42.Nf2 Ke5 43.h4 Rxh4 44.Kc3 Rd4

)

38.Nc3+ Kd4 39.Nb5+ Ke3 40.Nd6 Rc5 (D)

41.fxg5 hxg5 42.Nf7 f4 (D)

43.gxf4

(43.h4 fxg3 44.Nxg5 Rxg5 45.hxg5 g2 46.Kc3 g1=Q

)

43…gxf4 44.Nh6 (D)

Again, the Rook blocks the (possibly) most useful fields for the Knight, and the pawn will inevitably queen, unless the Knight sacrifices himself (if he can find a way to do it, that is. Mwahaha).

44…Ke2 (D)

I’m doing anything to avoid knight checks… I may be overdoing it here, but I consider it a good exercise.

45.Ng4 f3 46.Nh2 f2 47.h4 Rh5 (D)

And he finally resigned.

0-1

The downside is that my next opponent will be one of the big shots, against whom I will have very slim chances… When I told my friend Jens who I was facing, he sat silent for a while, then grunted concernedly (“Hm….”), then said — I’m sure as an encouragement — “Well, you mustn’t give up in advance. Anyone can have a bad day.”

Possibly My Best Game of Chess

I’ve woved to stick to music, dylan, politics and computers, but allow me a digression into the wonderful world of chess.

I’m not a great player, but I’m not a bad player either. I’ve never played in a club — I just enjoy the occasional game of chess with my good friend Jens. I think our score is quite exactly equal.

He lured me into this local tournament, though, and I’m enjoying every minute of it. I especially enjoy — on Jens’ behalf, but also on my own, through self-indulgent hubris — the looks when I casually tell the other club members about our current standing (“Oh, you play equal with Jens — so you’re quite good, then.”).

Anyway. Today’s round was against someone way above my league: an elderly gentleman who looks nice and kind — the ideal grandfather — but who would probably be all over me to prove that looks are deceptive if I gave him the chance.

If ratings are to be trusted, I was going to fry. It turned out they’re not.

I openly admit I have two major drawbacks as a chess player: I usually come out of the opening second best, and I tend to venture on unsound, unprepared missions in the middle game, usually creating something of interest, but most often realising that “Nah, going to c6 probably wasn’t such a great idea after all”.

This time I decided things should be different.

As for the opening, I had had a look at some of my opponent’s previous games, and I had noticed two things: (1) He almost exclusively plays Caro-Cann as black, and (2) he sometimes gets himself into trouble, partly thanks to the opening; his black score is less than average, actually.

So I decided to deviate from my usual 1. d4 and play 1. e4 for a change, expecting to get 1…c6 back. It is potentially dangerous, of course, to step into the lion’s mouth like this and play my opponent’s favourite opening, but I decided to give it a try.

As for unwarranted experimental expeditions, I had pledged to avoid them, to the best of my ability. Last week, I was on the brink of expulsion thanks to one of them, against a player whom — again based on ratings — I ought to have beaten easily. No more of that. Cautious, solid play, waiting for the mistakes — that was my plan.

Østrem, Eyolf (1400) — Larsen, Paul M (1613)

Faxe EMT (3) Faxe

2011.04.13 1-0 B12s

1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 (D)

I enjoy the advance variant in the French opening, so going for the equivalent in Caro-Cann was an easy choice. Since black usually does c6-c5 eventually, I consider it an advance French with an extra tempo. I decided to disregard the major difference: that black gets his white bishop out before e6.

Afterthought: Why is it that I enjoy the advance variation? Probably because it closes the centre, and with the centre closed, there is a little less to think about. If I look upon it like that, it sounds like an awfully defensive strategy for the white player. I’m sure there are more noble reasons to play this kind of opening, but I admit: I do it out of fear. I’ll have to do something about that. See a shrink? Hardly. Play only the King’s gambit for six months? Perhaps…

3…Bf5 4.Nf3 (D)

The Short variant: don’t try to fight the aggressor on f5 – just keep developing as if nothing had happened.

4…e6 5.Be2 c5 6.c3 cxd4

So far: everything according to plan. The usual line is for black to play Nc6 before the capture. When he didn’t wait, I got the chance to occupy the wonderful central square with my knight, which was to become the one piece and field around which the whole game evolved.

7.Nxd4 (D)

7…Bg6 8.Nd2

After this move, I groaned to myself: “Oh, no, I’ve lost from the start – again! Qg5 wins d5 or g2 no matter what I do! Damn!”

It turns out that any of the moves I had considered to continue with (Qb3, N2f3, Qa4+ and 0-0) would maintain the advantage.

( 8…Qg5 Here’s what Toga (a chess engine) has to say about the matter. “14:+1.20” means: “looking 14 half-moves forward, white is better by 1.20 pawns.”
( [Toga II 1.2.1] 14:+1.20 9.Qb3 Qe7 10.Qa4+ Nd7 11.O-O Qd8 12.c4 Ne7 13.N2f3 Qb6 14.Rd1 Qa6 15.Qxa6 bxa6 16.Bg5 Rb8 )
( [Toga II 1.2.1] 13:+1.21 9.N2f3 Qd8 10.O-O Ne7 11.Bg5 h6 12.Bh4 Qd7 13.Bb5 Nbc6 14.Qa4 Be4 15.Rfd1 )
( [Toga II 1.2.1] 13:+1.09 9.Qa4+ Nd7 10.N2f3 Qd8 11.O-O Bc5 12.Nb5 Nh6 13.Bxh6 gxh6 14.Nd6+ Bxd6 15.exd6 Qb6 16.Qd4 O-O-O 17.Qxb6 Nxb6 )
( [Toga II 1.2.1] 13:+1.01 9.O-O Qxe5 10.N2f3 Qc7 11.Nb5 Qa5 12.Bf4 Na6 13.Nbd4 Be7 14.Bb5+ Kf8 15.Re1 Nc7 16.b4 ) 9…Qxg2 10.Bf3 Qg5 11.Qxb7 )

And the pawn on g2 is poisoned: if the queen touches it, she dies.

The question, though: would I have found the correct defense over the board? That’s the question I had vowed to avoid having to answer.

No more of that! No matter if the computer analysis says I would win. What good does that do me, if I can’t find the move?

8…Ne7 (D)

Sigh of relief. I didn’t have to deal with the queen.

9.O-O?

Maybe I should have done N2f3 right away, but I wanted to postpone the decision about how to defend the lonely, soon-to-be-attacked e5, Should I give it a solid pawn-support with f4 first, compromising the king’s safe nest, or should I regard the piece support I intended to give it (N2f3, Bf4, and Re1) as enough?

I don’t think the move is that bad, objectively speaking. But I consider it a mistake because it does what I tend to do: think that “OK, that Knight is blocking everything right now, but I’ll move it next time anyway, and then I will get out of this temporary cramp.”

That’s of course the moment when Jens usually strikes.

( [crafty] 17:+0.69 9.h4 h5 10.N2f3 Nbc6 11.O-O Nxd4 12.Nxd4 Nc6 13.Nxc6 bxc6 14.Qa4 Qb6 15.b4 Be7 16.Be3 Qc7 17.g3 )

9…Nec6 (D)

Defend or attack? N2f3 is the “correct” move here, but I didn’t care for the prospect of Nd7, when I would have to trade my Knight in shining armour for the upshoot at c6, and then defend e5 with Bf4 before I could reconquer d4 with my other knight.

Besides, what is now a safe post would then be easy prey for the new c-pawn. Hence:

10.Qa4 (D)

I had actually been considering something like this on some of the previous moves too, even before the black Knight arrived at c6. The plan was to provoke the Knight pin that had now been given me for free. I just couldn’t decide whether to play Bb5 or Qa4 first, so I did something else instead.

As for the quality of the move, at least it prevents Nd7. But my analysis engine tells me that whatever edge I had before, is all lost now.

If someone is to blame, other than me, it’s Gus Hansen, the Danish poker god. I just read his fascinating story of how he won a couple of million Australian dollars, hand by hand, and although I’ve barely played a single hand of poker, what I took from it was the insight that it’s not all about what you have up your sleeve, it’s just as much about what the other guy THINKS you have.

Secondly, the importance of the initiative: if you can tell the other guy where to look, he may not see the better move (which in this case was the quiet Be7).

( 10.N2f3 Nd7 )

10…Qa5?

I pondered for a while: do I want to remove the Queens and place his Knight awkwardly on the side, and advance the pawn to f4 — safer now that the most dangerous pieces are gone? Or do I want to keep my knight at d4 at any cost? Presented this way, it looks like an easy decision.

( [crafty] 16:+0.14 10…Be7 11.Bb5 O-O 12.N2f3 Qb6 13.Be3 Bc5 14.b3 a6 15.Be2 Nd7 16.Nxc6 bxc6 17.Bd4 f6 18.exf6 Nxf6 )

11.Bb5? (D)

I, of course, decided to do something else. Objectively speaking, this is a bad move. QxQ BxQ now releases any tension from the position, and black is equal.

My motivation (not that I needed any, since I wasn’t aware it was such a bad move): he has taken some pains to get his knight to c6. Certainly he wants to get it into action, and the continued pin would not seem attractive.

And sure enough:

( 11.Qxa5 Nxa5 12.Nb5 Kd7 13.a3 a6 14.Nd4 Be7 )

11…Qc7?

( [crafty] 19:-0.09 11…Qxa4 12.Bxa4 Be7 13.Nb5 ( 13.N2f3 O-O 14.Bb5 Nxd4 15.Nxd4 a6 16.Be2 Rc8 17.Bf4 Nc6 18.Rac1 Be4 19.Rfd1 Rc7 20.Bd3 Bxd3 21.Rxd3 Nxd4 22.Rxd4 ) 13…Na6 14.Nd4 Nb8 15.f4 O-O 16.N2f3 )

12.N2f3 Be7 (D)

Now what? He is surely going to castle next time, and the knight pin I had based my play on would be history.

13.c4! (D)

For once, the engine agrees with me, although his (or is it “its”?) reasons are probably more thought-through than mine. I thought along these lines: if he trades horses (… 0-0, cxd NxN, NxN exd), I’ll still have one of them on d4. What could be better than giving him an isolated pawn to attack (behind which I could hide my stallion)?

Should he capture the c pawn instead, I could take it back with my queen, who is no longer needed on the diagonal towards the king, since the king will be gone anyway.

It doesn’t come easy, to give one of my own moves an “!”, but I’ve done it: I found what’s probably the best move in the situation; it’s not an obvious move; and there was a clear idea behind it.

13…O-O 14.cxd5 exd5

With the black knight free to move, I have to defend the e pawn again. I know, the bishop is undefended, but there may be a future disclosed attack in there too, somewhere along the line. Somewhat vaguely, I was thinking, too, that there might be some combination in there, involving moving the knight, opening the defense line from the Queen. It wasn’t a clear idea — just something to keep in mind.

15.Bf4 (D)

This was beginning to look quite nice. The e-pawn is well-defended, and I was getting ready to pile up rooks against the loner on e5. But hey…!?:

15…a6 (D)

Long thought. The a-pawn is pinned, sortof: If it takes the bishop, I capture the rook.

But then the queen is trapped – for good: there is not a single escape field left on the a file. I may be able to recapture the black queen with Nxb5 or, if I go in-between with Rc1 now, some funky business with Rxc6, but we would still come out equal and all my initiative would be gone.

I got lost in the calculations after a while, but this is where my pledge kicked in. Instead of thinking: “Surely, there must be a way out – I’ll go for it and see where it ends!”, I decided to play it safe. As Gus might have said: if the pot-odds are against you, you shouldn’t feel ashamed to fold a bad hand.

16.Bxc6

( 16.Rac1 axb5 17.Qxa8 Na6 18.Rxc6 Rxa8 19.Rxc7 Nxc7 )

16…bxc6 17.Rac1 (D)

I actually enjoyed this position, even though I had given him a connected passed pawn instead of an isolated one.

I tend to think of myself as fairly good at obstructive defensive play: taking away the good fields from the opponent’s attack forces when I’m behind. This game I consider a fairly successful obstructive offensive play, which is a rather new experience: even though the upper left corner is where all the action is, the Rook and Knight who are right there, are completely immobilized.

( 17.b4 )

17…c5

He can’t take the knight, of course, since the Queen would fall, so I decide to up the ante:

18.b4 (D)

18…c4 (D)

… and my knight can stay a little while longer! The double passed pawns may become dangerous in the end game, but we’re not there yet!

19.a3

A bit on the cautious side, but that was after all today’s strategy: better safe than sorry.

19…Bd3 (D)

This move annoyed me quite a lot. After a short think, I concluded that it wasn’t really dangerous, but I had lulled myself into thinking that he didn’t have any moves, which clearly wasn’t the case. Was there more that I had overlooked? Had I neglected my obstructive defensive play in the pursuit of a possibly futile offensive?

20.Rfe1 (D)

Should I play Re1 or Rd1? Rd1 would either drive the intruding bishop away, since the pawn is pinned against the queen, or force the queen to another spot.

That other spot is not that easy to find: some defense of c6 seems neessary (Nc6 NxN, QxN, threatening a couple of pawns, at least), and if it leaves the diagonal, the bishop on f4 might come to life.

But rather than force my opponent to start thinking: “Now, where would the queen stand better?” I decided to postpone the attack on the bishop and concentrate on the e file, which looks nice indeed. Surely, that advanced pawn, left to his own devices for so long, must have potential?

( 20.Rfd1 Be4 )

20…Qd8 (D)

Up to this point, I had spent almost twice as much time as my opponent, but he thought about this move for more than half an hour — and came up with a bad move.

The better alternatives – h6 and Rc8 – are not easy to find, though, especially when the chip leader (me) has dictated that the queen has to be involved in his move.

21.e6 (D)

Finally! My decisive advantage is back – not just according to my own over-the-board analysis, but also according to the engine.

Still, for an average player, it’s a nervous moment: a bridge has been burnt – it’s do or die.

But I felt confident: if the pawn is captured, the trusty knight forks the rook and the queen, and if not …

21…f6 22.Bxb8 (D)

… the knight makes its presence felt anyway. The rook can’t capture, since it would then fall to another knight fork, this time on c6.

I just loved that knight!

22…Qxb8

Now, Nc6 would fork the queen and the bishop, but first things first:

23.Qd7 Qd6

( 23…Ra7 won’t make things much better for black 24.Qxd5 )

24.Nc6 (D)

The knight moves in (All-in!) – at last!

24…Qxd7

( 24…Rfe8 25.Nfd4 Kf8 And the advantage is clear enough, but it’s not easy to find the right moves, for either side. )

25.exd7 Bd8 26.Re8? (D)

Two days ago, I played virtually the same position against Jens – but with me as the defender. As it happens, he failed to bring the attack to conclusion, and I should have taken the lesson: it would be decisive is black captures the rook (in this case, immediate mate), but if the white rook is left alone, it actually doesn’t do much harm. I can bring another rook into the puddle, but that’s about it.

With this move, I offer black a chance to get out of all his misery with Bf5. Much better than the fairly pointless Rook escapade would have been Nfd4, which prevents the bishop from attacking the pawn on d7. Besides, there just HAS to be a white knight on that spot — it’s fate!

But again: I tend to think that on our level, the fact that I’ve decided that “now it’s all about the eighth rank” was what made him play:

26…Bc7

( After 26…Bf5 27.Rxd8 Rfxd8 28.Ne7+ Kf7 29.Nxf5 Rxd7 the positioni is quite even, all of a sudden )

27.Rce1 Be4 (D)

28.Rxf8+

I’ve been looking for pins and forks like mad so far, but I missed the best continuation here:

( 28.Rc8 Rfxc8 29.Ne7+ Kf8 30.Nxc8 )

28…Kxf8 29.Nfd4 (D)

is not bad either, though. Covers f5, thus preventing any funny business from the light-squared bishop, and threatens a King-Bishop fork on e6. The dark-squared bishop has to move:

29…Bb6

I see the potential for nastiness along the diagnal towards the king, but I’m not too concerned: the bishop is soon going to die anyway.

30.Ne6+ Kf7 31.d8=Q (D)

31…Bxd8 32.Nexd8+ (D)

32…Ke8?

I reckon that I can safely trade the two knights for the black rook. My remaining rook against a single bishop ought to be enough. But hey, I’m still hungry:

( 32…Kf8 33.f3 Bf5 34.Rd1 Bd3 35.Ne6+ Kf7 36.Nc5 Rc8 37.Nd4 h5 38.Nxd3 cxd3 39.Rxd3 Rc1+ 40.Kf2 h4 41.h3 Ra1 42.Nf5 g5 43.Ne3 Ke6 44.Nxd5 Ra2+ 45.Kg1 Ra1+ 46.Kh2 Rc1 47.Rc3 Ra1 48.Nc7+ Ke5 49.Re3+ Kd4 50.Re4+ Kd3 51.Nxa6 Rxa3 52.b5 Ra5 53.Nc5+ Kc3 54.Na4+ Kb3 55.b6 Rb5 56.b7 )

33.f3 (D)

Another pin! I love it!

33…f5 34.fxe4 fxe4 (D)

At this point, I have won, of course. But it has to be said: he defended bravely, sticking to every chance of counter-play he could find. He now has three connected passed pawns, smack in the centre of the board, and although I’m rather confident I can keep them at bay, there is no room for mistakes either.

Rd1 would have been better than my:

35.Ne6

Heading for d4 again. Whatever fate decrees.

35…Kd7 36.Ncd4 Kd6 37.Nxg7 Ke5 (D)

38.Nge6

Again, Rd1 is better.

38…Rc8 39.Rc1

( 39.Rf1 c3 40.Rf5+ Kd6 41.Nc5 Rxc5 42.bxc5+ Kxc5 43.Nc2 is the best he has )

39…c3 40.Kf2 Rc4 41.Ke3 c2 (D)

Pesky little bugger of a pawn. We don’t want the rook onto the third rank either, so time to let the horses rest:

42.Kd2 Rxd4+ 43.Nxd4 Kxd4 44.Rxc2 (D)

The rest is routine.

44…e3+ 45.Ke2 Ke4 46.a4

( 46.Rc6 d4 47.Rxa6 d3+ 48.Kd1 d2 49.b5 )

46…d4 47.Rc4 Kd5 48.Kd3 e2 49.Rc1 (D)

( 49.Rc5+ is more elegant, but what the heck: )

1-0

Finally, my opponent decided there was nothing more he could do, and stretched out his hand.

He then said: “That was so nicely played!” It’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me — at least at a chess board.

So, is it a good game? There are flaws, overlooked moves, and bad strategic decisions on both sides. For it to have been a great game, I would have had to have avoided errors like 26.Re8.

When I’m happy with it, it’s because I played according to a strategy, and the strategy worked. The themes I had considerations about during the opening moves — how to handle the e-pawn, and the exploitation of d4 for the Knights — turned out to become essential to the game, and the decisions I made turned out to be successful.

But most importantly I think I managed to strike a balance between sound play, initiative, and the occasional good move (13.c4 and 21.e6). “Initiative” means not primarily forcing the opponent to act in a particular way, but making him think he is forced. The chess equivalent to the bluff in poker, if you wish. If Re8 was a bluff, it worked.

Four Simple Facts

Whenever I’ve been concerned, these past few weeks, about the future of Egypt, Libya, Tunis, and the other countries where the people (the People? which people? — Sorry, just a digression) have been revolting;

about why the revolters are chanting “Allah’u akbar”;

about what is true and what is not about Al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood standing in the shadows and controlling the whole thing;

about what would happen if this were actually the case;

about a host of questions along the same lines — I’ve quietly sat down and gone through the following simple facts:

1. Most or all major conflicts in the world since the WWII have been played out in areas with substantial oil resources.

2. “Democracy” — despite the almost religious ring the word has in the mouths of certain Western leaders — is not an obvious, natural system which guarantees the freedom, wellbeing, and empowerment of all citizens.

3. There is no reason to be surprised that some people (hm… there’s that “people” again. Wonder who’s hiding behind it this time. Sorry — digressing again.) may express suspicion, spite, distrust, hatred, anger towards the Western world and any of its symbols of faith, such as, e.g., “democracy”. But that does not mean that people wouldn’t want to govern themselves. As Richard Pithouse points out in the Pambazuka News:

The Europe of colonialism, slavery and genocide has no claim to moral leadership in this world. The Europe that backed the Mubarak dictatorship for thirty years and the Ben Ali dictatorship for twenty-three years has no claim to moral leadership in this world. […]

Any serious commitment to democracy has to reject the moral and political authority of Europe and the United States of America. […]

Anyone who says that anyone else isn’t yet ready for democracy is no democrat.

4. Oppression may benefit many others than the actual oppressor, and the end of oppression may be disadvantageous for many others than the fallen despot, and for many reasons. Apparently, both Al-Qaida and Israel are concerned about the current events.

When I’ve considered these four simple facts, … well, I can’t say that I’m not as concerned anymore. But I’m far less afraid of the islamists than of whatever the USA and the oil lobby may come up with in terms of safe-keeping measures to guarantee “democracy”, “universal (i.e. Western) values”, and, uh, the safe flow of oil.

As Pink Floyd put it: “Get your filthy hands off my desert”. In the current situation, that’s probably more a vain hope than something that can actually be a reality, but it’s my democratic right to hope, right?

(I’m still curious why they are chanting “allah’u akbar”, though…)

Update:

I found out. It’s equivalent to those American propaganda movies for militant Christian fundamentalism, where people — often portrayed in combat, fierce, desperate but unyielding — shout: “Oh my God!” or “Jesus Christ!” all the time. Platoon, Black Hawk Down, or whatever they’re all called.

In other words: it functions as a general exclamation, usually associated with joy or sorrow, or some other stressful situation — without any specific religious meaning, and definitely not as a sign of islamism.

So now I know. (Thanks, Amal. :)

Bliss, understanding, and power

Ten points to those who know which important document the following quotation comes from:

If one group of people wears white clothes in mourning and another group puts on black, the sentiment of each group will be adjusted according to these two colours, i.e., one group rejects the black colour on such an occasion while the other one prefers it, and vice versa.

Such a sentiment leaves its physical effect on the cells as well as on the genes in the body. This adaptation will be transmitted by inheritance. The inheritors automatically reject the colour rejected by the legator as a result of inheriting the sentiment of their legator.

Consequently, people are only harmonious with their own arts and heritage. They are not harmonious with the arts of others because of heredity, even though those people, who differ in heritage, speak a single common language.

The emphasis is mine. And — should anyone have any doubt — the emphasis is made in order to point out not the most brilliant passages but the most amusing ones.

Why this post?

I have two reasons for this post, other than sharing the hilarious ignorance of a powerful thinker.

The Challenge of Communication

The first is that out of the witless crap in the previous paragraphs, comes the following, which is actually a conclusion I can pretty much put my name to, concerning the challenge of learning and communication — in this case, between different cultural groups, but the argument applies to any appropriation of other people’s thought, including music and the arts:

To learn a single language is not the problem, and to understand others’ arts as a result of learning their language is also not the problem.

The problem is the impossibility of a real intuitional adaptation to the language of others.

Between Stupidity and Insight

The second reason is that the book from which the quotations are taken — which by the way is a book not without its importance in the world these days — are full of these: nonsense leading to fully valid observations, or surprisingly clear-sighted analysis leading to utterly delusional conclusions.

Since the author is a man of power, this might lead to a consideration of the complicated relationship between wisdom, reality, power, change, abuse, injustice, and our shared responsibility.

So — who is the author?

Update:

OK, so it wasn’t really that hard. The excepts are from Moammar Qadhafi’s Green Book, written in the late 1970s, and compulsory reading for Libyans ever since. I post it here, in a prettified pdf-version, for two reasons:

(1) It’s better to read it yourself (and then figure out it’s crap) than to be told — perhaps by someone with an agenda — that it’s crap and that the author is a village idiot;

and

(2) It’s better to read it in a format that is pleasing than in one that isn’t.

So here you go: Qadhafi’s Green Book

Can Anything Good Come From North Carolina?

Some times things move quickly. In a couple of minutes, one gets a handful of friends for life.

Here’s How

After more years than I care to think about as a somewhat (some people might say) autistic Dylan listener, I woke up one day with the urge to find out what had happened in the music world outside since 1990 or thereabouts.

So a year ago, I went to Pitchfork’s list of the best singles in the 2000s. And I listened to horrendous amounts of LCD Soundsystem, Beyonce, Jay-Z and other modern stuff for a while.

And lo and behold if one’s musical horizon wasn’t extended a bit, although I still don’t get Daft Punk’s greatness.

New Year — New List

When the new year was still green, I wanted to check out what had been big in the old one (while I had been busy catching up — there’s a barely concealed irony in there somwhere, which I’d rather not get), and again, I headed for Pitchfork — this time the 100 best singles of 2010 list.

Again it was LCD Soundsystem, Robyn, Kanye West all over the place, and I thought:I’ll be damned if I want to go through that once again.

And I did what I should have done right away: I found hearya‘s Best of 2010 (so far) list.

I Hear Ya

And this was something else. At the very least, one doesn’t have to pretend to love well-made but commercial techno-hip-hop-electronica.

But there was more.

Here was Lost in the Trees (from North Carolina), a cross between Radiohead, Hank Williams and J. S. Bach, who take advantage of the obvious but rarely exploited fact that folk and classical music are both acoustic genres. Here in the video for Walk Around the Lake:

Here were The Morning Benders, so young, so young, but oh so fresh and tender, attacking the legends of the past with the unfazed arrogance of someone for whom Nirvana is as ancient as the Beatles:

And here was The Tallest Man on Earth, a tiny little Swede with a huge voice, a great guitar technique, and an artistic integrity so great that it gushes from every pore. Here shot on location in the snow outside his native Leksand in Dalarna, Sweden:

And just around the corner, there was more: The Avett Brothers, also from North Carolina — two brothers whose style is probably best labeled sentimental hillbilly punkpop. They balance the thin line … — no, they embody the line between sentimental and cacophonous, between sugarbutter and gangrenegarlic. Here’s a live version of “Laundry Room” off their latest album I and Love and You (and miles above the Rick Rubinized album version. They start playing at about 2:30, and when they start rocking strangely in the latter part of the video, it is because they also play drums with their feet):

And Megafaun — from Wisconsin but now living in — you guessed it — North Carolina:

All in all: I’m not complaining.

But what the hell do they put in the water over there in Carolina?

The Brazil Series

It can’t be easy: to be a painter and be called Bob Dylan. If one exhibits one’s pictures, most of the visitors will be fans of the musician Bob Dylan who probably show up mainly because they love his songs, or to find hidden references to Visions of Johanna. Then there are the curious ones, who just want to see how a rock singer and an icon paints. And lastly those who malevolently claim that if it hadn’t said “Dylan” over the door, no gallery would ever have exhibited them, and nobody would have cared anyway.

And perhaps they’re right — we’ll never know, since there isn’t a single person in existence in that segment of the population where people go to art exhibitions who will be able to see it without having Like a Rolling Stone or Just Like a Woman playing on their internal sound system, in some way or another.

In any case, when Statens Museum for Kunst (the National Gallery of Denmark) contacted Dylan one and a half years ago after his exhibition in Chemnitz (his first ever) to suggest that the exhibition was shown in Denmark as well, it was a delightful surprise when the answer was “yes”, and an even greater surprise when it turned out to be forty brand-new painting instead. The pictures are all based on sketches made during travels in Brazil.

The simple reality

Both as a series and individually, the paintings use powerful visual tools. Dylan is a fearless colorist who has obviously taken some inspiration from Gauguin’s and van Gogh’s colors. He chooses sharply outlined motifs, he tends to place the persons in his pictures at the very front of the frame, close to the viewer, and facial features are frequently painted strongly marked. Most of the characters are painted with an almost cartoonish line, with black outlines around figures, and facial expressions that are just indicated with quick lines.

The motifs are just as clear-cut, and seemingly simple: stylized versions of everyday situations.

And this is where one sees a glimpse of the singer, the sly Jokerman, behind the pictures. Fair enough, Dylan has said, in conncection with the exhibition: “If I could have expressed the same in a song, I would have written a song instead.” And if one is looking for the painted version of one’s favorite song, one has come to the wrong place. But still, there is a way of negotiating between form and contents in the pictures which one recognizes from the singer and musician Dylan.

For if the simple, figurative style and the clear-cut motifs makes one think that there is a correspondingly simple meaning in the paintings, one has been fooled. The best paintings are those which venture towards the absurd: The naked woman in Bamboo Road, who attacks a bamboo grove with a sword; another naked woman in Revelations, who reveals herself to a statue of an angel while she is reading from a book in front of her, which spills over with red colour; or the overdimensioned, grinning ventriloquist’s dummy who forces the woman in the picture half ways out of the canvas, in a way which we normally see only in bad amateur holiday snapshots.

It is as if Dylan is saying: “it looks simple, but it isn’t”. Or: “You think you know what you’re seeing, but you don’t.” Or perhaps rather: “You think you know what you’re seeing, and that may be so, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you understand what’s going on.” Reality, however trivial it may appear, is not something one just grasps.

The world that Dylan exhibits, isn’t a particularly nice place. Many of the paintings are operating in the borderland of morals. Here are corrupt politicians, self-assured mafia bosses, gang wars, poverty, murder, sexual promiscuity, and gluttony. Some of the depraved persons in these pictures look almost content, but other than that, there isn’t much joy in the Brazil Series. A Religious Couple seem to be filled up with anything but humble religious sentiment. The workers in The Vineyard at first sight seem to be smiling, but the mood in the picture is ominous. The most aesthetically pleasing pictures are a pair of paintings with motifs from the slum quarters outside of Rio, the so called favelas, which gives the pure aesthetical enjoyment a touch of the miserable.

But there is no condemnation or pointed fingers from Dylan. He presents a section of reality — not as it really is, but with the artist’s emphases and omissions — and leaves it to the viewer to make up his own mind.

If the purpose of art is to communicate a perspective on reality, I would claim that Dylan at the moment is a greater artist as a painter, film maker, and radio host than in his traditional role as a stage artist. And if part of this purpose is to set some thoughts in motion, create some images for the viewer to elaborate further, then he succeeds quite well in Brazil Series. And then it may not matter so much if the experts find technical flaws or the critics claim that “If it wasn’t Dylan, nobody would care.”

“Why don’t you also block …?”

I receive a lot of suggestions of other countries to boycott. Turkey, North Korea, Sudan, etc. So why don’t I also block them?
1. This is not a crusade against every injustice in the world. It is a contribution to the cultural boycott of Israel because of its treatment of Gaza and the Palestinians, as explained previously. That other regimes are also corrupt, racist, and oppressive should not be used as an argument against such a reaction, or to alleviate the burden of guilt of the Israeli regime.
2. Different issues call for different means. I have very few visitors from any of the countries that have been suggested. I have severe doubts that anyone in Somalia would even notice it if they were blocked from a site about Bob Dylan.
3. Quite a few have voiced concern for the many Dylan fans in Israel who are against the current state of affairs and who are now said — erroneously, it should be added — to be deprieved of the opportunity to sing Masters of War in protest against Netanyahu, and quite a few Israeli Dylan fans have called me a hypocritical asshole, but none, as far as I remember, have combined the two: the outcries of injustice towards the good Israeli Dylan fans have come from people who have no interest whatsover in Dylan and his music, not from those who want to use Dylan songs against the regime.
It is my hope that for those unfortunate few, the solidarity with the oppressed will be greater than the inconvenience of being barred from the site, just as it was for the few white anti-apartheid authors in South Africa who because of the boycott were deprieved of the contact with the western culture to which they felt themselves to belong.

Update: I came across this article by Lawrence Davidson, Professor of history at West Chester University, who lines up the arguments for and against a boycott much better than I could ever do.

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The comments to this post are being moderated. I will not let through posts with the sole or main purpose (1) to tell me that I’m an idiot (no need to restate the obvious), or (2) to duplicate any of the “facts” in the comments to the previous post.

Anti-Hamas

I thought I was going to take a break from this now, but there is one more thing I need to state more clearly, and thanks to all who have reminded me of this (and I’m not being sarcastic here):

Everything I’ve said about truth, propaganda, and predetermined morals could and should be used against the Hamas, as well as against simplistic, populist slogan truths from the Left. I’ve always been uncomfortable — to say the least — with banners and flags, of any colour or political orientation, because they by nature simplify a message and transform it into the same kind of Truth as I polemicize against in my previous post. I prefer a reasoned discussion where arguments are allowed to meet, and in this respect, the Left in the west are just as culpable as anyone else. I happen to think that the underlying analysis is stronger on the left side, but when it comes to presenting it, there is still a lot to be desired.

If I appear to be insensitive to fact, or even to censor it through unfair moderation of comments, this is again for the same reason: I simply don’t have time to respond to all the comments in the way I would like (and I’ve learned over these past days that I have to weigh my words very carefully — more carefully than I’ve done so far — and weighing words takes a helluvalotof time). I don’t either have time to read all the links and watch all the youtube videos I’ve been sent. That doesn’t mean I don’t care. The character of the comments as a whole is still of such a kind that it requires moderation, and for the time being, it is on hold — my apologies to those who feel they have been silenced.

What I polemicise against is not fact and the willingness to work towards finding out what actually happened, but against the uncritical acceptance of one truth as the only possible. This was the overwhelming and unexpected impression I got from all the mails I received in the first few days, but my criticism goes just as much in the other direction.

I’m deeply concerned with the islamist elements in the IHH and the ties to the BBP. I’m also aware that the events are being used and abused in destructive ways e.g. in Turkey. I’m disillusioned by the uncritical willingness of the Left to embrace elements and actions that should have been opposed; just because they too are against the common Greater Enemy doesn’t make them more acceptable. This was the case in the events surrounding the Cartoon crisis, and I also think the various leftist and humanitarian organizations that took part in the flotilla ought to have chosen their friends more wisely. Even the Left — or rather: especially the left — should be more clear and outspoken against islamist tendencies: they are not just uneasy but bad bed-fellows.

All this weakens the efficaciousness of the Flotilla. However, it does not lessen the need to do something about the situation in Gaza and the responsibility of Israel in this matter. Lifting the naval blockade entirely may not be the solution at the moment; if Mahmoud Abbas says that this would play into the hands of Hamas and strengthen them, that’s an opinion I respect. What he is saying is not that everything is fine as it is, though. The siege should be eased, border crossings should be opened, more goods should be allowed in, etc., everything in ways that can’t be construed as a victory for Hamas.

Edit: According to Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Ereket, who accompanied Abbas on his US visit, the report that Abbas was in favour of a continued blockade is “yet another disinformation attempt aimed at distorting facts and deflecting Israel’s responsibility to end the illegal and inhuman siege on Gaza.” I don’t know what game Abbas is playing; I don’t know what was actually said during that meeting.

This should be the main objective: to get to a situation where Gaza is controlled neither by Hamas nor by Israel, so that living conditions can be improved for the inhabitants of Gaza.

My stance still remains, that Israel, as the stronger power, has the greater responsibility, and that the current policy is not the way to honour that responsibility. As Desmond Tutu has said: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” This is equally true whether one sees Hamas or Israel in the oppressor’s position.

*

Cultural Boycott – some reflections

A week ago, I started my cultural boycott of Israel, in direct response to, but not caused only by, the events surrounding the murders (or war crimes) on the Freedom Flotilla. These are some reflections on the boycott itself and on the reactions it has caused.

What is a cultural boycott, and is it fair?

I consider my blockade as part of a cultural boycott of the same kind as that against South Africa in the 80s. As such it is a gesture which some people will feel is hurting them unjustly.

On an individual level, that is entirely true: why should all the good-hearted, friendly citizens of Israel, those who have never voted for Netanyahu and who are against the blockade of Gaza and feel sorry for the citizens of Gaza – why should they be punished for the transgressions of their Government and the IDF?

But this misses the fundamental character of a cultural boycott: Unlike trade embargos or disinvestment it is not meant to hurt the economy, or to pressurize or punish individuals through the means of market economy (“we have something you need, but we won’t give it to you”). Rather, it is a symbolic gesture, aimed to send a signal: “judging by your behaviour, as a group, by watching the actions of the people you are represented by, we can’t regard you as decent people. We can do without that contact. It’s up to you to give us a reason to want talk with you.”

This is the perspective in which I see the boycott: as an explicit act of non-communication. The way you let yourselves be represented as a collective (and, I must add, present and re-present yourselves, again and again) I don’t want to talk with you, just as I didn’t want to help the schoolyard bully with his homework, even when he hadn’t done anything to me directly.

It has been said that a boycott of this kind is based on a fundamental trust in the people one wants to reach and influence. The comparison with South Africa is illustrative: the apartheid rulers were – or wanted to be – an integrated part of international society, and they wanted to be seen as decent people, by themselves and others. That’s why the boycott worked.

As far as I can tell, the same can be said about the people of Israel: they want to be met as decent people. I hope that’s true.

Reactions from Israelis

So far, I’ve received lots of emails from Israeli citizens in response to the boycott. It has been a depressing read.

There are two trends in these mails.

First, there is the hoard of mails with the main or – usually – only message: “go fuck with dogs you mother faker”, “you are a pig and a dog”, “your children will be sick”, “ISRAELRAPEDYOURASS”, “Go to the hell, idiot!!!”, “Good day to you, Adolf”, “bloody antichrist” (which I found oddly amusing, coming from Israel. Could have been a Christian Israeli, of course), and “you nazi pig. we know where you live”. These are exact quotations, and just a small selection

A large portion of them also seem to know exactly how much – or should I say: how little – I know about the true situation, that I only know what I’ve seen on CNN and other brainwashed media.

Quite a few tell me – openly or indirectly – that the reactions against Israel in general and the boycott in specific are anti-semitic, that the boycott is a hostile assault or even an act of violence.

Apart from that, I’ve received exactly one mail from an Israeli who supports the boycott, and exactly one blog comment from an Israeli who disagrees strongly withe me but still supports the boycott. Other than those two, not a single person so far has in any way acknowledged that Israel has done anything that is worth reacting to (at least without [qua|nul]lifying it with one of the two continuations: “…but we were right!”, or “…but others are just as bad.”).

Secondly, almost without exception, every single mail I have received has offered to educate me about the Truth, taking for granted that I only know what the pro-Palestinian media have fed me and the rest of the world, and that not a word of it is true.

This extreme focus on One Single, Indivisible and Indisputable Truth is so universal in the pool of messages that it looks like an obsession.

If there is only room for one Truth of this kind in one’s world, it must be difficult to accept any statement which conflicts with the truth one has accepted. Hence the notions that “We are Right, everyone else is Wrong”, and, consequently: “The whole world is against us”, that usually accompany the lessons in Truth (if not in these exact words).

This, and not the unbridled hatred that pours off of a lot of the mails, is the most depressing part of the reading experience. It’s so consistent that it’s scary: I’ve been met with hundreds of mouths lip-syncing different words to the same track. The intros vary from “get the facts right, you asshole” to “I can understand your anger, but let me tell you how it really is”, but the song is the same in mail after mail:

The ’so called humanitarian workers’ on the Freedom Flotilla were terrorists (which is proven by a picture showing one of them holding a knife) and Israel had the right to do what it did (forgetting that, no, according to international agreements, Israel did not have the right to do what it did: it was “an illegal act of war”); there is no need for humanitarian aid in Gaza (proven by a certain Gaza Restaurant Menu, by pictures of fruit stands in Gaza marketplaces, and by reference to how many trucks of goods Israel sends or lets through every day).

So what is truth, then? And what is a fact?

This is not the place to go into that whole question, neither the philosophical aspects nor the practical ones. (But let me mention that I’ve spent some time in my academic life discussing the question “If history is a construction (and it is hard to argue otherwise), why do facts matter?”, with the explicit goal of arguing that Holocaust denial is not only stupid and immoral, but also destructive, even for those of us who are fortunate not to have first- or second-hand knowledge of the events that are being denied.)

With remarkable consistency, the “Truth” that I’ve been offered is either of a propagandistic or rhetorical nature, or strongly open to interpretation, which a priori defies the notion of an undisputable Truth. Here are some recurring ways in which Truth is revealed:

Pictures.

A picture can lie more than a thousand words. The media know that, and so does every governmental propaganda machine in the world. What is not in the picture? What are the circumstances of the picture? Is it at all genuine? I once took two pictures of a lecture hall, one showing it to be near-empty, the other crammed with people. All it took was a different angle.

Experience.

“Have you ever been to Israel? Didn’t think so.” “Since you do not live in threat all your life, you do not deserve to speak out loud.”

If that’s your opinion, then so be it. I don’t see any reason in such a standpoint, and I choose to disregard it. As Rohan phrased it in one of the comments: “Would I have need to have been in Germany in 1938 to condemn Kristall night?”

Words.

A lot can be done with words – they are powerful tools. There is a huge difference between a peace activist and a so-called peace activist; this so-called peace activist may have donated to a so-called ’charity’ organization with ’alleged’ ties to Hamas, and is thus a muslim fundamentalist terrorist, and voilà: a flotilla of peace activists is transformed into an armada of terrorists. And what do terrorists carry on their ships, if not weapons and ill intentions?

All this is done with words, quite innocent little changes, a seed of suspicion sowed here (’alleged’, ’so-called’), a quick generalization there, and suddenly a ludicrous statement such as “The fact that only 9 Jihad activists [were killed] is proof to the IDF soldiers’ restraint”, acquires a shade of the reasonable (and to some, it parades as the Truth).

An example

I’m not going to go through the whole arsenal of rhetorics, but limit myself to the question of the legality of the Israeli interception, as an example.

What is the status of the conflict between Israel and Gaza/Hamas? Is it what the lawyers call an IAC (“International Armed Conflict”), or is it a NIAC (“Non-International Armed Conflict”)?

Does it matter for the the legality of the actions if it is an IAC or a NIAC?

Is Gaza occupied by Israel or not?

Is the blockade of Gaza legal or not?

Can a blockade, if legal, be enforced in international waters?

The general agreement among experts in international law is that the conflict is a NIAC, because Israel has never declared war on Gaza (To do that, it would have to recognize Gaza as a state, in which case the Geneva Convention would apply, which ironically would have sharpened the demands on how Israel treats both the civilian population of Gaza and the Palestinian prisoners, and improved the conditions for both).

Furthermore, that this distinction matters, since the regulations in the various naval war agreements (none of which, as far as I’ve been able to check it, Israel have signed) about intercepting ships apply only to nations at war, engaged in an IAC.

Furthermore, that Gaza is de facto occupied; this is not determined by the physical presence of soldiers, but by the actual control over the area and its inhabitants.

Furthermore, that for a blockade to be legal, it must be determined as legal by the UN Security Council under Section 42. This is not the case: the blockade of Gaza is unilateral, undisclosed, and – as far as merchants have been able to infer from the goods that have been denied into the region – encompasses items (sage, vinegar, etc.) which under no circumstance can be considered as contraband, but which make the blockade serve as a collective punishment — explicitly regulated aginst in the various regulations. For ths and other reasons, the blockade has never been accepted by the UN.

Lastly, the right to blockade does not extend to international waters, where any vessel can travel freely. Craig Murray, former UK Ambassador, sums it up concisely:

Because the incident took place on the high seas does not mean however that international law is the only applicable law. The Law of the Sea is quite plain that, when an incident takes place on a ship on the high seas (outside anybody’s territorial waters) the applicable law is that of the flag state of the ship on which the incident occurred. In legal terms, the Turkish ship was Turkish territory.

There are therefore two clear legal possibilities.

Possibility one is that the Israeli commandos were acting on behalf of the government of Israel in killing the activists on the ships. In that case Israel is in a position of war with Turkey, and the act falls under international jurisdiction as a war crime.

Possibility two is that, if the killings were not authorised Israeli military action, they were acts of murder under Turkish jurisdiction. If Israel does not consider itself in a position of war with Turkey, then it must hand over the commandos involved for trial in Turkey under Turkish law.

Now, it is possible to come to the opposite conclusion and construe the blockade of Gaza as a legal act of warfare, to cut-and-paste from different naval war agreements (none of which Israel has signed) to legitimize the interception and the use of violence, etc.

None of the versions are the Truth. “Fact” is simply not a relevant term in this matter. Interpretation is not just a possibility but a necessity.

Interpretation is not about twisting and turning the truth, corrupting facts; it’s about exposing your own facts to those of other people. I.e. to interact with other interpretations.

If you think the sun is yellow, but the whole world says: “The sun’s not yellow, it’s chicken,” you have three options: you can say “The whole world has gone mad!”, you can say “The whole world is lying!”, or you can ask yourself: “What do all those people mean by that?” and then ask the world the same question. In either case, it would be wise not to put too much hope in communication with that other world if you keep insisting that the sun is yellow, even though that’s how it looks to you.

Besides, the world is not denying that the sun is yellow. The Gaza/Flotilla issue is not a matter of denying the obvious. It’s about different interpretations, against different standards.

Judging and communicating

I don’t suggest that every citizen of Israel should roll over and play dead and surrender all their power to any bypasser, or some kind of pseudo-leftist, emotional crap like that – I’m fully aware that that’s not how things work.

But it would pay off to be aware that the twisting of truth (presented as The Truth) and bending of rules that the international community to an increasing degree perceives in the leaders you (and I’m speaking to the Israelis now) are represented by, makes you all, as a group, come through as a bunch of liars, to put it bluntly.

But even more importantly, the outside world sees you making decisions of a kind which can only be legitimized by a standard of ethics and morals which is predetermined: which starts out with a fixed scale of valuation of people: that some people by default have greater rights than others. That’s a standard which is detestable to me, whether it is grounded in a racist ideology, such as the German nazis, or in a self-imposed division into Us and Them, Good and Evil, True and False, as I perceive behind the automatic accusations of antisemitism/-zionism that erupt every time anyone criticizes anything Israel does.

Dylanchords is all about communication, about the empowering potential of music and language, the means that are available to all human beings of empowerment and growth through cultural interaction. Music and poetry are stylized ways of handling the patterns of tension and relief, of bodily reactions and physical encounter. Through these means, we can extend the possible world, for ourselves and for others.

Now, this is serious business: exposing other people to a transformed world calls for righteousness and honesty from both the giver (in my case: Dylan and, concerning the website, myself) and the receiver (myself, the visitors). There is an individual responsibility in there, of safeguarding and cultivating that will to empower the other and thereby gain in strength oneself.

I know of few regimes since apartheid South Africa that have combined physical power with a dishonest use of language to the degree that Israel’s rulers do and have done for as long as I can remember. When I have to put up with their patent lies (the ’Gaza Restaurant Menu’, for example), their immoral rhetoric and their consistent abuse of logical fallacies, in their official statements, in news reports, in blog commentaries, in private mails, etc., they are distorting the language I use and through which I perceive the world. That’s a game I don’t want to play in: I don’t want to communicate with people who – either directly or indirectly through the people they have elected and, judging from the responses so far, wholeheartedly support – are polluting and corrupting language.

Friendly advice

Many have asked me: “Well, Dr. Adolf Smartass, tell us, what should we do then?” I sense a sarcastic undertone the way the question is formulated, but nevertheless:

Stop looking at the world in black and white.
Stop equating truth with right.
Stop arguing for the lesser evil. Remember that, as Hannah Arendt said, “those who choose the lesser evil very quickly forget that they choose evil.”
Stop assuming that anyone who disagrees with you is against you.
Stop calling anyone who disagrees with you an “antisemite”, “pig”, “dog”, “nazi”, “Hitler”, “Goebbels”, etc. If the “Antisemite” card is played every time someone criticizes something Israel has done, it looses its force, also in the situations when it should be played. Yes, there are antisemitic traits in some of the Hamas documents, and there is a lot of it in populist propaganda in muslim countries and elsewhere, but that doesn’t mean that everything the Hamas says is antisemitic, nor that every criticism of Israel by definition is a cancerous outgrowth of an antisemitic ideology.
You have a great cultural heritage. Don’t waste that on self-pity and anger.

We are what we do, and should be judged by that. It’s not the other way around: that we can do according to what we are judged – by ourselves or others – to be.

*

Note: The comments to this post will be moderated. I will not let through posts with the sole or main purpose (1) to tell me that I’m an idiot (no need to restate the obvious), or (2) to duplicate any of the “facts” in the comments to the previous post.

Neighbourhood Bully indeed

I’m too enraged to write anything coherent, but beginning yesterday, I’m running my own private boycott of the state of Israel and anything/-one associated with it, and I urge everyone to do the same.

A fascist, belligerent regime is not justifiable by any past, no matter how cruel and injust it has been. A rotten childhood does not justify being an asshole.

At the same time, I lament my own belated reaction: why is it that Israel may kill thousands of semi-dark-skinned Achmeds and Muhammeds without anyone raising a brow, but when a couple of Swedish authors are drawn physically into the firing line, the world gets on its feet?

It’s sickening.

Update: When news of the cultural boycott was publicized on an Israeli news site, the comment section virtually exploded. I decided that it was probably a good idea to turn off automatic publication of comments. I’ve now gone through the whole thing, and decided to let it all through. It’s not pretty, but quite interesting.

One correction of terminology: In one of the comments, I refer to the soldiers who boarded the Flotilla as “pirates”. I’ve learned that piracy is not the correct term, since that only applies to civilians acting on their own behalf. Since this was a nation’s armed forces, who acted on behalf of their country, the correct term is “an illegal act of war”. Changing the terminology may change the associations the words bring with them, but it does not change the contents of the statement.