Of
Willie Winkler
Bob Dylan, the singer of folk, blues, protest and everything else, is not only a Nobel Prize winner, but also a multiple honorary doctorate. At the age of 81 he has now submitted his habilitation thesis. “The Philosophy of Modern Song”, no doubt his scientific one magnum opus appears worldwide today. The title trots so high that it can only go down, and the author really leads down into the most abysmal abyss. “This is the Moloch,” he threatens, and Donald Trump’s apocalyptic inaugural speech as President is nothing compared to it, “the pyramid of the Sphinx, the dark underside of beauty; if you pull the base off, everything collapses. The chosen cowboy, bloody Mass sacrifices, Jews of the Holocaust, Christ in the temple, Aztec blood on the altar. The song blows your mind and before you can get up it hits you again. It’s worth living for and what you get from it This is humanity made in the image of a jealous deity. This is fatherhood, the devil god, and the golden calf – the godly man, a jealous human being.”