Liner Notables: Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks - Page 3

In "Lily, Rosemary” — in which “its real wonder is in the spaces, in what the artist left out of his painting” — Dylan sings, Hamill asserts, “a more fugitive song: allusive, symbolic, full of imagery and ellipses, and by leaving things out, he allows us the grand privilege of creating along with him. His song becomes our song because we live in those spaces. If we listen, if we work at it, we fill up the mystery, we expand and inhabit the work of art. His song becomes our song because we live in those spaces. If we listen, if we work at it, we fill up the mystery, we expand and inhabit the work of art.”

Oh my. As suggested here, Hamill gets a little full of himself as he goes on grandstanding for another couple paragraphs of increasingly hagiographic summation. It’s a wonder that he still knows how to breathe.

Article Author: Gordon Hauptfleisch

Gordon Hauptfleisch is a Blogcritics Books Editor, freelance writer, and book reviewer for the San Diego Union Tribune. For many years he worked in and managed bookstores and record stores. Email him and he'll stop talking in the third-person.
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