No Direction Home

"You can't be wise and in love at the same time" - In what can only be construed as a poignantly sincere apology and poetically disguised factoid, this was what from Bob Dylan had to say about the events that transpired between him and Joan Baez in 1964/65. Dylan and Baez shared many a stage during their early twenties, performing at the various folk festivals around America. Dylan, who gained his repute and fame as a poet during this collaborative stint with the then-more-established Baez, did not return the favor in the later gigs. Many years on, Dylan has this retort to offer on the topic.

This features as part of "No direction Home" - a documentary on the early days of Dylan, directed by Martin Scorsese. It's a two disc set spanning nearly 204 minutes comprising of some rare footage of perfomances from the archives of time and interviews with all those associated with Dylan's Freewheelin' Days including Pete Seeger, Dave Van Ronk and Joan Baez herself among others.

To say it gives a deep insight into the man behind the golden words would be far from true. And it does not have anything to do with Scorsese's potrayal of the man. For what is worth it, it is after all a documentary - just a mere recreation and retelling of the days that shaped Dylan's early life... It left me ungratified in a way any attempt to unravel a poet's mind does. And it reinforced the awe that his poetry evokes with regards to its sheer eloquence, its brazen honesty and its nonchalant political and social innuendos.

The elusive nature of the man behind the music is probably what makes his persona enchanting and puzzling, all at the same time. You can literally count with your fingers the number of instances where anything close to any sort of emotion comes through from him - one of such is when he becomes accustomed to the jeers that he receives for adding rock-n-roll elements to his music and going electric, backed by members who would later on go on to become "The Band"....This move was rubbished by a lot of his "pure music" oriented fans, but that did not deter him from not-rationalizing to what was expected. In fact the years following his motorcycle accident, he did not go on tour for about eight years, opting instead to produce more music. Another rare outlet of his not-so-removed self was when he declared this, as part of his interview for the documentary :

"I'd just about had it, though, I'd had it with the whole scene. And, uh, whether I knew it or didn't know it, I was, uh, lookin' to quit for a while....Uh, well, ya know, people like *you*, people like, uh, ya know, just, ya know, like bein' pressed and hammered and, uh, bein' expected to answer questions. It's enough to make anybody sick, really"

One way or other - you end up wanting to know more about the man..