On Murder Most Foul

I'm glad Dylan released this when he did. But I'm suspicious that it's not what it purports to be. People seem to think it is all righteous and elegiac for Kennedy--and it certainly can be--but there's lots more to read into it--and is what Dylan has always done with cunning in his songwriting--to make it ambiguous enough to provoke thought and controversy. That's his genius.

My first reaction was that he was doing it as a swan song either for himself and/or the boomer generation, but then I thought he's actually crying and winking at the same time.

The Kennedy reference could be a canard: It's not about the assassination per se, but about the constellation of events over the course of American history that resulted in that outcome, and he's saying there is a pattern that is repeating and to take note of it.

The piece seems cumulative in nature. I suspect that he has been working on this in dribs and drabs for decades. If you notice the song references are from the 60s to the 80s.

The piece is essentially a list of clever couplets drawn from popular culture (and literature), and anyone can do them. I made a few:

A line from a song, a clip from a movie
Way back when we were feelin' groovy

The palms of the hand, the leaves of the tea
To Robert Duvall, the smell of the victory

and so on...

Even with all the possible interpretations, the plagal nature of the music itself makes all the lyrics seem topical when they might just be wordplay and mind games. The effect is the same though--it sounds like a sincere elegy and that's what the main takeaway is. We are right to feel that, but also to be skeptical of it, and not to get too blinded by sentimentality.

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Check out Eco on intertexuality:

http://www.signosemio.com/eco/textual-cooperation.asp