APPLAUSE*APPLAUSE (Bob Dylan in Copenhagen). Lennox Raphael

 Jans Magnussen comparte un texto de Lenox  Raphael cuando fueron a escuchar un concierto de Bob Dylan en Copenhagen

Bob Dylan, villain of time against ghosts of the future.

One more image, the fury dylanistic, and, rising from depths of staged soul, Dylan the God, Bob, our beloved troubadour Zimmerman, crest of waves, master magician “growing old decently”, according to Jens Magnussen, sound rising from a grave of memories beneath all canopies, a sound whose language is already beyond meaning, Bob Dylan listening to deafening applause, roaring applause (brusende bifald, in Danish), washing water, rushing applause, a music unheard, a voodoo techno whose steadfastness forever turning back on itself to reveal whole histories scrambled across fantasies of dreams & cultures.

I think of 1966, at a distance, in Rabat, Morocco, and the French- speaking Moroccans disco-dancing to

Blowing in the Wind, and, earlier, listening live to this Dylan in the Big Apple, a man, a guitar, a harmonica, acoustic man, alone triumphantly in the wound we call the sound of meaning.

As usual, this time in the company of Magnussen & John Hyldgaard, author of DYLAN (The Lyrics) PART 1: 1962-1966, I write in the darkness of the auditorium.

I kept waiting for the applause, and it would come, again & again as Dylan pushed the envelope & moved the goalpost & stood, legs crabbed, apart, gunslinger on stage, a showdown with himself, music, a fantastic band, rock around the fuck out of here, if you dare!

I felt awfully, awesomely nice, applause crisp, rolling off the fingers, eating the troubadour, a blast from the past, a transatlantic monster in disco pants, BILLY THE KID digging his spurs into the flank of the future & spitting fire like desire amok in sound

of applause competing successfully with subterranean gunshots ringing out in the great falcon theater of the soul, in this one place, and, two weeks later, in Heineken Hall, Amsterdam, the Dutch applause, ‘heavy & long’, according to a friend, Jesper Dalmose, there too as in Sweden, and everywhere in this Copenhagen town, blowing his mind away in the Nordic vikingwind coming fast & furious in this Falconer auditorium, Bob Dylan in the clash of the world, all sounds one, the inextinguishable anguish, a belly full of dreams, and all sounds of God dusted from lifelines of applause*applause – and, running thru my mind, all the time, Geno, Geno Foremani, the one true friend I’ve shared with the bardicinnerhasidic gunslinger up there on stage, listening, no, riding on applause, wings of angels, loving lifelines beaten to a frazzle by joy, pure manhatte, applause*applause standing, sitting, rising on all fours, bursts of meaning,

absences of language, only spectacle, memory, graciousness, and I wonder, Geno, in Heaven, what is he saying as time blows in the wind to sonic applause still ringing in my ears: sound working outside of sound, embedded in contemplative silence amok in its prescientalism, simplicity & astonishment, an epicology of once upon a time in ourselves, sound at a time when the sound of the city is its sound, waiting for the future in the past, ever-present now, in each sheet of applause, defiance into ecstasy, expectation pilfering satisfaction.

I sat in the dark & wrote on the back of Copenhagenic applause.

I heard nothing. Understood nothing. Nothing made sense, only a wall of applause; at last; everything lasting forever, the sweat of applause giving birth to immortality as a vast, unending authenticity as ambiguous shadows of belief, song & sound, applause rising from the depths of innocence into being, breaking off all

the lines; silence; immortality; emptiness; voyages taking over: angel robot divorced from reserve battery of love me ellipsians distressed am I wind of snow blue territorialness; understanding returning as a promise.

At first I felt estranged from fantasy; and, at the same time hearing futures, a creole, cruel innerness of God, the remote mask behind which the soul of applause lies time & shadow rolled into one.

I sat there, stunned, then liberated, freed from the tyranny of expectations, allowing time, as the enemy of realness and, yet as necessary to have sought beyond depths of canopies of its time beyond itself when appreciation, refashioned by chords, would assume its own flatness & curiosity, freed too, itself, to haunt memory & make a Dylan of both assumed & borrowed violence in exchange for the taste of his presence introducing an invisibility, Bob Dylan, the bad boy from Goodness Gracious

Valley & incoming rush of staggering ecstasies of innocence as remote possibilities, and Dylan+Dylan whispering holy hoarseness, I am the great river which, when necessary, flows upwards to the heart & carries itself with enough modesty to feed ghosts their triumphs of holiness. What then? Soul appetite? For what? As a child I ate sorrow because, suddenly, as a man, there would be no tomorrow, only, by virtue, flatlands going nowhere as negotiated by a fashion whose despair is beyond repair. I have been there. No eraser. I am there. I am there now. The Virgin Mary comes riding on a cow. I take her to the river. I have stones rise from their indulgences & make a bed for the cow & the virgin. Those reflections yesterday reminding me of the way God looks when he is pissed off, and must himself dance till death divine be its closure – the sound, rising from the belly of the wound of love, anomalies beyond meaning, referring

always to something else, a memory, farewell, and welcome to The Club of Life Against Meaning.

The sound of one hand clapping could not be heard, only the Copenhagen war, enough to knock the singer flat on his past principles: applause*applause, a hard act to follow in the post Lady Gaga whirl of love & adoration of a wrecking ball swinging bebitchingly.

What happened then? I knew I could not trust my shadow.

Everything he was running away from was in his smile.

Life is not a Secret. Applause*Applause, the Devil has captured a succulent angel, and Dylan to the Rescue, all my dreams come true, all the sadness, all the vanity I’ve known, my own, all the sadness, &, yet, nothing to regret when, as a rule, time follows time, inescapable shadows translated by beastness, the weak ones are heroes, the moon a distant privilege; silence; eyes rolling,

love agony of orgasm, being eaten alive in Copenhagen, and enjoying it with death-defying leaps of inscrutability as a/version to meaning, every inch the reluctant bride & magic frog. Applause*applause!, winding in the blow.

i Geno Foreman (Hugh Quinn Foreman), son of Clark Foreman, surrogate father of Joan Baez. November 16, the anniversary of his death in 1966, in London.