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Dylan for me was always very important and I covered now 19 Dylan songs in German and will release them on a double CD this year (2015).
Among others, I would have loved to cover “I’m not there”, too, because this song is very important but it wasn’t possible…
But these cover versions is not my main work—these are my own compositions with improvised words; I call these compositions Post Passions. Post Passion No. 1 is here; Post Passion No. 2 here.
There must be a link between Dylan and the Post Passions, what is it?
A saying by Dylan is reported: “All I can do is be me, whoever that is.” Dylan is complaining strongly that he’s “not there” in the aforesaid song.
The improvised words in the Post Passions are nothing else than a complaining of not being there but much more still the process of becoming somebody who is there (again).
This “again” leads me to a consideration: As we know, Dylan had his born again phase. And actually it was his three “Christian” albums that impressed me the most, after having discovered one day “Saved”. To me, in these three albums (and concerts, too) he was as true, profound, beautiful and emotional as never before and never thereafter. Is this not because it was his most intense effort and attempt to end the situation of not being there at last and to become a real me?
Anyway, it isn’t a coincidence that this born again phase impressed me so much—me myself wasn’t there… It touched me so much, I felt there is somebody, and listening to it was feeling myself, too…
An attempt to feel alive through religion? To be there by religion? I don’t know. All I can say personally is that I’m not a Christian, not even religious at all. And yet, it fascinated me … What was it? Can it be it’s the will alone to be a person i.e. somebody who knows himself, who knows what he wants and what he is? Can it be it’s the pressingness, the desperation in its expression alone? There was something true and substantial in these songs, I didn’t even thought of any religious things. It was Dylan’s truthfulness and emotionality that made unimportant any religious or even intellectual things which meant absolutely nothing to me in contrast to the existential content and the expressivity. It was just the simple, authentic message of a distressed and longing soul. If it touched me, being non-religious, it must have been something deeper than religion.
Later, I discovered that the truth and being true can be a method against this feeling of not being there. It’s the truth in its profound, i.e. emotional dimension that leads you back to yourself, how painful it might be…
If it was truthfulness, than why not just being true to make me real again—without any ideology or religion?
Actually, it is pain which ends your existence. Being child, you find ways to stop feeling the pain—but it’s your whole existence and personality that’s ending, too… And if you want to take possession of yourself again, first you have become this little child again for a moment that could not go on as itself and got lost.
So the Post Passions now are Moments of Truth put into music…
Love,
Peter Post
