Kolog
A showcase of personal writing

8.17.04: Either my brother or my friend Paul gave me the cd, I can’t recall, but it might as well have been placed in my hands by God. It is an eclectic compilation briefly yet insightfully documenting Bob Dylan with his Band on the “never ending” tour as it was nearly forty years later in Japan between the dates of February 25th and March 12th, 2001.

After a rejuvenating version of Hallelujah, Dylan bleeds into It’s Alright, Ma, once again forcing all of us to look everyone in the mirror. Just the night before, my brother informed me of an educational theory I had never considered, the use of nursery rhymes recorded in foreign languages as a tool to enhance their familiarity in the young mind of his daughter. The master piece reinvented by the Band in Japan that night in It’s Alright, Ma (I’m only Bleedin’) could serve as such a tool, so foreign and full of infinitely primitive lessons.

From the political to the personal, If you see Her say Hello marches away from the social and turns the mirror inward. Dylan squawks with pain as the Band comforts this tortured soul with bucolic strings and divine drums. All is forgiven as the instruments play off each other, culminating a driving song.

A guitar reaches out to other members and a slide plays tricks on your heart as two people sit together in a park. The singer has caught us like an image of Chaplin and we realize why we must pass this on. Extending the story from the previous song, we meet Her and the singer as an ephemeral couple burning like a match in the winds of a hot summer night. The voice exudes every note if you just listen hard enough. Nearly over before it can begin, we know we must leave but pause along with the Band just long enough to appreciate the Simple Twist of Fate we’ve witnessed.

The roof then blows off the barn. The driving riff anchors the sea of melody and changes the tide of the evening. The crowd, dismayed, doesn’t know what to do until they find their feet tapping on the floor. Dylan and the Band bring poetry back to its rhythmic roots, every word a beat. Again distant, as in If you see Her, the singer doesn’t need to reach the end of the song to express his gratitude; nevertheless, ever leaving us to ask the question: If not for who?

Three-part harmonies repeat Dylan’s tenacious refrain: Tomorrow is Such a Long Time. The band has found their step as Dylan builds the drama. Now, if only she where lying by him, waiting.

So, mandolins announce queen Ramona’s arrival on stage. Dylan sings on his knees directly to her, pleading and taking her side only to steal it by the end of each verse. Slipping again into the comfort of his Band, the song sheds any sense of gratitude expressed in the earlier songs. No. If you walk away from him too early, you may mistake platitude for sincerity, for on this night, until you meet Ramona, we run the risk of continuing to misinterpret Bob Dylan by repeatedly failing to realize he will never come cryin’ again.

A prayer goodnight and we might be finished, t’were not for another satirical social commentary. Hyperbole can make big heads, but Dylan can remains small while constructing another mirror and leaving us lost with ourselves, searching for everyone else. Eros, philia, and agape, I say are words to teach any newborn despite the language. Search the classics for Greek; listen to Dylan for English.

And at long last, just party with country Joe and the fiddler playing till the break of day. A return just in time to the mountain on top of which Dylan preached only years before settling down with another historical band and experimenting with the ingredients to Country Pie. Oh me, oh my, we all love Country Pie. It seems like after all is said and done, Dylan says we need simply have fun.

But we’re brought too far, to the edge of a wilderness where Dylan’s obsequious heart can desire nothing but shelter from the storm. The Preacher’s here with the one-eyed undertaker taking shelter with us. Is it Ramona, a stop on the underground railroad for weathered souls, saving the singer in a climactic end? Theatrical, but if so, the runaway has moved on anyway with the next freight train as one assumes from the steel-driving force the band puts behind the man.

And one wonders where to? Taking Dylan’s voice and the Band’s pulse, the rest of the disc infelicitously burns out, yet not before making its mark.

My brother is right. Play Masked and Anonymous for little Olivia; but please, please may she also hear all the diverse versions Dylan himself has offered us, even the ones that sound like perhaps the most foreign of possible languages to most of us!

All my gratitude for whoever shared this cd with me.

Goodnight.

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8. 16.04: An Open Letter to the Candidates for President of the United States of America:

There is a basic question that confronts the world: How is the struggle against the forces of terror to be waged?

Since September 11th, 2001, the horrific day during which terrorists killed more than three thousand people on American soil, the United States government has primarily responded to this question by resorting to the all too prevalent method of physical violence, attacking the Middle East with the mightiest military force in the world. As a result, the world is seemingly at war, and a majority of Americans, vigilantly represented by their congress and president, join in banging the old, militant drumbeat.

However, underneath this imperial clamor for vehement revenge, a barely audible, yet collective voice of citizens can be heard screaming in opposition to such malicious retaliations. Their efforts, though seemingly stymied for the moment by the majority, are not in vain for the enduring wisdom of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lives on in each dissenting voice:

Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can only be done by projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives […] In speaking of love at this point, we are not referring to some sentimental or affectionate emotion. It would be nonsense to urge men to love their oppressors in an affectionate sense. Love in this connection means understanding, redemptive good will. When we speak of loving those who oppose us, we refer to neither eros nor philia; we speak of a love which is expressed in the Greek word agape. Agape means understanding, redeeming good will for all men. It is an overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless, and creative. (p.19, “An Experiment in Love”)

If it seems difficult or impossible for Americans to project love towards those who so brutally inflicted terror upon us in September of 2001, contemplate for a moment the arduous task Dr. King asked of black consciousness in September of 1958 when, after centuries of slavery, discrimination and genocide, he preached the need of love for the white man.

Despite the degree of difficulty, Dr. King suggests projecting an ethics of love as the only solution to the cycle of violence and oppression destroying the foundation of his country, simply because of the utter futility inherent in its alternative. Hatred and violence merely exacerbate the issues: “To meet hate with retaliatory hate would do nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness” (p. 17, “An Experiment in Love).

Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al-qaeda, obviously disgruntled for reasons yet to be clarified to me here in America, had a choice regarding how to wage the struggle against the opposing forces of the West, just as Dr. King and the civil rights movement had a choice to make regarding how best to battle oppression in the sixties, and just as Mahatma Gandhi and all his fellow countrymen in India had a choice to make in regards to how best wage their own such battle against the imperial British Empire. However, choosing the path of no Gandhian-King, Mr. bin Laden decided to use physical violence, which has unleashed nothing but more violence, bloodshed and hatred for everyone around the world.

Now, if killing three thousand people in America has spawned an entire war on terror, how could our violently destructive retaliation in the Middle East, which has led to a death toll far surpassing that of September 11th, lead to anything other than more violence and hatred. As Dr. King repeatedly reminds us, “Violence solves no social problems; it merely creates new and more complicated ones” (p. 7, “Nonviolence and Racial Justice”). The answer for radical Islamic terrorists as well for Americans lies not in the ugly hand of violence but rather in the indifferent heart of love and understanding: “We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love; we must meet physical force with soul free” (p. 17, “An Experiment in Love).

Certainly, it would be nonsense to ask Americans to love terrorists in an affectionate sense just as it was unreasonable to ask blacks to express signs of eros and philia towards whites; however, we must never forget the words of Dr. King, which demand that we fill the center of our lives with an indifferent, understanding, redeeming goodwill for all men. Otherwise, violence will continue to perpetuate hatred and vice versa.

Thus, on behalf of Olivia Kolakoski, my newborn niece, and for the sake of Dr. King, I would like to ask President George W. Bush and Senator John F. Kerry how they would answer today's most basic of questions.

Sincerely,
Mike Kolakoski

All selected quotes appear in A Testament of Hope:The Essential Writings and Speeches of
Martin Luther King, Jr. Ed. James M. Washington. HarperCollins. 1991.

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