Confession #2

Confession #2

I feel so heckin' comfortable with myself now that I started living in the suburban-like region of a small town. The internal peace overwhelms me, I don't even want to scroll Tumblr mindlessly to relax - it's enough to just look out the window.

Arkhip Kuindzhi - Birch Grove (n.d.)

Why do I appreciate Bob Dylan so much? Well, here are some random thoughts:

My brain literally melts in pleasure when I listen to song by Smerichka, a Ukrainian kind of rebellious (as their music was a complete opposite of what soviet union wanted people to listen to) ensemble from early 70s and realise there's the sound of the guitar which was popularized (if not invented) by Bob Dylan in 1965-66 on his Bring It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde albums.

Like Dude.

Dylan, an American performer and songwriter, created a mixture of American folk and Rock-'n'-roll music which was so iconic that it somehow even got to the Soviet Union despite Bob Dylan's music being prohibited there. Ukrainian Mustache Funk (yes, it's an actual name of this genre) was heavily influenced by the folk motives specific to the Western Ukraine and it's particularly amazing that you can hear the influence of American folk-rock in their music too. It's like a perfect fusion of everything I have always loved and it's only possible because this son of a gun ones invented it and held on to it despite the criticism.

Btw, I was reading BD's biography by Howard Sounes and tried to immerse into the story through re-listening to his albums appropriate to the periods of his life I was reading about, and at some point when I was listening to his debut album I heard his iconic performance of the House of The Rising Sun I started crying like a baby. Why? Well, I realised that, according to the book, even though this particular arrangement of the song was created by Dave Van Ronk, it was Bob Dylan who first recorded it in this sound. This song in this particular arrangement performed by Bob Dylan was so popular, that the Animals made their famous recording of the song being inspired by that specific recording by BD. The song became so famous that somehow it got to the USSR where someone once performed it, some guy from my hometown heard it and learned how to play it, my father heard that someone singing this song (having 0 idea what the original song was like,who first recorded it, who arranged it and so on), learned how to play it himself and many years after taught me how to play it on the piano. So, to cut a long story short, this is one of the first songs I have ever heard in my life and the first song I learned to play, and it is so damn nostalgic to me, and I love it so much, and I have so many warm family memories connected to this song and all this because this little smelly Jewish boy once decided to record it for his debut album in 1962 in Greenwich village so far away from my home. The song is so amazing and timeless that my father who was born 5 years after this song was released on Bob Dylan and legitimately fell in love with it and decided to pass this love to his children. Just how fucking amazing is that ffs

Biała Podlaska, Poland

(These are different tortoiseshell cats, a mother and a daughter, and I met them both on the same day. That was a great day)

I opened the Autumn movie/series season with "House of Usher", 1960 and "Fargo", 2014

Мистецтво українських шістдесятників / Art of the Ukrainian Sixtiers