Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize for Literature....

Dave Bidini wrote an article in the Globe and Mail and took some hits for it... Dave is always good for generating comments, but then comments may have dubious merits.  The point is I don't think anybody with a head on their shoulders would deny that Bob Dylan's lyrics are of the highest quality imaginable and that his body of work is nearly unmatched  ( does Joni Mitchell win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?).

I have an idea... I know crazy old Robertson with his crazy ideas?  Can we have a Nobel Prize for meaningful, inspiring and relevant song lyrics?  God knows we could use it given some of the insipid words cobbled together and slapped on a loop and called a song these days.  Imagine giving a shit about song lyrics?  A friend of mine was in a song/band contest in Vancouver and there was a hundred thousand dollar prize, and you had to go to a boot camp and prove your worth and learn how it is done.  I was quizzing him on things and was shocked to find out that according to this industry funded opportunity the idea of having good lyrics accounted for only about 5% of the focus for success.  So literature has no place in modern music, according to the leading industry folks.

This is insane to anybody who has ever been truly affected by "Words and Music", which happens to be the motto of SOCAN the society of composers and authors... just savior the irony.

So yes we could perhaps use some inspiration on the lyric commitment, and if you want to aim for the sky then Bob Dylan is one of the highest marks without question.

But as to the point that I believe Mr. Bidini was making was that writing a masterpiece book is a different animal than writing song lyrics.  Me, i have released a dozen albums worth of song lyrics and have plenty unreleased, and some I have laboured over and some came to me in moments of inspiration, but i have yet to write a book, but yet it is on my list, but i haven't mustered the courage to take it on.  Why take a carrot away from one of the hardest things to do for people that basically get very little reward for such massive effort.

I wrote a eulogy for my father when he died, and it went over pretty well, and a family member who knew I was a stay home dad mentioned to me a perfect career I could have... become a writer.  It was nice to hear that somebody thought I could do something, but I dismissed the idea with the logic that I would still have to sell some product to people.  Given  my massive failure selling words and music and the effort/ reward ratio was not conducive to me living a happy life and being a decent available father to my children and family.  I'm in a good spot, our family is surviving nicely on the fact that my wife has a good career and our family has balance and a level of prosperity.  Can i write a book?  That remains to be seen, but the overwhelming chance that if I do it will be in obscurity is not lost on me.  For the record I don't believe I would win a Nobel Prize if I did write a book, so this is not a "sour grapes" situation as some have suggested that Mr. Bidini's angle was.

Why not have a new category?  "Nobel Prize for lifetime song lyric output" and then let the people who slaved over books to still have a shot at the "Nobel prize for Literature".  Let's face it, another award ain't going to throw a rake on the spokes of humanity... we fucking love awards, and an award category for song lyrics might help raise the bar a bit as far as that is concerned.  Give the book people a chance to shine, or at least a hope, or a mirage perhaps and this whole thing can be done with.

I can almost imagine the people deciding on this thinking they are so great thinking outside the box giving this award to one of the greatest songwriters ever. Neat idea given to a worthy candidate, but at some point they lost focus on what they were actually doing... there is a Nobel prize in Chemistry and a Nobel Prize in Physics, also one in Physiology and Medicine.  These are all in the science field... there is not just one for science because they are all different, all meaningful and all important.

Books are important and so are songs, but they are different... Bob Dylan deserves a Nobel Prize for his lifetime body of work that has inspired the world to be better and more fair.  So do many authors fighting in the tunnel where the light at the end just got dimmer.