WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:05.080 --> 00:00:10.200 When I first received this Nobel Prize for Literature, I got to wondering exactly how 00:00:10.200 --> 00:00:14.030 my songs related to literature. 00:00:14.030 --> 00:00:17.340 I wanted to reflect on it and see where the connection was. 00:00:17.340 --> 00:00:20.519 I'm going to try to articulate that to you. 00:00:20.519 --> 00:00:26.380 And most likely it will go in a roundabout way, but I hope what I say will be worthwhile 00:00:26.380 --> 00:00:27.380 and purposeful. 00:00:27.380 --> 00:00:35.489 If I was to go back to the dawning of it all, I guess I'd have to start with Buddy Holly. 00:00:35.489 --> 00:00:40.050 Buddy died when I was about eighteen and he was twenty-two. 00:00:40.050 --> 00:00:43.250 From the moment I first heard him, I felt akin. 00:00:43.250 --> 00:00:46.550 I felt related, like he was an older brother. 00:00:46.550 --> 00:00:49.649 I even thought I resembled him. 00:00:49.649 --> 00:00:55.610 Buddy played the music that I loved - the music I grew up on: country western, rock 00:00:55.610 --> 00:00:58.450 'n' roll, and rhythm and blues. 00:00:58.450 --> 00:01:04.330 Three separate strands of music that he intertwined and infused into one genre. 00:01:04.330 --> 00:01:05.810 One brand. 00:01:05.810 --> 00:01:11.350 And Buddy wrote songs - songs that had beautiful melodies and imaginative verses. 00:01:11.350 --> 00:01:16.070 And he sang great - sang in more than a few voices. 00:01:16.070 --> 00:01:17.880 He was the archetype. 00:01:17.880 --> 00:01:19.390 Everything I wasn't and wanted to be. 00:01:19.390 --> 00:01:24.000 I saw him only but once, and that was a few days before he was gone. 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:29.370 I had to travel a hundred miles to get to see him play, and I wasn't disappointed. 00:01:29.370 --> 00:01:33.740 He was powerful and electrifying and had a commanding presence. 00:01:33.740 --> 00:01:35.549 I was only six feet away. 00:01:35.549 --> 00:01:36.610 He was mesmerizing. 00:01:36.610 --> 00:01:42.371 I watched his face, his hands, the way he tapped his foot, his big black glasses, the 00:01:42.371 --> 00:01:48.010 eyes behind the glasses, the way he held his guitar, the way he stood, his neat suit. 00:01:48.010 --> 00:01:49.259 Everything about him. 00:01:49.259 --> 00:01:51.509 He looked older than twenty-two. 00:01:51.509 --> 00:01:54.770 Something about him seemed permanent, and he filled me with conviction. 00:01:54.770 --> 00:01:59.049 Then, out of the blue, the most uncanny thing happened. 00:01:59.049 --> 00:02:03.689 He looked me right straight dead in the eye, and he transmitted something. 00:02:03.689 --> 00:02:04.689 Something I didn't know what. 00:02:04.689 --> 00:02:07.340 And it gave me the chills. 00:02:07.340 --> 00:02:11.090 I think it was a day or two after that that his plane went down. 00:02:11.090 --> 00:02:15.389 And somebody - somebody I'd never seen before - handed me a Leadbelly record with the song 00:02:15.389 --> 00:02:16.870 "Cottonfields" on it. 00:02:16.870 --> 00:02:20.170 And that record changed my life right then and there. 00:02:20.170 --> 00:02:22.900 Transported me into a world I'd never known. 00:02:22.900 --> 00:02:24.749 It was like an explosion went off. 00:02:24.749 --> 00:02:28.680 Like I'd been walking in darkness and all of the sudden the darkness was illuminated. 00:02:28.680 --> 00:02:30.909 It was like somebody laid hands on me. 00:02:30.909 --> 00:02:34.969 I must have played that record a hundred times. 00:02:34.969 --> 00:02:39.620 It was on a label I'd never heard of with a booklet inside with advertisements for other 00:02:39.620 --> 00:02:46.269 artists on the label: Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, the New Lost City Ramblers, Jean Ritchie, 00:02:46.269 --> 00:02:47.269 string bands. 00:02:47.269 --> 00:02:48.540 I'd never heard of any of them. 00:02:48.540 --> 00:02:53.889 But I reckoned if they were on this label with Leadbelly, they had to be good, so I 00:02:53.889 --> 00:02:55.209 needed to hear them. 00:02:55.209 --> 00:02:59.139 I wanted to know all about it and play that kind of music. 00:02:59.139 --> 00:03:04.040 I still had a feeling for the music I'd grown up with, but for right now, I forgot about 00:03:04.040 --> 00:03:05.040 it. 00:03:05.040 --> 00:03:06.040 Didn't even think about it. 00:03:06.040 --> 00:03:09.629 For the time being, it was long gone. 00:03:09.629 --> 00:03:12.160 I hadn't left home yet, but I couldn't wait to. 00:03:12.160 --> 00:03:16.519 I wanted to learn this music and meet the people who played it. 00:03:16.519 --> 00:03:20.709 Eventually, I did leave, and I did learn to play those songs. 00:03:20.709 --> 00:03:25.359 They were different than the radio songs that I'd been listening to all along. 00:03:25.359 --> 00:03:27.339 They were more vibrant and truthful to life. 00:03:27.339 --> 00:03:32.989 With radio songs, a performer might get a hit with a roll of the dice or a fall of the 00:03:32.989 --> 00:03:36.370 cards, but that didn't matter in the folk world. 00:03:36.370 --> 00:03:37.370 Everything was a hit. 00:03:37.370 --> 00:03:40.519 All you had to do was be well versed and be able to play the melody. 00:03:40.519 --> 00:03:43.810 Some of these songs were easy, some not. 00:03:43.810 --> 00:03:49.459 I had a natural feeling for the ancient ballads and country blues, but everything else I had 00:03:49.459 --> 00:03:51.209 to learn from scratch. 00:03:51.209 --> 00:03:56.219 I was playing for small crowds, sometimes no more than four or five people in a room 00:03:56.219 --> 00:03:57.689 or on a street corner. 00:03:57.689 --> 00:04:03.639 You had to have a wide repertoire, and you had to know what to play and when. 00:04:03.639 --> 00:04:07.040 Some songs were intimate, some you had to shout to be heard. 00:04:07.040 --> 00:04:12.629 By listening to all the early folk artists and singing the songs yourself, you pick up 00:04:12.629 --> 00:04:13.920 the vernacular. 00:04:13.920 --> 00:04:15.340 You internalize it. 00:04:15.340 --> 00:04:21.479 You sing it in the ragtime blues, work songs, Georgia sea shanties, Appalachian ballads 00:04:21.479 --> 00:04:23.090 and cowboy songs. 00:04:23.090 --> 00:04:26.860 You hear all the finer points, and you learn the details. 00:04:26.860 --> 00:04:28.470 You know what it's all about. 00:04:28.470 --> 00:04:31.340 Takin' the pistol out and puttin' it back in your pocket. 00:04:31.340 --> 00:04:34.509 Whippin' your way through traffic, talkin' in the dark. 00:04:34.509 --> 00:04:38.370 You know that Stagger Lee was a bad man and that Frankie was a good girl. 00:04:38.370 --> 00:04:42.069 You know that Washington is a bourgeois town and you've heard the deep-pitched voice of 00:04:42.069 --> 00:04:46.110 John the Revelator and you saw the Titanic sink in a boggy creek. 00:04:46.110 --> 00:04:50.430 And you're pals with the wild Irish rover and the wild colonial boy. 00:04:50.430 --> 00:04:53.789 You heard the muffled drums and the fifes that played lowly. 00:04:53.789 --> 00:04:59.159 You've seen the lusty Lord Donald stick a knife in his wife, and a lot of your comrades 00:04:59.159 --> 00:05:02.080 have been wrapped in white linen. 00:05:02.080 --> 00:05:03.949 I had all the vernacular down. 00:05:03.949 --> 00:05:05.400 I knew the rhetoric. 00:05:05.400 --> 00:05:10.270 None of it went over my head - the devices, the techniques, the secrets, the mysteries 00:05:10.270 --> 00:05:14.000 - and I knew all the deserted roads that it traveled on, too. 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:18.820 I could make it all connect and move with the current of the day. 00:05:18.820 --> 00:05:24.479 When I started writing my own songs, the folk lingo was the only vocabulary that I knew, 00:05:24.479 --> 00:05:27.800 and I used it. 00:05:27.800 --> 00:05:29.560 But I had something else as well. 00:05:29.560 --> 00:05:34.300 I had principles and sensibilities and an informed view of the world. 00:05:34.300 --> 00:05:36.539 And I had had that for a while. 00:05:36.539 --> 00:05:38.090 Learned it all in grammar school. 00:05:38.090 --> 00:05:45.239 Don Quixote, Ivanhoe, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Tale of Two Cities, all the rest 00:05:45.239 --> 00:05:51.009 - typical grammar school reading that gave you a way of looking at life, an understanding 00:05:51.009 --> 00:05:54.460 of human nature, and a standard to measure things by. 00:05:54.460 --> 00:05:58.439 I took all that with me when I started composing lyrics. 00:05:58.439 --> 00:06:03.599 And the themes from those books worked their way into many of my songs, either knowingly 00:06:03.599 --> 00:06:05.620 or unintentionally. 00:06:05.620 --> 00:06:12.610 I wanted to write songs unlike anything anybody ever heard, and these themes were fundamental. 00:06:12.610 --> 00:06:17.490 Specific books that have stuck with me ever since I read them way back in grammar school 00:06:17.490 --> 00:06:22.389 - I want to tell you about three of them: Moby Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front 00:06:22.389 --> 00:06:27.219 and The Odyssey. 00:06:27.219 --> 00:06:33.289 Moby Dick is a fascinating book, a book that's filled with scenes of high drama and dramatic 00:06:33.289 --> 00:06:34.979 dialogue. 00:06:34.979 --> 00:06:37.300 The book makes demands on you. 00:06:37.300 --> 00:06:38.740 The plot is straightforward. 00:06:38.740 --> 00:06:45.080 The mysterious Captain Ahab - captain of a ship called the Pequod - an egomaniac with 00:06:45.080 --> 00:06:51.020 a peg leg pursuing his nemesis, the great white whale Moby Dick who took his leg. 00:06:51.020 --> 00:06:56.490 And he pursues him all the way from the Atlantic around the tip of Africa and into the Indian 00:06:56.490 --> 00:06:57.590 Ocean. 00:06:57.590 --> 00:07:00.740 He pursues the whale around both sides of the earth. 00:07:00.740 --> 00:07:04.930 It's an abstract goal, nothing concrete or definite. 00:07:04.930 --> 00:07:08.660 He calls Moby the emperor, sees him as the embodiment of evil. 00:07:08.660 --> 00:07:15.449 Ahab's got a wife and child back in Nantucket that he reminisces about now and again. 00:07:15.449 --> 00:07:18.069 You can anticipate what will happen. 00:07:18.069 --> 00:07:23.370 The ship's crew is made up of men of different races, and any one of them who sights the 00:07:23.370 --> 00:07:26.930 whale will be given the reward of a gold coin. 00:07:26.930 --> 00:07:32.569 A lot of Zodiac symbols, religious allegory, stereotypes. 00:07:32.569 --> 00:07:38.199 Ahab encounters other whaling vessels, presses the captains for details about Moby. 00:07:38.199 --> 00:07:39.710 Have they seen him? 00:07:39.710 --> 00:07:45.610 There's a crazy prophet, Gabriel, on one of the vessels, and he predicts Ahab's doom. 00:07:45.610 --> 00:07:51.240 Says Moby is the incarnate of a Shaker god, and that any dealings with him will lead to 00:07:51.240 --> 00:07:52.240 disaster. 00:07:52.240 --> 00:07:54.900 He says that to Captain Ahab. 00:07:54.900 --> 00:07:58.419 Another ship's captain - Captain Boomer - he lost an arm to Moby. 00:07:58.419 --> 00:08:01.740 But he tolerates that, and he's happy to have survived. 00:08:01.740 --> 00:08:05.710 He can't accept Ahab's lust for vengeance. 00:08:05.710 --> 00:08:10.740 This book tells how different men react in different ways to the same experience. 00:08:10.740 --> 00:08:19.050 A lot of Old Testament, biblical allegory: Gabriel, Rachel, Jeroboam, Bildah, Elijah. 00:08:19.050 --> 00:08:28.219 Pagan names as well: Tashtego, Flask, Daggoo, Fleece, Starbuck, Stubb, Martha's Vineyard. 00:08:28.219 --> 00:08:30.650 The Pagans are idol worshippers. 00:08:30.650 --> 00:08:34.289 Some worship little wax figures, some wooden figures. 00:08:34.289 --> 00:08:35.870 Some worship fire. 00:08:35.870 --> 00:08:40.130 The Pequod is the name of an Indian tribe. 00:08:40.130 --> 00:08:42.159 Moby Dick is a seafaring tale. 00:08:42.159 --> 00:08:46.610 One of the men, the narrator, says, "Call me Ishmael." 00:08:46.610 --> 00:08:50.630 Somebody asks him where he's from, and he says, "It's not down on any map. 00:08:50.630 --> 00:08:53.300 True places never are." 00:08:53.300 --> 00:08:58.880 Stubb gives no significance to anything, says everything is predestined. 00:08:58.880 --> 00:09:01.800 Ishmael's been on a sailing ship his entire life. 00:09:01.800 --> 00:09:04.680 Calls the sailing ships his Harvard and Yale. 00:09:04.680 --> 00:09:06.420 He keeps his distance from people. 00:09:06.420 --> 00:09:09.380 A typhoon hits the Pequod. 00:09:09.380 --> 00:09:11.420 Captain Ahab thinks it's a good omen. 00:09:11.420 --> 00:09:14.910 Starbuck thinks it's a bad omen, considers killing Ahab. 00:09:14.910 --> 00:09:20.670 As soon as the storm ends, a crewmember falls from the ship's mast and drowns, foreshadowing 00:09:20.670 --> 00:09:22.840 what's to come. 00:09:22.840 --> 00:09:29.630 A Quaker pacifist priest, who is actually a bloodthirsty businessman, tells Flask, "Some 00:09:29.630 --> 00:09:34.270 men who receive injuries are led to God, others are led to bitterness." 00:09:34.270 --> 00:09:36.940 Everything is mixed in. 00:09:36.940 --> 00:09:44.240 All the myths: the Judeo Christian bible, Hindu myths, British legends, Saint George, 00:09:44.240 --> 00:09:47.510 Perseus, Hercules - they're all whalers. 00:09:47.510 --> 00:09:51.570 Greek mythology, the gory business of cutting up a whale. 00:09:51.570 --> 00:09:58.129 Lots of facts in this book, geographical knowledge, whale oil - good for coronation of royalty 00:09:58.129 --> 00:10:01.449 - noble families in the whaling industry. 00:10:01.449 --> 00:10:05.350 Whale oil is used to anoint the kings. 00:10:05.350 --> 00:10:12.990 History of the whale, phrenology, classical philosophy, pseudo-scientific theories, justification 00:10:12.990 --> 00:10:18.769 for discrimination - everything thrown in and none of it hardly rational. 00:10:18.769 --> 00:10:24.360 Highbrow, lowbrow, chasing illusion, chasing death, the great white whale, white as polar 00:10:24.360 --> 00:10:30.110 bear, white as a white man, the emperor, the nemesis, the embodiment of evil. 00:10:30.110 --> 00:10:36.060 The demented captain who actually lost his leg years ago trying to attack Moby with a 00:10:36.060 --> 00:10:37.060 knife. 00:10:37.060 --> 00:10:39.040 We see only the surface of things. 00:10:39.040 --> 00:10:42.850 We can interpret what lies below any way we see fit. 00:10:42.850 --> 00:10:48.230 Crewmen walk around on deck listening for mermaids, and sharks and vultures follow the 00:10:48.230 --> 00:10:49.230 ship. 00:10:49.230 --> 00:10:51.089 Reading skulls and faces like you read a book. 00:10:51.089 --> 00:10:52.199 Here's a face. 00:10:52.199 --> 00:10:54.660 I'll put it in front of you. 00:10:54.660 --> 00:10:56.351 Read it if you can. 00:10:56.351 --> 00:10:58.160 Tashtego says that he died and was reborn. 00:10:58.160 --> 00:11:00.820 His extra days are a gift. 00:11:00.820 --> 00:11:05.850 He wasn't saved by Christ, though, he says he was saved by a fellow man and a non-Christian 00:11:05.850 --> 00:11:07.029 at that. 00:11:07.029 --> 00:11:08.910 He parodies the resurrection. 00:11:08.910 --> 00:11:14.870 When Starbuck tells Ahab that he should let bygones be bygones, the angry captain snaps 00:11:14.870 --> 00:11:20.699 back, "Speak not to me of blasphemy, man, I'd strike the sun if it insulted me." 00:11:20.699 --> 00:11:24.529 Ahab, too, is a poet of eloquence. 00:11:24.529 --> 00:11:30.079 He says, "The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved 00:11:30.079 --> 00:11:31.079 to run." 00:11:31.079 --> 00:11:36.790 Or these lines, "All visible objects are but pasteboard masks." 00:11:36.790 --> 00:11:40.310 Quotable poetic phrases that can't be beat. 00:11:40.310 --> 00:11:44.199 Finally, Ahab spots Moby, and the harpoons come out. 00:11:44.199 --> 00:11:45.850 Boats are lowered. 00:11:45.850 --> 00:11:49.340 Ahab's harpoon has been baptized in blood. 00:11:49.340 --> 00:11:52.000 Moby attacks Ahab's boat and destroys it. 00:11:52.000 --> 00:11:54.870 Next day, he sights Moby again. 00:11:54.870 --> 00:11:56.329 Boats are lowered again. 00:11:56.329 --> 00:11:58.509 Moby attacks Ahab's boat again. 00:11:58.509 --> 00:12:01.910 On the third day, another boat goes in. 00:12:01.910 --> 00:12:03.490 More religious allegory. 00:12:03.490 --> 00:12:05.100 He has risen. 00:12:05.100 --> 00:12:09.199 Moby attacks one more time, ramming the Pequod and sinking it. 00:12:09.199 --> 00:12:13.860 Ahab gets tangled up in the harpoon lines and is thrown out of his boat into a watery 00:12:13.860 --> 00:12:14.860 grave. 00:12:14.860 --> 00:12:16.579 Ishmael survives. 00:12:16.579 --> 00:12:19.199 He's in the sea floating on a coffin. 00:12:19.199 --> 00:12:20.800 And that's about it. 00:12:20.800 --> 00:12:22.910 That's the whole story. 00:12:22.910 --> 00:12:31.850 That theme and all that it implies would work its way into more than a few of my songs. 00:12:31.850 --> 00:12:36.470 All Quiet on the Western Front was another book that did. 00:12:36.470 --> 00:12:39.709 All Quiet on the Western Front is a horror story. 00:12:39.709 --> 00:12:45.380 This is a book where you lose your childhood, your faith in a meaningful world, and your 00:12:45.380 --> 00:12:48.360 concern for individuals. 00:12:48.360 --> 00:12:50.270 You're stuck in a nightmare. 00:12:50.270 --> 00:12:54.260 Sucked up into a mysterious whirlpool of death and pain. 00:12:54.260 --> 00:12:57.529 You're defending yourself from elimination. 00:12:57.529 --> 00:13:00.740 You're being wiped off the face of the map. 00:13:00.740 --> 00:13:08.040 Once upon a time you were an innocent youth with big dreams about being a concert pianist. 00:13:08.040 --> 00:13:14.230 Once you loved life and the world, and now you're shooting it to pieces. 00:13:14.230 --> 00:13:19.279 Day after day, the hornets bite you and worms lap your blood. 00:13:19.279 --> 00:13:20.480 You're a cornered animal. 00:13:20.480 --> 00:13:22.870 You don't fit anywhere. 00:13:22.870 --> 00:13:25.339 The falling rain is monotonous. 00:13:25.339 --> 00:13:33.209 There's endless assaults, poison gas, nerve gas, morphine, burning streams of gasoline, 00:13:33.209 --> 00:13:38.510 scavenging and scabbing for food, influenza, typhus, dysentery. 00:13:38.510 --> 00:13:42.720 Life is breaking down all around you, and the shells are whistling. 00:13:42.720 --> 00:13:45.870 This is the lower region of hell. 00:13:45.870 --> 00:13:52.920 Mud, barbed wire, rat-filled trenches, rats eating the intestines of dead men, trenches 00:13:52.920 --> 00:13:55.149 filled with filth and excrement. 00:13:55.149 --> 00:13:57.589 Someone shouts, "Hey, you there. 00:13:57.589 --> 00:13:59.170 Stand and fight." 00:13:59.170 --> 00:14:01.509 Who knows how long this mess will go on? 00:14:01.509 --> 00:14:03.310 Warfare has no limits. 00:14:03.310 --> 00:14:07.370 You're being annihilated, and that leg of yours is bleeding too much. 00:14:07.370 --> 00:14:10.290 You killed a man yesterday, and you spoke to his corpse. 00:14:10.290 --> 00:14:17.519 You told him after this is over, you'll spend the rest of your life looking after his family. 00:14:17.519 --> 00:14:18.690 Who's profiting here? 00:14:18.690 --> 00:14:23.310 The leaders and the generals gain fame, and many others profit financially. 00:14:23.310 --> 00:14:26.290 But you're doing the dirty work. 00:14:26.290 --> 00:14:29.140 One of your comrades says, "Wait a minute, where are you going?" 00:14:29.140 --> 00:14:32.879 And you say, "Leave me alone, I'll be back in a minute." 00:14:32.879 --> 00:14:37.930 Then you walk out into the woods of death hunting for a piece of sausage. 00:14:37.930 --> 00:14:42.459 You can't see how anybody in civilian life has any kind of purpose at all. 00:14:42.459 --> 00:14:46.829 All their worries, all their desires - you can't comprehend it. 00:14:46.829 --> 00:14:52.000 More machine guns rattle, more parts of bodies hanging from wires, more pieces of arms and 00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:58.399 legs and skulls where butterflies perch on teeth, more hideous wounds, pus coming out 00:14:58.399 --> 00:15:04.930 of every pore, lung wounds, wounds too big for the body, gas-blowing cadavers, and dead 00:15:04.930 --> 00:15:06.959 bodies making retching noises. 00:15:06.959 --> 00:15:09.720 Death is everywhere. 00:15:09.720 --> 00:15:11.820 Nothing else is possible. 00:15:11.820 --> 00:15:15.380 Someone will kill you and use your dead body for target practice. 00:15:15.380 --> 00:15:16.380 Boots, too. 00:15:16.380 --> 00:15:17.380 They're your prized possession. 00:15:17.380 --> 00:15:21.690 But soon they'll be on somebody else's feet. 00:15:21.690 --> 00:15:23.740 There's Froggies coming through the trees. 00:15:23.740 --> 00:15:25.089 Merciless bastards. 00:15:25.089 --> 00:15:26.899 Your shells are running out. 00:15:26.899 --> 00:15:30.829 "It's not fair to come at us again so soon," you say. 00:15:30.829 --> 00:15:36.250 One of your companions is laying in the dirt, and you want to take him to the field hospital. 00:15:36.250 --> 00:15:39.579 Someone else says, "You might save yourself a trip." 00:15:39.579 --> 00:15:41.231 "What do you mean?" 00:15:41.231 --> 00:15:43.660 "Turn him over, you'll see what I mean." 00:15:43.660 --> 00:15:44.980 You wait to hear the news. 00:15:44.980 --> 00:15:48.830 You don't understand why the war isn't over. 00:15:48.830 --> 00:15:53.542 The army is so strapped for replacement troops that they're drafting young boys who are of 00:15:53.542 --> 00:15:58.579 little military use, but they're draftin' 'em anyway because they're running out of 00:15:58.579 --> 00:15:59.579 men. 00:15:59.579 --> 00:16:02.600 Sickness and humiliation have broken your heart. 00:16:02.600 --> 00:16:11.960 You were betrayed by your parents, your schoolmasters, your ministers, and even your own government. 00:16:11.960 --> 00:16:18.930 The general with the slowly smoked cigar betrayed you too - turned you into a thug and a murderer. 00:16:18.930 --> 00:16:21.860 If you could, you'd put a bullet in his face. 00:16:21.860 --> 00:16:23.759 The commander as well. 00:16:23.759 --> 00:16:29.070 You fantasize that if you had the money, you'd put up a reward for any man who would take 00:16:29.070 --> 00:16:31.170 his life by any means necessary. 00:16:31.170 --> 00:16:37.250 And if he should lose his life by doing that, then let the money go to his heirs. 00:16:37.250 --> 00:16:42.480 The colonel, too, with his caviar and his coffee - he's another one. 00:16:42.480 --> 00:16:44.420 Spends all his time in the officers' brothel. 00:16:44.420 --> 00:16:48.209 You'd like to see him stoned dead too. 00:16:48.209 --> 00:16:52.769 More Tommies and Johnnies with their whack fo' me daddy-o and their whiskey in the jars. 00:16:52.769 --> 00:16:56.880 You kill twenty of 'em and twenty more will spring up in their place. 00:16:56.880 --> 00:16:59.370 It just stinks in your nostrils. 00:16:59.370 --> 00:17:04.650 You've come to despise that older generation that sent you out into this madness, into 00:17:04.650 --> 00:17:06.339 this torture chamber. 00:17:06.339 --> 00:17:07.880 All around you, your comrades are dying. 00:17:07.880 --> 00:17:16.390 Dying from abdominal wounds, double amputations, shattered hipbones, and you think, "I'm only 00:17:16.390 --> 00:17:20.260 twenty years old, but I'm capable of killing anybody. 00:17:20.260 --> 00:17:23.830 Even my father if he came at me." 00:17:23.830 --> 00:17:30.840 Yesterday, you tried to save a wounded messenger dog, and somebody shouted, "Don't be a fool." 00:17:30.840 --> 00:17:34.680 One Froggy is laying gurgling at your feet. 00:17:34.680 --> 00:17:39.670 You stuck him with a dagger in his stomach, but the man still lives. 00:17:39.670 --> 00:17:43.340 You know you should finish the job, but you can't. 00:17:43.340 --> 00:17:49.010 You're on the real iron cross, and a Roman soldier's putting a sponge of vinegar to your 00:17:49.010 --> 00:17:50.010 lips. 00:17:50.010 --> 00:17:51.320 Months pass by. 00:17:51.320 --> 00:17:53.140 You go home on leave. 00:17:53.140 --> 00:17:55.190 You can't communicate with your father. 00:17:55.190 --> 00:17:57.710 He said, "You'd be a coward if you don't enlist." 00:17:57.710 --> 00:18:03.970 Your mother, too, on your way back out the door, she says, "You be careful of those French 00:18:03.970 --> 00:18:06.410 girls now." 00:18:06.410 --> 00:18:07.820 More madness. 00:18:07.820 --> 00:18:11.540 You fight for a week or a month, and you gain ten yards. 00:18:11.540 --> 00:18:15.790 And then the next month it gets taken back. 00:18:15.790 --> 00:18:22.260 All that culture from a thousand years ago, that philosophy, that wisdom - Plato, Aristotle, 00:18:22.260 --> 00:18:25.960 Socrates - what happened to it? 00:18:25.960 --> 00:18:27.750 It should have prevented this. 00:18:27.750 --> 00:18:29.380 Your thoughts turn homeward. 00:18:29.380 --> 00:18:34.580 And once again you're a schoolboy walking through the tall poplar trees. 00:18:34.580 --> 00:18:36.780 It's a pleasant memory. 00:18:36.780 --> 00:18:38.830 More bombs dropping on you from blimps. 00:18:38.830 --> 00:18:40.890 You got to get it together now. 00:18:40.890 --> 00:18:46.560 You can't even look at anybody for fear of some miscalculable thing that might happen. 00:18:46.560 --> 00:18:47.560 The common grave. 00:18:47.560 --> 00:18:51.260 There are no other possibilities. 00:18:51.260 --> 00:18:57.000 Then you notice the cherry blossoms, and you see that nature is unaffected by all this. 00:18:57.000 --> 00:19:02.370 Poplar trees, the red butterflies, the fragile beauty of flowers, the sun - you see how nature 00:19:02.370 --> 00:19:04.630 is indifferent to it all. 00:19:04.630 --> 00:19:07.550 All the violence and suffering of all mankind. 00:19:07.550 --> 00:19:09.150 Nature doesn't even notice it. 00:19:09.150 --> 00:19:10.440 You're so alone. 00:19:10.440 --> 00:19:15.020 Then a piece of shrapnel hits the side of your head and you're dead. 00:19:15.020 --> 00:19:18.150 You've been ruled out, crossed out. 00:19:18.150 --> 00:19:20.250 You've been exterminated. 00:19:20.250 --> 00:19:24.130 I put this book down and closed it up. 00:19:24.130 --> 00:19:31.130 I never wanted to read another war novel again, and I never did. 00:19:31.130 --> 00:19:35.970 Charlie Poole from North Carolina had a song that connected to all this. 00:19:35.970 --> 00:19:41.150 It's called "You Ain't Talkin' to Me," and the lyrics go like this: 00:19:41.150 --> 00:19:44.890 I saw a sign in a window walking up town one day. 00:19:44.890 --> 00:19:47.910 Join the army, see the world is what it had to say. 00:19:47.910 --> 00:19:54.200 You'll see exciting places with a jolly crew, You'll meet interesting people, and learn 00:19:54.200 --> 00:19:55.200 to kill them too. 00:19:55.200 --> 00:19:58.440 Oh you ain't talkin' to me, you ain't talking to me. 00:19:58.440 --> 00:20:02.520 I may be crazy and all that, but I got good sense you see. 00:20:02.520 --> 00:20:05.760 You ain't talkin' to me, you ain't talkin' to me. 00:20:05.760 --> 00:20:08.100 Killin' with a gun don't sound like fun. 00:20:08.100 --> 00:20:14.750 You ain't talkin' to me. 00:20:14.750 --> 00:20:18.640 The Odyssey is a great book whose themes have worked its way into the ballads of a lot of 00:20:18.640 --> 00:20:24.580 songwriters: "Homeward Bound, "Green, Green Grass of Home," "Home on the Range," and my 00:20:24.580 --> 00:20:26.640 songs as well. 00:20:26.640 --> 00:20:31.840 The Odyssey is a strange, adventurous tale of a grown man trying to get home after fighting 00:20:31.840 --> 00:20:33.620 in a war. 00:20:33.620 --> 00:20:38.190 He's on that long journey home, and it's filled with traps and pitfalls. 00:20:38.190 --> 00:20:40.380 He's cursed to wander. 00:20:40.380 --> 00:20:45.800 He's always getting carried out to sea, always having close calls. 00:20:45.800 --> 00:20:48.740 Huge chunks of boulders rock his boat. 00:20:48.740 --> 00:20:51.160 He angers people he shouldn't. 00:20:51.160 --> 00:20:54.130 There's troublemakers in his crew. 00:20:54.130 --> 00:20:55.570 Treachery. 00:20:55.570 --> 00:21:01.290 His men are turned into pigs and then are turned back into younger, more handsome men. 00:21:01.290 --> 00:21:03.760 He's always trying to rescue somebody. 00:21:03.760 --> 00:21:08.580 He's a travelin' man, but he's making a lot of stops. 00:21:08.580 --> 00:21:10.600 He's stranded on a desert island. 00:21:10.600 --> 00:21:13.540 He finds deserted caves, and he hides in them. 00:21:13.540 --> 00:21:16.440 He meets giants that say, "I'll eat you last." 00:21:16.440 --> 00:21:19.280 And he escapes from giants. 00:21:19.280 --> 00:21:23.670 He's trying to get back home, but he's tossed and turned by the winds. 00:21:23.670 --> 00:21:27.990 Restless winds, chilly winds, unfriendly winds. 00:21:27.990 --> 00:21:32.080 He travels far, and then he gets blown back. 00:21:32.080 --> 00:21:34.930 He's always being warned of things to come. 00:21:34.930 --> 00:21:36.810 Touching things he's told not to. 00:21:36.810 --> 00:21:39.950 There's two roads to take, and they're both bad. 00:21:39.950 --> 00:21:40.970 Both hazardous. 00:21:40.970 --> 00:21:46.550 On one you could drown and on the other you could starve. 00:21:46.550 --> 00:21:52.180 He goes into the narrow straits with foaming whirlpools that swallow him. 00:21:52.180 --> 00:21:55.830 Meets six-headed monsters with sharp fangs. 00:21:55.830 --> 00:21:58.460 Thunderbolts strike at him. 00:21:58.460 --> 00:22:03.170 Overhanging branches that he makes a leap to reach for to save himself from a raging 00:22:03.170 --> 00:22:05.380 river. 00:22:05.380 --> 00:22:10.070 Goddesses and gods protect him, but some others want to kill him. 00:22:10.070 --> 00:22:12.070 He changes identities. 00:22:12.070 --> 00:22:13.260 He's exhausted. 00:22:13.260 --> 00:22:17.620 He falls asleep, and he's woken up by the sound of laughter. 00:22:17.620 --> 00:22:19.730 He tells his story to strangers. 00:22:19.730 --> 00:22:22.140 He's been gone twenty years. 00:22:22.140 --> 00:22:24.300 He was carried off somewhere and left there. 00:22:24.300 --> 00:22:27.140 Drugs have been dropped into his wine. 00:22:27.140 --> 00:22:29.460 It's been a hard road to travel. 00:22:29.460 --> 00:22:34.200 In a lot of ways, some of these same things have happened to you. 00:22:34.200 --> 00:22:37.130 You too have had drugs dropped into your wine. 00:22:37.130 --> 00:22:39.750 You too have shared a bed with the wrong woman. 00:22:39.750 --> 00:22:46.530 You too have been spellbound by magical voices, sweet voices with strange melodies. 00:22:46.530 --> 00:22:50.550 You too have come so far and have been so far blown back. 00:22:50.550 --> 00:22:53.890 And you've had close calls as well. 00:22:53.890 --> 00:22:56.300 You have angered people you should not have. 00:22:56.300 --> 00:22:59.770 And you too have rambled this country all around. 00:22:59.770 --> 00:23:04.820 And you've also felt that ill wind, the one that blows you no good. 00:23:04.820 --> 00:23:06.470 And that's still not all of it. 00:23:06.470 --> 00:23:10.460 When he gets back home, things aren't any better. 00:23:10.460 --> 00:23:15.570 Scoundrels have moved in and are taking advantage of his wife's hospitality. 00:23:15.570 --> 00:23:17.870 And there's too many of 'em. 00:23:17.870 --> 00:23:23.290 And though he's greater than them all and the best at everything - best carpenter, best 00:23:23.290 --> 00:23:30.870 hunter, best expert on animals, best seaman - his courage won't save him, but his trickery 00:23:30.870 --> 00:23:31.870 will. 00:23:31.870 --> 00:23:36.710 All these stragglers will have to pay for desecrating his palace. 00:23:36.710 --> 00:23:41.860 He'll disguise himself as a filthy beggar, and a lowly servant kicks him down the steps 00:23:41.860 --> 00:23:44.420 with arrogance and stupidity. 00:23:44.420 --> 00:23:49.530 The servant's arrogance revolts him, but he controls his anger. 00:23:49.530 --> 00:23:55.570 He's one against a hundred, but they'll all fall, even the strongest. 00:23:55.570 --> 00:23:56.620 He was nobody. 00:23:56.620 --> 00:24:03.470 And when it's all said and done, when he's home at last, he sits with his wife, and he 00:24:03.470 --> 00:24:05.320 tells her the stories. 00:24:05.320 --> 00:24:08.300 So what does it all mean? 00:24:08.300 --> 00:24:12.830 Myself and a lot of other songwriters have been influenced by these very same themes. 00:24:12.830 --> 00:24:15.560 And they can mean a lot of different things. 00:24:15.560 --> 00:24:19.120 If a song moves you, that's all that's important. 00:24:19.120 --> 00:24:21.000 I don't have to know what a song means. 00:24:21.000 --> 00:24:24.180 I've written all kinds of things into my songs. 00:24:24.180 --> 00:24:27.190 And I'm not going to worry about it - what it all means. 00:24:27.190 --> 00:24:34.050 When Melville put all his old testament, biblical references, scientific theories, Protestant 00:24:34.050 --> 00:24:40.320 doctrines, and all that knowledge of the sea and sailing ships and whales into one story, 00:24:40.320 --> 00:24:45.930 I don't think he would have worried about it either - what it all means. 00:24:45.930 --> 00:24:51.850 John Donne as well, the poet-priest who lived in the time of Shakespeare, wrote these words, 00:24:51.850 --> 00:24:55.540 "The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts. 00:24:55.540 --> 00:24:59.330 Not of two lovers, but two loves, the nests." 00:24:59.330 --> 00:25:01.830 I don't know what it means, either. 00:25:01.830 --> 00:25:03.260 But it sounds good. 00:25:03.260 --> 00:25:06.800 And you want your songs to sound good. 00:25:06.800 --> 00:25:13.490 When Odysseus in The Odyssey visits the famed warrior Achilles in the underworld - Achilles, 00:25:13.490 --> 00:25:19.660 who traded a long life full of peace and contentment for a short one full of honor and glory - tells 00:25:19.660 --> 00:25:22.990 Odysseus it was all a mistake. 00:25:22.990 --> 00:25:24.790 "I just died, that's all." 00:25:24.790 --> 00:25:26.650 There was no honor. 00:25:26.650 --> 00:25:28.510 No immortality. 00:25:28.510 --> 00:25:34.120 And that if he could, he would choose to go back and be a lowly slave to a tenant farmer 00:25:34.120 --> 00:25:41.600 on Earth rather than be what he is - a king in the land of the dead - that whatever his 00:25:41.600 --> 00:25:49.600 struggles of life were, they were preferable to being here in this dead place. 00:25:49.600 --> 00:25:51.250 That's what songs are too. 00:25:51.250 --> 00:25:54.320 Our songs are alive in the land of the living. 00:25:54.320 --> 00:25:56.600 But songs are unlike literature. 00:25:56.600 --> 00:25:59.510 They're meant to be sung, not read. 00:25:59.510 --> 00:26:03.020 The words in Shakespeare's plays were meant to be acted on the stage. 00:26:03.020 --> 00:26:09.160 Just as lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on a page. 00:26:09.160 --> 00:26:13.410 And I hope some of you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended 00:26:13.410 --> 00:26:19.950 to be heard: in concert or on record or however people are listening to songs these days. 00:26:19.950 --> 00:26:26.650 I return once again to Homer, who says, "Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story."