If
there is an Illuminati
then
Bob Dylan is
somehow affiliated.
Frank Sinatra was
definitely
an Illuminatus.
If Tempest was hellfire apocalypse romance,
prophesied steampunk armageddon,
then Shadows in The Night is the revelation
of the true nature of the American songbook.
The American songbook is a catalogue of occult hymns.
The Night is history,
the Shadows are songs, chants, spells.
Familiars.
Gnomic,
quiet, sacred songs, once sung by other old masters,
once backed by orchestra, enormous, comfortable,
here now sung rough, drafty, by Dylan, backed by so little,
pedal steel approximating what once was so huge.
The songs, peeled back, their accumulated histories both
trashed and ingested, revered, reveal what has always laughed
behind Sinatra et al.: the absolute stillness of shared mind.
The occult tradition is diverse.
Dylan isn’t a witch.
Dylan isn’t practicing Thelema.
Dylan is cleaning the years
of glitter and shine (dust
and life) off of these
songs, these incantations,
these rituals. Dylan is rearranging,
channeling, reinterpreting
American musics, a magus,
like he has been for decades.
Finger hovering charged over the reset
button, tenderly depressing it, full moon above.
These songs are now, again, the basic totems
of the 20th century’s repressed occult psyche.