Alienation and community

You probably know the story already - or, as it turns out, the stories. Let's start with the earlier: in July of 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, Bob Dylan performed three songs using an electric guitar - and, in the process, angered a number of folk purists who saw the instrument as anathema. Pete Seeger allegedly tried to cut the power off, and the folk singer Oscar Brand observed, subsequently, that to many lovers of folk music "the electric guitar represented capitalism." Dylan had crossed a line, and the situation grew rowdy, with some in the crowd booing loudly.

Yesterday, as Cleo and I drove from her nursery to pick up L. after work, the conversation suddenly grew similarly heavy, and ominous. Cleo suggested that she could watch Dumbo when we got home, but I, since we were expecting a dinner guest, told her that she would have to wait until a polite time. Cleo dissented, and whined a little bit; I suggested that she try not to whine. And then she released this electric zinger: "I don't like you," she said, calmly. And then repeated it.

Honestly, I didn't know what to say. I felt momentarily paralyzed, completely deflated. Had she really said that? Could she really feel that way? She's at the age where she enjoys trying out phrasings, to see if they might bring a response, and I wondered if this was thus mere provocation. Perhaps. But in the moment it also felt as though she were entirely, coldly sincere.

But of course no story ends as simply as its telling might suggest. As Benjamin Filene notes, in Romancing the Folk:Public Memory & American Roots Music, part of the reason that Dylan's electric guitar angered Seeger so viscerally was that it violated Seeger's basic philosophy of performance: that a concert, that is, can offer an opportunity to build community. Seeger wanted his crowds to sing along with him - a possibility that was more or less precluded by Dylan's grinding, shrieking guitar. "Dylan's song set at Newport," Filene says, "was a performance done perhaps to his audience, but he had little interest in allowing it to be done by them."

Or, at least, he didn't for a few moments. There are, in fact, alternative accounts of what, exactly, happened in Newport in 1965. Ryder Windham, for example, points out that "some insiders maintain that the booing was not prompted by... Dylan's guitar, but in response to the festival's inferior sound system and the fact that Dylan, like every other performer, to three songs." That would make some sense, too, given that members of the audience then demanded an encore: a demand honored by Dylan, who later returned to the stage and played two songs, by himself - on an acoustic guitar.

So where is the truth? There were boos; Cleo was unhappy with me. But any rupture in community was, in both cases, soon restored; distances were bridged; amends made. This morning, Cleo woke up shortly after 6, and within a few minutes she was enthusiastically showing me how she can dive, and insisting that next summer I play in the pool with her.

Sure thing, Cleo. And I'll be sure to turn the electricity off before we dive in.