I'm having a Bob Dylan Summer…
This essay is not about Bob Dylan (kinda)
Hi, I'm George Westcott. Currently, I am writing from the European side of Istanbul, doing my first date holiday with my partner. It's been great overall aside from getting ripped off with the ice cream thing. On the bus we took before taking the ferry, we had a moment of just needing to listen to our music and enjoy each other's company in full. If I remember right, my partner, this is kinda of my soft launch to my dear readers, was listening to their liked songs or one of their playlists and I decided to listen to Bob. Now, if you are a paid subscriber, you might know that I am slightly in a Bob Dylan hyperfixation. Even before the trailer was released for the upcoming Chalamet-led biopic, I was completely obsessed with the song-and-dance man. Possibly, and I might be onto something, there is a current cultural trend to which Bob Dylan seemingly offers an answer, a Bob-shaped antidote to some societal ill.
Privacy…
It has suddenly occurred to me that there is an irony in opening up about my current relationship and then talking about privacy.
Anyway, I always go back to this article written in the New York Times a couple of years back, "We Should All Know Less About Each Other" by Michelle Goldberg. This opinion piece pops into my head every time I see someone give out upsetting amounts of details regarding their hygiene or their crumbling relationship on TikTok. The article calls into question, much like the title would suggest, the fact that we post too much on the internet and that we are currently in an era of oversharing on social media. This was written in 2021 in the seeming aftermath of the worst of the pandemic and it very much reads as such. The pandemic was the era of oversharing, where we didn't have any human connection and instead overshared on the internet with our distant friends. I think that has always loomed on us as of recently.
My point is that only in these last couple of months, especially viewing it in the context of the summer holidays where people love to overshare, I've felt a certain reluctance from people around me to overshare on social media. Maybe it's the fact that people are still on holiday but I haven't seen as many 10 photo albums on Instagram about someone's trip to Spain. I think that we have become more and more aware, especially my generation who are done, long done, or very close to being done, of this oversharing tendency. Even more recently, I have had friends go completely offline from social media.
This need for privacy is something that deeply calls out to us and people are listening. I think in certain elements, we have begun placing value in mystique and being esoteric. The London gentrifying girlies with their gold jewelry and silk nighties, the men who read in cafes, and the prolonged death of the podcast as this peak form of media. All of these separate have shown more and more our deep dissatisfaction with oversharing and have shined a light on this certain need for privacy.
The little Bob Dylan walk trend (How Bob plays into this)…
So, why am I talking about Bob Dylan in regards to people oversharing online? What specifically about this strange little man? I think it goes back to the semi-mythical status that he has within the current culture. In a culture that values being intensely open in your art, oversharing as the postmodern humanistic fixation, the mysterious poet figure stands alone. I think also culturally, we have become more and more starved of mythical or folkloric figures in pop culture. With the hyperreality of social media which constantly focuses on the "behind the scenes" of everything, we rarely have a mystique to what we watch or listen to. In an era where projects of high secrecy or tight storytelling, the marketing them will normally consist of some form of the previously mentioned "behind the scenes"
I like to call this the era of open marketing, a time where the overarching theme is a lack of secrecy. Culturally we have a repulsion towards it, even if we crave it. In an era where so much of the evil in the world has only been revealed in retrospect or through someone finding a secret out, we tend to want these organizations to be completely transparent. I do agree with this need, I don't think that big companies where abuse has been prominent should have a lot of freedom to hide behind closed doors. My issue lies in how it has affected the arts. Mystique is dead. Bob Dylan symbolizes a shift back to shape.
I think it is interesting that we specifically fixate on early Bob, the era of the "freewheeling Bob Dylan". At his start and possibly at his most mysterious. It is only after several years that his personal history began being revealed, his family, New Jersey roots, etc. coming up into such popular shape is a feat that seems impossible nowadays. I think that Bob Dylan specifically has resonated with the younger creative crowd specifically because of this. It directly speaks to the dissatisfaction with how ingrained marketing principles are in our own lives. With the neo-liberalization of social media, we cannot conceptualize any use of social media that would not add to our brand or our marketing as people. Bob Dylan symbolizes the opposite.
I find the poet part of Bob particularly interesting as they have been consistently counted as "skills with no work use". If you paint, you can sell the paintings. If you dance you can be part of a dance group or perform for events. If you make music you can play shows and stream your music online or make music for projects. If you write you can become a copywriter or publish like I did. I can't find something directly "useful" about being a good poet. It is, in some ways, unmarketable art and I find a lot of kinship with that.
Why I'm having a Bob Dylan summer…
The main point of discussion around the Brat summer was what it specifically meant. Whether it was dating a much older man and letting him take you on holiday to wearing a tank top with no bra while smoking a cigarette, the brat summer is the centerpiece of cultural discussion. I would like to explain what a Bob Dylan summer or a Dylan summer means to me.
I haven't posted much on social media. I have specifically made the choice not to share what my holidays were like. I kinda got burned out of having this need to post monthly for the last couple of years to always have a curated form of private life. That I was doing cool things and people should see. I like being able to have people ask "What have you been up to" and legitimately mean it instead of common-curtesy-speak. A Dylan summer is about living a private life, away from marketing.
I have also taken time to work on my projects for their own sake. I have currently started my new Moleskine notebook and it is full of poems, drawings, and notes that are for nobody except me. Your Dylan summer can be taking time to paint and only keep these paintings to show if someone comes to have dinner in your own house. It could look like writing songs and keeping them on your computer. A Dylan summer is about building mystique and you can't build mystique by sharing everything.
I have also been wearing blazers more and more. Summer is tough for jackets but having a style of jacket that you can still get away with wearing if the weather is hot is great, hence blazers. I also was never a sunglasses kind of person but I have loved wearing my old glasses again. A Dylan summer is about dressing cool. I like to dress cool.
Conclusion
After the end of my marketing internship, I have been thinking a lot about marketing. I discussed with a friend of mine a couple of days ago about marketing and I can't stop thinking about it. Specifically about how it has become a cultural practice. Marketing is the sword of neoliberalism, the lead in a cultural practice. We talked about how these marketing companies essentially run on interns and prey on the most creative of the kids coming out of university.
I think in the face of that, having so much of my life and work be consumed by marketing, listening to Bob, dressing like Bob, and trying to live with mystique, I am reclaiming some of my privacy. Of course, I am not alone. Only a couple of months ago we had the Bob Dylan walk trend thing that took over TikTok. Everyone seems to be dressing like Bob and trying to move towards living mysteriously. It makes me feel like I am less alone, that people are in the same situation of creative frustration and lives being overtaken by marketing.
In addition to this, I fear this comes off as cliche. I know that claiming a want to go back to art was made is terribly cliche. Everyone is dressing like Bob Dylan is almost a bad joke. However, my goal with this essay is to explore specifically why this connection is so strong and explore personally why it resonates with me. If it comes off as cliche there's not much I can do. I am a leather jacket handycam Mf and there’s not much to do about it.
I wish to write another piece about marketing but I am currently working on a larger essay project I might begin to tease soon. I also want to write a piece on marketing and neoliberalism. Sorry for the lack of writing this month, holidays and such, and some personal stuff that in the spirit of things I keep mysterious. I hope that you, dear reader, have had a great summer regardless.