Layer 56 Summer In The City IV Conscience and Crime.

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The preacher was a’talking, there’s a sermon he gave
He said every man’s conscience is vile and depraved
You cannot depend on it to be your guide
When it’s you who must keep it satisfied.
It ain’t easy to swallow, it sticks in the throat
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She gave her heart to the man in a long black coat.

Bob Dylan, Man In A Long Black Coat
from Oh Mercy

This is a song I return to, sometimes every day. Melodically, lyrically, instrumentally, atmospherically it’s just superb, as are all of the songs on Oh Mercy.

Most Of The Time, which follows it on the CD, is similar in all those ways. This is the voice of experience, as well as the voice of wisdom and understanding, gently and melodically telling us that this is the way life is - he can keep both feet on the ground and follow the path, handle whatever he stumbles upon, and make it through, all on his own - most of the time.

I’m becoming more and more absorbed in the way Dylan’s voice functions as an instrument - the way in which his sounds and inflections manage to convey states of pure feeling or passion - or love, or anger, or disgust. You don’t even have to pay any attention to the lyrics to tune in to the mood he’s putting across, the feelings he’s conveying. Come to think of it, I’d like to hear versions of his songs with the vocal/melody track removed and replaced by piano, keyboard and guitar, - played, of course, by the man himself, ideally.

Before I get on to the main part of this piece I want to recommend a book called “Dylan’s Visions of Sin“, by Prof. Christopher Ricks, in which he quotes Dylan as saying,

“The politics of sin; that’s what I think of.”

And one of the things that Dylan has noticed is that so many people have turned a deaf ear to this aspect of his work -

“The things I have to say about such things as ghetto bosses, salvation and sin, lust, murderers going free, and children without hope . . .”

Before I get on to some thoughts on crime, schools and the education system I’d just like to slip in another Dylan quote from Ricks’ book.

“As you get older, you get smarter and that can hinder you because you try to gain control over the creative impulse. Creativity is not like a freight train going down the tracks. It’s something that has to be caressed and treated with a great deal of respect. If your mind is intellectually in the way, it will stop you. You’ve got to program your brain not to think too much.”

There speaks a true Gemini, a true air sign!

In essence what he’s saying is that creativity takes place where the planes of knowing, feeling and imagining meet and intersect; the point at which the axes of knowledge and instinct, spiritual intelligence and emotional intelligence cross over and link together. Because creativity and originality and personal expression depend upon combining all those elements of knowing, feeling, imagining, empathizing and intuiting. And the process has to be driven by instinct and passion.

So much for the creative impulse. How sad it is that so many never experience it, or do so very infrequently. Unless you count things like destruction and mayhem as a kind of negative creation.

Hicks talks about Dylan’s equilateral thinking - the triangle of music, voices and “his unpropitiatory words”. In the past Dylan has said, “I can hear the sound of what I want to say”.

Hicks has a very interesting way of organizing his book, his study of the art of Bob Dylan. Seven chapters on “The Sins”; four chapters on “The Virtues” - Justice, Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude; three chapters on “The Heavenly Graces” - Faith, Hope and Charity.

To people brought up in so-called Judeo/Christian societies these headings, combined with the notion of “sin”, might give the impression that he’s intent on some sort of religious exploration and interpretation, that he’s considering Dylan’s work through the prism of religion.

But of course there is no religious monopoly on, or religious ownership of, these words and concepts, which are, after all, human values, and belong to all of us. They belong to the world, including atheists and agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems and the rest.

Human values are at the heart of any attempt to educate children in the art of living well, as are emotional intelligence, imagination, spiritual intelligence and creativity. A lot of the kids living feral and broken lives would be far better off listening to and studying the music and poetry of Bob Dylan everyday than they are studying what is to them irrelevant and empty subject matter that has nothing to do with their lives.

It was Springsteen who said, "I learned more from a three minute record than I ever learned at school", and there's another passionate genius whose work should be on the curriculum in every secondary school.

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Last night Panorama on BBC1, and Channel 4 with three separate programmes, launched into a combined four hours of documentary, discussion and talking heads on the subjects of knife crime, teenage street gangs and broken lives. More and more kids are dying of knife wounds, and sometimes gunshots. The media is currently full of this stuff.

Dylan says that conscience can’t be relied on to be your guide - it’s you who must keep it satisfied. The comment that’s stayed in my memory from last night’s programmes is a kid saying,

“I didn’t have a conscience. I wanted to hurt people. I wanted to be ‘good‘. I wanted respect. I wanted people to be afraid of me.”

And someone else said, “You call this life? This is death out here, man”.

“Too much analyzing what’s happening just spreads fear.”

“Some of the older kids teach you bad stuff.”

And in conclusion,
“These days all people care about is themselves. Nothing’s going to happen and nothing’s going to get better unless everybody is prepared to stand up and make a difference.”

These kids are not total idiots, notwithstanding the fact that many of them lack consciences and have very little emotional or spiritual intelligence. What they also don’t have is the strength and the know-how to resist the pressures to become part of a gang or a group on the streets. They have no strategies or very few strategies to help them cope with fear, coercion and bullying.

So who’s for standing up and making a difference, as the young man suggested? Maybe no-one should have the right to an opinion on these matters unless they can explain what they are actively doing to make a difference, or unless they have a track record of making a difference before retiring from the battlefront. Unless they have a sick note to explain why they can’t be an activist. Unless they can clearly demonstrate they are making a difference.

Putting in some ground rules like this might exclude from the debate a great many loud-mouthed pundits, as well as most politicians and most civil servants and bureauk-rats too, all the vermin that scurry along the corridors of power and feed off the bounty of hard-working people, whilst despising their lifestyles, language and living conditions.

These are the highly-paid overrated fellows who specialise in scratching one another’s backs as they pontificate on the next great initiative and strategy for dealing with the troublesome proles and their feral offspring.

There are also lots of decent-minded and liberal individuals who also don’t have a clue what to do about the gathering storm. A couple of weeks ago I was listening to some BBC types, some programme-making types, talking excitedly about a documentary project that will focus on teenagers, gang culture and the need to teach kids “emotional intelligence”. There was a pause in their chatter, and then one of them, a very bright and able young woman, turned to me and said, “How do you teach emotional intelligence?” I resisted the temptation to ask her how many days she had, since I’ve spent a career trying to figure that one out.

What I can say very easily is that you can’t give someone a conscience. You can’t inoculate them from the sickness. You can’t inject them with resilience. You can’t force enlightenment on anyone.

Christ - we can’t even give them decent housing and living conditions. Simple, concrete, physical things. We can’t give them pride and self-esteem when we make them live inside chaos and decay. We can’t shield them from deprived, depressed and desperate parents. We can’t cut off their access to drugs and weapons.

But there are things we can do - in principle, very easily. We can stop putting them in schools which are no more than results factories where there is only boredom and cramming on offer. We can offer them opportunities to learn how to be creative and to love learning for its own sake. We can fill their days in school with colour and stimulation, with friendships and laughter and enjoyment. This is not rocket science.

What they increasingly have is just old-fashioned child abuse and denial of human rights dressed up as driving up standards. They know they are just pawns in a political/educational game. They know they have teachers who are too tired, too demotivated, too full of fear and too stressed to give them a smile or a chance to talk, a chance to express themselves.

And this is the real sickness in our society. Deal with this, and let the schools be managed by people who are concerned with meeting the real developmental needs of children, people who can steadfastly and patiently look after children, encourage them, allow them to learn at their own pace and in their preferred manner, and we might start to get somewhere.