"How Does it Feel?": Arnoff on Dylan on Empathy as Everything

03/27/23 • 53 min

Dudes: please check out Stephen Daniel Arnoff’s podcast and book, Bob Dylan: On Man and God and Law. One of my favorite pop-culture rabbit-holes, the podcast delivers on so many levels: informative, illuminating, a ton of fun and at times breathtakingly insightful. I was super excited to talk to him about how he came to approach song lyrics as sacred text, how music “saves your life and keeps you company,” and his esteemed lineage of invaluably “weird” teachers (“Weird is good. I like weird.”) He describes his journey from passionate singer-songwriter to pursuing a doctorate in ancient midrash, the Talmud professor who promised to help him “preserve a creative life” in the process, and the very live question that drives his musical-intellectual-spiritual work:

“I want to know if there is any meaningful use for religion? In the way that rock and roll is of use. In the way that love is of use. In the way that feeding people is of use.”

He also gives his take on what, ultimately, Dylan’s life’s work is all about. Spoiler Alert: it’s EMPATHY.

“The question How does it feel? is the question of the age. We live in an age where we’re either going to fail as a human race for lack of empathy, or we’re going to survive. Only those who are empathic will survive...You can’t abuse, you can’t enslave, you can’t belittle another person if you have empathy.”

“I want to know if there is any meaningful use for religion? In the way that rock and roll is of use. In the way that love is of use. In the way that feeding people is of use.”

He also gives his take on what, ultimately, Dylan’s life’s work is all about. Spoiler Alert: it’s EMPATHY.

Previous Episode

"If It Doesn't Hit You in the Kishkes It's Worthless": Jon Madof's Universe of Grooves

One of the things I love most about Jon Madoff is that on any given day in the midst of of numbly scrolling on my phone to avoid contemplating any number of personal and collective inevitabilities, I can run into a video of him JAMMING TF OUT on his guitar -- alone in his basement with headphones, in a venue backing up a friends band, on an internet show or a clip from a festival leading his own band -- and for a minute or two be reminded of the pure joy of the creative process. As a musican, composer, and band leader, Madoff has made himself into a vehicle for some of the most innovative, virtuosic, and grooveworthy Jewish music being produced today. As a human, Jon opens up about how his creative life has been both crippled and catapulted by a navigation with intense anxiety, how music is a good addiction in the Marley-an sense of, "When it hits, you feel no pain," and why Fugazi hits him directly in the kishkes.

On navigating anxiety as a musician:

"That voice attacks what means the most to you: the overactive critical voice that does not stop telling you you did everything wrong. This barrage of self-criticism and self-doubt, just a million times a minute. The Buddhists call it monkey mind. I could very easily have an anxiety attack just listening to music. I was judging myself against who I was listening to. And I thought somehow that I should be able to analyze this piece of music and know exactly what is going on. And if I can’t I’m just a failure!"

Next Episode

"We Need the Fantasy of a Destination and a Journey and a Path": Living Tangientially with Basya Schechter

“I think this is such a great line for your podcast. It’s from my third album, Exile. ‘I am in exile in my own home. My real home is moving, it’s a wandering home. I give birth to contradictions, I give up in indecision, and worry.' ”

Basya Schecter is one of my favorite wanderers. From a prolific early singer-songwriter career as the leader of Pharaoh’s Daughter, to her nine-year stint as the full-time musical director and then spiritual leader of communities in Manhattan and Brooklyn, to her recent sabbatical and transition to a more fluid mix of communal leadership and “musical adventures,” she has embodied an insistence to listening to one’s inner voice that I deeply admire. Speaking about the surprising comfort and inspiration she was able to find within the Jewish Renewal community (after a Hassidic upbringing in Borough Park that traumatized her relationship with Jewish community) — and about how the contingencies and demands of single-motherhood pushed her to reconfigure her life in a way that opened unexpected portals to self-connection — she is also frank about he perils of burnout and the non-negotiability of maintaining an active creative life.

“Creativity is finding the thing inside you that you didn’t know was inside. To find that thing that’s higher and beyond what I can actually do, and yet something that comes through anyway. And it’s a surprise. Those are gifts. Those are such gifts. Then those gifts become your friends.”