Parody
Parody "Gore is a man whose view of the world seems to have been as equally formed by listening to Bob Dylan songs as by reading dense policy reports. At one point, we ask him to take apart the...
...You know the Hendrix classic "Purple Haze...
...Oh, absolutely...
...Begins to draw intersecting donut shapes.] You see the replicationalized pattern repeated in the next lines: "The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz, And the sky with no clouds, The heat was hot...
...It was Rod McKuen, I think, who taught us that a post-industrial consciousness will actively devalue the poetic sensibility, in a process of reverse-atom-ization...
...Do you follow me...
...You've really thought a lot about this...
...So you actually . . . I don't want to get into the game of who gets the credit for inspiring the song...
...There's a story here...
...Are there any other songs that shaped your view of the world...
...Begins to sing, strumming an air guitar.] "On the first part of the journey, I was looking at all the life . . ." Isn't that . . . Yes...
...Wow...
...Like a desert...
...Many years ago, in the mid-seventies, I bought a horse...
...You really know your Dylan...
...But the fact of the matter is, I did have a horse with no name...
...The heat was hot - do you see...
...A fellow can barely remember his own name...
...I was standing around with some of my friends from a local band -they called themselves "America," at my suggestion, actually - and I said, "I just can't name that horse...
...That doesn't surprise me...
...One song, in particular, I think, is a metaphor for all of us, and certainly for my own personal odyssey, from my humble beginnings on a hardscrabble Tennessee farm, to my years in the NFL and my rewarding career as an astronaut, then winning the Pulitzer Prize and on through eight years of leading the Gore-Clinton administration as vice president...
...What to name it...
...And by the way, it would not have been the first time something like this had happened to me...
...A few months later, the song came out...
...Tipper and I were fortunate to know Jimi back at Yale, and one time he'd brought over this killer Sin-semilla and we [Cont...
...on 347...
...If you'll allow me to continue . . . But - well, many people consider that song to be the dumbest ever recorded...
...I drew a blank...
...There were plants and birds and rocks and things," which raises the question of thingness...
...The lyrics are adducing a model in which the belief system itself folds back on itself...
...Horse With No Name" is a song that has always spoken to me at a deep, almost sub-cutaneous level...
...May I borrow your notepad...
...With a bi-dimensional, or even tri-dimensional, model, a line like "In the desert you can remember your name, 'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain, la, la la, la la la la, la la la la laaaa," simply becomes one of several possible iterations of a universally apprehended metaphor...
...Vice President...
...At one point, we ask him to take apart the lyrics of 'It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding),' which contains his favorite Dylan line: 'He not busy being born is busy dying.'" -From "Al Gore: The Rolling Stone Interview," November 9, 2000 . . . That's incredible, Mr...
...Yes, oh yes...
...And I said, "Jeesh, it's really hot out here, isn't it...
Vol. 6 • November 2000 • No. 9
