I just stumbled on a video for Bob Dylan's Beyond Here Lies Nothin' which I'd only watched once when the Together Through Life album came out in 2009.
It is a remarkable video. I'm not sure what the remark is, but it is remarkable.
On the one hand the video seems oddly jarring with the border-town rhythm of the song; yet it somehow builds into a ballad of ultra-violence, each punch of the music providing a new assault. It provoked a visceral reaction, shock, horror, despair and then a truly weirdly conflicting tonic. For me, it's a good example of when something is so ugly that it's pretty much beautiful.
It's also interesting to see it as a response to the posturing violence celebrated in so many gangsta and even pop videos. This is real and desperate. (And genuinely violent!).
It is a desperate song; trapped within a cycle of no-hope, trying to break away but having no capacity or imagination to hope for any better a life. It's like breaking away from an abusive relationship and sitting staring at the horizon only to remember you can't escape demons of your past, so you return to the only love you've ever known. Indeed, it reminds me of the end of many a relationship, looking to future and seeing nothing, unable to remove the obstacles of the past. Naturally, it also reminds me of how we live under an abusive system like capitalism where we are expected to strike blow after blow on each other in order to be the one who survives, suffering because we do not yet have the collective imagination to see anything lying beyond capitalism.
I await the sequel, Beyond Here Lies Socialism. But for now this is a fitting display of ultra-violence to remind us of the desperation we so badly need to break away from.
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