THE NEW YORK AEGEAN BRONZE AGE COLLOQUIUM
will meet at The Institute of Fine Arts One East 78th Street
Friday, October 12, 2012 @ 6:30 PM
Thomas Palaima
will speak on
"Gold into silver? 65 years of Mycenaean Palaeography"
Senior Fellows Honors Program School of Communications BMC 5.208 TUESDAY NOVEMBER 13 12:30-1-45
“Second Last Thoughts on Bob Dylan’s ‘Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie'”
A talk by Tom Palaima, professor of Classics, University of Texas at Austin
On Jan. 29, 1961, Bob Dylan, 19 years old, took a bus to Morris Plains, New Jersey, where he met for the first time his idol and inspiration Woody Guthrie, 48 years of age, who, almost five years before, in May, 1956, had been ‘involuntarily checked into’ Greystone Park Hospital with advanced Huntington’s Chorea.
On Feb. 14, 1961, Dylan wrote “Song for Woody” (SFW). Two years later, on April 12, 1963, at New York’s Town Hall, before 900 people, Dylan recited a poem of five pages, “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie” ((LTOWG). Guthrie would live four and a half more years after Dylan had his “last thoughts.”
In this talk, professor Palaima will examine these two tributes, considering the following questions: What would Woody Guthrie’s condition have been when Dylan met him? What impact might Dylan’s finding out at this time about the range of Guthrie’s genius have had on Dylan? What might Guthrie’s end condition have taught Dylan about what is important in life with regard to fame, music, personal choices, creativity, society and the human heart and soul? And how might this have affected, in large or small ways, where Dylan was heading with his life and his music?
Tom Palaima is Robert M. Armstrong Centennial Professor of Classics and has written commentaries, reviews and articles about musical figures like Pinetop Perkins, Jimmy LaFave, Woody Guthrie, Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan. He teaches and writes about war song and music as social commentary.
See, for example: http://www.texasobserver.org/archives/item/15265-2665-alive-and-singing-the-truth and
http://sites.utexas.edu/pasp/publications/dylanology/
Contact: Dave Junker, junker@austin.utexas.edu, 512-773-0673
See for other senior fellows talks: http://communication.utexas.edu/senior-fellows/public-events-and-lectures-2012-13