Скачать с ютуб "I and I" Dylan's moody meditation on the mystical union of spirit and flesh; Mansfield, MA 9/12/93 в хорошем качестве

"I and I" Dylan's moody meditation on the mystical union of spirit and flesh; Mansfield, MA 9/12/93

Dylan's 1993 and 1994 tours were the last in which "I and I" appeared regularly in his set lists. After those two years, he played it increasingly infrequently, only 17 times in all until it popped up after more than a year's absence in November, 1999, the last time he's ever played it to date. Maybe it's because it's not the easiest song to perform, with its long, declarative lines and not very obvious melodic hooks. "I and I" is a Jamaican Rastafarian term that refers to the oneness of Jah (God) and every human being. According to Rastafarian scholars, it means that God is alive in every human being, and by extension, all people are united as one under the love of Jah (God). This is a concept shared among the more esoteric traditions of many religions and spiritual belief systems. In Jewish mysticism, for example, every soul is considered to be a spark of one Divine Being, differentiated as an individual, but even so, still an integral part of an essentially indivisible whole. In this intriguing song from his 1983 album Infidels, Dylan doesn't concern himself with conceptual understandings of the term. Instead, it hangs over his descriptions of real-life experiences, both mystical and mundane, and his ruminations on them, leaving listeners to figure out what to take from it. A common theme in many of Dylan's songs, from the political to the personal, is the huge gulf that more often than not seems to exist between people's ideals and their actual behavior. Dylan has both criticized other people and institutions for it, and expressed acute sensitivity to and regret over the tendency in his own life. It's a theme that resonates throughout the song, particularly in the refrain: "I and I, in creation where one's nature neither honors nor forgives I and I, one says to the other, no man sees my face and lives." To me, that first line expresses the difficulties that souls or spirit encounter when trying to maintain the purity of their divine nature while existing incarnate in a physical world full of vicissitudes and temptations. It reminds me of a line I also remarked on in the description accompanying another video from this September 1993 series, "Born in Time" from Saratoga, NY: "On the rising curve, Where the ways of nature will test every nerve" The second line in the refrain from "I and I," meanwhile, highlights a whole additional, meaty point to ponder. It references the Biblical passage from Exodus, Chapter 33 verses 18-20, where Moses asks God, "Please show me Your glory," and God replies "I will cause all My goodness to pass before you,” but adds, "You cannot see My face, for no one can see Me and live." It creates an interesting tension between the Rastafarian concept of "I and I" that God and human beings are essentially united as one, and the Biblical assertion that God and man are so different and necessarily separated to the extent that the latter can't even see the former's full reality and remain alive. The resolution to this seemingly paradoxical juxtaposition lies in the dual nature of human beings as sparks of pure, Divine spirit incarnate in physical, material vehicles. As individuated manifestations of the Divine being, human beings are one with and indivisible from God. But in their physical form, as matter imbued with life, they are separate and faced with a struggle to comprehend both the supreme Divine Being, and their own true spiritual nature as an essential, integrated part of the Divine. It's kind of like a game of "hide and seek" that Spirit plays with its own physical manifestations. Anyway, for what it's worth, that's my take on "I and I," which among all of Dylan's songs is one of my favorites.