The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [177]
So in the Western dialogue about church and state . . .
Ah! That’s different. “Church” means the religious institution. Of course that should be separate. Combining them causes too many difficulties. The spirit of democracy, competition and contest, as in the United States, is very important, so if religious leaders were to engage in such contests, it would lead to difficulties. Religious institutions should not get involved in the democratic competition—only individuals.
Turning to Tibet: You have said that Tibetans are basically more jolly and content than most of us in the West. Why?
There are many factors. First, Tibet maintained a small population, so generally speaking survival was not very difficult. The nomads have plenty of meat, plenty of cheese, plenty of milk, no problems. So it seems they can lie down all day; then, when they get hungry, they just get up and kill one yak. Of course, they have plenty of pasture, no boundary at all, everywhere. Then there are the farmers; perhaps they have to work more, but again, there is sufficient land for a small population. So these are economic factors for their contentment.
Then, Tibet had a lot of Buddhist teaching: the teaching of karmic evolution, the teaching of rebirth and the concept of the nature of suffering of the samsara [endless cycle of unhappy lives]. So no matter how difficult this life gets, still we put a lot of hope in the future. In daily life, at least some portion of our mind is thinking about the long-term future, just beginning with the next life. So when you face some difficulty in this life, since your whole mind is not focused only on it, even tragic things can happen, and you’re not so disturbed. When your whole mind, your whole hope, is concentrated on something within this life, then when something happens, you have much more worry, much more anxiety. We often say, when some tragedy happens, it’s all due to karma. In that way, we lay less blame on others; we feel at least less bitter.
BOB DYLAN
by Mikal Gilmore
November 22, 2001
In 1998, when you received the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, you said something that surprised me—maybe surprised other people as well. You said, “We didn’t know what we had when we did it, but we did it anyway.” That was interesting because ‘Time Out of Mind’ plays as an album made with purpose and vision, with a consistent mood and set of themes. Was it, in fact, an album you approached with forethought, or was its seeming cohesiveness incidental?
What happened was, I’d been writing down couplets and verses and things, and then putting them together at later times. I had a lot of that—it was starting to pile up—so I thought, “Well, I got all this—maybe, I’ll try to record it.” I’d had good luck with Daniel Lanois [producer of the 1989 album Oh Mercy], so I called him and showed him a lot of the songs. I also familiarized him with the way I wanted the songs to sound. I think I played him some Slim Harpo recordings—early stuff like that. He seemed pretty agreeable to it, and we set aside a certain time and place. But I had a schedule—I only had so much time—and we made that record, Time Out of Mind, that way. It was a little rougher. . . . I wouldn’t say rougher. . . . It was . . . I feel we were lucky to get that record.
Really?
Well, I didn’t go into it with the idea that this was going to be a finished album. It got off the tracks more than a few times, and people got frustrated. I know I did. I know Lanois did. . . . I felt extremely frustrated, because I couldn’t get any of the up-tempo songs that I wanted.
Don’t you think a song like “Cold Irons Bound” certainly has a drive to it?
Yeah, there’s a real drive to it, but it isn’t even close to the way I had it envisioned. I mean, I’m satisfied with what we did. But there were things I had to throw out because this assortment of people just couldn’t lock in on