How I moved to the Ninth Ward eight days before Katrina and all I got was this sad little story. https://jefftakacs.substack.com/p/new-orleans-contraflow
Marriage songs sold in the '70s, divorce songs sold in the '80s. From "We've Only Just Begun" to "Separate Lives"...with stats.
From Countrypolitan to now, country music really loves to hate Los Angeles. https://jefftakacs.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/143115458?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fposts%2Fpublished
The origins of evangelical pop and that time Bob Dylan played on a Keith Green song.
.https://jefftakacs.substack.com/p/easter-reflection-keith-green-and
An appreciation of the late great miracle of a singer-songwriter, her unceasing prayer, and the uncanny resemblance of her second album to Mahler's Third Symphony.
They wrote the same thing in the same order at the same time in different disciplines. A fireside chat. See below:
René Girard, the French theorist known for his sprawling mimetic theory, and Bob Dylan, the American troubadour, were exact contemporaries until Girard's death in 2015. In different disciplines, they made a series of uncannily similar discoveries.
This essay, approximately 13k words followed by an appendix, charts the twin explorers' discoveries of mimetic desire, sacred violence, Christianity as an archaic sacrificial culture and as the myth that reads all myth, and the prospects and meaning of Revelation. An audio version with musical clips is below the .pdf.
Major works discussed include Deceit, Desire, and the Novel; Violence and the Sacred; Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World; The Scapegoat; Evolution of Desire; Another Side of Bob Dylan; Blonde on Blonde; John Wesley Harding; Street-Legal; Slow Train Coming; Love and Theft; and Rough and Rowdy Ways.
A condensed version of this essay was presented at the Novitate Conference in celebration of Girard's 100th birthday in Washington, D.C., November 2024.
Read or download the essay below.
The Twin Odysseys of Rene Girard and Bob Dylan audio version with musical clips.