We were all angels

On May 24, the new album of Bob Dylan was released

Again, this voice, in the morning well -wetted whiskey, sings to us about small towns by the highway, about single people under the plane, about traveling long life, about the stars in the palm of your hand, about the moon in the wires and bright hair of the girl who trembled the spring wind.

Again, this hoarse throat, grated by an emery, tells us the stories of love and fairy tales of old magic, in which no one else wants to believe. But magic - exists. Here it is, in twelve songs and forty minutes of a long -familiar voice and dense, juicy, clean, smelling of strong alcohol, pierced by the soft sadness of the sound.

He sings these songs, without worrying about whether they fall into the trend and rating. All this does not exist for him at all. This music for those who with him on the same wave and on the move knows how to enter his worlds, into his strong and naive sound, into his romantic moonlight, in the exciting melodies of the old orchestras - the explanations and interpretations of all the others are not absolutely interested in him. In his hoarse voice and unshaven cheekbones there are so many renouncements from life and so much life itself.

These songs are permeated with a strange, non -modern, wise and kind attitude to people. Anyone who sings so knows that everyone was once an angel, but forgot something important, or lost a particle of himself, or lost sight of the little truth, or for a moment got lost in the clouds and in his own soul-and immediately lost his wings and found himself on black heavy land, where he should live now. And he lives, tormented by ineuming longing and memory of the past heaven. This is the album leitmotif called Fallen Angels, on the cover of which someone's hands hold cards in the gambling and unhurried game at the table of a biased bar, lost over time.

The wise ear of the expert will hear a lot in the music of guitar and violin, growing from the air of decades, current river and longing. He will hear the time itself how it passes through us in a wide stream, he will hear jazz standards of the 40s, he will hear the laughter of Ella Fitzgerald and the soft modulations of Frank Sinatra. How infinitely far from the harsh songs of the underground that he once sang. The red scarf of his girlfriend Joan Baese turned into a point and was lost in endless fields. And the friendly Dave Van Ronk, Trotskyist and Trouble, who once sang radical political texts under a beaten guitar in New York's eates, ceased to be a man and again became an angel. Much has happened, much has gone, heavy rains passed, times changed, and changed again, but the music is pouring, and his slow voice is beautiful.

Someone considers the albums published by him and knows their exact number. Someone still discusses success and calculates publications, interviews, references, concerts, admirers, observers, awards, bonuses, likes. But he himself has not been involved in races for the fun of the public for a long time. He himself had already left the lively room of the inexorable worldwide conversation on the night air and quietly pretended to be an old door in the scales of peeling paint. Researchers analyze his archives, look for hidden meanings in his poetry, collectors buy his paintings, zealous publishers publish almost a fortieth volume of boots with his lost and again found music - and he, unshaven, with a gray -haired bristle, looks like a fellow with a slightly trembling hand, approaches the microphone and nods to his musicians ...

The old -fashioned calm music slowly, in which there is so much loneliness and memory, tenderness and longing, slowly, slowly. This memory is not about his life, this memory of the life of the fallen angels, about the 30s where he was never, about the 40s, where we did not live, about the 50s, which few can clearly recall. This music is like a cloud of memories of all former human lives, about men and women who once lived in homes on the outskirts who have long been demolished and walked in a park, on the site of which now parking by the store. The violin draws smooth lines in the night sky. And the guitar in the hands of the guitarist Donnie Herron knows something that we need to know all of us and it would be worth taking with us, but we forget again and again, and there are no words.