{"id":1365,"date":"2024-10-09T22:02:34","date_gmt":"2024-10-10T02:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/?p=1365"},"modified":"2024-10-09T22:17:43","modified_gmt":"2024-10-10T02:17:43","slug":"craft-corner-no-6-art-in-conversation-with-itself-on-bob-dylan-t-c-cannon-and-joy-harjo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/craft-corner-no-6-art-in-conversation-with-itself-on-bob-dylan-t-c-cannon-and-joy-harjo\/","title":{"rendered":"Craft Corner: Art in Conversation with Itself: On Bob Dylan, T.C. Cannon and Joy Harjo No. 6"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Nathan Fako<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo Caption: All the Tired Horses in the Sun<\/em> by T. C. Cannon (painted between 1971-1972)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"two<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

T. C. Cannon<\/a> Fair Use<\/a>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1970, Bob Dylan released Self Portrait<\/em>, his tenth studio album. It was met with poor reviews and disdain from fans, the long history of which is well-documented online. Curiously, Dylan made a choice that alienated fans, whether intentional or not. The opening track, \u201cAll the Tired Horses,\u201d does not feature vocals from Dylan at all. Where had the dynamo gone? Where was the \u201cRolling Stone,\u201d the Dylan of \u201cCorrina, Corrina,\u201d the young man \u201cBlowin\u2019 in the Wind?\u201d What did he mean, foregrounding a voice, a choir of voices, that didn\u2019t belong to him? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around the time Dylan\u2019s song was released, a young Kiowa-Caddo man named Tommy Cannon\u2013popularly known as T.C. Cannon\u2013returned from the Vietnam War and painted two horses under an ochre sky. One red horse, one blue. He named the piece All the Tired Horses in the Sun.<\/em> Cannon tragically died eight years later, just a few months before his big opening show at the Aberbach Gallery in New York. While his life was short, Cannon was a prolific artist, known as both a painter and a poet. Was his painting a response to Dylan\u2019s song? Inspired by it, surely, but carrying the message forward somehow? Transforming it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, in 2018, a year before being named United States Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo was commissioned to write a piece for a book about Cannon. She wrote \u201cAll the Tired Horses in the Sun.\u201d The piece has to do with Harjo\u2019s Mvskoke identity and issues faced by Indigenous communities; perhaps, the piece has something to do with not just Cannon\u2019s painting, but Dylan’s as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Artists respond to the world around them; the world is filled with artists. How do we make sense of intertextual connections like those presented here? I don\u2019t have an answer. We engage with art, think about it, are moved by it, and in some cases, make art in response. We keep our minds open. One avenue of entry that often proves to be interesting, if even as basic exploration, is the use of one work to frame another work. This is sometimes called a lens. So let\u2019s use the Harjo poem as a lens for viewing the Cannon painting, and then listening to the Dylan song. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First: Harjo.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The poem begins with \u201cForever.\u201d Harjo creates a landscape with anaphora and end-stopped lines. Readers have the sense of a weary propulsion. A tired procession of family, \u201cmy cousin. Auntie. Uncle. \/ Another cousin.\u201d The poem opens in the center, and the subject is complexified. Up to this point, we are given context through the title, made to think of family members like horses in the sun, and then: \u201cVending machines and pop. \/ Chips, candy, and not enough clean water.\u201d So we are handed food insecurity. Harjo\u2019s choices are very intentional. The harshness of the end-stopped lines, the word choices having to do with junk food, and the absence of enough clean water paint a picture of a landscape that is difficult; it is hot, dry, \u201cwaiting and tired.\u201d The final line of the poem is a call to action: \u201cGo water the horses.\u201d We the readers have the ability to positively impact our communities.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Applied to the Cannon painting<\/a>, Harjo\u2019s poem provides the figures with further meaning. The two animal shapes are so close to one another that they touch. The blue from the horse\u2019s coat is echoed in the lighter-toned saddle of the red horse. Their heads are down, likely to indicate that they are grazing. This is a family, pressed down under the weight of a sky that takes up two-thirds of the canvas, a hot ochre with marshmallow clouds. The saddles indicate these are working animals. It wouldn\u2019t be a stretch to link a working horse conceptually to the grim reality of Indigenous dispossession in our American history. So we have the sense of hot work, with one\u2019s family, in an open landscape with no space for shelter.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To my eye, the Dylan song<\/a>\u2013stay with me, I know it\u2019s odd to go backward\u2013ties the three works together. Making a lens of the poem makes the song quite simple, and in my opinion, poignant. There are only two lines of lyric in the song: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
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\u201cAll the tired horses in the sun, \/ how\u2019m I supposed to get any ridin\u2019 done? Hmm.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

If we apply the connotative landscape we have built by working backward, we have a picture of the horses in our minds. They are family members, moving through life under a hot sun, without enough clean water. Our families are working, the sun can be oppressive, and there is not enough. There is never enough. How can an artist\u2013existing in a political landscape like the one inhabited by Dylan and Cannon in the 70s, the one Harjo has inhabited throughout her long career\u2013rationalize the act of making art? How do you unpack the choice to be creative when there are so many practical problems in the world that need fixing? And how do you grapple with becoming a symbol\u2013as Dylan was\u2013for something you may not want to stand for?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simple: you focus on what you have to. You make the art. There\u2019s no sense in hand-wringing.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You go water the horses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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