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Bob Dylan

Sarcasticus

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I haven't seen him discussed here. My guess would be INFJ. Thoughts?
How about Joan Baez?
 

Mondo

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I think Bob Dylan is an ISFP- he didn't make his music for some larger purpose but more so because he enjoyed doing so. Also, most musicians are Perceiving types over Judging types.. his songs are ones that NF's and SFP's can relate to easily.
Joan Baez is likely an ENFP.
 

the state i am in

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is he more isfp neil young or more infj troubadour? he is adamant that he ain't synthesizing shit, that he's just writing songs and playing music that means something to him. but he seems too consistently in the right place at the right time. it's tough to see where the iconography ends and where he begins. he is very safe-guarded and personal. his songs seem to blend concrete imagery and metaphor about as balanced as can be. when talking he seems Fi dominant to me. he doesn't impress me as a writer at all, but his songs WORK. they resonate. his fascinations with folk music > poetry > rock and roll/the band > christianity > break-up songs > daniel lanois production. i don't know, he seems less infj every day. i can see any of these possibilities working to some degree, but we aren't catching hold very well quite yet.

i could see neil young, johnny cash, bob dylan, and will oldham all kind of connected. or a rootsy rocker like mike ness. all isfps. jimi hendrix i lean towards infp now, but who the fuck knows. either way he's a 9w8, i think. whereas bob is straight 4. same with neil. that constant burn/simmer.
 

BlueScreen

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I´m with ISFP. Compare him with Morrisey or some of the other INFJ singers. Quite different attitudes. The hippiness and lifestyle of Dylan supports ISFP also.

Baez is a classic ENFP. Zero doubt there.
 

Salomé

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Pfft. Dylan is totally N.

He's been discussed in several threads, and typed as INFJ here.
 

pure_mercury

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I´m with ISFP. Compare him with Morrisey or some of the other INFJ singers. Quite different attitudes. The hippiness and lifestyle of Dylan supports ISFP also.

Baez is a classic ENFP. Zero doubt there.


Dylan didn't care for many of the hippies around him, and he was far more iconoclastic than most of the popular singer-songwriters of the period.
 

Sarcasticus

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Dylan didn't care for many of the hippies around him, and he was far more iconoclastic than most of the popular singer-songwriters of the period.

True. While the Beatles were putting out Sgt. Pepper (42 years ago today-- man that's hard to believe), Dylan was putting out an album of songs that would've been at home back in Woody Guthrie's time.
 

the state i am in

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why was he iconoclastic? bc he played folk music electric, or bc everybody fucking resonated with his songs and built up a legend o bob dylan when he just kept saying "leave me the fuck alone?" i don't think he was trying to invent anything new, he was just trying to find things that needed to be said and saying them, SHOWING them, singing them, etc. his heart was all folk music, he just was really fucking inspired by italian and french poets for a while. listen to him talk and it's so Se concrete. he is extremely distrustful of the media and refuses to be painted into a category/corner. they do not encompass the feelings he gets or the thins he has seen. he has strong tertiary Ni and uses personification well. but it's not like he's chock full of metaphors.

plus watch him talk and you'll immediately see he's Fi dominant. NOT Ni, he's not searching for ideas but feelings, impressions, and concrete facts. fuck it- infjs don't even believe in any of those three things. just give me ideas, and let them wash over me like the sun and rain.
 

Fecal McAngry

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ISFP for dylan

Bob is about as Ne as any writer who has ever lived...

They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row

Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning
"You Belong to Me I Believe"
And someone says," You're in the wrong place, my friend
You better leave"
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row

Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortunetelling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row

Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid

To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah's great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
Now you would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They're trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She's in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy on His Soul"
They all play on penny whistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row

Across the street they've nailed the curtains
They're getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
A perfect image of a priest
They're spoonfeeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words

And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls
"Get Outa Here If You Don't Know
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row"

Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row

Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody's shouting
"Which Side Are You On?"
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row

Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the door knob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row


'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured
I'll always do my best for her, on that I give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Not a word was spoke between us, there was little risk involved
Everything up to that point had been left unresolved.
Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail,
Poisoned in the bushes an' blown out on the trail,
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Suddenly I turned around and she was standin' there
With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair.
She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Now there's a wall between us, somethin' there's been lost
I took too much for granted, got my signals crossed.
Just to think that it all began on a long-forgotten morn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Well, the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount
But nothing really matters much, it's doom alone that counts
And the one-eyed undertaker, he blows a futile horn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

I've heard newborn babies wailin' like a mournin' dove
And old men with broken teeth stranded without love.
Do I understand your question, man, is it hopeless and forlorn?
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes
I bargained for salvation an' they gave me a lethal dose.
I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Well, I'm livin' in a foreign country but I'm bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor's edge, someday I'll make it mine.
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."
 

simulatedworld

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^ Why are these lyrics any more Ne than Ni, out of curiosity?
 

Fecal McAngry

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^ Why are these lyrics any more Ne than Ni, out of curiosity?

Because the N is extroverted! Ne draws connections between things that are actually there. It is concrete. Even when the user creates imaginary worlds populated by imaginary imagery (INFP Lennon), that imagery itself is concrete, real.

INFJ Lyrics, by comparison:

"The Future"

Give me back my broken night
my mirrored room, my secret life
it's lonely here,
there's no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby,
that's an order!
Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
and stuff it up the hole
in your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
give me Stalin and St Paul
I've seen the future, brother:
it is murder.

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant

You don't know me from the wind
you never will, you never did
I'm the little jew
who wrote the Bible
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
but love's the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
to say it clear, to say it cold:
It's over, it ain't going
any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is murder

Things are going to slide ...

There'll be the breaking of the ancient
western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms
There'll be fires on the road
and the white man dancing
You'll see a woman
hanging upside down
her features covered by her fallen gown
and all the lousy little poets
coming round
tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson
and the white man dancin'

Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St Paul
Give me Christ
or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby:
it is murder

Things are going to slide ...

When they said REPENT REPENT ...
 

simulatedworld

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Because the N is extroverted! Ne draws connections between things that are actually there. It is concrete. Even when the user creates imaginary worlds populated by imaginary imagery (INFP Lennon), that imagery itself is concrete, real.

And what sort of imagery do you think Dylan would use if he were, hypothetically, an Ni type?
 

BlackCat

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Bob Dylan- Time Magazine interview

[YOUTUBE="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlSzWJ0-r24"]...[/YOUTUBE]

I see clear Fi, Se, and Ni. I relate a lot to him. ISFP.

Messages based on functions-

Se- This is how it actually is; you are imperceptive and you fail.
Ni- What you do is meaningless, everything is meaningless in the end. We will all die and it won't matter.

Ni quote- Each of us thinks we know something, but we all know nothing. None of us know anything.
 
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