What's The Most Boring Fortean Subject?

[Steven]

Maybe 'the Scientific Gaze' is the problem: one reason, perhaps, why the extraordinary stubbornly refuses to perform under it.

 

[AnonyJ]

I like the way the caption ‘demonic spirts’ pops up at 1.17. Totally convinced me..

The ‘sold his soul to the devil’ legend is way older than Bob Dylan as you’re no doubt aware. The first time I heard it was about bluesman Robert Johnson in the 20s & it may well predate that about people with an unusual talent.

Dylan is just talking about his early songs which he wrote in a purple patch of some years when he was young decades ago & which has now gone. He’s mainly talking about the lyrics. He admits he doesn’t know where they came from & can’t tap into that source again. Maybe the drugs helped - who knows.

The man’s an artist, an uber talented man who's written hundreds of songs over several decades, many of them classics. He’s still writing now in his 80s but he’s not the same as he was when younger.

He doesn’t admit he sold his soul to the devil. He’s just saying he doesn’t really know where or how some of the songs came to him. Many talented/gifted people will say the same. Some music comes to people in a dream.

I found this:


That’s in the 1700s.

I'm too scared to ask what satanic symbolism is Taylor Swift using..

As a tangent/mirror to the idea of 'selling' one's soul there was the odd (and IMO definitely not-boring) case of Mr Johnny Cash. He was a believing Christian who was also a self-confessing sinner, always striving to repent. He 'visited prisoners' with his jail concerts partly out of it being a Christian duty. He's the example I refer to when people ask why aren't all Christians perfectly good and wholesome all of the time. One can believe and yet have serious personal devils.

Some of his songs are full of holy rollin' prophetic lyrics, and his last great song contains a lyric given to him in a dream:

"...The central lyric of the song came from an odd dream. Cash had a dream after having recorded the song "The Wanderer" with U2 for their album Zooropa. "The Wanderer" is an apocalyptic song inspired by the book of Ecclesiastes. (An early title of the song was "The Preacher" taken from Qohelet, the Preacher/Teacher of Ecclesiastes.) Apparently, the apocalyptic imagery of "The Wanderer" had gotten into Cash's dreams. In this particular dream Cash finds himself speaking to, of all people, the Queen of England. In the dream the Queen laughs, looks at Cash and says, "Johnny Cash, you're just like a thorn tree in a whirlwind." "

From https://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-theology-of-johnny-cash-part-8.html

The Man Comes Around...