"No Time to Think": Il tempo tra arte e canzone

In a 1991 interview, Dylan describes the trilogy composed of Blood on the Tracks, Desire and Street Legal as follows, «that was my painting period [...] that’s like taking a brush and painting those songs onto a canvas». This composing technique owes much to the lessons of artist Norman Raeben and involves the problem of time representation: according to the teacher, in fact, «art must telescope time» or, in Dylan’s words, «have a no time quality». Based on the study of unpublished materials from Raeben’s lesson and the manuscripts of the album Blood On the Tracks held at the Bob Dylan Archive in Tulsa, a research activity conducted as part of the Marie Curie project POYESIS, the article aims to provide a framing of Raeben’s theories on time, highlighting the links to Bergson’s philosophy. The second section of the article analyzes the ways and strategies by which Dylan assimilated and translated their content into the field of songwriting.