Desire
Horned up with Bob and company.
I found this pic of Dylan in his art studio while traveling a few weeks back.
It was in a display case at London’s Halcyon Gallery, who were showing a collection of The Bard’s recent paintings.
“The idea was not only to observe the human condition,” Dylan said, “but to throw myself into it with great urgency.” They’re hazy, snapshot things and with Dylan remaining noncommittal as to which derive from reality and which from his imagination, the viewer is encourage to partake in a little storytelling of their own.
The art was… fine. But nothing captured the human condition in all of its goofy glory quite as sharply as this one photo’s insane tableaux.
I could go heart eyes on the fit all day long, not to mention that “Butterscotch Blonde” Tele, the off-brand paper towels, his big ol’ dog and — as my man Dan astutely pointed out — “one freaky ahh painting on the easel.”
“Lay Lady Lay,” if you will…
Somehow there’s no Gemini AI overview for “BOB DYLAN HORNY” — dude’s so bricked up it broke the algo — just a Reddit thread and a Spotify playlist.
And there’s no new joints we might be able to add this summer, either; narrating MGK’s album teaser doesn’t count (lol).
A missed opportunity?
Because apparently, now is the time.
While I was perusing Bobby’s nudes, The Ringer was calling the drum loop-laden Disc 2 of Springsteen’s Tracks II: The Lost Albums “a horny record, the horniest of Bruce’s career by a mile.” That’s an enormous skip over “I’m On Fire,” but our guy did look like this at the time of recording (yowza).
Lorde’s (quite good) album Virgin also dropped while I was abroad; her wheat-pasted pelvic X-rays were omnipresent. If that IUD sleeve art is too subtle for you, she also released a statement about the color of spit as an inspiration and named a song after a pregnancy test.
Haven’t tested Virgin’s transparent disc in the Volvo, but managed to burn Justin Bieber’s new one to CD-R (we are old) for a recent drive upstate. JB’s all caps SWAG is solid, and solidly libidinous — albeit in a wife guy sort of way, where even Sexyy Redd’s directions to the coochie shop come off as relatively chaste.
All these releases dropped to fairly universal acclaim; Lorde scores 2025’s only positive P4K review with a cum digression (there’s still a lotta year left).
Each one is “cool” in its own poptimistic, critically acceptable way. None launched any real think pieces or social media outrage, though lord knows we have plenty of that to go around.
GQ asks, in headline font, “Sabrina Carpenter and Addison Rae Are Making Pop Music Sexy Again. Why Is This Freaking Everyone Out?”
And again, in slightly smaller text: “performative sexuality has been a part of pop music for as long as pop has existed. But what happens when a time-honored aesthetic meets a culture that can't be normal about anything?”
Ahem, my points are up here!
Anyway, our nation’s blue jean eugenicists have more than fulfilled the “can’t be normal” portion of that query. As for the “time honored” part, there’s lots of bars throughout Molly Mary O'Brien’s essay (check her tradwife read on Jesse Murph for more) ripe for thought:
Despite society’s best attempts to keep us in our houses, numbly swiping on dating apps like they’re slot machines and hiding behind the couch until the DoorDash guy takes the proof-of-delivery photo, we still have desires. We have blood and guts, we have body parts and we probably remember how to use them. In her essay “Men and Women Still Don't Get Each Other. But Aren't We Supposed to Try?,” Magdalene J. Taylor described desire as “striving to bridge an unclosable gap”; the Overtly Sexual pop girlies, subtle as neon signs and delicate as mechanical bulls, remind us to keep on striving.
When it comes to artistic expression — whether scoring the corniest TikTok to ever exist, or painting spread-eagled muses on your break from the Traveling Wilburys — sex and death remain the only two subjects.
Might as well go all in…
I love Peter Greenaway interviews, where the octogenarian arthouse director of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (sadly, not streaming) gets heady on Eros and Thanatos instead of talking about his films. This Guardian profile (back when he was a spring chicken in his 60s) comes in hot:
I don't know much about you, but I do know two things. You were conceived, two people did fuck, and I'm very sorry but you're going to die. Everything else about you is negotiable…
Anyway, Sabrina’s reading Sylvia Plath.
Preheat yr ovens!
Playlists updated!