Meet Mr. Dylan
Photograph Source: Sharon Mollerus – CC BY 2.0
Perhaps you are aware there is a new movie out titled A Complete Unknown. It addresses the first five years, or thereabouts, in Bob Dylan’s public musical life. I have not yet seen it. I have read some interviews with cast, director, etc., and have seen some excerpts, as well as heard from some friends who have seen it.
Timothee Chalamet, who plays Dylan, has reported that he hopes that among other outcomes the movie will introduce Dylan and his words to new generations. Regrettably I can’t now say that my guest for this episode is Bob Dylan here to talk about his words. I can’t even say my guest is Timothee Chalamet here to talk about Dylan’s words. But…
Well, I find it remarkable that high school kids, college kids, grown people in their twenties and thirties, even ones who listen to lots of music, often don’t even know who Bob Dylan is. I’ve had two friends who have seen the movie tell me the theatre was full of people just like them, people just like me—in the specific attribute that we share of having a shitload of lived birthdays to our credit. We are old people. And these two friends reported that in the theatre there were virtually no young people. Incredible.
And yet, I also know, that isn’t incredible. After all, when I was a young person did I know performers, even incandescent performers, from a half century earlier. Not a chance. I barely knew there had been life a half century earlier.
And, with music, I think this situation is more true than in many other domains. Most of us get into listening to music when we are quite young, and as we get older we tend to listen less. And often what we listen to when we are older, is in any case what we listened to when we were younger. So we don’t know much music before when we got started, often not even ten years before, much less from fifty or sixty years before we got started. And often we don’t know much more music after our early days, as well, perhaps twenty years and then silence is not very golden.
So it goes. It is not ideal, but I suspect as a broad though of course not universal phenomenon the time-tripping picture is pretty accurate. Thus that few young people turn to A Complete Unknown is not surprising.
Why should a teen now, a twenty-something adult now, a thirty something adult now, hell, anyone less than sixty four now, take any time now to even know of Bob Dylan, much less to seriously deep dive into his music?
Some old folks might say, well, because Dylan changed music into something it wasn’t. I think it is absolutely true that he did just that regarding duration, focus, lyrics, and more but, even so, some young folks might say, okay, great. I’ll take your word for it. I’m happy to hear he did that. But why do I need to explore it? Why do I need to deep dive into it? That is your pool, not mine.
Well, I reply, the truth is, you don’t. I don’t think that Dylan having been historically pivotal to how music has developed is sufficient reason for you to feel a great need to go back and listen. Not to him, or to Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Patti Smith, Joni Mitchell—and so on.
You may have historical interest in those who went before and transformed the discipline, and so you may choose to listen deeply way back, and that is fine, of course. But I don’t think it is essential that people go back because of prior historical impact. The same is true and may make the point even more clearly, in many other disciplines.
In physics, for example, you don’t have to go back to read Einstein or Dirac, much less Newton and many others who changed the whole field. Yes, they did that, but that means that if you get up to date now, perhaps physics being your thing, then by being up-to-date now, you are imbibing their effects on physics along with more effects of others since.
Or, say you love basketball. Do you have to watch old videos of Doctor J, Bill Russell, Bill Walton, and Oscar Robinson to be a fan who legitimately and intelligently enjoys basketball now. The old timers tend to say yes, you do, but I don’t think so. The predecessors’ effects live on in the game. So to experience historical insights, to gain the fullest possible overview, yes, you would have to dig in, but not to enjoy next Tuesday’s playoff game, which is quite alright to do.
Is there some other reason to visit the past in diverse fields, including music? Yes, I think there is. For example, you may simply enjoy doing so. History is your drug of choice. Or, time-traveling back, you may be affected by the predecessors’ style and particular genius. This of course applies most powerfully if you are active in the discipline or art, whatever it may be. But what if you just dabble now and then and you mostly enjoy what’s happening now, what’s current, not least because it is what others now enjoy?
I think there is still a reason to time-travel in some fields, for some people. Call the destination enjoyment, enrichment, and edification. And so, to potentially accrue those things there is a case, I claim, for listening to Bob Dylan’s music. But such a case requires evidence, not just a claim.
No one had heard anything quite like Dylan before Dylan. And I would have to say, we haven’t heard overly much like him since him. Big deal, you might say, everyone is different. Yes, that is true, but some are differently different. That is a big claim, rarely true, I admit. You can decide for yourself if it is true of Dylan, but you can’t do that if you don’t give his work some time. So here I admit that I am trying to provoke attention to Dylan from those who haven’t yet given his work much. For the rest of you, those who have attended to his work, maybe this will be a reminder of why you cared, or just a familiar trip with a few twists.
I should perhaps say that for me at least, as a teenager hearing Dylan, what was mesmerizing and edifying like with no other singer song writer included his voice and the ebb and flow of the music under his songs. But beyond those, and those don’t universally appeal even if I can’t perceive why they don’t, for me what was and is mesmerizing, and what I would wager it could be mesmerizing for you too, albeit with some effort to first get into something different, is his incredible lyrics.
So what can I say? Am I just a guy with roots way back when who is forever young about this, which in this case could mean forever blind to the scale of subsequent accomplishments? Or am I correct that Dylan’s lyrics, even taken alone, much less taken with the melodies and sonic and social emotions that accompany them, stand out even today as wildly different than what is current—and after sixty years, even as still more enjoyable, enriching, and edifying than most and perhaps even all of the rest?
The movie A Complete Unknown addresses just five years of Dylan’s emerging public life. And in those years, it addresses just a few songs, with hundreds more to follow later. What more could the film include about Dylan or his lyrics without becoming endless? The movie addresses some of his life too, one chapter I guess, albeit a very important one, but I will set his life aside. And the movie doesn’t have Dylan’s voice, though Chalamet, I am told, does a profoundly good job. He’s not Dylan, but very good.
So I thought I would here take a sort of break from thinking about the deadly orange plague and how to erase it. I thought I would try and help along Chalamet’s wish for the movie—that it bring new ears to Dylan’s music—and to do that, I would try to entertain, enrich, and edify by offering some Dylan lyrics, even without his voice and music. Mostly, I will let the movie largely choose which songs to present…but not entirely.
Finally, I hesitate to interject comments with the lyrics, but as I transcribe the lyrics I suspect I may at times be unable to stop myself. If my comments help a little, great. If not, ignore my small part. But take some time for Dylan’s large part.
When Leonard Cohen, another incredible poet from the old days who is, I dare say, also worth some of your time in 2025 was asked about Dylan winning the Noble Prize for literature he said, “To me, [the award] is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain.” I will keep my comments on the mighty big mountain to an absolute minimum, and not just relative to its scale.
I would wager that you all expect me to now offer up some of Dylan’s more political early songs, but first how about a quick foray into some of his version of what is so ubiquitous nowadays…four of his relationship songs…even break up / look back songs, though with an edge. It turns out Dylan is not only an observant troubadour, he is also a human.
First… consider “Girl from the North Country” which came along after the movie time but refered back to a movie lady, I think…
It goes like this:
Well, if you’re travelin’ in the north country fair
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mineWell, if you go when the snowflakes storm
When the rivers freeze and summer ends
Please see if she’s wearing a coat so warm
To keep her from the howlin’ windsPlease see for me if her hair hangs long,
If it rolls and flows all down her breast.
Please see for me if her hair hangs long,
That’s the way I remember her best.I’m a-wonderin’ if she remembers me at all
Many times I’ve often prayed
In the darkness of my night
In the brightness of my daySo if you’re travelin’ in the north country fair
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine
Not overly complex lyrics. Not mind-bending metaphors and images. No need to interject. But still…he can write, already…
Next, consider, “All I Really Want to Do,” a song about him and a her—whoever that might have been—and imagine that you heard it as a teenager, before feminism got your attention…in fact before anything much got your attention.
I ain’t lookin’ to compete with you
Beat or cheat or mistreat you
Simplify you, classify you
Deny, defy or crucify you
All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with youNo, and I ain’t lookin’ to fight with you
Frighten you or tighten you
Drag you down or drain you down
Chain you down or bring you down
All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with youI ain’t lookin’ to block you up
Shock or knock or lock you up
Analyze you, categorize you
Finalize you or advertise you
All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with youI don’t want to straight-face you
Race or chase you, track or trace you
Or disgrace you or displace you
Or define you or confine you
All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with youI don’t want to meet your kin
Make you spin or do you in
Or select you or dissect you
Or inspect you or reject you
All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with youI don’t want to fake you out
Take or shake or forsake you out
I ain’t lookin’ for you to feel like me
See like me or be like me
All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with you.
Again, there is nothing hard to fathom in that song, and yet the sentiments, so succinct, are also so relevant and for some maybe even so emulatable.
I want to do two more relationship songs, if you will, since even some old folks like me may not know this next one…and then I have to do one that everyone knows…or knew.
First, here is the song you most likely have never heard, titled “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window.” It was not in the movie but it was from the same period, or the end of it, the same time as “Positively Fourth Street” another song that displays wit on top of acid, which I will add later, if we have time…
If you perhaps think I was over the top putting the word feminism in the same sentence as his song “All I Really Want To Do.” listen to this song from just before feminism freed countless minds…indeed, from before my generation had by and large heard a feminist word. It was sung to a particular woman…but perhaps also to many women, and I would say to all men. So “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window” goes:
He sits in your room, his tomb, with a fist full of tacks
Preoccupied with his vengeance
Cursing the dead that can’t answer him back
You know that he has no intentions
Of looking your way, unless it’s to say
That he needs you to test his inventions
I will interject, I heard that, years after it was recorded, and, well, I wondered, is that fair? Are we men really that gross?
Then came the chorus:
Hey, crawl out your window
Come on, don’t say it will ruin you
Come on, don’t say he will haunt you
You can go back to him any time you want to
I interject: Think abused women not easily moving on…
The song continues:
He looks so truthful, is this how he feels?
Trying to peel the moon and expose it
With his business-like anger and his bloodhounds that kneel
If he needs a third eye, he just grows it
He just needs you to talk or to hand him his chalk
Or pick it up after he throws it
I have to interject: was there a more militant then current critique of sexism that I missed? Caustic Dylan was very caustic indeed. How long did it take me before I could even really hear what he sang in this one? Surely not as a senior in high school, but maybe it planted some seeds. I have to wonder if Dylan himself heard this one, or maybe he just conveyed it from out of the skies. And tell me, do you not think this broad assessment of male misogyny, even with all the gains against such ways that have occurred over the years, still resonates? Is the image you get listening to this much different than your picture of Trump and Musk? The song goes on:
Hey, crawl out your window
Come on, don’t say it will ruin you
Come on, don’t say he will haunt you
You can go back to him any time you want toWhy does he look so righteous while your face is so changed?
Are you frightened of the box you keep him in
While his genocide fools and his friends rearrange?
Their religion of little tin women
To back up their views, but your face is so bruised
Come on out, the dark is beginning
I interject, I think perhaps it isn’t surprising that this song is barely known at all…
It ends:
Ah, come on, out your window
Come on, don’t say it will ruin you
Come on, don’t say he will haunt you
You can go back to him any time you want to
Of course the women who shortly later re-birthed feminism didn’t need and probably never heard Dylan cajoling involvement, but I did… and I have to admit, I wonder about the women who voted for Trump. Might they hear this before too long as we heard it back then?
Note—if it wasn’t already clear—Dylan’s relationship songs are in no way about narrow relationships even if they ostensibly mainly aim to address just those. Is that true, today, too?
And now comes Dylan’s most famous song, “Like A Rolling Stone,” which is the one that most immediately, most proximately, changed the whole industry, and now his words are somewhat more complex. He piles images on images and multiple listenings can yield new takes. This song, and the choice to go in your face electric at the time, is really the destination of the movie. Dylan’s move to rock from folk, but we will here have more to present, from a bit earlier, and later, too, after this one.
This time it is a wealthy, even a rich woman—or maybe all materially rich women, or maybe everyone who is materially rich, that Dylan is singing to and about. I am not going to repeatedly include the chorus…save for one time.
Once upon a time you dressed so fine
Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?
People call say ‘beware doll, you’re bound to fall’
You thought they were all kidding youYou used to laugh about
Everybody that was hanging out
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging your next meal
And now the chorus…
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stoneAhh you’ve gone to the finest schools, alright Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
Nobody’s ever taught you how to live out on the street
And now you’re gonna have to get used to it
You say you never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He’s not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And say do you want to make a deal?
I interject: Look up “get juiced in it”—which of three or four meanings do you think Dylan meant to evoke, or all of them about the finest schools, or perhaps from another song, about the “old folks home at the college.”
Ah you never turned around to see the frowns
On the jugglers and the clowns when they all did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain’t no good
You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for youYou used to ride on a chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain’t it hard when you discovered that
He really wasn’t where it’s at
After he took from you everything he could steal
I can’t not interject—here we have men again…a rich one riding a motorcycle not throwing chalk, but still not where it’s at…
Ahh princess on a steeple and all the pretty people
They’re all drinking, thinking that they’ve got it made
Exchanging all precious gifts
But you better take your diamond ring, you better pawn it babeYou used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him he calls you, you can’t refuse
When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you’ve got no secrets to conceal
Okay, Like A Rolling Stone in hand, it’s time to go back a few years to directly consider society…to go back to what he called his finger-pointing songs and I have to wonder would a young person listening to the following offerings now, with Trump in the societal saddle, and with us needing to do something about it, hear these songs not exactly but at least somewhat like I and others heard them sixty years ago?
First, consider “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, ’n’ how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, ’n’ how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the windHow many years can a mountain exist
Before it’s washed to the sea?
Yes, ’n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, ’n’ how many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the windHow many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, ’n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ’n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind
No need to interject. No confusion. Finger pointed unambiguously. Next we have “With God On Our Side,” a song certainly sung to my generation.
Oh, my name, it ain’t nothin’, my age, it means less
The country I come from is called the Midwest
I’s taught and brought up there, the laws to abide
And that the land that I live in has God on its sideOh, the history books tell it, they tell it so well
The cavalries charged, the Indians fell
The cavalries charged, the Indians died
Oh, the country was young with God on its sideThe Spanish-American War had its day
And the Civil War too was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes I was made to memorize
With guns in their hands and God on their sideThe First World War, boys, it came and it went
The reason for fightin’ I never did get
But I learned to accept it, accept it with pride
For you don’t count the dead when God’s on your sideThe Second World War came to an end
We forgave the Germans, and then we were friends
Though they murdered six million, in the ovens they fried
The Germans now too have God on their sideI learned to hate the Russians all through my whole life
If another war comes, it’s them we must fight
To hate them and fear them, to run and to hide
And accept it all bravely with God on my sideBut now we’ve got weapons of chemical dust
If fire them we’re forced to, then fire them we must
One push of the button and they shot the world wide
And you never ask questions when God’s on your sideThrough many dark hour I been thinkin’ about this
That Jesus Christ was betrayed by a kiss
But I can’t think for you, you’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot had God on his sideSo now as I’m leavin’, I’m weary as hell
The confusion I’m feelin’ ain’t no tongue can tell
The words fill my head, and they fall to the floor
That if God’s on our side, he’ll stop the next war
That was early sixties, the civil rights movement was quite real but the anti war movement was just getting up to speed. Dylan was finger pointing. So what should we have felt heading off to school, or off to war?
Do you know the Langston Hughes poem:
Harlem (A Dream Deferred)
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.Or does it explode?
The next song for our survey—still very straight forward—is “Masters of War”—which revealed quite graphically and unsubtly what Dylan then felt, and me too.
Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombsYou that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masksYou that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toyYou put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets flyLike Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believeBut I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drainYou fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you sit back and watch
When the death count gets higherYou hide in your mansion
While the young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mudYou’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the worldFor threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veinsHow much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearnedBut there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you doLet me ask you one question
Is your money that good?
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could?I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soulAnd I hope that you die
And your death will come soon
I’ll follow your casket
By the pale afternoonAnd I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand over your grave
‘Til I’m sure that you’re dead
Imagine you listened to that repeatedly and then you went off to college, or to work, or to wherever. What might happen next for you as the bombs blasted Indochina? Or, today, Gaza? Would you sag like a heavy load, or explode?
I first got into Dylan, however, as did a great many people via a song of his, well part of it, anyhow, sung by a group called the Byrds, “Mr. Tambourine Man.” So I think maybe why not include it? Choosing among so much what to convey here is really taxing. How can I not include “Maggies Farm,” she says “sing while you slave and I just get bored,” “When the Ship Comes In,” and “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “get born, keep warm, short pants, romance, learn to dance, get dressed get blessed, try to be a success, please her, please him, buy gifts don’t steal, don’t lift 20 years of schoolin’ and they put you on the day shift.” “Mr. Tambourine Man” introduces Dylan writing image after image as he leaves his meaning sometimes hard to perceive, much less to hold on to.
Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following youThough I know that evening’s empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand, but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming
And now the chorus which I won’t keep repeating…
Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following youTake me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship
My senses have been stripped
My hands can’t feel to grip
My toes too numb to step
Wait only for my boot heels to be wandering
I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready for to fade
Into my own parade
Cast your dancing spell my way, I promise to go under itThough you might hear laughing, spinning, swinging madly across the sun
It’s not aimed at anyone
It’s just escaping on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facing
And if you hear vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time
It’s just a ragged clown behind
I wouldn’t pay it any mind
It’s just a shadow you’re seeing that he’s chasingAnd take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time
Far past the frozen leaves
The haunted frightened trees
Out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky
With one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea
Circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate
Driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrowHey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you
I won’t burden you with how I thought about that one, after feeling its verses, except to say that as best I could estimate, you can’t play a song on a tambourine and so I thought the the “ancient empty streets too dead for dreaming” were Dylan’s mind at that moment, or at any rate the mind of the part of him that whispered the words to the rest of him—and that his own parade referred to his funeral…but then again, perhaps not. He is, after all, still alive. And his meanings abound.
Now I’d like to offer two in between songs, I guess you might call them, in between finger pointing and going way more poetic. This is where the Nobel Prize judges likely looked, I think, to see what this guy had to offer literature. Note though, that to not really finger point, and to even ridicule finger pointing, certainly didn’t mean Dylan was not taking on the world. Actually, it didn’t even mean no more fingers were going to aim where he wanted.
First, there was “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” At this point, I think he had partly in mind a nuclear rain as a metaphor and it works if you take it that way now, but it also works having in mind global storms—you know, high water rising and fascism prowling—or really whatever calamitous social crises you want to insert, even though, again, it was sixty years ago that he wrote this and yet even with the quite monumental changes since, it could also have been written ten minutes ago, which is both amazing and rather sad…because it wasn’t. “Hard Rain” went and goes like this:
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fallOh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fallAnd what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fallOh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fallOh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the numberAnd I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
Not bad to know our song well and reach out widely with it, or so it seemed to me albeit quite a long time after it seemed that way to him. Next is a song I find my mind sending lines from to my typing fingers over and over, right up to now. Images piled on images. It is ”It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), and it goes like this…
Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fools gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.Temptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel the moan but unlike before
You discover
That you’d just be
One more person crying.So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing.As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred.Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much Is really sacred.While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
And goodness hides behind its gates
But even the President of the United States
Sometimes must have To stand naked.And though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it.Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Ensure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.But though the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destiny
Speak jealously of them that are free
Do what they do just to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.While some on principles baptize
To strict party platforms ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And say “God Bless him”.While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in.But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him.Old lady judges, watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False goals, I scoff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only.
Jeez Ma, during that, after that, I can’t find my voice, but I feel a great need to find my way. All life in a song, with an edge. And what about your thought dreams? Then? Now? Can we implement them? It turns out that in the fifty to sixty years since all that, Dylan has written hundreds more songs for dozens of albums and who knows how many he consigned to a waste basket. I say that just to make evident that if you consider all this and do get interested, there is more to explore. Remember what I said at the outset, about how we get hooked on sounds when young and we don’t really keep up. It applies to me too. One of the more recent songs I did notice was in the nineties… and it is next. After that there is one from still more recently, 2001 I think, that I never heard until preparing for this, and that I never knew existed, and yet he got an Oscar for it as best song in a movie.
First: “Dignity”
Fat man lookin’ in a blade of steel
Thin man lookin’ at his last meal
Hollow man lookin’ in a cotton field
For dignityWise man lookin’ in a blade of grass
Young man lookin’ in the shadows that pass
Poor man lookin’ through painted glass
For dignitySomebody got murdered on New Year’s Eve
Somebody said dignity was the first to leave
I went into the city, went into the town
Went into the land of the midnight sunSearchin’ high, searchin’ low
Searchin’ everywhere I know
Askin’ the cops wherever I go
Have you seen dignity?Blind man breakin’ out of a trance
Puts both his hands in the pockets of chance
Hopin’ to find one circumstance
Of dignityI went to the wedding of Mary Lou
She said, “I don’t want nobody see me talkin’ to you”
Said she could get killed if she told me what she knew
About dignityI went down where the vultures feed
I would’ve gone deeper, but there wasn’t any need
Heard the tongues of angels and the tongues of men
Wasn’t any difference to meChilly wind sharp as a razor blade
House on fire, debts unpaid
Gonna stand at the window, gonna ask the maid
Have you seen dignity?Drinkin’ man listens to the voice he hears
In a crowded room full of covered-up mirrors
Lookin’ into the lost forgotten years
For dignityMet Prince Phillip at the home of the blues
Said he’d give me information if his name wasn’t used
He wanted money up front, said he was abused
By dignityFootprints runnin’ ’cross the silver sand
Steps goin’ down into tattoo land
I met the sons of darkness and the sons of light
In the bordertowns of despairGot no place to fade, got no coat
I’m on the rollin’ river in a jerkin’ boat
Tryin’ to read a note somebody wrote
About dignitySick man lookin’ for the doctor’s cure
Lookin’ at his hands for the lines that were
And into every masterpiece of literature
For dignityEnglishman stranded in the blackheart wind
Combin’ his hair back, his future looks thin
Bites the bullet and he looks within
For dignitySomeone showed me a picture and I just laughed
Dignity never been photographed
I went into the red, went into the black
Into the valley of dry bone dreamsSo many roads, so much at stake
So many dead ends, I’m at the edge of the lake
Sometimes I wonder what it’s gonna take
To find dignity
Is not seeking dignity more in play now, even, than then? And for the last song in this episode—I thought writing that, that, I have to stop somewhere. And I thought at first that I would jump forward to 2000 to a song Dylan wrote for the movie “Wonder Boys.” I guess he was about sixty. I had never heard it despite that it got the Oscar. It is called “Things Have Changed.” But then I decided since Dylan changed personas over and over, repeatedly leaving one version of himself and stepping into another version of himself almost as his most constant attribute—always changing—perhaps I ought to convey the song “Positively Fourth Street” which displayed his fierce words again, but this time directed at those who wanted him to never change. The song title refers to a street in Greenwich Village, where he first joined folk singers and then, at least in their feelings, left them, though I would say, not really.
You’ve got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend
When I was down you just stood there grinnin’
You’ve got a lotta nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on the side that’s winnin’You say I let you down, ya know its not like that
If you’re so hurt, why then don’t you show it?
You say you’ve lost your faith, but that’s not where its at
You have no faith to lose, and ya know itI know the reason, that you talked behind my back
I used to be among the crowd you’re in with
Do you take me for such a fool, to think I’d make contact
With the one who tries to hide what he don’t know to begin with?You see me on the street, you always act surprised
You say “how are you?”, “good luck”, but ya don’t mean it
When you know as well as me, you’d rather see me paralyzed
Why don’t you just come out once and scream itNo, I do not feel that good when I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief perhaps I’d rob them
And tho I know you’re dissatisfied with your position and your place
Don’t you understand, it’s not my problem?I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment I could be you
Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
You’d know what a drag it is to see you
That was Dylan saying goodbye to the Folk music community. Next, in a song titled “Farewell Angelina.” he says goodbye to Joan Baez, I think, and, as well to the then radical activist left community. Notice there is nothing about Baez that repels him. Rather it is something about the times, about our community that repelled him. I think we should have listened to Dylan not only when he said what we liked, but also when he said what he tried to convey here, when he said what he could no longer immerse himself in, what he had to escape.
Farewell Angelina
The bells of the crown
Are being stolen by bandits
I must follow the sound
The triangle tingles
And the trumpets play slow
Farewell Angelina
The sky is on fire
And I must goThere’s no need for anger
There’s no need for blame
There’s nothing to prove
Ev’rything’s still the same
Just a table standing empty
By the edge of the sea
Farewell Angelina
The sky is trembling
And I must leaveThe jacks and the queens
Have forsaked the courtyard
Fifty-two gypsies
Now file past the guards
In the space where the deuce
And the ace once ran wild
Farewell Angelina
The sky is folding
I’ll see you in a whileSee the cross-eyed pirates sitting
Perched in the sun
Shooting tin cans
With a sawed-off shotgun
And the neighbors they clap
And they cheer with each blast
Farewell Angelina
The sky’s changing color
And I must leave fastKing Kong, little elves
On the rooftops they dance
Valentino-type tangos
While the makeup man’s hands
Shut the eyes of the dead
Not to embarrass anyone
Farewell Angelina
The sky is embarrassed
And I must be goneThe machine guns are roaring
The puppets heave rocks
The fiends nail time bombs
To the hands of the clocks
Call me any name you like
I will never deny it
Farewell Angelina
The sky is erupting
I must go where it’s quiet
And so he did and not only Baez but also the movement lost Dylan at least as someone intimately immersed in it and singing for it. It was not her fault at all, I think, but instead the movement’s fault as we shot tin cans and heaved rocks, and I say again that I think we should have heard Dylan not only when he sang what we were ourselves learning and trying to teach, but also when he sang about our not always wonderful effects on others.
Next, here is one song not from Dylan but from Baez to him, well after their split. Dylan wasn’t the only one who could write. It is called “Diamonds and Rust.”
Well, I’ll be damned
Here comes your ghost again
But that’s not unusual
It’s just that the moon is full
And you happened to callAnd here I sit
Hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I’d known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fallAs I remember your eyes
Were bluer than robin’s eggs
My poetry was lousy you said
Where are you calling from?
A booth in the midwestTen years ago
I bought you some cufflinks
You brought me something
We both know what memories can bring
They bring diamonds and rustWell, you burst on the scene
Already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond
You strayed into my arms
And there you stayed
Temporarily lost at sea
The Madonna was yours for free
Yes, the girl on the half-shell
Could keep you unharmedNow I see you standing
With brown leaves falling all around
And snow in your hair
Now you’re smiling out the window
Of that crummy hotel
Over Washington Square
Our breath comes out white clouds
Mingles and hangs in the air
Speaking strictly for me
We both could have died then and thereNow you’re telling me
You’re not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it
You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague
‘Cause I need some of that vagueness nowIt’s all come back too clearly
Yes, I loved you dearly
And if you’re offering me diamonds and rust
I’ve already paid
Okay, I know I said that would be it, but, I guess I lied. Dylan life-switching and dodging his own steps may be catching. At any rate, I don’t see how I can end this without this next song, the final one, I promise. It is called “Chimes of Freedom.” It’s on the album titled Another Side of Bob Dylan from 1964. Dylan was born in 1941, six years before me. So he was at most 23 when he wrote this. Like I said at the beginning, he was differently different…
The song goes like this…
Far between sundown’s finish an’ midnight’s broken toll
We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing
As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds
Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing
Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight
Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight
An’ for each an’ ev’ry underdog soldier in the night
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashingIn the city’s melted furnace, unexpectedly we watched
With faces hidden while the walls were tightening
As the echo of the wedding bells before the blowin’ rain
Dissolved into the bells of the lightning
Tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake
Tolling for the luckless, the abandoned an’ forsaked
Tolling for the outcast, burnin’ constantly at stake
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashingThrough the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail
The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder
That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze
Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder
Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind
Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind
An’ the unpawned painter behind beyond his rightful time
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashingThrough the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales
For the disrobed faceless forms of no position
Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts
All down in taken-for-granted situations
Tolling for the deaf an’ blind, tolling for the mute
Tolling for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute
For the misdemeanor outlaw, chased an’ cheated by pursuit
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashingEven though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashingStarry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Whooops, I gotta change my mind again. When the pundits and critics called Dylan the voice of my generation I think the song that they had in mind wasn’t any of those I have cribbed above. It was, instead, “The Times They Are A Changin.” So surely I have to offer that one too…
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
And you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin’
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’
We still have to make Dylan’s observation real—don’t we?
So that’s it. I hope the words will cause you to try some albums. The music and his voice really do add to the brew. Bringing It All Back Home, Highway Sixty One Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde, were three albums done back to back to back, and are as good as any three consecutive artistic interventions, at least in my mind, as ever can be found, and at any rate are as good a place as any to start navigating Dylan, unless, of course, you start earlier—or later.
So by all means lend him your ear to help fulfill Chalamet’s hope for the movie’s effect, but do it please only as an adjunct to and maybe to help fuel giving Trump migraines, and worse.
The post Meet Mr. Dylan appeared first on CounterPunch.org.