Welcome to A Few Words, a writing blog I have been maintaining since 2004, off and on. Most visitors end up here after searching for a Marks and Spencer food advert parody , analysis of Bob Dylan's Desolation Row, Highlands, or Blowin' in the wind, or background about Sandi Thom's mysterious rise to fame. None of which represent the best or most interesting of the material.
Good places to start are:
Change and Decay:
a long short story about an archivist's visit to a crumbling gentry estate (this was posted in chapters here but is presented in the right order in its own blog; it can aslo be downloaded as ae pdf, or bought on paper, in the volume File Under Fiction.
Written in your heart:
a radio play about Friends Reunited, old girlfriends, and midlife crises;
Dooced:
a radio play about an employment tribunal for an employee sacked for blogging about her work (life shortly therafter imitating Art, or at least artifice, in the form of Petite Anglaise);
Martin Amis criticism:
A long-term endeavour to cover all of his works, eventually, if I don't lose patience with his current rabble-rousing geopolitical insights first;
Stuff which won't be found here is poetry, which is at Complete and Utter Poetry, and archaeological project management, which is at 10 Simple Steps.
This post is a sticky and will stay at the top until I get bored with it.
Showing posts with label Bob Dylan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bob Dylan. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
A night like this (January 7th 1974): short story
Phil awoke, cold and stiff. He was alone, still clothed. He must have dropped off where he sat. The scent of tobacco and dope smoke engrained in his crumpled clothes competed with the unfamiliar apartment's own odour of damp and decay.
From the stereo speakers in the corner came the repeating click and hiss as the needle followed the circling groove around the label; on the floor lay the shiny album sleeve, disfigured with stamped warnings: the review copy of Planet Waves which he'd picked up yesterday at the gig. It wouldn't be in stores for a few days. Outside, dogs barked in the street.
He patted his pockets for cigarettes, found none, and coughed instead. He looked around the room, taking in the glasses, ashtrays, and bottles. And books. His memory nagged at him; there was something important he'd found out last night.
He'd first noticed the chick in the crowd at the Maple Leaf Gardens arena, while standing in the darkness of the auditorium waiting for Bob Dylan and The Band to come on stage. She stood with her eyes closed, arms part raised, ringed fingers extended, rocking and swaying gently to some silent rhythm. As the concert started, she opened her eyes and stared at Bob intently, following his every move. As the crowd shifted over the next half hour, she ended up alongside Phil as he lit up a joint; in response to her questioning look he passed it to her.
Then, as Bob ended 'Just like a woman' with a magically inventive and expressive harmonica solo, their eyes locked and they nodded in recognition of the artistry they had witnessed. Putting his arm around her shoulders seems a natural response, and by the time the lights went out on the encore of 'Most likely you'll go your way and I'll go mine', they were kissing passionately. Things were looking good, he thought.
They stepped into the cold hard air of the night. Toronto was quiet to his ringing ears.
'Where do you live?' he asked.
'Not far, McGill Street,' she replied, 'although it's nothing much.'
They settled on her place; his was nothing much either. Being a music reviewer for a small alternative magazine wasn't a job for people interested in material success.
They crossed the street to the empty sidewalk and went down an alleyway between two tattered billboards, emerging in a back street. As they mounted the spidery lattice of the fire escape, she turned towards him.
'He's great, isn't he? Bob? So complex.'
I revealed the treasure in my bag.
'I know,' she said, 'I saw you get it at the gig: I can't wait to hear it!'
She squealed and ran up the steps.
They settled down on the sofa as the music started. She sat up with a start as 'Tough mama' began, shaking off his hand.
'Wait,' she said, 'I'm listening.' He listened too; it counted as work, after all. When the track finished, she stood up and repositioned the needle to start it again. She picked up a battered notebook, opened it to a fresh page, and wrote down notes as she picked out the key phrases. When the song ended, she let the album play on, but only because she was reaching up to a book shelf.
'New morning was about the Abrahamic God as Father,' she said over her shoulder, 'I think this is changing to the female principle - don't you see? Goddess - angel - beauty - mama.'
Phil nodded dejectedly. She took down a Bible, its pages interleaved with Tarot cards used as bookmarks.
'Cities of the plain,' she muttered.
Phil felt he should make some contribution, what with being an English major and professional critic and all.
'There's a Eugene O'Neill play about drug addiction - Long day's journey into night - I'm sure he's alluding to it with 'night's long journey',' he said.
'Of course,' she replied dismissively, 'or it's re-birth: that would fit better, wouldn't it?'
And so the night had gone - research, theory, listening, reading. He was eventually overcome by exhaustion and boredom.
He yawned, stretched, and stood up. He went to knock on the bedroom door, but it swung open to his pressure. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, still dressed; it was concealed benath a mat of paper, books lying open, and closely-written index cards.
'Oh, hi,' she said distractedly. 'You fell asleep. I feel like I'm getting somewhere.' She gestured at her notes. 'The number nineteen is the key, you see.'
The walls were covered with posters of Dylan, newspaper cuttings, occult symbols, and handwritten transcriptions of lyrics.
Now Phil remembered what it was. She was crazy. Not crazy like a crazy mama, or crazy like a fox. Call-the-nut-wagon, straitjacket, padded cell crazy. What were the chances of him picking up someone like that?
As he retrieved the album and crept out of the building, he realised that the chances were quite high, all things considered.
Author's note
A night like this was devised after seeing Dylan live for the first time recently. I had looked around the audience and noted the preponderance of male fans; most of the female fans had come as part of couple. 'What were the ones who came alone like?' I wondered, and realised that I knew, or could guess. The story's setting is as true as research can make it, although normally I wouldn't count that as a particularly important question: credibility is more vital than accuracy. Dylanologists will enjoy spotting references to songs in the text.
This story is included in the new edition of File under fiction.
From the stereo speakers in the corner came the repeating click and hiss as the needle followed the circling groove around the label; on the floor lay the shiny album sleeve, disfigured with stamped warnings: the review copy of Planet Waves which he'd picked up yesterday at the gig. It wouldn't be in stores for a few days. Outside, dogs barked in the street.
He patted his pockets for cigarettes, found none, and coughed instead. He looked around the room, taking in the glasses, ashtrays, and bottles. And books. His memory nagged at him; there was something important he'd found out last night.
He'd first noticed the chick in the crowd at the Maple Leaf Gardens arena, while standing in the darkness of the auditorium waiting for Bob Dylan and The Band to come on stage. She stood with her eyes closed, arms part raised, ringed fingers extended, rocking and swaying gently to some silent rhythm. As the concert started, she opened her eyes and stared at Bob intently, following his every move. As the crowd shifted over the next half hour, she ended up alongside Phil as he lit up a joint; in response to her questioning look he passed it to her.
Then, as Bob ended 'Just like a woman' with a magically inventive and expressive harmonica solo, their eyes locked and they nodded in recognition of the artistry they had witnessed. Putting his arm around her shoulders seems a natural response, and by the time the lights went out on the encore of 'Most likely you'll go your way and I'll go mine', they were kissing passionately. Things were looking good, he thought.
They stepped into the cold hard air of the night. Toronto was quiet to his ringing ears.
'Where do you live?' he asked.
'Not far, McGill Street,' she replied, 'although it's nothing much.'
They settled on her place; his was nothing much either. Being a music reviewer for a small alternative magazine wasn't a job for people interested in material success.
They crossed the street to the empty sidewalk and went down an alleyway between two tattered billboards, emerging in a back street. As they mounted the spidery lattice of the fire escape, she turned towards him.
'He's great, isn't he? Bob? So complex.'
I revealed the treasure in my bag.
'I know,' she said, 'I saw you get it at the gig: I can't wait to hear it!'
She squealed and ran up the steps.
They settled down on the sofa as the music started. She sat up with a start as 'Tough mama' began, shaking off his hand.
'Wait,' she said, 'I'm listening.' He listened too; it counted as work, after all. When the track finished, she stood up and repositioned the needle to start it again. She picked up a battered notebook, opened it to a fresh page, and wrote down notes as she picked out the key phrases. When the song ended, she let the album play on, but only because she was reaching up to a book shelf.
'New morning was about the Abrahamic God as Father,' she said over her shoulder, 'I think this is changing to the female principle - don't you see? Goddess - angel - beauty - mama.'
Phil nodded dejectedly. She took down a Bible, its pages interleaved with Tarot cards used as bookmarks.
'Cities of the plain,' she muttered.
Phil felt he should make some contribution, what with being an English major and professional critic and all.
'There's a Eugene O'Neill play about drug addiction - Long day's journey into night - I'm sure he's alluding to it with 'night's long journey',' he said.
'Of course,' she replied dismissively, 'or it's re-birth: that would fit better, wouldn't it?'
And so the night had gone - research, theory, listening, reading. He was eventually overcome by exhaustion and boredom.
He yawned, stretched, and stood up. He went to knock on the bedroom door, but it swung open to his pressure. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, still dressed; it was concealed benath a mat of paper, books lying open, and closely-written index cards.
'Oh, hi,' she said distractedly. 'You fell asleep. I feel like I'm getting somewhere.' She gestured at her notes. 'The number nineteen is the key, you see.'
The walls were covered with posters of Dylan, newspaper cuttings, occult symbols, and handwritten transcriptions of lyrics.
Now Phil remembered what it was. She was crazy. Not crazy like a crazy mama, or crazy like a fox. Call-the-nut-wagon, straitjacket, padded cell crazy. What were the chances of him picking up someone like that?
As he retrieved the album and crept out of the building, he realised that the chances were quite high, all things considered.
Author's note
A night like this was devised after seeing Dylan live for the first time recently. I had looked around the audience and noted the preponderance of male fans; most of the female fans had come as part of couple. 'What were the ones who came alone like?' I wondered, and realised that I knew, or could guess. The story's setting is as true as research can make it, although normally I wouldn't count that as a particularly important question: credibility is more vital than accuracy. Dylanologists will enjoy spotting references to songs in the text.
This story is included in the new edition of File under fiction.
Friday, November 17, 2006
Desolation Row: Bob Dylan's wasteland
Although he now disavows any studious intent in the construction his songs, Dylan's absorption of high and low culture and fashioning it into masterpieces of allusion is undeniable.
"You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images" Wasteland, line 21
I had always thought Desolation Row was his best song in its glorious Highway 61 version, delicately punctuated by acoustic guitar breaks. But now it is bookended by the earlier take, with electric guitar, on the No Direction Home soundtrack CD, and the strummed acoustic Live 1966 version; each is in its way nigh-perfect, but the minor changes in the lyrics emphasise just how precisely right the rest are.
It is a commonplace that the overall shape and structure of the song parallels that of T. S. Eliot's Wasteland, but as I looked at each line possible references came flooding in. This isn't to say that they were in Dylan's head when he wrote it; but they are there in mine when I hear it. I have marked the parallels with ** where I believe they are close enough to represent conscious references, and * the less definite ones.
Lyrics are copyright Bob Dylan.
I
They're selling postcards of the hanging
The bleak thrown-away horror here is masterful. Without the anger driving overt protest, it is as if the commercialisation and celebration of execution were too expected to be worthy of note.
Wasteland reference: line 55 'the Hanged man' [Tarot card reference: tarot=postcard] *
They're painting the passports brown
This line is less clear, although it is notable that the emphasis in this line is on the 'they' at the start: in line 1, it's almost lost, just syaing 'postcards are being sold', but here it is a They who is doing the painting. Brown is associated with soil, shit and death, and 'means noone no good'. My image of this is of visas or identity cards being stamped 'cancelled' before being returned to the now trapped citizens.
Wasteland: line 208 'under the brown fog of a winter noon' and line 211: 'documents at sight'
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
What are the sailors doing there? Presumably being sexually transgressive. The world is turned upside down.
The circus is in town
I connect circus here with carnival and in turn to a feast of the senses, or debauchery, and with the 'freak show' cover photograph of the Basement Tapes.
Wasteland: line 56 "I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring" *
Here comes the blind commissioner
On first hearing, you automatically interpret this as a commissionaire, dressed up in hotel finery: a blind one might not be much good, but unworthy of note. Actually, thouygh, he quite definitely sings and writes 'commissioner', in which case he is presumably meaning some government official with quasi-judicial functions. The 'blind' then presumably relates to his powerlessness or unthinking fairness (blind justice with her scales).
Wasteland: line 46 "(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)" *
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
I connect this with walking the plank: justice is not only blind but imperilled. In the early take, his hand is 'nailed in his pants', perhaps a cricifixion reference, but in the final version it appears the commissioner is choose to keep his hand there, presumably masturbating. And you know that makes you go blind.
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
The 'mob' of riot police is another aspect of the overturning of authority, when those supposed to uphold the law are keen to breach it.
As the Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row
Wasteland: lines 49/50 "Here is Belladona, the Lady of the Rocks, / The lady of situations" **
II
Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
The narrative here starts in the midst of a scene: clearly the singer has just said something while flirting with her, and she appears to respond positively.
Wasteland: line 253 "When lovely woman stoops to folly and / Paces about her room again, alone, / She smooths her hair with automatic hand, / And puts a record on the gramaphone." *
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."
He's in the wrong place because love and sincerity of feeling do not operate on Desolation Row. The 'someone' who answers is presumably the singer.
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Obviously Romeo declines to leave quietly, and a fight ensues.
Dylan, "Pledging My Time": "They called for an ambulance, and one was sent / Someone must've got lucky, but it was an accident"
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row
Sweeping up the broken glass from the fight. No Prince Charmings on Desolation Row.
III
Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
Hidden by gathering doom-laden clouds.
The fortunetelling lady
Wasteland: line 43 'Madam Sosostris, famous clairvoyante' *
Has even taken all her things inside
The time to worry is when psychics panic.
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
Cain and Abel are too busy fighting; Quasimodo knows his beloved is dead. But sort of rain can be expected from such an ominous cloud?
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row
Charity and good fellowship have been replaced by cynicism and hedonism.
IV
Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
Because she has gone to the Nunnery.
To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
She chooses death rather than devotion only to God.
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah's great rainbow
The rainbow is supposed to be a sign of God's ultimate forgiveness, so she hopes for redemption.
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row
But she is too aware of reality to succumb.
V
Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
Einstein presumably regrets the consequences of his genius.
Wasteland: line 362 "There is always another one walking beside you/ Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded" **
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
Einstein is reduced to an idiot savant.
Now you would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row
Fame is transient; nothing endures.
VI
Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They're trying to blow it up
The doctor's name hardly inspires confidence, and neither does the reaction of his patients. He sounds like a Nazi doctor in the death camps.
Now his nurse, some local loser
She's in charge of the cyanide hole
The medicinal use of cyanide confirms the interpretation.
And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy On His Soul"
Wateland: line 52 "And this card, which is blank, is something he carries on his back, which I am forbidden to see". *
They all play on penny whistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row
VII
Across the street they've nailed the curtains
They're getting ready for the feast
The Last Supper.
The Phantom of the Opera
A perfect image of a priest
Judas.
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 Outta Here If You Don't Know
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row"
Casanova is being punished by being crucified.
VIII
Now at midnight all the agents
Wasteland: line 232 "A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare, One of the low on whom assurance sits"
W. H. Auden , 'The Fall of Rome': "Agents of the Fisc pursue/ Absconding tax defaulters"
And the superhuman crew
This wraps up Nietzsche's Superman and Shaw's 'Man and Superman', covering both left-and right-wing politics.
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
The hatred for educated people is a good indicator of tyranny, shared by the book-burning Nazis, Mao's Great Leap Forward, and the lunacy of Pol Pot's victimisation of anyone wearing glasses.
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
Industrial evil: death factories.
Kafka (the insurance clerk): the Castle, the tyranny of bureaucracy
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row
IX
Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
Wasteland: line 56 "Fear death by water" *
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
Wasteland: line 261 "The pleasant whining of a mandoline / And a clatter and a chatter from within / Where fishmen lounge at noon" *
Between the windows of the sea
Wasteland: line 47 "the drowned Phoenician sailor" *
Where lovely mermaids flow
Wasteland: line 96 "In which sad light a carved dolphin swam"
Prufrock: "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each" *
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row
X
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the door knob broke)
Wasteland: line 411 "I have heard the key / Turn in the door once and turn once only / We think of the key, each in his prison" *
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
Wasteland: line 115 "I never know what you are thinking." *
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
My reality is unique to me and we can't even agree on what to call things that are 'out there'.
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row
The letters here are a reference back to postcards at the start, making the song cyclical.
"You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images" Wasteland, line 21
I had always thought Desolation Row was his best song in its glorious Highway 61 version, delicately punctuated by acoustic guitar breaks. But now it is bookended by the earlier take, with electric guitar, on the No Direction Home soundtrack CD, and the strummed acoustic Live 1966 version; each is in its way nigh-perfect, but the minor changes in the lyrics emphasise just how precisely right the rest are.
It is a commonplace that the overall shape and structure of the song parallels that of T. S. Eliot's Wasteland, but as I looked at each line possible references came flooding in. This isn't to say that they were in Dylan's head when he wrote it; but they are there in mine when I hear it. I have marked the parallels with ** where I believe they are close enough to represent conscious references, and * the less definite ones.
Lyrics are copyright Bob Dylan.
I
They're selling postcards of the hanging
The bleak thrown-away horror here is masterful. Without the anger driving overt protest, it is as if the commercialisation and celebration of execution were too expected to be worthy of note.
Wasteland reference: line 55 'the Hanged man' [Tarot card reference: tarot=postcard] *
They're painting the passports brown
This line is less clear, although it is notable that the emphasis in this line is on the 'they' at the start: in line 1, it's almost lost, just syaing 'postcards are being sold', but here it is a They who is doing the painting. Brown is associated with soil, shit and death, and 'means noone no good'. My image of this is of visas or identity cards being stamped 'cancelled' before being returned to the now trapped citizens.
Wasteland: line 208 'under the brown fog of a winter noon' and line 211: 'documents at sight'
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
What are the sailors doing there? Presumably being sexually transgressive. The world is turned upside down.
The circus is in town
I connect circus here with carnival and in turn to a feast of the senses, or debauchery, and with the 'freak show' cover photograph of the Basement Tapes.
Wasteland: line 56 "I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring" *
Here comes the blind commissioner
On first hearing, you automatically interpret this as a commissionaire, dressed up in hotel finery: a blind one might not be much good, but unworthy of note. Actually, thouygh, he quite definitely sings and writes 'commissioner', in which case he is presumably meaning some government official with quasi-judicial functions. The 'blind' then presumably relates to his powerlessness or unthinking fairness (blind justice with her scales).
Wasteland: line 46 "(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)" *
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
I connect this with walking the plank: justice is not only blind but imperilled. In the early take, his hand is 'nailed in his pants', perhaps a cricifixion reference, but in the final version it appears the commissioner is choose to keep his hand there, presumably masturbating. And you know that makes you go blind.
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
The 'mob' of riot police is another aspect of the overturning of authority, when those supposed to uphold the law are keen to breach it.
As the Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row
Wasteland: lines 49/50 "Here is Belladona, the Lady of the Rocks, / The lady of situations" **
II
Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
The narrative here starts in the midst of a scene: clearly the singer has just said something while flirting with her, and she appears to respond positively.
Wasteland: line 253 "When lovely woman stoops to folly and / Paces about her room again, alone, / She smooths her hair with automatic hand, / And puts a record on the gramaphone." *
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."
He's in the wrong place because love and sincerity of feeling do not operate on Desolation Row. The 'someone' who answers is presumably the singer.
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Obviously Romeo declines to leave quietly, and a fight ensues.
Dylan, "Pledging My Time": "They called for an ambulance, and one was sent / Someone must've got lucky, but it was an accident"
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row
Sweeping up the broken glass from the fight. No Prince Charmings on Desolation Row.
III
Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
Hidden by gathering doom-laden clouds.
The fortunetelling lady
Wasteland: line 43 'Madam Sosostris, famous clairvoyante' *
Has even taken all her things inside
The time to worry is when psychics panic.
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
Cain and Abel are too busy fighting; Quasimodo knows his beloved is dead. But sort of rain can be expected from such an ominous cloud?
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row
Charity and good fellowship have been replaced by cynicism and hedonism.
IV
Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
Because she has gone to the Nunnery.
To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
She chooses death rather than devotion only to God.
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah's great rainbow
The rainbow is supposed to be a sign of God's ultimate forgiveness, so she hopes for redemption.
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row
But she is too aware of reality to succumb.
V
Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
Einstein presumably regrets the consequences of his genius.
Wasteland: line 362 "There is always another one walking beside you/ Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded" **
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
Einstein is reduced to an idiot savant.
Now you would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row
Fame is transient; nothing endures.
VI
Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They're trying to blow it up
The doctor's name hardly inspires confidence, and neither does the reaction of his patients. He sounds like a Nazi doctor in the death camps.
Now his nurse, some local loser
She's in charge of the cyanide hole
The medicinal use of cyanide confirms the interpretation.
And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy On His Soul"
Wateland: line 52 "And this card, which is blank, is something he carries on his back, which I am forbidden to see". *
They all play on penny whistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row
VII
Across the street they've nailed the curtains
They're getting ready for the feast
The Last Supper.
The Phantom of the Opera
A perfect image of a priest
Judas.
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 Outta Here If You Don't Know
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row"
Casanova is being punished by being crucified.
VIII
Now at midnight all the agents
Wasteland: line 232 "A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare, One of the low on whom assurance sits"
W. H. Auden , 'The Fall of Rome': "Agents of the Fisc pursue/ Absconding tax defaulters"
And the superhuman crew
This wraps up Nietzsche's Superman and Shaw's 'Man and Superman', covering both left-and right-wing politics.
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
The hatred for educated people is a good indicator of tyranny, shared by the book-burning Nazis, Mao's Great Leap Forward, and the lunacy of Pol Pot's victimisation of anyone wearing glasses.
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
Industrial evil: death factories.
Kafka (the insurance clerk): the Castle, the tyranny of bureaucracy
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row
IX
Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
Wasteland: line 56 "Fear death by water" *
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
Wasteland: line 261 "The pleasant whining of a mandoline / And a clatter and a chatter from within / Where fishmen lounge at noon" *
Between the windows of the sea
Wasteland: line 47 "the drowned Phoenician sailor" *
Where lovely mermaids flow
Wasteland: line 96 "In which sad light a carved dolphin swam"
Prufrock: "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each" *
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row
X
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the door knob broke)
Wasteland: line 411 "I have heard the key / Turn in the door once and turn once only / We think of the key, each in his prison" *
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
Wasteland: line 115 "I never know what you are thinking." *
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
My reality is unique to me and we can't even agree on what to call things that are 'out there'.
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row
The letters here are a reference back to postcards at the start, making the song cyclical.
Saturday, June 03, 2006
Bob Dylan and the Dead Sea Scrolls
"You gotta heed the Teacher of Righteousness
If you want to know the Way
The Wicked Priest's a spouter of lies
You can't belie-ee-eeve him when he prays"
Could be a John Wesley Harding , Slow Train Coming or Infidels outtake, but in fact has been cobbled together by me: the phrases in bold are from the Dead Sea Scrolls. In Chronicles Vol. 1, and elsewhere, he has made it clear that he doesn't (as most of his commentators imply) sit down with his reference books around him and laboriously construct his songs like a crossword. Instead, he simply inhales a wide range of cultural sources and leaves them to emerge from his unconscious. But for all four of the key elements of the Scrolls texts to reflect so closely his concerns is evidence enough for me that he has at some point come across them.
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Dylan writes!
I got Dylan's autobiography, Chronicles Volume One, for Christmas, having restrained myself from buying it when it came out in the autumn. Given his track record (musical and non-musical) and his recent erratic form, I feared the worst. But it turns out that, no, it is not as bad as it could easily have been, nor as bad as might reasonably be expected, nor even good considering remembering his past has never been one of his interests or strengths and writing prose didn't suit his style; no, it's actually good full stop. He writes tangentially and episodically, concentrating on establishing the mood of a particular time and place economically. He describes the Minnesota communities' repsonse to fallout shelters: "But salesmen hawking the bomb shelters were met with expressionless faces".
His account of songwriting and recording is prosaic and matter-of-fact (and unenthusistaic compared to his treatment of books and people); you can see in his description of the New Morning and Oh Mercy! sessions his growing frustration that the sounds they were making were getting further away from the sounds he had envisioned, and that he, as well as his critics, was unhappy with the final result. So, surprisingly, the book takes a dip in interesty the closer it comes to "the work".
The only groanworthy moment is the appearance of Bono and the two-page eulogy Dylan gives to Bono's genius, knowledge and wisdom. But as Dylan says himself, noone should rely on his judgement! Otherwise, it's clear that, despite fears to the contrary, he is still sane and capable.
Whether Volume Two will cohere as well as this does is doubtful, since it will inevitably cover better-documented parts of his life, and will also have to deal with a lot of touring and recording, but I'd recommend Volume One to anyone with an interest in Dylan.
His account of songwriting and recording is prosaic and matter-of-fact (and unenthusistaic compared to his treatment of books and people); you can see in his description of the New Morning and Oh Mercy! sessions his growing frustration that the sounds they were making were getting further away from the sounds he had envisioned, and that he, as well as his critics, was unhappy with the final result. So, surprisingly, the book takes a dip in interesty the closer it comes to "the work".
The only groanworthy moment is the appearance of Bono and the two-page eulogy Dylan gives to Bono's genius, knowledge and wisdom. But as Dylan says himself, noone should rely on his judgement! Otherwise, it's clear that, despite fears to the contrary, he is still sane and capable.
Whether Volume Two will cohere as well as this does is doubtful, since it will inevitably cover better-documented parts of his life, and will also have to deal with a lot of touring and recording, but I'd recommend Volume One to anyone with an interest in Dylan.
Friday, October 22, 2004
Dylan's "Highlands"
Highlands is usually called the best song on Time out of Mind (=TOOM) (even by those who would say there are only 3 other good ones on it), and has generated a lot of analysis and discussion on the message boards of www.bobdylan.com - which seem to have been removed, possibly in an attempt to increase world GDP by getting thousands of people to stop surfing and get on with their work. Although it lasts 16 minutes (longer than it took the world to end in 'Desolation Row'), it is vague enough in specifics to be open to different readings. Essentially it is a song of dislocation and loss, contrasting a realistic urban landscape with an imagined, and probably mythical, Highlands; interspersed with a long and inconclusive conversation with a waitress.
The song has usually been interpreted as a depiction of breakdown as loss-of-moral-worth (in contrast to the 'downer' albums Planet Waves and Blood on the Tracks, which, despite their desperation, affirm the redemptive power of love, TOOM explores damnation as a result of past rejection of love), with the waitress episode as a lighter moment.
But before we get there, he says:
"I'm listening to Neil Young, gotta turn up the sound
Someone's always telling me to turn it down"
which is a situation familiar to any NY fan in a non-fan household. If this is Bob talking (and it sounds like it), it makes you wonder what he's listening to - my bet would be the title track from On the Beach, the third (and least obviously doomy) of his Doom trilogy: this long, flowing, eloquent exposition of urban breakdown contrasted with an imagined escaped to the beach is similar both musically and lyrically:
"The world is turning, I hope it don't turn away"
"I need a crowd of people, I can't face them day-to-day"
"I came to the radio interview, ended up alone at the microphone"
"Though my problems are meaningless, that don't make them go away"
One of the first verses to "Highlands" includes:
"Don't want nothing from no-one, ain't much to take
Wouldn't know the difference between a real blonde and a fake"
These lines have been criticised as poor, part of the lazy versifying that crops up elsewhere on the album (by Michael Gray in his usually-sound Song and Dance Man III). Technically, it's a bit strange: you have an awkward first line and a weak second line, or vice versa; in his delivery, Dylan has to hurry to fit the second line in with the tune, when it could lose some syllables instead. As an example of indifference it is specific without being very enlightening.
But I'd turn this around. It was the second line Dylan wanted, even if it didn't fit: the first line is the make-weight, although it does in fact reinforce the theme, which echoes the line in TOOM's 'Not Dark Yet':
"I'm not looking for nothing in anyone's eyes"
Because what IS the difference between a real blonde and a fake? The answer is that fake blondes only dye the hair on their heads. [on both TOOM and Love and Theft he has re-discovered his liking for including obscene and sexually explicit references, often derived from blues usage]. So what he is saying is that he is unlikely to be in a position to find out whether any blondes he meets are fake or not, because he feels cut off from sexual / romantic contact. In this context, the chat with the waitress is the opposite of flirting: it is sparring leading nowhere because he wouldn't want it to, going through the motions.
And so where are the Highlands? I think that they represent the state where he has cut himself off from life and love, and has come to terms with it, almost a regression to a pre-adolescent sexless state in which a hunting trip looking for deer in the woods was as good as it got.
And therefore, by re-interpreting this line the song can be seen to fall in with the main theme of the album, finding out how to live without love.
The song has usually been interpreted as a depiction of breakdown as loss-of-moral-worth (in contrast to the 'downer' albums Planet Waves and Blood on the Tracks, which, despite their desperation, affirm the redemptive power of love, TOOM explores damnation as a result of past rejection of love), with the waitress episode as a lighter moment.
But before we get there, he says:
"I'm listening to Neil Young, gotta turn up the sound
Someone's always telling me to turn it down"
which is a situation familiar to any NY fan in a non-fan household. If this is Bob talking (and it sounds like it), it makes you wonder what he's listening to - my bet would be the title track from On the Beach, the third (and least obviously doomy) of his Doom trilogy: this long, flowing, eloquent exposition of urban breakdown contrasted with an imagined escaped to the beach is similar both musically and lyrically:
"The world is turning, I hope it don't turn away"
"I need a crowd of people, I can't face them day-to-day"
"I came to the radio interview, ended up alone at the microphone"
"Though my problems are meaningless, that don't make them go away"
One of the first verses to "Highlands" includes:
"Don't want nothing from no-one, ain't much to take
Wouldn't know the difference between a real blonde and a fake"
These lines have been criticised as poor, part of the lazy versifying that crops up elsewhere on the album (by Michael Gray in his usually-sound Song and Dance Man III). Technically, it's a bit strange: you have an awkward first line and a weak second line, or vice versa; in his delivery, Dylan has to hurry to fit the second line in with the tune, when it could lose some syllables instead. As an example of indifference it is specific without being very enlightening.
But I'd turn this around. It was the second line Dylan wanted, even if it didn't fit: the first line is the make-weight, although it does in fact reinforce the theme, which echoes the line in TOOM's 'Not Dark Yet':
"I'm not looking for nothing in anyone's eyes"
Because what IS the difference between a real blonde and a fake? The answer is that fake blondes only dye the hair on their heads. [on both TOOM and Love and Theft he has re-discovered his liking for including obscene and sexually explicit references, often derived from blues usage]. So what he is saying is that he is unlikely to be in a position to find out whether any blondes he meets are fake or not, because he feels cut off from sexual / romantic contact. In this context, the chat with the waitress is the opposite of flirting: it is sparring leading nowhere because he wouldn't want it to, going through the motions.
And so where are the Highlands? I think that they represent the state where he has cut himself off from life and love, and has come to terms with it, almost a regression to a pre-adolescent sexless state in which a hunting trip looking for deer in the woods was as good as it got.
And therefore, by re-interpreting this line the song can be seen to fall in with the main theme of the album, finding out how to live without love.
Friday, September 10, 2004
Dylan's protest and peace
As someone who discovered electric Dylan first, I always found it hard to engage with the earlier material; there seems something missing not just in the music, but in the words. It was only when listening to the Bootleg Dylan album that I began to understand why. Everyone always said that the quintessential 'protest' period anthem was 'Blowin' in the Wind'; the Bootleg Dylan includes his performance of a Civil War-era spiritual, 'No More Auction Block', from which Dylan has admitted lifting the tune for "Blowin'…" I now think he lifted more.
Considering its iconic status in peace movements and folk music even today, and considering it was written by the most articulate poet of a generation, "Blowin' in the wind" is actually full of awkward phrases.
"How many roads must a man walk down,
Before you call him a man?"
This is the first line of the most important song of a generation… yet look at it. The man/man repetition is technically maladroit, creating an unwanted internal rhyme. But worse than that, it is actually using the same short word in two different senses in the course of the same line: "a man" first is "someone" or perhaps "anyone" or "me", while seven words later "a man" is used as "a grown person" or "someone whose opinion should be listened to". The answer presumably is some but not many.
"How many miles must the white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?"
The answer here, to "how long before the dove can sleep having delivered its message of hope" is presumably too many.
"Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they are forever banned?"
This line is perhaps the point at which you can start to unravel the song. The song was written in 1962, 6 years after the first Hydrogen bomb was detonated, just before Vietnam brought modern technology to the battlefield. The answer to the question is none: cannonballs no longer fly, and in fact haven't since the supremacy of rifled artillery was established in the American Civil War in the 1860s. As an image of 20th century warfare, it is not just weak but wrong. This is a sentiment that belongs to the 19th century.
So does the second half of the line. Banning is what headteachers do: earrings, bleached hair, fluorescent socks. The more honest modern peace protestors say "Not in My Name". The Western students of the 1960s, rather than saying "ban the bomb", might with more justice have said "renounce the bomb": telling their (democratic) government that they did not wish it to use the threat of nuclear war as an instrument of foreign policy, while willing to admit that other governments did not face similar pressures and wouldn't have listened if they did.
"The answer, my friend
Is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind"
The sense of the song must be not that the wind has the answer, but that there is no answer; this is how things are and how they will stay.
How can it be that this message has been adopted as one of hope, even triumph? It could be that people aren't listening to the words, in the same way that the American Right adopted Springsteen's "Born in the USA" as an anthem, assuming it reflected their simplistic patriotism, rather than questioning it. But I think the truth is that what has sold this song as an optimistic one is Dylan's delivery of it, which makes it sound as if the answer is "not yet, but soon".
So we have a curious mixture of archaism in technology and a belief that banning (or not banning) is in someone's power as a possible outcome. To return to the 1860s, and "No More Auction Block":
"No more auction block
No more, no more,
No more auction block
Many thousands gone
No more driver's 'lash for me
No more, no more
No more driver's whiplash for me
Many thousands gone"
The song is one of mournful triumph, an expression of release, of gratitude for the liberation of the slaves delivered in 1865 after the Civil War, regretting the terrible cost in pain and sorrow through all the years of trial, but looking forward in sombre optimism. Or to put it another way "How many times on the auction block?" "Too many , but no more".
Dylan's delivery of this song is clearly the blueprint for "Blowing"; he sounds dignified: wearied, but thankful. Thus undercutting the message of the words as "Who knows when anything will change" is the feeling, more properly belong to "Auction Block", of "Something will change".
"How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
How many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
I think that 'seeing the sky' here is noticing what would have been obvious to any normal observer (i.e. slavery being wrong). The second line, if you can avoid the bathetic image of people needing more ears, rather than better ears, makes the same point: how can you ignore all the suffering?
"How many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?"
This is another 'banning' line; it's actually paradoxical (in modern terms): you can't allow people to be free; they either are free, or they're not. There was, of course, a major historical action which really did allow people to be free… in 1865.
My doubts about the song were based on a vague feeling that somehow the rhetoric was misplaced and ineffective; at face value, in 1962, it is at best a bit of wishful thinking on behalf of a generation deprived of political influence. By noticing how much of this perceived lack of impact derives from the parallels with a song one hundred years older, most of these doubts are washed away. And you can see that Dylan, looking around for examples of good overcoming evil after a long period of darkness and sorrow, might latch onto the emancipation of the slaves as one with deep resonances. He probably didn't have time to notice that the moral was equivocal: after all, there was a war fought at least partly to resolve the issue: was that a good thing or not?
Considering its iconic status in peace movements and folk music even today, and considering it was written by the most articulate poet of a generation, "Blowin' in the wind" is actually full of awkward phrases.
"How many roads must a man walk down,
Before you call him a man?"
This is the first line of the most important song of a generation… yet look at it. The man/man repetition is technically maladroit, creating an unwanted internal rhyme. But worse than that, it is actually using the same short word in two different senses in the course of the same line: "a man" first is "someone" or perhaps "anyone" or "me", while seven words later "a man" is used as "a grown person" or "someone whose opinion should be listened to". The answer presumably is some but not many.
"How many miles must the white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?"
The answer here, to "how long before the dove can sleep having delivered its message of hope" is presumably too many.
"Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they are forever banned?"
This line is perhaps the point at which you can start to unravel the song. The song was written in 1962, 6 years after the first Hydrogen bomb was detonated, just before Vietnam brought modern technology to the battlefield. The answer to the question is none: cannonballs no longer fly, and in fact haven't since the supremacy of rifled artillery was established in the American Civil War in the 1860s. As an image of 20th century warfare, it is not just weak but wrong. This is a sentiment that belongs to the 19th century.
So does the second half of the line. Banning is what headteachers do: earrings, bleached hair, fluorescent socks. The more honest modern peace protestors say "Not in My Name". The Western students of the 1960s, rather than saying "ban the bomb", might with more justice have said "renounce the bomb": telling their (democratic) government that they did not wish it to use the threat of nuclear war as an instrument of foreign policy, while willing to admit that other governments did not face similar pressures and wouldn't have listened if they did.
"The answer, my friend
Is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind"
The sense of the song must be not that the wind has the answer, but that there is no answer; this is how things are and how they will stay.
How can it be that this message has been adopted as one of hope, even triumph? It could be that people aren't listening to the words, in the same way that the American Right adopted Springsteen's "Born in the USA" as an anthem, assuming it reflected their simplistic patriotism, rather than questioning it. But I think the truth is that what has sold this song as an optimistic one is Dylan's delivery of it, which makes it sound as if the answer is "not yet, but soon".
So we have a curious mixture of archaism in technology and a belief that banning (or not banning) is in someone's power as a possible outcome. To return to the 1860s, and "No More Auction Block":
"No more auction block
No more, no more,
No more auction block
Many thousands gone
No more driver's 'lash for me
No more, no more
No more driver's whiplash for me
Many thousands gone"
The song is one of mournful triumph, an expression of release, of gratitude for the liberation of the slaves delivered in 1865 after the Civil War, regretting the terrible cost in pain and sorrow through all the years of trial, but looking forward in sombre optimism. Or to put it another way "How many times on the auction block?" "Too many , but no more".
Dylan's delivery of this song is clearly the blueprint for "Blowing"; he sounds dignified: wearied, but thankful. Thus undercutting the message of the words as "Who knows when anything will change" is the feeling, more properly belong to "Auction Block", of "Something will change".
"How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
How many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
I think that 'seeing the sky' here is noticing what would have been obvious to any normal observer (i.e. slavery being wrong). The second line, if you can avoid the bathetic image of people needing more ears, rather than better ears, makes the same point: how can you ignore all the suffering?
"How many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?"
This is another 'banning' line; it's actually paradoxical (in modern terms): you can't allow people to be free; they either are free, or they're not. There was, of course, a major historical action which really did allow people to be free… in 1865.
My doubts about the song were based on a vague feeling that somehow the rhetoric was misplaced and ineffective; at face value, in 1962, it is at best a bit of wishful thinking on behalf of a generation deprived of political influence. By noticing how much of this perceived lack of impact derives from the parallels with a song one hundred years older, most of these doubts are washed away. And you can see that Dylan, looking around for examples of good overcoming evil after a long period of darkness and sorrow, might latch onto the emancipation of the slaves as one with deep resonances. He probably didn't have time to notice that the moral was equivocal: after all, there was a war fought at least partly to resolve the issue: was that a good thing or not?
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