OK, so this is JUST ONE example of how full of shit critics can be. Being as how I am in yet another Dylan cycle, triggered by the album he released just last year, I've gone back into some of his classics, including one of the most atmospheric songs ever written, his paean to Sara Lownds (and if people still puzzle over "gee, who could he have written this for?", just insert a "la" in the middle of her name), and have been hypnotized and enthralled all over again.
One does not "listen" to Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. One is overwhelmed by it. It is a pavane, a stately, courtly processional that has just a hint of a nihilistic funeral march. It is relentless, and it builds on itself in rumbling, trembling piano chords that express a passion we can only guess at. In Rough and Rowdy Ways, he similarly creates a world and pulls us into it - or we go willingly, captives with our hands tied behind our backs. But man, he was doing that back in 1966at the age of 25. Already he had lived several lives as a dazzling creative artist and a Byronic, if not TITANIC figure in popular culture.
But let's get to the good stuff, that "critics are full of shit" part. I call this this little passage "HOW WRONG CAN YOU BE, YOU DUMB-ASS?", for want of a better term. In poking around in Wikipedia to find out more about the roots of Sad Eyed Lady, I found lots of commentary and analysis, much of it lame and completely missing the point. Here is how one self-proclaimed "Dylan scholar" described it initially, and how the scales fell from his eyes decades later - FINALLY - so he could hear it for the erotic masterpiece it is.Dylan scholar Michael Grey expressed a similarly contradictory attitude to "Sad Eyed Lady". In his book Song & Dance Man III, Gray writes of the song's imagery: "Dylan is... cooing nonsense in our ears, very beguilingly of course. The only thing that unites the fragments is the mechanical device of the return to the chorus and thus to the title... It is, in the end, not a whole song at all but unconnected chippings, and only the poor cement of an empty chorus and a regularity of tune gives the illusion that things are otherwise."
In a footnote to this passage, written later, Gray adds: "When I read this assessment now, I simply feel embarrassed at what a little snob I was when I wrote it... When I go back and listen, after a long gap, to Dylan's recording, every ardent, true feeling I ever had comes back to me. Decades of detritus drop away and I feel back in communion with my best self and my soul. Whatever the shortcomings of the lyric, the recording itself, capturing at its absolute peak Dylan's incomparable capacity for intensity of communication, is a masterpiece if ever there was one."
"Masterpiece"! But one wonders if this bastard-piece (of shit) and his stupid assessment of a classic affected Dylan at all, if he was bruised by such inane and plain STUPID remarks about the most potent of the many dozens of heart-stabbing love songs he has written. Maybe yes, maybe no, but, relentless as that chord-rumbling chorus coming around and around again (much as Dylan keeps rolling like that Big Wheel that keeps on turnin'), Dylan kept on touring for concert after concert while the audience boo-ed him, literally threw things at him and swore at him for being a turncoat and a sell-out and a "fake". But Dylan knew he had it, whether they got it or not, and that is the true mark of genius.
So what happened to all those people? Who gives a shit! But they remind me of the time I soaked a carrot in bleach and pulled it out white and sickly, devoid of all colour, flavour, or meaning. It had lost its vegetable essence. These people never had it to begin with. Is it any wonder Bobby could be a tad bitter, to the point of writing the most genius lines of all:
"I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
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 it.
I 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 it
No, 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
Blogger's note. OK then. This is often cited as the nastiest, cruellest, most heartless song ever written, with a lyric that would peel paint off the walls, not to mention 20 layers of wallpaper. But that's what it's supposed to do.
Think of it. If you've never in your life been in this position, then you are truly blessed. You see someone coming toward you, grinning, glad-handing, full of righteous hot air and foul gas, bustling up to slap you on the back and make you thoroughly nauseated with their complete insincerity. . . well, you get the picture. If you've ever had an old high school classmate (the one who used to humiliate you at every opportunity) come surging up to you to say, "Hey, remember me?" - if you've ever had someone try to "friend" you on Facebook who was never any friend of yours. . .
This song is FAIR. It's about someone who stabbed Dylan in the back repeatedly, pretended to be his friend, sucked up to him, basked in his reflected glory - then betrayed him, attempted to destroy him, and came back smiling to ask for a favor.
The other "unforgiveable" Dylan lyric is Don't Think Twice, It's All Right - which MAY live up to the assumption of meanest song lyric of all time. But look more closely, and you'll see why he feels so bitter:
It ain’t no use in callin’ out my name, gal
Like you never did before
It ain’t no use in callin’ out my name, gal
I can’t hear you anymore
I’m a-thinkin’ and a-wond’rin’ walkin' down the road
I once loved a woman, a child I’m told
I give her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don’t think twice, it’s all right
Though this song is invariably described as being "about" his forlorn and hopeless love for the free-spirited artist Suze Rotolo, it is just as much about Joan Baez, the arrogant and opportunistic Baez who wanted to be the first to "discover" Dylan's genius, to present him to the world on a silver platter of her own making, and bask in his reflected glory - only to fall into bitter ranting when Dylan failed to return the favor and ask Baez to climb onto the stage with him.
But soft, what could this sudden contradiction mean? It's the fact that things were totally different by then. I mean totally. Bobby was no longer singing Woody Guthrie songs with a sailor cap on. He was kicking ass with rock masterpieces such as Like a Rolling Stone, while Baez was still warbling away about Mary Hamilton. Nothing had changed with her. Not only that - Baez was so established when they met that she already had her first gold record before Dylan ever recorded a thing. Helping her up onstage when he had already remade himself several times over would clang so badly that it would not work for either one of them, and he knew it.
There is another song which more closely linked to Rotolo, and in this case there is very little ambiguity about it. Ballad in Plain D, one that I felt an unusual attachment to back in the day, was starkly and literally autobiographical, a rarity for Dylan both then and now. That song actually happened. It went down just the way he wrote it. With Dylan's propensity for wearing layers of masks and evading analysis, it's a shocking and singular example of unmasking himself. People were hurt by this lyric, even devastated, and in public - but that is its power. Even now, so many decades later, Dylan's songs ignite a light bulb of recognition, a powerful sense that you have lived this, but never knew how to express it. It inspires that quick intake of breath, the near-baffled gasp which is one of the more spontaneous reactions to the emotional ambush that is genius.
The best, if not the only, version of this song. Johnny Cash wrote the tune, and Dylan the lyrics (can't you tell?). I had this album in the late '60s and wore the grooves off it, but seeing this video is startling and makes the experience much more real and vivid. Cash had never done any serious time, but he managed to create the impression that he had. His was an outlaw's soul, and these men knew it.
Anyone who follows this blog (and, admittedly, that would be mostly me) will notice I come around to certain subjects on a cyclic basis. Having heard and been completely entranced by Bob Dylan's latest album, recorded when he was 79 years old and apparently in yet another flowering of his startling lyric genius, I'm now in a Dylanish, Bobbyish phase once again.
I have my favorites, but because he has written so many hundreds of songs it's hard to pick just one, or even just a dozen. I became attached to one of his earlier albums, Desire, in part because of the unusual violin stylings of Scarlet Rivera, but largely because of some truly kick-ass songs. It isn't Dylan at his best, but it's a more relaxed and self-revealing Dylan than most, with some memorable and sweetly pining love songs. One More Cup of Coffee stands out for its breathtakingly succinct language:
Your sister tells the future, like your mother and yourself
You never learned to read and write, there's no books upon your shelf
And your pleasure knows no limits, your voice is like a meadowlark
But your heart is like an ocean, mysterious and dark
One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go
To the valley below.
How Dylan can cram an entire biography, not to mention a family history, into a few deft lines is completely beyond me - but that's genius for you. You can't define it, but you know when you are in its presence.
But while wandering around inside this one-of-my-many-favorite Dylan albums, I rediscovered a tender love ballad called Oh, Sister - and remembered that this song led to a famous, if not infamous, musical feud.
It was obvious to anyone who knew the situation that Oh, Sister was written - not for, but AT Joan Baez, expressing some obvious hurt and self-pity for having been "wronged" by someone he felt so close to that they could have been (ick!) brother and sister. Dylan doesn't have a sister, and it's kind of evident by these sentiments. But it's also pretty manipulative stuff, and as usual with Dylan, you kind of have to pull it apart to really get at it.
Oh, Sister Bob Dylan
Oh, sister, when I come to lie in your arms You should not treat me like a stranger Our Father would not like the way that you act And you must realize the danger
Oh, sister, am I not a brother to you And one deserving of affection And is our purpose not the same on this earth To love and follow his direction
We grew up together From the cradle to the grave We died and were reborn And then mysteriously saved
Oh, sister, when I come to knock on your door Don't turn away, you'll create sorrow Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore You may not see me tomorrow
Oh, sister - where do we start? This is a really short song, but as usual, it's packed with megatons of import. The first couple of lines aren't just reproachful: they actually contain the word "should", as if he has the right to dictate how she feels about him. From the erotic reference to lying in her arms (which can also be seen as a mother thing), he quickly segues to "Our Father", as if he's suddenly saying the Lord's Prayer. Dylan's entrenched religiosity can be a real ambush which is difficult to endure right in the middle of a supposed love song.
And as for the line "realize the danger" - of what? Even if we don't go there, we find in the next stanza that he thinks he's "deserving of affection", which she is obviously withholding. He also jumps the gun on not only HIS, but HER purpose here on earth, assuring her (and assuming) that he knows more about it than she does, though it's doubtful he ever asked.
"We grew up together/From the cradle to the grave" - well, it WAS the '60s, wasn't it, and they were in a kind of glamourous blaze of folkie love, but that "cradle to the grave" bit also seems to jump the gun. Not only are they not dead yet, they're still only in their thirties. And all that died-and-reborn stuff is a little heavy for a love ballad. Dylan is still hiding behind his heavy-handed Christianity - but wait, this was BEFORE all that happened! The symptoms of the disease were already there: self-righteousness mascarading as piety.
The last verse is deceptively beautiful, but similarly "loaded": if she dares turn him away, she's going to "create sorrow" - not just for him, but for both of them, if not the whole world. Ahem! "You may not see me tomorrow" sounds almost like a threat. Is he going to die or what? Come on, Bob, make it clear.
The funny and really Dylan-ish thing about this song is that, when you hear him sing it, it sounds sweetly sentimental, full of lyricism and longing, not the piece of subversive abuse that it truly is. Dylan manipulated Baez like a yo-yo for years, jerking the string just as she was getting over him (see the truly incredible Diamonds and Rust, the only song she ever wrote which was a worthy adversary of the Dylan one-two punch). She STILL isn't over him, if a recent PBS special is any indication - she goes all dewy-eyed and then even apologizes for his cruelty to her, saying she just didn't understand back then what he was all about. (As if he wasn't busy telling her that, not to mention what SHE was all about.)
But at the time, some time in the '70s, Baez's reaction to Oh, Sister was one of white-hot fury. Dylan had the effrontery to keep his marriage to Sara Lowndes a secret, not just from the whole world but from the woman he supposedly cherished as a soul mate. Baez didn't even know about Sara until she heard Bob was sick, popped in to see him, and his wife, who happened to be a dark-eyed fashion model, opened the door. It was one of the worst betrayals in popular music history, and the song is one long vomit of the toxins his deception created.
I had trouble even posting it here because it seethed and fumed and even spewed vitriol. Because Baez is Baez and unable to cram all this into one line like "you'd know what a drag it is to see you", it goes on for verses and verses. I watch true crime shows, though I probably shouldn't, and when someone is stabbed to death, they are always stabbed 47 times, and it always turns out to be a family member or spouse. It's called "overkill", something that can only be perpetrated by someone with intense feelings for the victim.
The opposite of love isn't hate. It's indifference. Baez takes a lot of verses to purge herself, is as nasty as she knows how to be, and even uses a refrain (take it easy, but take it) that comes directly out of a Woody Guthrie song.
I do wonder, if Dylan paid any attention to this at the time, how much it affected him. Though I always saw something one-sided in their immortal Darby-and-Joan (or Bonnie and Clyde) connection, Dylan rhapsodized about Baez during an interminable acceptance speech he gave for some award or other a few years ago. Who knows what THAT was about. He talked for half an hour, when it's more normal for him to just take the award and run.
This never gets resolved.
Dylan will turn 80 in a couple of months - yes, eighty freaking years old, and Baez might be there already. Dylan has suddenly hit the jackpot - AGAIN - proving he has more creative lives than a wildcat (bobcat?), and isn't finished with us yet. Are these two extremely old people still attached by some freakish umbilical cord born of history, twins like Castor and Pollux (excuse me, I've been listening to Dylan's latest album and it's chock-a-block with mythology)? Or did they just get thrown together by a simple twist of fate?
Oh, Brother! Joan Baez
You've got eyes like Jesus But you speak with a viper's tongue We were just sitting around on earth Where the hell did you come from? With your lady dressed in deerskin And an amazing way about her When are you going to realize That you just can't live without her?
Take it easy Take it light But take it
Your lady gets her power From the goddess and the stars You get yours from the trees and the brooks And a little from life on Mars And I've known you for a good long while And would you kindly tell me, mister How in the name of the Father and the Son Did I come to be your sister?
Take it easy Take it light But take it
You've done dirt to lifelong friends With little or no excuses Who endowed you with the crown To hand out these abuses? Your lady knows about these things But they don't put her under Me, I know about them, too And I react like thunder
Take it easy Take it light But take it
I know you are surrounded By parasites and sycophants When I come to see you I dose up on coagulants Because when you hurl that bowie knife It's going to be when my back is turned Doing some little deed for you And baby, will I get burned
Take it easy Take it light But take it
So little brother when you come To knock on my door I don't want to bring you down But I just went through the floor My love for you extends through life And I don't want to waste it But honey, what you've been dishing out You'd never want to taste it And if I had the nerve To either risk it or to break it I'd put our friendship on the line And show you how to take it
Take it easy Take it light But take it
SPECIAL BONUS RECORD. Like those cereal-box records I collected as a kid, I can't help but share the magic of this. It's just one of the songs on Dylan's latest album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, which is among the best he has ever done. Though it might be said the song is about Joan, I think it more likely that it's about his most faithful love: the love of his Saviour, his truest friend always, the Son of Man.
I have tried to remain as apolitical as possible over the years, mainly because there are elements of politics that make me so physically and mentally sick that I can't engage with the subject. But today is different.
I have some things to say to our neighbor to the South, as we watch all these atrocities in utter horror. Much has been made in the media about how the barbarians are "at the gate". Wrong. These thugs are not "AT" the gate. They trampled the gate down and ransacked the symbolic heart of government, putting everyone's lives at risk for hours while the cops stood back, posed for selfies with white supremacists, and even directed traffic, showing the mob the way to those offices that are so hard to find. Have you forgotten that already? How short is your attention span?
Everyone is now talking in circles, "discussing" whether they "should" try to stop this monster right away rather than allow his white supremacist lackeys to re-organize and try it again, perhaps tomorrow or the next day, or even TODAY. But the Proud Boys and neo-Nazis will not just quietly retreat while you wait until Biden takes power. Biden (whom I have respected up to now) is putting the whole situation on hold and passing the buck on impeachment for six months so he will have a nice opportunity to establish his policies without "distractions".
Meanwhile, holding your breath for twelve more days (which was actually floated as a "strategy") doesn't sound too rational to me. When the next attack comes - WHEN, not if - more lives will be lost. Perhaps, astoundingly more. This time it was "only" five, and by US standards, five lives lost doesn't seem to even qualify as a mass shooting. It's small potatoes, perhaps the price of doing business with Trump.
WAKE UP! Trump is a criminal and should be arrested and jailed NOW, in a maximum security prison. It is the only response that makes any sense at all. His followers are killers, and an even more formidable force now because a splinter group is forming which is furious with Trump and feel disillusioned and betrayed. They are capable of ANY kind of insurrection which comes to their evil minds. Remember history - Hitler's own henchmen tried to assassinate him more than once, not to free their country from tyranny but so that THEY could seize power.
Ruthless, soulless people will turn on the one they worshipped in a heartbeat, leading to incalculably more violence and bloodshed - while the "discussion" goes on and on, going in useless circles while nothing is done. COME ON, PEOPLE! Be responsible and sane, and ACT. Are you scared you'll maybe break one of the rules? WHAT RULES? They have been smashed all to pieces! Mass arrests are happening now, the guys wearing furs and horns and waving American flags with bayonets on them, but meanwhile the ringleader is humored and allowed to go on untouched for another 12 days - for the same reason he has gone on untouched for four years, even after he was formally impeached.
EVERYONE IS AFRAID OF HIM.
Everyone - the nation, the cops, the President-elect, and most especially, his own corrupt party - is terrified of this man, too terrified and paralyzed to DO anything. It is as if they are "waiting", buying themselves time and refusing to act quickly enough to save the nation.
You people are afraid of your own President, a direct result of allowing yourselves to be ruthlessly bullied and cowed for four years. It's too late for clever Randy Rainbow parodies and Alec Baldwin caricatures that have enabled people to laugh about and distance themselves from the horror for so many years. Humor is a distancing tool and a coping mechanism, but it is in shreds and tatters now. It's not funny any more, and trying to pretend it is will only make things worse.
As a Canadian, I have to watch all this, powerless and sickened and VERY afraid - not of Trump, but for the safety and even the existence of your nation, and, unavoidably, our own. You are on the brink, and having "ongoing discussions" and talking in endless circles while Biden sits on his hands and the fascist yahoos cry for more blood. What does it take for you to act?
"Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the halls For he who gets hurt will be HE WHO HAS STALLED The battle outside raging Will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls For the times, they are a-changin'."
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' Then 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 aging 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'
And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend
You'd better leave."
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row.
Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortune-telling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row.
Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah's great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row.
Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
NOW, he looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
You would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row.
Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They ARE trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She's in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy on His Soul"
They all play on the penny whistle
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row.
Across the street they've nailed the curtains
They're getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
In a perfect image of a priest
They are spoon-feeding 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.
At midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
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
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row.
Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
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
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row.
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
About the time the door knob broke
When you asked me how I was doing
Or was that some kind of joke?
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
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row.
They're selling postcards of the hanging They're painting the passports brown Here Dylan immediately establishes a macabre atmosphere of heartless exploitation. Human execution has become the subject of postcards, a cheap and superficial means of communicating usually associated with vacations. Passports are similarly associated with travel (being "transported") and escape, a theme running through the entire lyric. That the passports are painted brown means that they are blurred, defaced, shat upon, or otherwise rendered invalid. Might it also be a weird twist on "painting the town red'? The beauty parlor is filled with sailors The circus is in town The sailors swarming the beauty parlour might be there to ogle women, or to become them, transforming themselves in garish drag. It's our first hint of a sense of dislocation: no one seems to be in the right place. "The circus is in town" is a familiar cliche (and let's not forget he grew up in a small town, in which the circus was a very big deal), which Dylan turns on its head: this motley parade will lead us to a hellish place from which there is no escape. Here comes the blind commissioner They've got him in a trance One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker The other is in his pants It's worth mentioning that "they" are never identified. I remember hearing someone say, "They've shot John Lennon." Facelessness and blank masks and constantly-shifting identities inflame the lyric's rampant paranoia. The "blind commissioner" is some sort of deposed authority figure reduced to dragging along helplessly behind a circus performer walking a tightrope, while simultaneously masturbating.
And the riot squad they're restless They need somewhere to go As Lady and I look out tonight From Desolation Row. The police are out there and looking for trouble, hoping for a good riot. Like juvenile delinquents, they're hanging around waiting for something to happen. Desolation Row seems forever on the point of exploding in apocalyptic violence. "They need somewhere to go" speaks of a lost traveller, one of the many figures in this song who is dislocated and "a stranger everywhere". "Lady and I" adds a sudden incongruous but very Dylanesque romanticism: or is it Our Lady, Mother of God that he speaks of?
Cinderella, she seems so easy "It takes one to know one," she smiles And puts her hands in her back pockets Bette Davis style Cinderella portrayed as good-time girl is remeniscent of a line from an Auden poem: "And Jill goes down on her back." Bette Davis gives her a touch of old Hollywood glamour, but we can see her posturing as if her body is for sale. And hey, how about that line "it takes one to know one"? Just what is she implying about the songwriter - has he similarly sold himself to the public - or does it have nothing to do with him? 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'd better leave."
Enter Romeo, stage left. But doesn't he belong with Juliet? Apparently not, but he doesn't belong here either. "Someone", that notorious "they", is telling him to leave. Wrong play, perhaps? And doesn't Romeo end up dead? Whereas Cinderella ends up transformed. In a manner of speaking. And who is the "someone" telling Romeo to get lost? Some stray Prince who's just as much out of place? And the only sound that's left After the ambulances go Is Cinderella sweeping up On Desolation Row. "Ambulances" implies twenty-nine harrowing violent movie scenes that we never get to see because we don't have to - it's all condensed down into a couple of lines, a few sirens wailing (and after the fact - they've already gone). "Something" has happened, but we're never told what. Cinderella is like the fairy tale in reverse: she ends up sweeping the street, back to her rags and tatters, and tricks.
Now the moon is almost hidden The stars are beginning to hide The fortune-telling lady Has even taken all her things inside
Dylan does this, he suddenly and dramatically varies the tone so that the lyric is shot through with beauty. The fortune-telling lady is a magical, almost paranormal figure, her palm-readings and Tarot cards (more about that later) predicting a future that seems, at best, uncertain. But it's so late, so dark, so spooky out that even she has to protect her wares. All except for Cain and Abel And the hunchback of Notre Dame Everybody is making love Or else expecting rain
Impenetrable lines, but they inexplicably work, like all genius does: Biblical references pop up constantly in Dylan's writing, so Cain slew Abel, perhaps raising Cain in the process, and the hunchback is just another grotesque soul seeking "sanctuary". And the next two lines are Dylanisms just as surely as "he not busy being born is busy dying". They seem to say: choose life/Eros, or choose dullness and the conventional life with its boring expectations, where everything is "right as rain". Or is this really about Noah's flood and its inevitable culling of the sinful?
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing He's getting ready for the show He's going to the carnival tonight On Desolation Row.
Another Biblical reference, but a sardonic one: the figure whose name is synonymous with selfless help and even personal risk is now reduced to just another performer, donning the motley for the "show". And Biblically, the Samaritan was at the bottom of the heap socially, almost an untouchable, which is what gave Jesus' parable such punch. Ophelia, she's 'neath the window For her I feel so afraid On her twenty-second birthday She already is an old maid This is a strange one, but then, the characters on Desolation Row just get stranger. Unlike Cinderella who turns tricks, Ophelia goes crazy while Hamlet seduces his mother. And 'neath the window - is that some sort of weird inversion of Romeo and Juliet? (By the way, what DID happen to Romeo?) This is someone who has apparently died before she even had a chance to live. To her, death is quite romantic She wears an iron vest Her profession's her religion Her sin is her lifelessness "Lifelessness is the Great Enemy & always wears a hip guard—he is very hipguard,"Dylan wrote in Tarantula, and if you can figure THAT out, you've nailed these lines. The iron vest sounds like medieval torture, or else kinky. This whole poem/song is about the sin of lifelessness or, perhaps, the deathwardness of the eternal Show. "Her profession's her religion" is a little too opaque for me to fathom, as her profession isn't the same as Cinderella's.
And though her eyes are fixed upon Noah's great rainbow She spends her time peeking Into Desolation Row. Ah, Bob! You know more about the Bible than the average monk or Catholic priest. "Expecting rain" may well be a reference to the Great Flood, but here the flood is over and the rainbow has appeared. "Peeking into" means that Ophelia has been cast out and has to "peek in", as in some great existential peep show. Funny that both she and Romeo stand beneath windows, on the outside looking in.
Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood With his memories in a trunk Passed this way an hour ago With his friend, a jealous monk You can try to pull this apart or leave it alone, but it pulls apart like a wishbone and spills weirdness like a cornucopia. Einstein, being the ultimate enigmatic genius, is headed for the carnival dressed up like Robin Hood, some sort of ancient folk hero who fires arrows, robs from the rich and gives to the poor. But he's already gone, folks, he passed this way an hour ago and you missed him. Memories in a trunk - another version of the iron vest, the lifelessness of self-suffocation? And why is his friend so jealous, and of what (and why is he a monk? Maybe it just scanned, we don't know.)
Now, he looked so immaculately frightful As he bummed a cigarette Then he went off sniffing drainpipes And reciting the alphabet This implies some sort of hobo in disguise, a fraud, somebody who gets off on sniffing sewer gas or else is a kind of health inspector. Reciting the alphabet implies childishness, or the failure of the greatest mind in human history. You would not think to look at him But he was famous long ago For playing the electric violin On Desolation Row. Interesting that Einstein really was a quite gifted violinist. That line "famous long ago", three little words, Bobby, you really can spit them out, became the title of a book, and everybody knew where the title came from, it was just self-explanatory. The author of e=mc2 is now nothing but a musician standing on a street corner in a neighborhood which might be called degraded.
Dr. Filth, he keeps his world Inside of a leather cup But all his sexless patients They are trying to blow it up This stanza really chills me. It is past grotesque: it's harrowing. Who the fuck is this Dr. Filth, why are his patients (like Ophelia) so sexless? Where is the riot squad when you need them? Is the leather cup sort of like Baudelaire's image of a woman's vagina (so stomach-turning I can't reproduce it here)? For surely the literate Dylan would have read Baudelaire. And it's obvious that sexlessness is next to lifelessness.
Now his nurse, some local loser She's in charge of the cyanide hole And she also keeps the cards that read "Have Mercy on His Soul" There are those who would say this is Joan Baez, the great unnamed saint of the Row. Even Joan Baez thought it was Joan Baez. Calling her "some local loser" (and what in fuck's name is a "cyanide hole"? That's quite possibly the worst thing I ever heard of) seems harsh, but then come those two impossibly tender lines, which Baez quoted in Daybreak as "I also keep the cards that read have mercy on his soul". She might also be the same person as the fortune-telling lady taking all her things inside (because it might rain?). In the song She Belongs to Me, which as usual might be about Baez or might be about his first wife Sara Lowndes, Dylan portrays a lady full of mystical power ("she can take the dark out of the nighttime and paint the daytime black"). They all play on the penny whistle You can hear them blow If you lean your head out far enough From Desolation Row. "Blow" could be taken a couple of ways. Sexual? A drug reference? Or just "blow"? Pennywhistles imply innocence, childhood, and being too poor to afford a real instrument. Pennywhistles are irritating, shrill and unmusical. It's also never clear whether we are ON Desolation Row, looking INTO Desolation Row, or trying to get the hell OUT of Desolation Row. Dylan's camera darts all over the place.
Across the street they've nailed the curtains They're getting ready for the feast The Phantom of the Opera In a perfect image of a priest Who is whom here, and whom is who he appears to be? No one. The curtains are already nailed up for this ghastly dumbshow (and remember how in old gangster movies they say "it's curtains for you"?) Nailed-up curtains certainly aren't fancy and won't open and close like normal ones. They're crude, and - nailed in place like so many of the crippled characters. But it is also, as in the Catholic Church, a feast day, a holy celebration. And thus the Phantom, some sort of spiritual kin to the aforementioned Hunchback of Notre Dame, is wrapping himself in priestly raiment. Enough clergy here to start a monastery. They are spoon-feeding Casanova To get him to feel more assured Then they'll kill him with self-confidence After poisoning him with words The cast of this thing grows ever bigger, and each character is somehow laden. Spoon-feeding Casanova might allude to cooking heroin, or it might not. It might allude to feeding a baby, or it might not. He is traditionally a legendary lover and seducer. There's a weird take on sexuality in the song, of exploitation (the blind commissioner whacking off, Cinderella selling herself, Ophelia in her kinky iron maiden) and the uglifying of something that should be beautiful, even sacred. (Dylan is nothing if not a romantic.) And we're back to that amorphous, vaguely disturbing "they". Whoever they are, they are not too damn friendly.
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. If Romeo has been cast out, if he's in the wrong place, my friend, then surely Casanova is going to be out on his ass soon. The skinny girls are - what? Models? The Andy Warhol crowd Dylan hung out with? I wonder if this whole thing isn't about being tossed out of Eden, except that this is nobody's idea of the garden. Or if Casanova really is a heroin addict, perhaps the law has caught up with him?
At midnight all the agents And the superhuman crew Come out and round up everyone That knows more than they do Here we get into the most delicious paranoia, a macabre vision straight out of a sweating, gasping film noir/spy movie. Who ARE these people - part of the unnamed "they"? Agents of WHAT? And I love that line "come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do". Are these people - "everyone" - really smarter? Or do they just carrying a burden of subversive, secret knowledge? 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 Check to see that nobody is escaping To Desolation Row.
The heart-attack machine is the most sadistic thing I have ever heard of: not a defibrillator, but the opposite, something that GIVES you a heart attack. And then the kerosene. . . This is like "after the ambulances go", a couple of words slamming us against the wall. No mention of a fire or of someone starting a fire, but we don't need that, we already know. Insurance men in their dull facelessness seem to foreshadow the infamous, soulless figure, Mr. Jones, the epitome of the "establishment'. And let's not get into "escaping to", it's just too convoluted. Praise be to Nero's Neptune The Titanic sails at dawn Everybody's shouting "Which side are you on?"
Nero is the one who fiddled while Rome burned. The Titanic is a mite obvious, but like all of this bizarre imagery, it works. "Everybody" is "nobody" and could be anybody, and the question they're shouting, "which side are you on?", is one Dylan heard and had to try to answer or ignore for his whole life. And is no doubt still dealing with. (What do the lyrics mean?) And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot Fighting in the captain's tower While calypso singers laugh at them And fishermen hold flowers
This seems like a blatant contrast of intellectual elitism with simple, life-loving joy, not so much a mockery as a dismissal of violence and hate: so that yes, even in this song there is some sort of breath of hope. I see the fishermen and calypso singers all jumbled in with the mysterious ugly horrific vivid incendiary images of the song as in a Picasso painting, where everything is happening at once. But if you really want to dig (man), the singers do the same thing Bob does, and the fishermen echo Jesus' famous words, "I will make you fishers of men." Holding flowers is either a hippie thing, or a garden thing, take your choice. Between the windows of the sea Where lovely mermaids flow And nobody has to think too much About Desolation Row. Unlike Ballad of a Thin Man, this song does have unexpected beauty strewn through it. Is Desolation Row a choice, a punishment, a purgatory leading on to greater glory, or to eternal damnation? Is it just the bizarre baffling imagery of a genius on acid who hadn't slept in about 45 days? We know it is compelling, and hard to get away from. But it's not over yet. As with all great works of music, there is a coda.
Yes, I received your letter yesterday About the time the door knob broke When you asked me how I was doing Was that some kind of joke? I am virtually certain, though I cannot provide proof, that he chose "broke" to rhyme with "joke". But then, a broken doorknob does imply not being able to get in or out. "Was that some kind of joke?" dismisses all possibility that the asker even cares, or only cares in order to get something. The question has a sardonic Positively Fourth Street feel to it. What's it to you? You got a lotta nerve. 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 Thus does the artist casually create and destroy his own universe, so that all the characters come out looking like versions of himself. As for "give them all another name", remember his nickname in high school was Zimbo. The old saw "all the characters are really me" is even more of a stretch than what I'm doing here. Right now I can't read too good Don't send me no more letters, no Not unless you mail them From Desolation Row.
It's well-known that Bob really can't read very well, he's always been blind as the proverbial fruit bat, so maybe this is one line we can take literally. Don't forget "here comes the blind commissioner/They've got him in a trance." But "don't send me no more letters, no" means he's cutting himself off from contact with people. And - oh, this is a good one! - what was in the very first line of this thing? POSTCARDS. But typical of Dylan, they aren't sending postcards, but selling them. So the old saw "I'll send you a postcard" becomes, sardonically, "I'll sell you a postcard." Bob Dylan's masterpiece, if that's what this is, reflects his profound ambivalence about the vertiginous and devouring carnival of fame, his own fame in particular: he lied about working in carnivals as a boy, then found himself IN one, magnetically attracting a horde of sycophants, sociopaths and losers. But which character IS he, anyway? The most likely contender, in my mind (and this is MY essay, so I can surmise if I want to) is Einstein disguised as Robin Hood: genius in the guise of folk hero. Costumed poseur, lost troubadour shifting from identity to identity, the figure comes closer than any of the others to a self-portrait of the most unlikely Nobel winner in the history of the prize, that enigmatic gift to the world, Bob Dylan.
