Why I think this Bob Dylan song is all about Joan Baez

One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)

Bob Dylan

I didn't mean
To treat you so bad
You shouldn't take it so personal
I didn't mean
To make you so sad
You just happened to be there, that's all

When I saw you say "goodbye" to your friend and smile
I thought that it was well understood
That you'd be comin' back in a little while

I didn't know that you were sayin' "goodbye" for good

But, sooner or later, one of us must know
That you just did what you're supposed to do
Sooner or later, one of us must know
That I really did try to get close to you

I couldn't see
What you could show me
Your scarf had kept your mouth well hid
I couldn't see
How you could know me
But you said you knew me and I believed you did

When you whispered in my ear
And asked me if I was leavin' with you or her
I didn't realize just what I did hear
I didn't realize how young you were

But, sooner or later, one of us must know
That you're just doin' what you're supposed to do
Sooner or later, one of us must know
That I really did try to get close to you

I couldn't see
When it started snowin'
Your voice was all that I heard
I couldn't see
Where we were goin'
But you said you knew an' I took your word

And then you told me later, as I apologized
That you were just kiddin' me, you weren't really from the farm
An' I told you, as you clawed out my eyes that I
Never really meant to do you any harm

But, sooner or later, one of us must know
That you just did what you're supposed to do
Sooner or later, one of us must know
That I really did try to get close to you

This song appears on Dylan's second-to-best album, Blonde on Blonde (1966), the best (of course!) being Rough and Rowdy Ways, which he released only last year. My analysis of this song, line-by-line, attempts to prove my thesis:  though never recognized as such, it is a shockingly detailed, almost literal re-telling of his stormy, complicated and often sado-masochistic relationship with Joan Baez.

I didn't mean
To treat you so bad
You shouldn't take it so personal

The song starts off with this heartless and cynically dismissive assertion. In essence, he's saying to Joan, "Hey, I demolished you emotionally, but stop being so touchy about it. It didn't mean anything to me."

I didn't mean
To make you so sad
You just happened to be there, that's all

That glimmer of compassion ("I didn't mean to make you so sad") is then negated, if not stomped into the ground, by the cruelly casual "you just happened to be there, that's all". This is beyond dismissive - it borders on contempt, as if a figure as crucial to his career as Baez was just a bystander or a piece of furniture in his path (if not in his  way).

When I saw you say "goodbye" to your friend and smile
I thought that it was well understood
That you'd be comin' back in a little while

I didn't know that you were sayin' "goodbye" for good

Now, this MAY be related to a scene from the infamous 1966 documentary Dont Look Back (apostrophe omitted on purpose, for reasons unknown). Cameras followed Dylan around on his London tour, and though the concert performances are outstanding, the really fascinating part  takes place in Dylan's hotel room, filled with hangers-on (including a then-unknown Donovan, soon to eclipse Dylan on the hit parade) and media people hanging about like vultures. But one of these hangers-on was Baez, who came along with Dylan on tour (inviting herself, I believe) as a tag-along. Though Baez generously gave Bob's fledgling career a boost in 1961 by bringing him up onstage with her (when he was "a complete unknown" - sorry!), Dylan even more famously did NOT return the favor. It's as if she wasn't even considered. Was she asking too much, or did she have a hidden agenda all along, boosting her OWN career by giving the meteoric "unwashed phenomenon" a leg-up which he didn't actually need? 

In any case, the dynamics here are tangled and complex. The thwarted Joan was left strumming a stray guitar in the hotel room and singing in an ear-splitting voice that is really meant to be heard from  a distance. I don't remember the song, but it sure wasn't anything original. She was still singing archaic, traditional folk ballads like Mary Hamilton and Silver Dagger, with Dylan having long passed and surpassed her several years before.

"When I saw you say goodbye to your friend and smile" - that whole verse actually, literally happened. A particularly obnoxious sycophant named Bobby Neuwirth, supposedly Joan's good friend, attacked her verbally on-camera for no reason, claiming she was nothing but a flat-chested has-been (!). Joan tried to laugh it off, but you could see how devastated she was as she slipped out the door to catch the nearest plane home. Goodbye for good. But Dylan attempts to yank the yo-yo string by assuming she'd be "coming back in a little while" - an arrogant assertion if ever there was one.

But, sooner or later, one of us must know
That you just did what you're supposed to do
Sooner or later, one of us must know
That I really did try to get close to you

Again, this is so back-handed! "You just did what you're supposed to do" may be a reference to the way Baez proudly displayed the still-wet-behind-the-ears Dylan on stage during HER concert performances. After singing Masters of War or With God on Our Side, she'd get the audience all stirred up by asking the crowd, "Would you like to meet the young man who wrote  that song?", prompting screams of adulation.  And "I really did try to get close to you" can be taken at least two ways. It echoes the story of the disgusting sycophant Richard Farina, who, shockingly, married Joan's teenaged sister Mimi just to "get close to" Joan. For career reasons only.

I couldn't see
What you could show me
Your scarf had kept your mouth well hid
I couldn't see
How you could know me
But you said you knew me and I believed you did

More enigmatic statements, but "your scarf it kept your mouth well hid" may be a shockingly direct detail (in the way Dylan can throw in shockingly direct details, even in the middle of the most surrealistic song). In Dont Look Back, Joan attempts to attract some attention by covering her mouth with a gauzy scarf and doing a sort of seductive harem dance in the hotel room. For no apparent reason, Neuwirth casually, mockingly rips into her. She dances around like Mata Hari, trying  desperately to look as if she's just goofing around and having a good time, as Dylan coldly ignores her and Neuwirth gores her in her most vulnerable places. "Look, there's Fang Baez, wearing one of those see-through blouses that you don't even wanna!" Ignoring all this, Dylan is as self-absorbed as always.  "But you said you knew me and I believed you did" seems to hint that HE felt (bizarrely) betrayed by HER. Today we'd call that "gaslighting".

When you whispered in my ear
And asked me if I was leavin' with you or her
I didn't realize just what I did hear
I didn't realize how young you were

Oh, now THIS one! This is very direct. At the time of the London tour, Dylan  was secretly married to Sara Lownds, a figure who is  to this day mysterious because she has never spoken to the media about Dylan or anyone/anything else. Baez knew nothing of her or of his secret marriage, but was to find out in a shocking, hurtful way. She came to his hotel room after hearing a rumor that he was sick, bringing him a shirt she had picked out for him. Sara answered the door, took the shirt, thanked her nicely, and closed the door again. "You or her" is sung with such vitriol that it can only be for real. "I didn't realize just what I did hear/I didn't realize how young you were" is a bit mysterious, since Baez is half a year older. And why is he playing so innocent with that "I didn't realize" business? "How young you were" is a bit of a puzzle, but it's known that Dylan was attracted to the 17-year-old Mimi Baez (then still in high school) before he took up with Joan.

I couldn't see
When it started snowin'
Your voice was all that I heard
I couldn't see
Where we were goin'
But you said you knew an' I took your word

Am I reaching here? Not by much. In the lyrics of Baez' melancholy anthem to Dylan, Diamonds and Rust, there appear these lines: 

Now I see you standing

With brown leaves falling around
And snow in your hair
Now you're smiling out the window
Of that crummy hotel over Washington Square

Our breath comes out white clouds
Mingles and hangs in the air
Speaking strictly for me

We both could have died then and there

Yes, SNOW. But the snow falling all around them and lighting on his famous nimbus of hair was blinding his view. Can't see in front of me, Joanie, it's SNOWING outside. And "your voice was all that I heard" - well, that's a bit obvious. What else does he care about 'cept what she (meaning her voice) can do for his career? "Couldn't see where we were goin'" might be literal (Dylan is blind as a bat without his glasses, and too vain to wear them in public), but it can also mean where the relationship was going. It was inseparable from the complicated dynamics of their briefly-intertwining careers. It seems to me he  (at least initially) liked and admired her, but SHE was madly, passionately in love with him. "But you said you knew an' I took your word" seems to suggest  Baez wanted to retain sort of share in Dylan for "discovering" him, and the direction she was taking him in (a sort of creative partnership) wasn't what he wanted at all. He was too proud to receive help from anyone, and by that time he was already more famous than Baez would ever be. So, once again, the line has a flavour of accusation, as if he trusted HER and she somehow betrayed him.

And then you told me later, as I apologized
That you were just kiddin' me, you weren't really from the farm
An' I told you, as you clawed out my eyes that I
Never really meant to do you any harm

This may just be a Dylanesque detail thrown in for drama. Hmmmm, did he really apologize to her, how sincerely, and exactly for what? For shooting down her floating hopes with a poisoned arrow? "Clawed out my eyes" and "never meant to do you  any harm" both seem like fiction to me. But years later, in answer to a sappy song Dylan recorded called Oh, Sister (which most felt was a sort of backhanded, even chastising love song for Baez - he  wasn't quite through with her yet), Baez wrote a song right back at him, called Oh, Brother! In it she clearly refers to the nasty triangle of Dylan, Baez and Sara Lowndes. But all this came much later. Could Dylan see (even with his blind eyes)  "where we were going", after all?

The line about "from the farm" makes no sense to me at all, unless it's a reference to Maggie's Farm. Upon which Dylan ain't going to work no more. Oh, or it could be this - on the same album, there's a line in Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands (known to be a paean to Sara): "They wish you'd accepted the blame for the farm." I can't make this one out either, except her "streetcar visions" may be a reference to A Streetcar Named Desire and Blanche Dubois losing the family plantation, Belle Rive. OK, I know, it's far-fetched, but so is Dylan, sometimes.

But, sooner or later, one of us must know
That you just did what you're supposed to do
Sooner or later, one of us must know
That I really did try to get close to you

Sooner or later, and he  doesn't seem to care too much if it IS sooner or later, "one of  us" must know (and in Diamonds and Rust, Baez talks about Dylan's talent for "keeping things vague") that she served her purpose - what she was "supposed to do", which is to make him famous. But did he really try to get close to her, and what exactly does that mean? In the Richard Farina sense? Though Dylan's famous, probably fictional "motorcycle accident" in 1966 gave him  the massive time-out he needed to survive, ironically, Farina died at the same time in an actual motorcycle accident. Richard Farina, who was married to Joan Baez's 17-year-old sister. Oh, what a tangled web, and how skillfully and ruthlessly Dylan weaves fiction and fact together! But this is one nasty song, and I can't  see how to read it any other way.

In subsequent years - MUCH later - Dylan praised Baez to the  skies, even rhapsodizing about her in a bizarre 30-minute award acceptance speech in the early 2000s. Too little, too late? Though  Baez generously and publicly congratulated Dylan for his 2020 masterpiece, Rough and Rowdy Ways, she has also said she has no desire to meet up with him again. Sooner or later, one of them (meaning HIM) must know just what he did to her, and how wounds that deep and devastating can never heal.

 

It's all come back too clearly (Diamonds and Rust)

Well I'll be damned

Here comes your ghost again

But that's not unusual

It's just that the moon is full

And you happened to call

And here I sit
Hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I'd known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall

As I remember your eyes
Were bluer than robin's eggs
My poetry was lousy you said
Where are you calling from?
A booth in the midwest

Ten years ago

I bought you some cufflinks

You brought me something

we both know what memories can bring

They bring               diamonds and rust

Well you burst on the scene

Already a legend

           The unwashed phenomenon

                                                                                                   The original vagabond
                                   
                           You strayed into my arms

and there you stayed

      Temporarily          lost at sea 

The Madonna was yours for free

Yes the girl on the half-shell       Would keep you 

                         unharmed

Now I see you standing

With brown leaves falling around
And snow in your hair
Now you're smiling out the window
Of that crummy hotel
Over Washington Square

Our breath comes out white clouds
Mingles and hangs in the air
Speaking strictly for me
We both could have died then and there

Now you're telling me     You're not nostalgic      Then give me 

another word for it               You who are so good with words        And at keeping things 
vague

Because I need some of that                         vagueness now
It's all come back too clearly                                                                 yes I loved you dearly

And if you're offering me diamonds and rust

I've already paid

Oh, Sister! Oh, Brother!

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.

Diamonds and Rust: a love that lasts a lifetime

The Nobel Prize for Literature is yet another step towards immortality for Bob Dylan. The rebellious, reclusive, unpredictable artist/composer is exactly where the Nobel Prize for Literature needs to be.
His gift with words is unsurpassable. Out of my repertoire spanning 60 years, no songs have been more moving and worthy in their depth, darkness, fury, mystery, beauty, and humor than Bob’s. None has been more of a pleasure to sing. None will come again.

- Joan Baez


Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Joan Baez. She was the queen of folk music then and now. She took a liking to my songs and brought me with her to play concerts, where she had crowds of thousands of people enthralled with her beauty and voice. People would say, "What are you doing with that ragtag scrubby-looking waif?" And she'd tell everybody in no uncertain terms, "Now you better be quiet and listen to the songs." We even played a few of them together. Joan Baez is as tough-minded as they come. Loyal, free minded and fiercely independent. Nobody can tell her what to do if she doesn't want to do it. I learned a lot of things from her. A woman of devastating honesty. And for her kind of love and devotion, I could never pay that back.

- Bob Dylan

Here comes your ghost again

Well I'll be damned
Here comes your ghost again

But that's not unusual

It's just that the moon is full

And you happened to call

And here I sit
Hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I'd known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall

As I remember your eyes
Were bluer than robin's eggs
My poetry was lousy you said
Where are you calling from?
A booth in the midwest

Ten years ago

I bought you some cufflinks

You brought me something

We both know what memories can bring

They bring diamonds and rust

Well you burst on the scene

Already a legend

           The unwashed phenomenon

The original vagabond

                                   
                           You strayed into my arms

And there you stayed

      Temporarily               lost at sea 

The Madonna was yours for free

Yes the girl on the half-shell     Would keep you 

unharmed

Now I see you standing

With brown leaves falling around
And snow in your hair
Now you're smiling out the window
Of that crummy hotel
Over Washington Square

Our breath comes out white clouds
Mingles and hangs in the air
Speaking strictly for me
We both could have died then and there

Now you're telling me     You're not nostalgic      Then give me 


another word for it               You who are so good with words        And at keeping things 

vague

Because I need some of that                         vagueness now


It's all come back too clearly                                                                 yes I loved you dearly

And if you're offering me diamonds and rust

I've already paid

My China doll

China Girl (filmmaking)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A China Girl image, with explanatory labels.

In the motion picture industry a China Girl is an image of a woman accompanied by color bars that appears for a few frames (typically one to four) in the reel leader. A "China Girl" was used by the lab technician for calibration purposes when processing the film (with the still photography equivalent being a "Shirley Card").[1] The origin of the term is a matter of some dispute[2] but is usually accepted to be a reference to the models used to create the frames - either they were actually china (porcelain) mannequins, or the make-up worn by the live models made them appear to be mannequins.

Originally the "China Girl" frames were created in-house by laboratories to varying standards, but in the mid-1970s engineers from the Eastman Kodak Company developed the Laboratory Aim Density system as a means of simplifying the production of motion picture prints. Under the LAD system, Kodak created many duplicate negatives of a single China Girl and provided them to laboratories to include in their standard leaders. These LAD frames were exposed to specific guidelines and allowed a laboratory technician to quickly make a subjective evaluation of a print's exposure and colour tone by looking at the China Girl herself. If a more objective evaluation were required, a densitometer could be used to compare the density of the colour patches in the LAD frame with Kodak's published guidelines.

In keeping with changes to the modern laboratory process, Kodak also provide a "Digital LAD" to be incorporated in the film-out process to check the accuracy of the film printer and processor.

In 2005, "China Girl" images were the subject of an art exhibit by Julie Buck and Karin Segal at the Harvard Film Archive[3]

The "China girl" has occasionally appeared as a visual trope in experimental films over the years. Some experimental films which use "China girls" include Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc. (1965-66) by Owen Land, New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops (1976) by Owen Land, Girls on Film (2005) by Julie Buck and Karin Segal, MM (1996) by Timoleon Wilkins, Standard Gauge (1984) by Morgan Fisher, To the Happy Few by Thomas Draschan and Stella Friedrichs, China Girls (2006) by Michelle Silva, and Releasing Human Energies (2012) by Mark Toscano.

The narrator and main character in the 2013 novel The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner shared her experience as a China Girl model for a film lab in New York City.

I'm a travelin' man

I've made a lot of stops all over the world

And in every part I own the heart

Of at least one lovely girl

I've a pretty Seniorita waiting for me

Down in old mexico

If you're ever in Alaska stop and see

My cute little Eskimo

Oh my sweet Fraulein down in Berlin town

Makes my heart start to yearn

And my China doll down in old Hong Kong

Waits for my return

Pretty Polynesian baby over the sea

I remember the night

When we walked in the sands of the Waikiki

And I held you oh so tight

------ instrumental break ------

Oh my sweet Fraulien down in Berlin town

Makes my heart start to yearn

And my China doll down in old Hong Kong

Waits for my return

Pretty Polynesian baby over the sea

I remember the night

When we walked in the sands of the Waikiki

And I held you oh so tight

Oh, I'm a travelin' man

Yes, I'm a travelin' man

SUNDAY THOUGHTS. I'm fascinated, if not obsessed by obsolete technology, and my goodness. I keep learning new things. I collect film leaders because they are just so bloody cool, and I am finding out I am not the only one who really really likes them. Film students and amateur filmmakers use them to give their productions a "retro" look and atmosphere.

I remember them from my McKeough School days, because on Friday afternoons when we were about to be released from prison, we'd all be marched downstairs into the dank, dark basement of the school to watch a "fillum". That's what they called it. For a long time I thought that was the right way to say it. Usually it was some edu-ma-cational thing, a National Film Board movie about the Rocky Mountains, or even a hygiene film, though of course we didn't know what hygiene was.

The fillums, which were at least 20 years old, would always start with the countdown, but before the countdown was that explosion of grease-pencil writing and scratches and flashes of "things". It also made - well, that sound, you know what I mean, that snappy, gritchy sound. The picture was pretty gritchy too, and usually black and white. Colour fillum was a very big deal in those days.

We particularly liked it when the countdown was accompanied by beeps. These were more like boops, actually. We were not supposed to count along - no one ever told us this, by the way. We just knew. Our principal was an old army man who kept order; we even marched in to military music in the morning. My God.

I sort of vaguely noticed split-second flashes of human faces (not always girls) in my film leaders, but wasn't sure why they were there. So today (last night, actually, very late, when I do these things) I found out about China Girls. I'm not sure exactly where the name came from. The Wikipedia entry seems embarrassed by it, trying to avoid the possibility that there's something racist about it. If it's a reference to porcelain or even a mannequin, the name would not be capitalized, would it? But here they capitalize BOTH names, just to stay on the safe side.

It brought to mind Ricky Nelson's Travellin' Man, an incredibly racist thing that basically says he fucks them all over the world, assigning them pretty much equal value as far as nooky is concerned. Or is that spelled Nooky?

And there's this, from Moving Image Archive News, in case you'd like to know more (and more, and more, and more).

China Girls, Leading Ladies, Actual Women

Oh, and. . . this, from a Harvard magazine (still trying to find the name). Given my post from a couple of days ago, there are only a few degrees of separation.

"What is striking is how familiar some of the faces seem. When the exhibition was shown in New York, Buck says, visitors would swear that they had seen some of the women in old films, but that is unlikely. As far as Buck and Segal have been able to determine, none of the women in this collection ever made the leap from China Girl to film actress.

Julie Buck and Karin Segal, after an unknown studio cameraman, 2004. 'Girl # 62' image courtesy of the artists. (Test Strip 62)

In the end, the sense of déjà vu probably results from the combination of lighting, makeup, hairstyles, clothes, and facial expressions that suggest film actresses of a particular era. But the resemblance does raise questions about why our response to a famous face is different from our reaction to one that is eerily similar but which lacks the associations acquired through a career as an actress and celebrity.

Rumors persist, however. One that Buck and Segal heard as they were interviewing film technicians is that a teenage Joan Baez once stood in as a test-strip girl when her physicist father was engaged in making an educational film in the Boston area. But so far, the photo has not shown up." (Emphasis mine. This DOES sound like something the adventurous young Joanie would try, looking for her .001 seconds of fame. As it turned out, she had nothing to worry about.)

But there's a kicker. A kicker to the kicker!

My exploration of China Girls led me to something called the Shirley Card. Let me explain. There were pretty "girls" (young women) posing, perhaps professionally, though likely for a pittance, as a standard for colour tones in still photography back in the '50s and '60s. This is where all the aspiring models went, when they weren't out on the town as escorts. Most of this had to do with getting skin tones right - because, as we all know, if we get THOSE right the rest of the picture is OK. Problem is, all of them were young, gorgeous and - of course - Caucasian. Their hopelessly idealized beauty explains why Joan Baez got so depressed back then. But look at her now, eh? - and most of THEM are probably dead, or all wrinkled up. Or dead.

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