I am thrilled that Zimmy won the Nobel Prize. It actually made my day.
In celebration, let us post some of our favorite Dylan lyrics.
From Idiot Wind:
I been double-crossed now
For the very last time and now I’m finally free
I kissed goodbye the howling beast
On the borderline which separated you from me
You’ll never know the hurt I suffered
Nor the pain I rise above,
And I’ll never know the same about you
Your holiness or your kind of love
And it makes me feel so sorry
The last 2 verses of Shelter From the Storm:
In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes
I bargained for salvation and she gave me a lethal dose
I offered up my innocence I got repaid with scorn
Come in, she said
I’ll give ya shelter from the storm
Well, I’m livin’ in a foreign country but I’m bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor’s edge, someday I’ll make it mine
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born
Come in, she said
I’ll give ya shelter from the storm
Damn, there are just sooooo many!
How about this bit from Mr. Tambourine Man:
Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time
Far past the frozen leaves
The haunted frightened trees
Out to the windy bench
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky
With one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea
Circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate
Driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow
The first three entries beat mine in terms of pure language and poetry.
However, the message of these words frequently resonate from the headlines of the day:
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’
Cinderella, she seems so easy
It takes one to know one, she smiles
And puts her hands into her back pockets
Bette Davis style
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”
And the only sound that’s left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On desolation row
Oh, don’t get me started, I could spin out classic Bob lines for days…
On preview, koeeoaddi ninja’d me on the Cinderella verse from “Desolation Row,” so I’ll take two:
You will start out standing, proud to steal her anything she sees
But you will wind up peeping though a keyhole down upon your knees.
And when I was through,
I filled up my shoe
And brought it to you.
You, you took me in,
You loved me then,
You never wasted time.
And I, I never took much,
I never asked for your crutch,
Now don’t ask for mine.
I’m a-thinking and a-wonderin’ walking down the road
I once loved a woman, a child I am told
I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don’t think twice, it’s all right.
I posted this on Facebook on the 20th anniversary of my wife and I meeting:
Suddenly I turned around and she was standing there
With silver bracelets on her wrist and flowers in her hair
She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns
Come in she said I’ll give ya shelter from the storm
I also love this one:
Even the president of the United States must sometimes have to stand naked
Through many a dark hour
I’ve been thinkin’ about this
That Jesus Christ was
Betrayed by a kiss
But I can’t think for you
You’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.
There’s beauty in the silver singin’ river
There’s beauty in the sunlight in the sky
But none of these, and nothing else
Can steal the beauty
That I remember in my true love’s eyes
“Damn, so many” is right. Bob’s lyrics are ingrained in my life. “When I Paint my Masterpiece” ran through my head for the four months I spent in Paris at age 19. “Tangled Up in Blue” can make me cry in certain moods. I had brain-blowing sex in college to “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” so many times…it was a full album side so we didn’t have to get up to flip the LP.
A cat’s meow and a cow’s moo,
I could recite them all
Tell me where it hurts you, honey
And I’ll tell you who to call
Nobody can get any sleep,
there’s something on everyone’s toes
When Quinn the Eskimo gets here
Everybody’s gonna doze.
“Doze” is a homophobe of “dose,” get it? Bob wrote this in 1966-7. “Dosing” was a slang term for taking LSD.
I love “Quinn the Eskimo” for the ambiguity. Dylanologists consider it either 1) an apocalyptic chant heralding the coming of a new Messiah and Armageddon, a la Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” or 2) a charming bit of children’s doggerel, in the style of Lewis Carroll.
Either way, it delights me.
Incidentally, our only son is named Quinn.
People are crazy
Life is strange
I’m locked in tight
I’m outta range
I used to care
But things have changed
From: Things Have Changed
These words have served me well over the years dealing with society at large.
You got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend
Well, I wake up in the morning
Fold my hands and pray for rain
I got a head full of ideas
That are drivin’ me insane
It’s a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.
To quote a very different author, “Get busy living or get busy dying”. Speaking personally, I worked (metaphorically) on Maggie’s farm for a good long while, so this song meant a lot to me when I first came across it.
My all-time favorite lyric:
In a soldier’s stance, I aimed my hand at the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not that I’d become my enemy in the instant that I preach
My existence led by confusion boats, mutiny from stern to bow
Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now
Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then I’m younger than that now
Stuck inside of Mobil, with the Memphis blues again.
And I’ll tell and speak it and think it and breathe it
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it
And I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singing
Dear Landlord, don’t leave me out in the cold
My burden is heavy, my dreams are beyond control
Though I know that evenin’s empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming.
Though you might hear laughin’, spinnin’ swingin’ madly across the sun
It’s not aimed at anyone, it’s just escapin’ on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin’
And if you hear vague traces of skippin’ reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it’s just a ragged clown behind
I wouldn’t pay it any mind, it’s just a shadow you’re
Seein’ that he’s chasing.
Mr. Tambourine Man is a kind of intersection of Dylan and Leonard Cohen and IMHO is Dylan at his absolute best.
It’s Alright Ma:
“For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something they invest in”
I could have sworn it was “to do what they do just to be something else they invest in”
Huh.