Dylan of the Week, Mk. 8

“I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine”
Bob Dylan
John Wesley Harding – 1968

Sometimes repulsion is tempered with sadness, or is it pity? The song is so simple, that it must be hiding something. No one can make a statement about such a titanic figure being hypocritical and decrepit (“With a blanket underneath his arm / And a coat of solid gold”) without trying to say something more than what they're saying (look at Tom Waits!). This guy is someone we should be condemning, yet still preaches the word. It's because he feels the pains of his life that we are drawn to him. His fire and brimstone has become a “sad complaint”; his encouragement to “go on your way accordingly / But know you're not alone” sounds like some retired circus clown forced to perform one last time. So we kill him. Put a stake through his forehead and string him up. But, god! Dylan rarely sounds so sad as he does in those last two lines. Whose head did the stake go through?

Dylan of the Week, Mk. 7

“Wallflower”
Bob Dylan
The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3 – 1971

We beat our heads into the ground. Why was it always so funny? When his face crushed the pavement, beating it into a bloody pile? "She's flowing like the Santiam!" Cups spill blood (wine) that's fortified with iron. His homework reads like Bill Gate's receipts, his temerity only matched by his uselessness. His ability to do nothing busily. But Oh! what fun it is! Everyone should be enslaved by drunkeness for a fortnight, then set about the ears for industry. Working at capacity? Fuck that: working at gluttony. Give anyone the seven deadly sins (minus pride) and you'd be in Utopia. The utopia that Heironymous Bosch paints. Thats the funny part – irony. What cruelty that accompanies ecstasy! Blood, wine, blood, whiskey, then blood again.

Those simple delights. Like a cup of Ramen in the morning. Or a pretty girl. Or non-existence.

“Just like you I'm wondering what I'm doing here.”

A Wedding in Cherokee County

“A Wedding in Cherokee County”
Randy Newman
Good Old Boys - 1974

Self-confrontation. Isn't there a better word for it? Analysis? No. Psycho-something...psycho-affront? Whatever. What we have is that. A man (most definitely male) describing the inadequacies of his bride, which turn out to, most definitely, be his own characteristics. “She don't say nothin' / She don't do nothin' / She don't feel nothin' / She don't know nothin' / Maybe she's crazy, I don't know” but always with that “Maybe that's why I love her so”. (We're in the South, by the way.) So what is this thing that's so useless? Our speaker. Or, more significantly, our speaker's character. He's snagged the one thing he could get out of this shithouse – a woman. A woman that, “If she knew how she'd be unfaithful to me”. He doesn't have anything to offer – AND – the ultimate in abasement – he's physically adolescent! So, Girl – Check. Rescuer (“Her papa was a midget / Her mama was a whore”) - Check. Further, Courage, or at least its face (“I'm not afraid of the Greywolf / Who stalks through our forest at dawn”) - Check. Then the wedding, with all those freaks. And after that – show time. But his soul is torn asunder.

“I will carry her across the threshold
I will make dim the light
I will attempt to spend my love within her
Though I will try with all my might
She will laugh at my mighty sword
She will laugh at my mighty sword
Why must everybody laugh at my mighty sword?
Lord, help me if you will”

And that's it. Now watch that last bit, because its all there. It's all sexual. Failure in virtue, failure in maturity, failure in emotion, failure in normalcy – all from his physical failure! Newman is almost too cruel. Luckily he has that tinge of sardonicism.