- The Philosophy of Modern Song. Black Magic Woman – Carlos Santana
- Can a Dylan song be a life changing experience? The Drifter’s Escape expresses it all.
By Tony Attwood
If you are a regular reader of Untold Dylan, then thank you, and here’s an observation. Indeed, you may well have made this observation yourself if anything on this site has any sort of impact on you. But just in case you have not, I’ll carry on…
About a year ago I wrote on this site the line, “When Bob clearly said, ‘Songs don’t have to mean anything…’, I explored that idea, and today I am back once again with that line, wondering if that is true: that songs don’t have to mean anything.” And then I got to thinking, supposing there are songs that don’t mean anything, what then? What implication does it have? Can we meaningfully write articles about songs that don’t mean anything at all?
The answer, of course, has to be yes, because we can write articles about instrumental pieces. So that suggests that pieces of music do not have to mean anything overt, but they can still have a meaning, whether the composer tells us about the meaning or whether he doesn’t.
Now, in contemplating this thought, which I do find rather interesting, I am drawn back to other art forms, and it strikes me that with some works of art (meaning not just visual art but all art forms of art: music, theatre architcture etc), there is art that has meaning and art that is purely functional. But supposing Bob writes a song, and as usual gives us no indication of its meaning, what then? Do we take a guess at its meaning, or do we assume it has no meaning? Or do we take it that perhaps there is a meaning but the meaning is hidden?
What actually seems to me to happen is that some people explore the meanings they find in the song, and then maybe criticise the song for being “confused” or unclear. Which in effect suggests that the meanings they have perceived have not been explored in the way that they want. In short, it’s a convoluted way of saying “This piece of art doesn’t do what I want it to do, so it is no good.”
That is a problem with an artwork that is fixed – such as a painting. But it is an even bigger problem with an artwork that is performed, since it can change every time it is delivered to an audience. Consider this opening…
… it gives a totally different feeling from the version that you may know best. But does that make it any worse for that?
But more than that, there is art that has a meaning for the creator, but has no meaning for the outsider looking at the art. And maybe there is art that doesn’t have any meaning at all.
And that raises the question, who decides? Can I just say that all the people who say they hate Dylan songs are just blind to his writing and painting? And if so, does it matter at all?
I mean, what does “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?” actually mean? We can find an answer of course, but Dylan’s song tells us there is no answer – or at least no answer for all time. So does that make the song any more or less a good work of art, given that it raises a question for which there is no answer?
What we do know is that Bob’s work is full of lines that sound as if they ought to make sense, but then in making them make sense, we may well find that we have bent the meaning so much that we can’t be sure of what Bob was actually saying in the first place. Take for example
For them that think death's honesty Won't fall upon 'em naturally Life sometimes must get lonely
That might well mean that if you think someone will deliberately seek to kill you, life gets lonely, presumably because you become afraid of everyone. But it could also refer to an accident that you might think will befall you one day. But maybe the message is that whatever the meaning, we shouldn’t worry because “It’s alright ma, it’s life and life only,” so maybe life is just, well, life and we should get on with it. But if life is boring and dull, why write such a gorgeous song about it?
Put another way, since we have reviewed all the songs Dylon has composed, some in just one article, many over the equivalent of a book (thank you Jochen) and been through the whole of the Never Ending Tour (thank you Mike) and reviewed virtually every album cover (thank you Patrick) and done lots of searching around for cover versions (thank you Tony, oh sorry that was me), and in the midst of it all lost our wonderful friend Aaron Galbraith – the question arises: what was the point? Are we just going round in circles – or does this prolonged exploration of Bob’s work, help us get more out of it?
The subjects and themes we cover are generally listed on the home page and as the person who decides what we publish and what we don’t I like to think I’m always open to new ideas. But new ideas on writing about Dylan are not that easy to find. But this is still UNTOLD Dylan, so we don’t want to write about what everyone else has written about – at least not too often. And besides, Bob doesn’t do that, so as people writing commentaries on his work, the least we should do, surely, is try to venture out into the unknown.
And yet, as time goes by, it gets harder and harder to find new themes which we can cover while still being in keeping with the website’s title “Untold”. Perhaps it gets harder to find a new theme to follow. Although maybe here is one. What about the meaning of Dyaln’s lyrics where there appears to be no meaning, or at least no coherent meaning, in a song?
Now this debate began with The Whiffenpoof Song which turned up in “The Philosophy of Modern Song” series. The Whiffenpoof tradition takes the idea of songs with meaning and turns it upside down by having songs with no meaning. That’s quite clear, and I suspect many of us have heard such songs.
But there is something else here: songs which are not deliberate nonsense, but which nonetheless still don’t have a meaning. Or maybe they do have a meaning, but we can’t be quite sure what it is. Or perhaps have no clear meaning because life itself has no clear meaning…
Take, for example,
you can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.
I love that line, and I have my own meaning extracted from it, but was it the meaning that Bob implied or wanted us to hear? Or has my explanation pushed aside the meaning inherent in the music?
Which raises the question again, does it matter? Put another way, how many of us have answered the question, “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?” How many of us have actually even thought about the answer? Or the implication of the question?
I mean, does the “How many roads” line question the validity of judges in courts, suggesting that if a judge has not had the experience of travelling the land on foot, he/she can’t fully grasp the meaning of anything? Which turns out to be quite an interesting question at the moment, as in my country, there is a huge debate going on about what views are permissible and what is legitimate protest. (At least I think that is what the debate is all about, although I might be wrong.)
Or do lyrics mean anything, or do they mean different things to different people, or does it matter if the lyrics mean one thing to you and one thing to me? Does it affect our appreciation of the song if we listen to
Standing on the water, casting your breath, while the eyes of the idol with the iron head are glowing
… and yet it has no impact at all? In other words, how many of it is us, how many is Bob, and how much of it is all the people who never listen to Bob?
I’m sitting here, thinking about it, and the best I can come up with is “errrr?” Likewise, when I come up with a cover version in relation to which I am not at all sure why it is there, or why the setting is as it is, does that affect the music?
Of course, there are lines that I am so used to, that I assume they have a meaning, and maybe think they have a meaning, but when I come back to such lines, and suddenly think about them, I am left pondering, “What actually does that mean”? Or am I still hooked on the line…
And that ladder of law has no top and no bottom
I took that for many years to mean that we are all equal before the law, and that wealth and power don’t affect justice. But then one day it struck me it doesn’t mean that at all. In fact, it means (I now think) that justice pretends to be complete, eternal, all-encompassing and based on fundamentals. But is it? Are there eternal rights and wrongs?
What I do know is that hearing Hattie Carroll immediately takes my mind back to the time when I did jury service at the Old Bailey (the central London court for criminal trials) and subsequently met two of the accused after we had found them not guilty.
And that made me think that maybe a central part of Bob’s work is that he takes our minds to places that they otherwise wouldn’t go. But still I keep worrying, is there something else that I have completely missed? As for example, with the line, “The ghost of ‘lectricity howls in the bones of her face.” You might then recall Larry’s article on Bob Dylan and symbolism on this site.
I’ve never known quite what or who that line describes, although I think the answer lies somewhere in the darker reaches of my mind. But as Larry said in that article, “Symbolist poets express states of mind, irrational thoughts, emotional feelings, and subconsciousness.”
The line from “Visions”
The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place
has been with me most of my adult life, and yet I still have no idea what on earth it means, although I think I settled on the fact that she looks very much like a person who really does know what’s going on, whereas I am still as lost as ever.
And that thought, took me a step further, which is certainly unexpected since I have known that line since I bought the album as my “school leaving present” to myself in 1966.
The sound of the line is enough to have an influence – and of course, in this case, to have existed in my head all my adult life, although it doesn’t mean I go around quoting the line (which would be silly, given that I don’t really understand what it means!) But it feels like it should have a meaning, and I want it to have a meaning, and yes it seems like it has a meaning, except I don’t know what the meaning is.
But there is something else… for there is always something else… And I think somehow I found it is this version. It’s just that I can’t quite work out what it is. But I think it is something to do with life playing tricks on me. Especially when I am trying to go to sleep.