Dylan Obscuranti: Track 3 – I’m not there

• Tiny Montgomery
• Sign on the cross
• Million dollar bash
• I’m not there
• You ain’t going nowhere
• This Wheel’s on Fire
• I shall be released
• Too Much of Nothing

And so we can see “I’m not there” is tucked in the middle of an extraordinary mixture of pieces – Tiny Montgomery is about one of Dylan’s odd character creations, Sign on the cross seems to be about a conversion to Christianity, the Million Dollar Bash is the final party of all the freaks who have appeared in earlier songs, You ain’t going nowhere is country rock-a-billy, This Wheel’s on Fire is a sensational piece of rock mysticism…

It is a most extraordinary mixture of pieces and shows Dylan at his most creative, not just for each individual song, but for the incredible variation in all the songs.

And in the midst of it all, we have a song he seemingly threw away.  The exact opposite of She’s your lover now, which he struggled to record, here is a song he just tried out once and then just moved on, until he included it in the movie, that is.

“Improvising on the spot” is the phrase Heylin provides for this masterpiece (although one is tempted to ask, what other form of improvisation is there?  Improvising means making it up around a set theme – and here the set theme is the chord sequence and the melody.  He’s seemingly improvising the lyrics.)

OK that is unusual – normally the improvisation is instrumental, but there is nothing in the rule book that says you can’t improvise lyrics as well.

Composition by having a chord sequence and a basic melody, and then by playing with words, by having ideas, and, improvising around a theme by using whatever words turn up, doesn’t give us a sense of a finished song in Bob’s case but when we get to Sonic Youth it certainly has that extraordinary sense of darkness and uncertainty.

Some of the lyrics don’t work, the scansion in particular falls over itself, but the strength of the Sonic Youth piece shines through.

As a result the uncertainty over the lyrics and melody adds to the whole notion of a fragmentary vision of events which just has the chord sequence (G, F, Am, G) which itself goes nowhere, to hold onto.

When the melodic line rises (“I believe that she’d stop him”) we get C, Em, F, G and variations thereof.  It is not exactly in a different key, but it is halfway there, which is what gives the alternate verses such a strong sense of individual identity.

Not many people have commented on the song, but here are a few of what seemed to me to be the most interesting commentaries…

Greil Marcus called the song, “a trance, a waking dream, a whirlpool… Words are floated together in a dyslexia that is music itself — a dyslexia that seems meant to prove the claims of music over words, to see just how little words can do… In the last lines of the song, the most plainly sung, the most painful, so bereft that after the song’s five minutes, five minutes that seem like no measurable time, you no longer believe that anything so strong can be said in words.”

Michael Pisaro wrote, “It’s almost as though he has discovered a language or, better, has heard of a language: heard about some of its vocabulary, its grammar and its sounds, and before he can comprehend it, starts using this set of unformed tools to narrate the most important event of his life… [Rick] Danko plays [bass] as if he knows that all his life this song has been waiting for him to complete it, and that he will be given only one chance.”

Paul Williams, in “Bob Dylan, Performing Artist 1960-1973″ wrote, “What’s astonishing here is that we can feel with great intensity and specificity what the singer is talking about, even though 80% of the lyrics have not been written yet!…

“It’s as though when Dylan writes, the finished song is not constructed piece by piece as we might imagine, but tuned in; there is an entirety from the first but still out of focus, like the photograph of a fetus, a blur whose identifying characteristics are implicit but not yet visible — not because they’re obscured but because they haven’t yet taken shape. ‘I’m Not There’ is a performance complete in feeling.”

The late John Bauldie, who wrote the quarterly magazine, The Telegraph, called it “Dylan’s saddest song, achieved without benefit of context or detail. It’s like listening to the inspiration before the song is wrapped around it.”

Even if this song were nothing else, it gives us one of the great insights into Dylan’s songwriting technique.  But of course, it is much more.   So much, much more.

Thing’s are all right and she’s all too tight
In my neighbourhood she cries both day and night
I know it because it was there
It’s a milestone but she’s down on her luck
And she’s daily salooning about to make a hard earned buck; I was there.

I believe that she’d stop him if she would start to care
I believe that she’d look upon the side that used to care
And I’d go by the Lord anywhere she’s on my way
But I don’t belong there.

No, I don’t belong to her, I don’t belong to anybody
She’s my Christ-forsaken-angel but she don’t hear me cry
She’s a lone hearted mystic and she can’t carry on
When I’m there she’s all right, but then she’s not, when I’m gone.

Heaven knows that the answer she not calling no one
She’s the way, forsaken beauty for she’s mine, for the one
And I lost her hesitation by temptation lest  it runs
But she don’t honour me but I’m not there, I’m gone.

Now I’ll cry tonight like I cried the night before
And I’m leased on the highway  but I still dream about the door
It’s so long, she’s forsaken by her faith, (where’s to tell?)
It don’t have consternation she’s my all, fare thee well.

Now when I’ll teach that lady I was born to love her
But she knows that the kingdom waits so high above her
And I run but I race but it’s not too fast or still
But I don’t perceive her, I’m not there, I’m gone.

Well it’s all about diffusion and I cry for her veil
I don’t need anybody now beside me to tell
And it’s all affirmation I receive but it’s not
She’s a lone-hearted beauty but she don’t like this spot and she’ gone.

Yeah, she’s gone like the radio below the shining yesterday
But now she’s home beside me and I’d like her here to stay
She’s a lone, forsaken beauty and she don’t trust anyone
And I wish I was beside her but I’m not there, I’m gone.

 Well, it’s too hard to stay here and I don’t want to leave
It’s so bad, for so few see, but she’s a heart too hard to need
It’s alone, it’s a crime the way she hauls me around
But she don’t fall to hate me but tears are gone, a painted clown.

Yes, I believe that it’s rightful oh, I believe it in my mind
I’ve been told like I said one night before “Carry on the crying”
And the old gypsy told her like I said, “Carry on,”
I wish I was there to help her but I’m not there, I’m gone.

“I’m not there,” the movie, was released in 2007 along with Dylan’s version of the song.  The film has six actors who have been”inspired by the music and the many lives of Bob Dylan.”  The album of the movie includes the Dylan performance of “I’m not there” taken from the Basement Tape days.  The Sonic Youth version of the song comes from this album.

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