Cooking Up Mythologies (Part X)

• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (part I)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part II)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part III)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part IV)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part V)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More  Mythologies (Part VI)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part VII)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking up more mythologies (Part VIII)
• Bob Dylan: Cooking Up More Mythologies (Part IX)

By Larry Fyffe

Bob Dylan has a black sense of humour from which the Holy Bible does not escape:

And Adam said, "This is the bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh
She shall be called 'Woman'
Because she was taken out of Man
(Genesis 2: 23)

More often than not the persona in the double-edged lyrics of Bob Dylan addresses a modern day obedient Eve-like woman, telling her to keep him out of economic and/or sexual frustrating situations rather than making an address to a modern-day independent Lilith-like woman by whom he does not want to be led down to money, and/or carnal woes:

Come to me mama
Ease my money crisis now
Yes, come to me
Ease my money crises now
I need something to support me
And only you know how
(Chronicles: Money Blues ~ Dylan/Levy)

Often Eve’s to serve as a Muse for artistic inspiration in whatever way she can:

Mother of Muses, unleash your wrath
Things I can't see are blocking my path
Show me your wisdom, tell me my fate
Put Mr upright, make me walk straight
Forget get my identity from the inside out
You know what I'mean talking about
(Bob Dylan: Mother Of Muses)

Lilith, Adam’s “screech owl” first wife, flies off, but Eve knows her place in Eden:

Oh, well I love you, pretty baby
You're the only one I've ever known
Just as long as you stay with me
The whole world is my own
(Bob Dylan: Beyond Here Lies Nothing)

 

Seems all is well until every thing is broken. That old Devil, hiding in the trees, shows Eve his snake-like appendage, and she apparently becomes as bad as Lilith:

The window open, African trees
Bent over backwards like a hurricane breeze
Not a word of a goodbye, not even a note
She gone with the man in the long black coat
(Bob Dylan: Man In The Long Black Coat)

For sure history is repeating itself:

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food
And that it was pleasant to the eye
And a tree to be desired to make one wise
She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat
And gave also to her husband with her
And he did eat
(Genesis 3: 6)

There’s those damned Egyptains with penises the size if donkey’s:

Yet she multiplied her whoredoms
In calling to remembrance the days of her youth
Wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt
For she doted upon their paramours
Whose flesh is as the flesh of asses
And whose issue is like the issue of horses

(Ezekiel 23: 19, 20)

Little wonder the narrator in the following song says that the size of the Devil’s appendage, who ever he may be, doesn’t matter:

Black Rider,  Black Rider, hold it right there
The size of your cock will get you nowhere
I'll suffer in silence, I'll not make a sound
Maybe I'll take the high moral ground
Some enchanted evening, I'll sing you are song
Black Rider, Black Rider, you'very been on the job too long
(Bob Dylan: Black Rider)