Red River Shore (1997) part 9: A floating nothing

• Red River Shore (1997) part 1: She wrote me a letter
• Red River Shore (1997) part 2: The importance of capturing spontaneity
• Red River Shore part 3: Pretty angels all flying in a row
• Red River Shore (1997) part 4: I got a gal named Sue
• Red River Shore (1997) part 5: Mom says the pills must be working
• Red River Shore (1997): part 6;  Misery is but the shadow of happiness
• Red River Shore (1997) part 7: Please try to make it rhyme
• Red River Shore (1997) part 8:  He is no one

by Jochen Markhorst

IX         A floating nothing

Well I’m a stranger here in a strange land
But I know this is where I belong
I’ll ramble and gamble for the one I love
And the hills will give me a song
Though nothing looks familiar to me
I know I’ve stayed here before
Once a thousand nights ago
With the girl from the red river shore

It’s a diesel, Dylan’s lyrical engine. Today, anyway. It starts slowly and sputters, but is now almost at its optimum. After that wonderful opening full of alienation and melancholy, the engine sputters again, just for a second, and reluctantly produces one last filler. The unreal, dreamy atmosphere that the song poet evokes with the Kafkaesque I’m a stranger here in a strange land but I know this is where I belong evaporates at once with the introduction of a clichéd, earthy Rambling, Gambling Willie, the knave who indeed rambled and gambled for the ones he loved (“He supported all his children and all their mothers too”). A colourful protagonist, and a wonderful song – but a total miscast here.

Equally out of place is the meaningless, unrelated And the hills will give me a song. It’s possible that the faltering engine seeks a shortcut via Bing Crosby (“The Singing Hills”, 1940), or sputters past Rex Allen’s “Song Of The Hills” from 1949. And if Dylan has a hidden drawer somewhere in which he keeps the ignored phenomenon of Kevin Coyne, we may owe the musical hills to one of his hidden treasures, to “Shangri-La” from 1976 (when the later Police star Andy Summers is still in Coyne’s band, demonstrating his crushing talent);

Shangri-La is a million miles away
You might see it on a clear blue day
Over the hills and far away
They're singing out: 
Duh-de-doo-doo, duh-de-doo-doo

… who knows. After all, “Million Miles” also features in these same recording sessions for Time Out Of Mind, and our protagonist is also on a hopeless quest for unattainable happiness. Unlikely, though. Singing hills probably impose themselves on the poet Dylan the way the image will impose itself on almost every listener: via one of the corniest highs (or lows, depending on personal taste) of the twentieth century:

The hills are alive with the sound of music
With songs they have sung for a thousand years
The hills fill my heart with the sound of music
My heart wants to sing every song it hears

… the song with which Julie Andrews introduces the Unbearable Lightness of her Being in The Sound Of Music, an association that at the most a minority of Dylan’s generation, and of the generation before that, and of the generation after that, will escape. And an association that, like Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie, quite seriously clashes with the mood and the setting that the songwriter in “Red River Shore” seems to want to evoke; the rather uncomfortable, Kafkaesque uncanniness. In Kafka’s words:

“To describe reality in a realistic way, but at the same time as a “floating nothing”, as a clear, lucid dream, so as a realistically perceived irreality.”
(the so-called “Petřín Hill Experience”, in his Reflections From The Year 1920)

… the mood that Dylan, fortunately, rediscovers after this little dip.

Though nothing looks familiar to me I know I’ve stayed here before is an oppressive outpouring from the protagonist. More sinister and less innocent, and even more unreal than a déjà vu – a déjà venu, as it were. It is a plot that is effectively used in mindfuck films such as Total Recall and Before I Go to Sleep, to evoke in the audience the same frightening feeling as in the protagonist, who usually has undergone something like a memory reset or implanted memories. Or, in the more criminal variety, the stories that suck us into the maddening frustration of victims of gaslighting; offices are dismantled, photos are swapped, walls are painted over, and when the protagonist returns with the police, the evidence is gone and everything is different. Though nothing looks familiar to me I know I’ve stayed here before – it’s the paranoid version of the musical highlight from The Muppets Movie (1979), from Gonzo’s heartbreaking “I’m Going To Go Back There Someday”;

This looks familiar
Vaguely familiar
Almost unreal yet
It's too soon to feel yet

Close to my soul
And yet so far away
I'm going to go back there
Someday 

It really does seem that the song poet Dylan has found the tone again now. The following once a thousand nights ago is not such a hollow cliché as, say, “ramblin’ and gamblin’” or “when it’s all been said and done”, but has the same magical, poetic sheen as cloak of misery and fires of time; the paradoxical quality of being simultaneously fresh and old-fashioned. Its magical sheen can surely be traced back to Sheherazade, the Persian storyteller of the tales from One Thousand and One Nights, and is perhaps unintentionally reinforced by choosing not something like “once a long, long time ago” but rather “once a thousand nights ago”.

The poetic power, then, is due to a kind of generally accepted metaphorical quality of “thousand”; although thousand nights covers a relatively manageable span of time (not much more than two and a half years, in fact), we all experience it as “endlessly long”, “half a lifetime”. Like Emmylou Harris uses it in her moving ode to Gram Parsons from 1985, “Sweetheart Of The Rodeo”, in the beautiful opening line A thousand nights a thousand towns I took the bows, eventually leading to the equally beautiful closing couplet

I stepped into the light you left behind
I stood there where all the world could see me shine
Oh I was on my way to you to make you mine
But I took the longest road that I could find

Or as it is used in “I’ve Made Love To You A Thousand Times” by Smokey Robinson, the man whose poetic value was once equated by Dylan with Rimbaud and Allen Ginsberg (jokingly, we may assume, in an interview with the Chicago Daily News in 1965). And like this, there are a few more songs in which thousand nights, usually in a romantic context, is used as a metaphor for “unbearably long time” – but except for Sinatra’s “How Old Am I?” no songs from the canon – it’s not too common. “Thousand nights” is a realistically perceived irreality, so to speak.

To be continued. Next up: Red River Shore part 10: Send it to Lulu

 

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

• Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
• Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
• Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
• Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
• Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
• Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
• Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
• John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
• Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
• Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
• Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2^nd Big Bang