Watching The River Flow (1971) part 2: The situation comes first

 

by Jochen Markhorst

• Watching The River Flow (1971) part 1

II          The situation comes first

What’s the matter with me
I don’t have much to say
Daylight sneakin’ through the window
And I’m still in this all-night café
Walkin’ to and fro beneath the moon
Out to where the trucks are rollin’ slow
To sit down on this bank of sand
And watch the river flow

 

Whether the song was a little pre-cooked, as Jim Keltner suspects, or indeed dashed off in a single outburst on the spot, as Leon Russell says, does not matter much for the genesis; in either case, we see the struggles of a song poet in a dry spell.

The approach to unlock the creative part of the brain, to spark the stream of consciousness, seems: a story.

At least, we see a fairly common opening, almost identical to, say, Heinrich Heine’s top hit Die Lorelei (1824);

I don't know why I am feeling
                So sorrowful at heart.
An old myth through my thoughts is reeling,
                 And from them will not depart.
The cool evening air makes me shiver
                As I watch the Rhine's gentle flow.
The peak towering over the river
                Gleams bright in the sun's setting glow.
                                            (transl. Peter Shor, 2016)

Remarkably identical even; first the author’s unusual personal outpouring (Heine’s I don’t know why I am feeling so sorrowful at heart versus Dylan’s What’s the matter with me, I don’t have much to say), and then the classic opening of a novella, setting the scene – who, where and when. Also, in both cases, an ‘I’ as the who, a waterfront as the where and the day/night transition as the when (only difference: with Dylan the end of the night, with Heine the beginning of the night). And in Heine’s case, the what, how and why then indeed follow, as it should be when writing a ballad.

It has every appearance that Dylan is also trying to force something like this. He sets the scene – a hapless first-person chronicler leaving a night café at the crack of dawn and having nothing better to do than sit by the waterfront – thus suggesting that now the profound event will follow, the development of a catastrophe or the run-up to a catharsis. At least, this is how we are all conditioned, and this is how master storyteller Stephen King prescribes it, in his unsurpassed, masterful memoir c.q. writer’s manual On Writing from 2000;

“I want to put a group of characters (perhaps a pair; perhaps even just one) in some sort of predicament and then watch them try to work themselves free. My job isn’t to help them work their way free, or manipulate them to safety—those are jobs which require the noisy jackhammer of plot—but to watch what happens and then write it down.”

“The situation comes first,” King teaches. As for what happens next… the writer has limited influence on that. Sometimes I do have an idea about it, but in most cases, “it’s something I never expected.” A plot, King means, can help, but usually the protagonist takes on a life of his own and deviates from what the writer intended. And that’s a great thing, thinks the master – “if I’m not able to guess with any accuracy how the damned thing is going to turn out, […] I can be pretty sure of keeping the reader in a state of page-turning anxiety.”

A technique the song poet Dylan seems instinctively keen to employ this March day in 1971: he places his protagonist in a situation, in some sort of predicament, as King says, and then just waits to see what will happen. The choice of setting is already promising: it is a cinematic setting, word choice suggests a troubled protagonist at a low point. The I leaves a night café at the break of dawn, in the wee small hours of the morning that is. Not an unfamiliar setting in songwriting, and it always signals: unhappiness. In Dylan’s jukebox is undoubtedly Stonewall Jackson’s “Sadness In A Song” (1962), for instance;

While a lonesome city sleeps to pass away the time
By myself I walk the streets with a troubled mind
Up ahead the neon sign it says All night Cafe

… or else Ralph McTell’s immortal “Streets Of London” from 1968, a song with an identical colour:

In the all night café at a quarter past eleven
Same old man sitting there on his own
Looking at the world over the rim of his teacup
Each tea lasts an hour and he wanders home alone

Lonely, unhappy protagonists, on their way from nothing to nowhere. Dylan thickens the misery even more than Stonewall Jackson and Ralph McTell by choosing the wee small hours of the morning, the loneliest of all hours, “the time you miss her most of all,” as Sinatra knew in 1955. And reaffirmed in dozens of other songs. “The Song Is Ended”, “Kansas City”, “When Your Lover Has Gone”, Dylan’s own “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”, “Ray’s Blues” by Ray Charles, “I Can’t Keep From Crying”, Johnny Rivers’ “Tunesmith”, and we could go on and on; all songs in which the dramatic low point is at the break of day, or at the break of dawn, or at daybreak, in any case at the time of day Dylan also deliberately chooses here, worded somewhat more poetically: Daylight sneakin’ through the window.

Much the same is true of the slightly archaic to-and-fro – whenever we hear that at all in a song, the narrator is more often than not unhappy, haunted by a sense of lostness after – usually – the departure of a loved one. In all likelihood, Dylan can sing along to Pete Seegers’ “The Foggy Dew”;

And my heart with grief was sore.
For I parted then with valiant men
Whom I never shall see n'more.
But to and fro in my dreams I go

… or, who knows, today Dylan was walking from his home on MacDougal Street with a slight diversion to the Blue Rock Studio on Greene Street; via Mott Street and Delancey Street, strolling through his beloved Manhattan and humming along in his head to Lorenz & Hart’s classic, ironic declaration of love to this – then dilapidated  – part of New York from the Great American Songbook, “We’ll Have Manhattan” (1925):

It's very fancy
On old Delancey Street, you know
The subway charms us so
When balmy breezes blow
To and fro

Dylan himself no doubt has a soft spot for Dinah Washington’s nostalgic version of the song, but in these days, The Supremes’ smashing interpretation is probably still in the air.

Anyway: night café, dawn, walkin’ to and fro… by now, we have an impression of the state of mind of the lone narrator, who will soon sit pondering on the riverbank. And then let’s see what will happen. Perhaps a mythical fable creature like the Lorelei will show up, luring boaters onto the cliffs with her enchanting song. Or a fog will rise, bringing gruesome antediluvian monsters to shore….

To be continued. Next up Watching The River Flow part 3: If I had wings like Nora’s dove

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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
• Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
• Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic
• Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan’s other type of music
• Nick Drake’s River Man: A very British Masterpiece
• I Contain Multitudes: Bob Dylan’s Account of the Long Strange Trip
• Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side B
• Bob Dylan’s High Water (for Charley Patton)
• Bob Dylan’s 1971