By Tony Attwood
Perhaps extremely unwisely, I recently began a set of articles about some of the series that have been published on Untold Dylan since we first emerged some 17 years ago – series that I thought were interesting in their own way, which can stand the test of time, in the sense of still being informative today and which in most cases had nothing to do with me.
So I’ve written short articles reminding our readers, if a reminder was helpful, of these series, which are of course still on the site.
And wouldn’t you know it, as I came to publish the next piece in this series, the site went down. It seems the settings put in place 17 years ago were no longer adequate for the size of site we now are, nor the number of readers we get. But here we are back again, so I battle on in the hope of future stability.
In my series of series that you might want to go back and re-read (or take in for the first time if you joined us more recently) I started with The Album Covers, which has long been one of the works I’ve been most proud to have published, as I learned so much from it. The second was Once or Twice, which I am not trying to say was interesting for its writing, but rather because it highlighted the oddities of Bob’s selections when performing. As the title implies, these are the songs that he performed in public just once or twice, and then left. And much of the time, I am left saying, “How could he???”
Then of course, I turned to Jochen and asked him which of his masterworks of analysis he might nominate for inclusion in the series. Unfortunately, he chose “Like a Rolling Stone” – which was published as a book, but as far as I recall, with only a few episodes published on Untold. And I am told the book is out of print 0r about to be so, thus there is no point publishing extracts and saying “go and read the book” if the book can’t be bought! But the series is still on Untold so you can still read it here.
But undeterred I am choosing another work of Jochen’s myself: “I contain multitudes.”
Now I am very biased here since I love this song and have played it constantly and I really enjoyed the series of articles we published on the song.
But there is something else that is very personal to me at this point. I live in rural England, in a small English village that (as I have mentioned at least twice before) dates back its history by at least 1000 years. It is in fact, mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, and in my younger days, long before coming here, I always said to myself that one day I would live in a Domesday village.
So as I sit in my study and each morning, gazing across the garden at the trees at the far end, (themselves pretty ancient) I think of the people who have lived in this village for the past thousand years, and if I want a piece of music to play as I contemplate the weirdness of this situation, and the incomprehensibility of what led a north London boy to end up here, I play “I contain multitudes”. Not for the lyrics but for the music, for the sounds, and for that concept of “I contain multitudes”. I have no idea how many people have lived in this village where I live since the Conquest of 1066, but it is a small village (although the nearest town has expanded over the last century, and crept up to the village boundaries – but I don’t begrudge them a share of this beauty and antiquity).
For because of the way that my country does make some effort to protect and remember its history, the ancient manor house and church are still there – its lands backing onto my back garden and the river shown in the Domesday map as running through the village is still there, flowing exactly the same path – which I am genuinely thrilled to be able to walk.
There is something about “I contain multitudes” that links me to the honour I feel in living in such an ancient village, where I have been for maybe 25 years now, and I think more than any other Dylan song, I have a deep-rooted connection to this track related to all these feelings about where I now live. And here I must admit I don’t listen to the lyrics, I listen to the sound. And I sit here in peace and harmony with my home, myself, and Dylan’s performance of this song.
It is the sound that wraps itself around me, and the notion that yes, here I am in this village which people have lived in for over 1000 years, and somehow in some small way, their spirits are wrapped around my house, and indeed wrapped around me.
That can of course, just be the wild thoughts of an old man wrapping himself up in the past, but I like to think there is something more. I will of course, in my time pass on, but my children and my grandchildren will continue and (at least for now) I am hopeful they might play this song at my funeral – although hopefully not for a while yet. (And yes in my younger days as a pianist, I did learn to play Beethoven sonatas and Chopin preludes. There are connections everywhere for me in this song).
So, having had my say, I refer you for further reading to Jochen’s series on this song, while here is Emma Swift again, this time live, and below the full list of articles that make up the series. Thank you Bob, thank you Emma, thank you Jochen
