I want to be like so many people who have this knack for picking one Dylan song as a favorite, but it is not something I am able to do. When asked this question while filling out my Profile a while ago, I could not answer it and instead wrote that this changes with age and stage, which is true. It is as close as I could come to saying something of note, yet it says nothing. It says I am changeable, mercurial, perhaps unsteady on my feet. Or on a more positive note, maybe it means that my life is changeable and that’s a good thing; that new experience brings a new day, a “new morning”, and with that, we start over, or I start over anyway and find myself someplace new. Or perhaps a phase can last a few months – it all depends on circumstance, events. So when I think about only one favorite Bob Dylan song, I find the task impossible.

As I said, I am changeable, and so the music naturally changes with my moods. These days, the setlist seems to be all about love and yearning and distance. I seriously think that the song “Tomorrow Is A Long Time” should come with a warning (“caution: will make heart bleed”). But more, I listen to that song these days and all I can hear is “Tomorrow Is A Long Place” because time is place and travel and that’s what I hear. I hear about crooked highways and I think of distance. That’s just me. I hear “I’ll Keep It With Mine” and I hear a song not only about time, but about being “saved” – at least, to some extent. It’s in there anyway. I’ve had so many people disagree with me on that front and argue that the song is “just about saving time” or so I’m told, but it resonates more deeply than that for me. Whatever the song is or is not about (for really, only Dylan knows this), my response remains a visceral one – perhaps it’s the pause in the words: If I can save you any time (pause) Come on, give it to me, I’ll keep it with mine…” It could just be about music and timing. It could be a lot of things, but our response is our response and is no less valid because it may differ from the norm. There is no one right or wrong way of considering it. Music, like any other artform, exists to create an emotional response, and whatever our response is, that is per force, valid.

This time-period’s list runs the gamut – covering so many different Dylan periods, that none is favored here. All that is favored, if I have to use that word, are songs that speak to love in some way. “Blood In My Eyes” is an interesting song because it is, I’m told, about a prostitute who has stood up her customer. Likely true. But can’t we have blood in our eyes for so many other reasons as well? It only follows that a song does not have to be about only one thing, no more than my own poetry is about “this” or “that” thing. I hear “Blood In My Eyes” and I get the original meaning, but I can also say that I’ve had “blood in my eyes” for reasons that have nothing to do with the original intention of the song. That “blood in my eyes” is how we feel when love goes wrong: bloodshot, fucked-up, strung-out, brought-down, neither here nor there, existing in the in-between, and all with blood in our eyes. That’s love sometimes. It’s love gone wrong, perhaps, but we’ve all been there. In this way, I find the song relatable – and yes, sure, of course, I like the music – a lot. And I like the video even more (obviously the music is a big part of that), but I think it’s one of the most well done of Dylan’s videos for it perfectly captures the moment and his mood. Sometimes, things just “work”, they fall into place. Is that Camden Town in that video? Certainly looks like it… and Dylan crossing the Camden River there across the small bridge. My part of the world, but I could be wrong, but it certainly looks like it.

What’s interesting is how many different interpretations there are of Dylan songs, then others who say that “no interpretation is possible”, which may well be the case – to which I would say that perhaps no truly and totally accurate interpretation is possible. As Bob said in No Direction Home, according to Baez, that he wrote “all these songs” and he didn’t (doesn’t) know “what the fuck they’re about” but that years from now (he said at the time, according to Baez), people would be interpreting them, when he told her, and laughed, “I have no idea what the fuck they’re about” (I paraphrase, but you get the point).  

So does Dylan know what his songs are about? Did he? It seems almost disingenuous to say that he does not and never did. Even a song like “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” or “Girl From The North Country” seem to be clearly about something and someone. We can hazard a guess, but to say they are about nothing – that’s sort of absurd. I think we can even hazard a guess. Didn’t BD himself say something about Girl From The North Country, giving some of his own thoughts on the matter in No Direction Home. I think he did, as I recall (must watch again). We all know that Echo brought out “the poet in [him]”.

I suppose it’s the songs like “Desolation Row” that are harder, and they incorporate so much of the culture (as a friend and fellow collector and journalist told me during a recent interview, which I will run here soon – an interview with Phil Gounis). According to Gounis, Dylan absorbed the culture around him, then the culture absorbed Dylan and it became a continuous loop with each feeding off the other and Gounis is right; the cultural references abound. That said, so do personal references – and we may not get them all, but they do take on some significance for us.

A friend of mine says he doesn’t listen to lyrics at all, but focuses instead on the music; the lyrics are secondary to him. I’ve heard that before. To me, both seem vitally important, and we are talking about a man who won the Pulitzer (read: language), so I’d wager that the lyrics are important, just as they are important to any poet. Listen, I’ve had my own poetry set to music, and it’s great, but that doesn’t make the lyrics any less important. It simply brings the lyrics to the forefront in my mind and serves as the perfect accompaniment. For Dylan, which came first, chicken or egg, I don’t know. Probably the idea comes first – as it does with any artist. That’s always the starting point, right? Then you commit to paper, and it’s just a process. You have an idea for a song or poem and just begin to write. His process is his process, though we’ve seen enough photos of Dylan at his typewriter to know that lyrics play an important role.

My mind has been caught up, as always, in a Dylan phase lately, but this phase changes. Sometimes I want to hear a more country Dylan and it’s all that… and other times, I want to hear what I’m going through at that moment. And what am I going through now? Confused. Perhaps that’s the best word… confused, but at least knowing some things, and maybe my latest setlist, which I’m calling “Dylan Outro”, is telling. I hear some of these songs and I smile, I hear others and they make my heart bleed.  So where am I now? I can’t say it with my own words, and that’s why I think Dylan does a lot of talking for us, even though he’s speaking for himself – what holds Dylan up, what sets him apart, is that he, like a shaman, speaks on behalf of the village. I’ve long said that and I stand by it. We all relate to something or some song because he says what we cannot or will not or do not have the words to say. So, on that note, here is what’s on my mind lately:

Tomorrow Is A Long Time
Abandoned Love
You’re A Big Girl Now
Most Of The Time
You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome
Emotionally Yours
I Shall Be Free
You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere
I Shall Be Released
Blood In My Eyes (trad.)
I’ll Keep It With Mine
Love Sick
Apple Suckling Tree (Take 2)
Mr. Tambourine Man (1966 live bootleg)
Tell Me, Momma (live)
Harmonica Solo (Minnesota Tapes)