Never Just One Thing, Part VII: What Dylan Knows and Doesn't Know

July 14, 2023

Never Just One Thing, Part VII: What Dylan Knows and Doesn't Know

It’s a restless hungry feeling
That don’t mean no one no good
When everything I’m a-sayin'
You can say it just as good

You’re right from your side
I'm right from mine
We’re both just one too many mornings
And a thousand miles behind

- Bob Dylan, One Too Many Mornings, 1964

It's a fool's errand to try to derive a program from the lyrics of Bob Dylan. But that doesn't stop countless thousands of us from trying! Why? Well, the words just hit you as inherently meaningful, and they make your brain spin in a hundred different ways. And if you are so inclined then you feel compelled to say something about it. One of the most famous books to attempt a single analytical lens for Dylan's body of work is Christopher Ricks' Dylan's Visions of Sin. It's a good book, but it only captures one dimension of Dylan. And that's fine. No, that's as it should be.

Generally speaking with Dylan, as soon as you say the work is about this, it becomes apparent that elsewhere that very spirit is contradicted, and it's about that. This is why, for me, Dylan is the most Emersonian figure of our last 60 years of culture. It was Emerson who famously said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." From my reading of Emerson biographies I know that he never looked at an idea and wondered if it was in line with, or consistent with, his philosophy. He simply encountered ideas, either in the work of others or among those he intuited, and those that excited him, those that set his mind on fire, are those that he ran with. Period. This is what gives the work such dynamism and what makes the ideas take on a life of their own in the mind of the reader. Now, if you ask me, Emerson's main message is to trust yourself and your intuition, but you will read other Emerson interpreters, they will never even mention it.

So, in that spirit, I will discuss a theme or through line in Dylan's work that keeps occurring to me as I listen. I think I'm onto something with this one, even if it proves nothing about what Dylan actually thinks. Because what matters is what you hear. My theme is that Dylan consistently contrasts what can and can't be known about the world. Or, put another way, he addresses the limits of knowledge in really interesting ways. Here, I'll take a look at a handful of his greatest songs in light of this notion.

Let's start with Dylan's most famous song, Like a Rolling Stone, which is also the consensus pick for his greatest song. Often a piece of art that is groundbreaking -- as this song is, propelling its firehouse of poetic allusion right into the Top 40 -- is nevertheless not necessarily a great piece of art in itself, apart from its innovation. But Like a Rolling Stone fully succeeds on its own terms. While it is often said to be "about" a clueless person of privilege, perhaps the iconic Poor Little Rich Girl Edie Sedgwick, the thing that really makes it for me is that the chorus, which is nothing if not emphatic, actually centers on a question: How does it feel? The one time I saw Dylan, Stone was the encore, and when he shouted How does it feel? it felt like it was aimed at all of us, and not just the figure who is the subject of the song. It felt like an existential question, not just about coming of age, but also about just trying to figure out how to be in a world where one is always existentially on one's own. I picture James Dean, in one of his states of inner torment, wrestling with the question, as only he could wrestle. The point of the song then, what the song "knows," is nothing more than the necessity of coming face to face with your feelings.

Another classic from the mid-60s, another "Top 50 Dylan Song" if you will, gives us a complementary but slightly different take on knowledge. I Want You may be the most archetypal Dylan song, exemplifying his classic sound, the sound most people identify with Dylan, complete with the poppy, jangly backing track. What we find lyrically, is that the verses stand in stark contrast to the chorus. What the verses portray is a world that amounts to what we now call noise, a lot of chaotic nonsense that threatens to overwhelm. Right out of the gate we are informed: "The guilty undertaker sighs / The lonesome organ grinder cries / The silver saxophones say I should refuse you / The cracked bells and washed-out horns / Blow into my face with scorn." And later: "The drunken politician leaps / Upon the street where mothers weep." Instead of making sense of this phantasmagoria, in the chorus Dylan simply responds with a fog-cutting statement of raw desire: "I want you, I want you / I want you so bad / Honey, I want you." This, then, this feeling; this is what he knows.

Let's fast forward to the early 80s, to the Infidels-era Blind Willie McTell. This, in fact, is the song that got me thinking about this theme -- years ago now; sometimes it takes that long to screw up the resolve to sit down and actually do the work to turn a mere idea into writing. Now considered one of Dylan's greatest songs, it remains a mystery for Dylan fans why he didn't put it on Infidels, since it was recorded at the same time. Well, as he has explained, he just didn't like the recording how it was and didn't think it fit. Frankly he just doesn't sweat such matters too much. As for the lyrics themselves, the stupendous opening couplets set the scene: "Seen the arrow on the doorpost / Saying this land is condemned / All the way from New Orleans / To new Jerusalem." Recall that the Puritans thought they were really creating a new Promised Land here, with God's blessing to conquer, just as he gave His approval for taking the Land of Canaan by force in the Hebrew Scriptures. And New Orleans, of course, was one of the most significant sites for slave trading. In the last verse, he lays out what he sees as the animating principle behind this wretchedness: "The power and greed, the corruptible seed." What makes the song so effective, what gives the song its juice, is that he doesn't follow this damning portrait with a "finger-pointing" disquisition on the evils of slavery and Euro-American civilization. Rather, he makes a simple observation, a tossed off aesthetic assertion: "And I can tell you one thing / Nobody can sing the blues / Like Blind Willie McTell." Dylan can't make sense of the world's madness, but he can alert us to one of the few good things that emerged from this tragedy, and one of the most crucial aesthetic developments in American history: the art form we know as the blues. This is no small deal, for the essence of the blues is to turn suffering on its head into a source of communal celebration.

I'm not a huge fan of late Dylan, but I have spent some time with what is considered his best "later" album, 2001's Love and Theft. The strongest song on the album is Mississippi, which American Songwriter judges to the 25th best Dylan song of all time. They aren't alone in their esteem for the song. Consider this the ultimate Dylan "Never Just One Thing" song. On one level, it offers macro-level reflections, "recollected in tranquility," remarkably free from rancor: "So many things that we never will undo / I know you’re sorry, I’m sorry too." Or, this, which contrasts tribulation with deep acceptance: "Well my ship’s been split to splinters and it’s sinking fast / I’m drownin’ in the poison, got no future, got no past / But my heart is not weary, it’s light and it’s free / I’ve got nothin’ but affection for all those who’ve sailed with me." But the song also operates on a narrative level that seems to be telling the story of a specific encounter, but in ambiguous language. It's another noir-ish song, like Simple Twist of Fate, except a bit more vague, though you've got no trouble picturing this: "I was raised in the country, I been workin’ in the town / I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down." We never do find out exactly what's going on, but Dylan does offer us a sort-of explanation and non-conclusion conclusion: "Well I got here following the southern star / I crossed that river just to be where you are / Only one thing I did wrong / Stayed in Mississippi a day too long." Sounds like shit went sideways and he still doesn't know why. But he's willing to leave it at that. Call it bad timing. Call it fate. It's another side of the acceptance that operates on the song's macro level. And it provides a really nice echo of 1964's One Too Many Mornings. There is no blame to be assigned. No one knows enough to be able to do that.

Okay, if you've stuck with me this far, you surely have been thinking about the two-ton hippo in the room: Dylan's Born Again Evangelical Christian phase. Isn't that characterized by excessive confidence in the rectitude of your new knowledge? Well, yes. But one the other hand, it's a way of acknowledging the limits of your personal knowledge and power in the presence of the immensity of the Divine. Nevertheless, it does present us with a nice contradiction, which is just fine in our Emersonian view.

And this is where I was going to end this piece when I mapped it out in my mind. But then fate intervened and I came across a fun essay about a night in 1985 when the Beat personage Raymond Foye encountered Dylan at Allen Ginsberg's New York apartment. Foye was there working on a project when the phone rang with Bob wanting to know if he could come by and play Allen a tape of his newest not-yet-released record, Empire Burlesque. Sure. 20 minutes later Dylan was outside and Ginsberg threw down the building key in a sock. The story goes on to describe the evening and it got me curious about that record, which I probably hadn't listened to since the time of its release. As I checked out the album page at AllMusic I was reminded that it has a song on it called Trust Yourself, which was quite interesting coming just a handful of years after the Born Again phase. I know Dylan himself never stopped believing, but now what he wants to share with others is a different message, one Ralph Waldo would likely approve of.

Trust yourself
Trust yourself to do the things that only you know best
Trust yourself
Trust yourself to do what’s right and not be second-guessed
Don’t trust me to show you beauty
When beauty may only turn to rust
If you need somebody you can trust, trust yourself

Trust yourself
Trust yourself to know the way that will prove true in the end
Trust yourself
Trust yourself to find the path where there is no if and when
Don’t trust me to show you the truth
When the truth may only be ashes and dust
If you want somebody you can trust, trust yourself

Well, you’re on your own, you always were
In a land of wolves and thieves
Don’t put your hope in ungodly man
Or be a slave to what somebody else believes

Trust yourself
And you won’t be disappointed when vain people let you down
Trust yourself
And look not for answers where no answers can be found
Don’t trust me to show you love
When my love may be only lust
If you want somebody you can trust, trust yourself