Never Just One Thing, Pt. XI: "Mr. Tambourine Man": A Tale of Comin' Down

I've never heard anyone offer this interpretation of "Mr. Tambourine Man," for my money the most poetic hit song ever. So here it is. I'm not saying the song is "about" this, but it seems to me the impetus for the song is that, having done an all-nighter of drugs and booze and high-spirited Bohemian conviviality, Dylan finds himself around dawn on the deserted streets of Greenwich Village where he encounters, or suddenly recalls, his guitarist Bruce Longhorn, who had stuck in Dylan's mind as someone who played an unusually large tambourine. Now, if this blog was an entry in Dylan's Philosophy of Modern Song he would engage in some wildly riffing conjecture about the song using the "you" voice. You've just been up all night, etc., and would go into all sorts of sordid and sublime detail about what "you" just experienced in the wee hours. But I'm not that creative so let's talk about me, and what my own experience suggests to me about the song.

Let's go way back, 40 years or more. This was in Champaign-Urbana, and my buddy and I would micro-dose on acid, and take excursions out to the local state parks. We had many interesting adventures that way. But what I want to do is skip past the excursions to the afterwards part, that is, the coming down part. That's when some really memorable stuff happens. Kris Kristofferson's greatest song, and one of the best songs ever written, is all about that condition. "Sunday Morning Comin' Down," it's called, and as the narrator heads out to get some smokes he encounters vivid scene after vivid scene, presenting as if in a movie. Why? Because his "senses have been stripped." And not only is it the clarity of the kids with a can they're kickin' and the smell of someone fryin' chicken; there also is a deep emotional or existential realization that surfaces, taking him "back to somethin' that I'd lost / Somehow, somewhere along the way."

So we were back at my buddy's place after being out through the evening and we put some music on, in this case it was Who By the Numbers, and a Daltrey ballad came on and it hit me like a song has rarely hit. You see, in that stripped-senses place what I was getting was pure emotion, but not emotion like happy or sad or painful but what the essence of the music is like when the inside of the singer connects with your own interior with no distance in between, no physical separation at all. So to the extent it was psychedelic, it wasn't freak-out mode stuff; it was more like raw existential awareness. Actually, with all the nightlife I was pursuing at the time, usually just with good old booze and weed, I came up with a name for that stripped-bare feeling, captured in this verse: "It's the ragged side of midnight / In this neon lit-up town / It's the ragged side of midnight / And I think I'm comin' down."

Okay, that said, let's return to Dylan. I'm not necessarily saying his state described in the song was psychedelic; it may have been a speed-fueled night that induced it, since there was a lot of that going around in those late-Beatnik days. Amphetamines certainly will make you feel jangled, so that "jingle-jangle morning," in my read, is the marriage of the tambourine sound with the feeling of the sun having risen while you're still a bit wired. And one notable thing about this state is exactly as Dylan describes when he observes both that "my weariness amazes" and "I'm not sleepy."

This state isn't all fun and games; there often is a bit of dread, a sense of holding something at bay. You see, those high-spirited nights are always a bit unreal, with so many promises and grand plans and pledges of affection don't always stand up to the light of day. In other words, "I know that evenin’s empire has returned into sand / vanished from my hand." At this point, things can go either way. City spaces that make sense with all the people bustling can be weird and ominous when empty, like a painting by Hopper or de Chirico. But things are still wide open; the ecstatic is still in play. Thus the appeal to the intercession of the Tambourine Man. "I'm ready to go anywhere." "Cast your dancing spell my way / I promise to go under it."

From here on out the song is a rapturous vision presented in pure poetry such that I'm still astounded it was played on the Top 40 radio in the days of my youth. Question: Did Dylan write the whole thing in one burst? Or did he compose the "coming down" part and then add the visionary part later, using lines which were just laying around somewhere? Either way, you don't get lines like those of "Mr. Tambourine Man one at a time. You get them in a flow state, however induced:

Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow

THE "NEVER JUST ONE THING" SERIES

Part I: Dylan’s Mysterious Musical Maturation

Part II: The Nature of Dylan’s Art

Part III: Dylan's Verbosity and the Path to Poetry 

Part IV: Close Reading Dylan's "Idiot Wind"

Part V: Don't Overlook Dylan's Musicality 

Part VI: On Dylan's Identity Tricksterism

Part VII: What Dylan Knows and Doesn't Know

Part VIII: Dylan, Taylor Swift, and Genius Inflation

Part IX: Close Reading "Simple Twist of Fate"

Part X: The Authentic Zen of "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" 

Part XI: Mr. Tambourine Man's Tale of Comin' Down

Part XII: A True Song - Dylan's "I Threw It All Away"

Part XIII: The Infidels Debate

Part XIV: Biblical Language, Beat Poetics, and a Theology of Service

Part XV: The Glory of Dylan, Covered