The other morning I had to take my car in, and instead of Uber-ing home from the garage, I decided to walk the couple miles back to Venice; it was a blustery morning, and I headed into a strong wind, with not a small amount of trash and dust kicked up in the air.
I was saddened to see even more homeless than usual, huddling in new spots. It was a 30-minute walk, but the only song that kept coming up in my head was “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall.”
Then I did the math… Bob Dylan wrote that when he was twenty-f**king-one. 21!
A visionary song that combines his social conscience with the bursts of lyricism that came to full fruition in a couple years later, it takes the form of a question-and-reply (using a European folk form dating to the late 1600s), where Dylan emphasizes witnessing, asking, wondering, naming… which makes it both prophetic and poetic.
And I am so struck by the final verse, where the children whose innocence has been spent on their travels in the world proclaim that, of what they’ve seen, they will “tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it/ And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it” — one thinks of all the cries for social justice being renewed now… and the final line of the song, “But I’ll know my song well before I start singing.”
For me that one line lifts the song even more… I couldn’t imagine a better way to end a song by a writer who didn’t want to provide answers but to evoke visions and ask questions.
Then today I got a Xmas/ Hannukah gift from my podiatrist, who practices in Long Beach, and is obsessed with everything Bob Dylan — to the point where he (only half-)joked, “Basically I just practice to fund my Dylan thing…” as in, he has flown to New York to try to recreate the album covers with himself in the photos.
We geeked out on lyrics, bootlegs, trivia… he pulled out a Blood on the Tracks CD, and gave it to me. Of course I told him I have it, but he insisted, “You should have one permanently in your car.”
He has a box of them in the office which he bought on ebay from an out-of-print run when when SACD (Super Audio CD) was briefly in vogue as a “superior format” (which turned out to have no discernible improvement for ordinary listeners, so it fizzled).
Me and my podiatrist agreed that when “Tangled Up in Blue” comes on, you simply must stop everything else you’re doing for 5 ½ minutes and let it take up that space. And when “Idiot Wind” comes on, likewise for 7 ½…
And that life is a beautiful challenge to truly see, to sing, to name, but also to remember sometimes how little we know. and that is what I’ll take as the gift (and yes keep the CD until it melts in my car).
– Bicoastal writer Daniel Housman works hard and enjoys the very best of both Los Angeles and New York.
