| Joan Baez – Diamonds and Rust Lyrics | 6 years ago |
| @[melco99:25594] Yes, you are right. | |
| Bob Dylan – My Back Pages Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Rollin' high and mighty traps Pounced with fire on flaming roads Using ideas as my maps "We'll meet on edges, soon," said I Proud 'neath heated brow. This might be far fetched, but I wonder if Dylan is making an oblique reference to Euler's seven bridges problem. The mathematical problem was about whether it was possible to cross all the 7 bridges once. In Euler's proof, a bridge was known as an "edge" and he simplified the map of the bridges into a simpler graph. Because there would need to be an even number of bridges, you always end up getting trapped. "Tied through my ears" suggests the brains - what's between the ears. So, the puzzle is a metaphor for intellectual pursuits, things of the mind. Perhaps, is it a remembrance of things learned in school, that he comes back to later in the song? |
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| Bob Dylan – Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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I think this is a morality tale, which is about redemption and sin. The beginning has "lost in the rain" and "it's Easter time too" (the story of the resurrection - redemption from sin) and ends with "I'm going back to New York city, I do believe I've had enough". It is like the story of the prodigal son, he comes to his senses and returns to his father after wasting all his money on prostitutes. “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you." New York (Big Apple) is a metaphor for the garden of Eden (Greenwich Village?)- the place before the fall, a return to innocence. All the verses are detailing the archetypal temptations/sins that a person can succumb to: despair =gravity fails/negativity, Pride = Don't put on any airs, greed/lust=hungry women, lethargy=I cannot move/My fingers are all in a knot/don't have the strength, superstition=[the gypsy soothsayer in her room] the peasants call her the goddess of gloom, lack of faith=steals your voice (Zechariah lost his voice when he refused to believe), paganism/lust=howling at the moon, It's either fortune or fame=Satan's temptations of Jesus, idleness=just stand around, pride/vanity=boast, corruption=blackmail, and addiction=I started out on burgundy But soon hit the harder stuff. Salvation is found by becoming true to oneself (the truth will set you free): no one there to call my bluff, which is a poker reference. When no one is around to ask you to reveal your hand, you can still see your own cards, you can't fool yourself. It ends with faith "I do believe I've had enough". Why is being lost being played off against it being Easter time too? Easter time is about being found/saved. Also, Juarez is across from El Paso, the boundary between Mexico and the US - it an image of not knowing one's borders/boundaries and descending into the valley in between. The song is about forgetting about one's limits and suffering the consequences (lost in the rain/you're down/really make a mess out of you/I cannot move/leaves you howling at the moon (insane?)/the joke was on me There was nobody even there to call my bluff (losing one's real friends). Of course, it may have been primarily influenced by other stories, that were in turn influenced by these concepts. |
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| Joan Baez – Diamonds and Rust Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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"hearing a voice I'd known a couple of light years ago Heading straight for a fall" Considering the song was written in 1975, it is my reading of it, that Bob rang her up one day looking for sympathy when he realised his marriage to Sara Lownds was on the rocks. According to a Wikipedia entry "Their marriage first became strained around April 1974 when he began taking art classes from Norman Raeben, a 73-year-old Russian immigrant... Raeban's teaching methods radically changed the musician's way of thinking, and he would later tell an interviewer, "I went home after that first day and my wife never did understand me ever since that day. That's when our marriage started breaking up. She never knew what I was talking about, what I was thinking about, and I couldn't possibly explain it." His marriage ended in 1977, which is the fall that is referred to. Would it be too much of a stretch that Baez was the charcoal and Lownds was the shiny metal (Dylan refers to Sara's silver cross in "Sad Eyed lady of the lowlands"). Time has brought decay (rust) in his relationship with Sara and Baez is pointing out he could have had a diamond instead, Baez. There is a strong feeling of "I told you so" to the song. |
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| Bob Dylan – My Back Pages Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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"Girls' faces formed the forward path From phony jealousy To memorizing politics Of ancient history Flung down by corpse evangelists Unthought of, though, somehow. Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now." I think the first line refers to the feminist movement, which was at the forefront of the 60s revolution/protest. Bob is quite conservative in some ways about women, as shown in one of his later songs - Sweetheart like you - "a woman like you should be at home, that's where you belong". He sees the reasons for this protest as ranging from a false jealousy of men to harping on (memorising politics) about ancient history - the story of men's mistreatment of women or perhaps, the origin of the ideal of equality in ancient Greece. "Flung down by corpse evangelists Unthought of, though, somehow." It was the Christian evangelists who challenged and overthrew the Hellenists' ideas about equality and said that we are members of a living body with different roles, ie equality among sexes is undermined. "Corpse evangelists" cleverly makes reference to that and to the archetypal preachiness associated with the Establishment. "Unthought of, though, somehow." might mean that they think the revolution is new, but we have been here before, it was just forgotten about. I find the images in this hard to comprehend: "Crimson flames tied through my ears Rollin' high and mighty traps Pounced with fire on flaming roads Using ideas as my maps "We'll meet on edges, soon," said I Proud 'neath heated brow. Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now." Fire, heat, flames, burning ears? Anyone have an idea? The trap of thinking you are "high and mighty"? It could be a reference to the columns of flame that held back Pharaoh's men (Pounced with fire on flaming roads). Is it a reference to the railroad? Does it mean getting off the track or the preconceived map? Any ideas anyone? |
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