| Bob Dylan – Shelter from the Storm Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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A NOTE ON BOB DYLAN'S NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE: I've been saying for quite a while that I thought Bob Dylan was the consummate poet of the 20th Century. Why? Well, here are four reasons: First of all meter. Easy enough. Music is a perfect net for repetition and surprise and subtle disclosure. Second, popular connection. Easy enough. Mass communication. Creative language. Surprising/creative point of view. Fresh expression achieved through poetic ambiguity and persistence toward the core of the expression. Third, humanity. Fourth, if you listen to enough of his music you can discover the Path With Heart ... his music is FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSCENDENTAL. "Shelter From The Storm" is about meeting with the Vessel. His experience left him full of adoration and heart -- "And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured I'll always do my best for her, on that I give my word" Ultimately, during this transformational experience the experiencer is lifted, shown "the other side" -- in other words "peace beyond understanding" and the full potential of a human being; the point of Spirit touching a Human -- then returned to Earth. The separation from that Source is painful -- "Now there's a wall between us, somethin' there's been lost I took too much for granted, I got my signals crossed" but since the experiencer chose the Path With Heart, the knowledge, not a mere intellectual experience but a deeper personality-wide knowledge, lingers for the lifetime of the beholder. Perhaps this lingering grace can be lost -- and everyones' gifts suffer breakage -- but for most who have made the correct ultimate choice at the moment of the most profound plumbing of the whole person, the resultant confidence and courage and resultant APPEAL to the common person, lasts a lifetime and surely leads to success. "There is a tide in the affairs of men which, when captured at the flood, leads on to fortune..." I am sooo gratified that the Nobel Prize committee recognized the grace of Bob Dylan, this monumental poet. |
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| Bob Dylan – Shelter from the Storm Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| @[SThrow63:16320] Excellent. Excellent. You are right on target, your expression sinking like a stone to the bottom of the meaning. I have made a few comments below. | |
| Bob Dylan – Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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I very much appreciate the leading comments. I have learned a lot from them. Let me add a few conjectures. Despite all the directly referential material, which I greatly appreciate, I think this song is so haunting because it often travels upon the Great Mystery. "dark-eyed lady" walks hand in hand with the Madonna who appears in so much great art. And the "prophet" is the artist, the soulful man, whose "warehouse eyes" see and store so much from materialistic truth to the deepest longings. "Arabian drums" might be the heart reflected by the 'male' Arabian instruments. The poet offers his music as a elegy ... why elegy? because the opening stanza can be interpreted as an offering to the dead; a review of a life; although in this case I believe it to be the reflections of a love that has lost its physical consummation. . I won't go beyond this except to say that I hear in this the admiration, the call, and the adjuration to avoid sinking into the mess of acculturation and conditioning that grows from the everyday world ... and how can she, the "dark-eyed lady of the lowlands" who has obviously been torn by the world and bereaved of lasting love by the ways of the wild man, EVER disappear into the establishment. |
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| Pat Green – Ain't Leavin' Your Love Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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Gen'l blues. Can be played slow and lazy, or rockin' like Townes Van Zandt. Either way is fine with me. Simple put this is a tune about true love. When true love is recognized, there is no reason to move on. Too often romeos get in the habit of honeymoonin' them sweethearts and then movin' on. There ultimately comes the realization, a few towns too far down the highway, that back there in that little one-horse town, let's say Two Dot Montana, that girl, she made the world into magic and made my heart full sing. Now, too late, the pointlessness of it comes home. Simply put, the song is contrasting the ramblin' music and the flyin', glidin' cruisin' and hoofin' AGAINST the steadiness of true love. Further playful irony is inculcated by switching the adjectives around and other deliberate substitutions ... all fun and set against the steadiness of the heart. |
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| Leonard Cohen – A Thousand Kisses Deep Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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Beautiful, but NOT a happy little tune. Cohen's age leads me to think this song is about time/aging and the soul. He is still a master, but now the ponies HAVE run and the young girls done. For a while he beat the odds, but now wistful memory alone remains. The invincible defeat is of course old age and then death. But that's not the worst of it. "You live your life as if it's real..." So what we call "life" is not real. The tricks, the fix, the boogie; they are all desperate attempts to be alive; mere show. A thousand kisses, what is that worth? Gone with a pop of the lips. "Confined to sex..." means we are caught on the surface of things; the flesh. We hunger for what is deep, but fail again and again to drive those miles and keep those promises ... as in "he is a person of great promise." Looking back, he is saying we missed the connection, we are prisoners of the flesh, we fail to fulfill our potential -- those "gifts" and now the boat is sinking. According to St Thomas (the apocrypha) the gifts we do not share are what will torture us later, the acts we did not perform will haunt us. Beautiful but not a happy little tune. |
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