Jacob Dylan has said that he was writing literally about a homeless musician who used to hang out on the steps across from his apartment on 6th Ave. In NYC. I'll take him at his word.
It has been suggested that the "black line" is a guitar strap over a man's shoulder and back. They both have one.
I took the line "I had my world strapped against my back" to mean that the author is either traveling and living out of a backpack himself, or else he is just starting out in life and has so few possessions that the guitar he carries feels like his everything. Maybe he himself is a busker trying to make a living with music.
The author identifies with this homeless guy because he also busks and plays some of the same songs. "Stood where he stands" seems to suggest that both have played music on the streets at times. The author is young and the homeless guy is much older. Either he's 50 years old, or maybe he's 50 years older than the author (= about 68yo?). The author seems to think that he could easily end up just like that homeless guy someday.
Maybe the homeless guy got shot in verse one. Maybe it was someone else but he was involved by happenstance and had to flee or something. This song has a clear narrative so It seems like verse one relates an incident that somehow leads to the homeless guy's sudden departure in the last verse. There's nothing too supernatural here - straightforward cause and effect seem to guide the events in this song.
I presume the homeless guy died. Homeless folks do not abandon their only possessions in the world for frivolous reasons. If he were still around then he'd come back for his stuff.
The author clearly feels a connection to the homeless guy. This song reminds me of my relationship to one of the first homeless people I ever met, an apparently schizophrenic former academic guy who lived on the steeets of Berkeley. He disappeared abruptly one week and we learned that his body had been found floating in the cold, Rough ocean off of Point Reyes. He apparently went out to that beautiful wild place and just swam until he drowned. That's a gutsy, seriously poetic way to take your own life.
The last verse of this song often gets me all choked up because the lines about the frailty of our lives remind me of the homeless guy I knew. There is a strong sense of, "There but for the grace of God go I."
America is a tough place to make a living these days and it would only take a couple unlucky breaks for almost any of us to end up homeless on the streets and alone in our old age. It happens to people every day. There is a very real sense in which that homeless guy's music was helping to keep him alive. What is a man's life worth in the end? Maybe just a few unanswered questions and a small pile of stuff abandoned on a street corner.
Jacob Dylan has said that he was writing literally about a homeless musician who used to hang out on the steps across from his apartment on 6th Ave. In NYC. I'll take him at his word.
It has been suggested that the "black line" is a guitar strap over a man's shoulder and back. They both have one.
I took the line "I had my world strapped against my back" to mean that the author is either traveling and living out of a backpack himself, or else he is just starting out in life and has so few possessions that the guitar he carries feels like his everything. Maybe he himself is a busker trying to make a living with music.
The author identifies with this homeless guy because he also busks and plays some of the same songs. "Stood where he stands" seems to suggest that both have played music on the streets at times. The author is young and the homeless guy is much older. Either he's 50 years old, or maybe he's 50 years older than the author (= about 68yo?). The author seems to think that he could easily end up just like that homeless guy someday.
Maybe the homeless guy got shot in verse one. Maybe it was someone else but he was involved by happenstance and had to flee or something. This song has a clear narrative so It seems like verse one relates an incident that somehow leads to the homeless guy's sudden departure in the last verse. There's nothing too supernatural here - straightforward cause and effect seem to guide the events in this song.
I presume the homeless guy died. Homeless folks do not abandon their only possessions in the world for frivolous reasons. If he were still around then he'd come back for his stuff.
The author clearly feels a connection to the homeless guy. This song reminds me of my relationship to one of the first homeless people I ever met, an apparently schizophrenic former academic guy who lived on the steeets of Berkeley. He disappeared abruptly one week and we learned that his body had been found floating in the cold, Rough ocean off of Point Reyes. He apparently went out to that beautiful wild place and just swam until he drowned. That's a gutsy, seriously poetic way to take your own life.
The last verse of this song often gets me all choked up because the lines about the frailty of our lives remind me of the homeless guy I knew. There is a strong sense of, "There but for the grace of God go I."
America is a tough place to make a living these days and it would only take a couple unlucky breaks for almost any of us to end up homeless on the streets and alone in our old age. It happens to people every day. There is a very real sense in which that homeless guy's music was helping to keep him alive. What is a man's life worth in the end? Maybe just a few unanswered questions and a small pile of stuff abandoned on a street corner.
[Edit: Corrected two typos.]