Bob Dylan’s Cryptic Designs
In a scene from Martin Scorsese’s film about Bob Dylan, No Direction Home Joan Baez laughs while telling the story of the master songwriter composing lyrics. Baez says that Dylan told her that some day scholars will explain what these words mean, but at that moment of composition, he didn’t really know what the cryptic words meant.
Dylan, bolstered by his literary bent, splashed onto the American stage in the 1960’s. Influenced early by the folk songs of Woody Guthrie, he morphed into a blues, rock, pop, country singer/songwriter whose lyrics have influenced scores of artists that are too many to name.
Focusing on a few key Dylan songs–should help drive home these talking points as well as help us understand his cryptic approach. (Cryptic, for those who don’t know, means having, or seeming to have, a hidden or ambiguous meaning.)
Dylan can’t truly be categorized; his intent, at least somewhat (if we believe Baez’s story and I do) was to be cryptic. Then as his career took shape, and he and his songs became more significant, this mysterious aspect turned into a persona that he loved to run with. Simply, he liked keeping people guessing. It worked; he’s much more interesting than an artist who explains every little lyric.
When he gave his song poems to the world they lost their autonomy; therefore the lyrics are open to interpretation by each listener. Dylan does reveal his influences, loves, hates and concerns. Knowing that music is evocative, he wanted listeners to conjur their own images, as he had done with the songs of Woody Guthrie and other early folkies. Furthermore, Bob wouldn’t go on what he called his “Never Ending Tour” if he still didn’t believe in the
magic of live performance.
“Blowin’ in the Wind” is the obvious pick here and for good reason. Dylan roamed around the country, moving from his one horse town of Hibbing, Minnesota, to the melting pot that is New York City, gathering ideas and techniques from other performers and doing a fine Woody Guthrie impersonation. Cryptic to the max, “Blowin” is indeed one of his masterpieces (there are so many) and perhaps his most well known song. Some called it a protest song; that could be true. A protest embedded in unanswered poignant questions. Use your mind’s eye to conjure your own images. In the end, we all want answers!
Blowin’ in the Wind (1963)
How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?
Yes, ‘n’ how many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, ‘n’ how many times must the cannon balls fly before they’re forever
banned?
The answers, as Bob said, are difficult to find, if we can even find them. If anything blows in the wind, we don’t know, can’t know, where it will end up landing.
By talking about heavy subjects like war (how many times must the cannon balls fly) and more importantly, by saying we don’t know, can’t know, when war will end, seems to be the most poignant way to go about talking about this subject, since, in all truth, we don’t know when/if war will end. Of course most of us want it to end and get caught up in the hoping and not
knowing. Therefore, Dylan had to be cryptic here and it truly worked. Entire movements claimed this song as their marching anthem.
“Desolation Row”, penned in 1965, reveal’s Bob’s mix of real people with fictional characters to create more mystery. I picked it because it again rings with mysterious cryptic poetry that has an eerie feel to it. Also because it is from early in his career when he was trying to make a name for himself. Many artists shine brighter early because once fame and fortune are upon them, they kind of slack off a bit, not having anything more to prove. Of course Dylan did that a bit but not much. His recent stuff proves that he still has what it takes to write/perform great songs.
Desolation Row (1965)
Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood with his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago with his friend, a jealous monk
He looked so immaculately frightful as he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes and reciting the alphabet
Sniffing drainpipes doesn’t mean anything much, or maybe it does. Perhaps it may be a drug reference since people back in the ’60’s were sniffing glue and other substances. Reciting the alphabet is again cryptic, unless you’re a little child in kindergarten.
Perhaps Dylan wanted us to think of this character as young, since we recited our A-B-C’s in the early grades. Overall, the song’s ambiguous tone combines to make us feel, well, the desolation. Dylan is an expert at creating a certain feeling or mood with words that seem unmatched or ridiculous. When the song is over the listener has an aahhh moment even without fully understanding all the words. Therein resides his magic.
These were great lessons for the would-be songwriters out there who, inspired by Dylan, jumped on his bandwagon and wrote some great songs in the ’60’s, ‘70,’s, 80’s and, as they say on radio, beyond. Obviously, he made a connection with his audience.
Many times the connection came from angst, an emotion that’s at best hard to define and is indeed ambiguous and cryptic. There’s a lot of truth that the scariest, most heartfelt traumas and sufferings induce great art. But to me, the greatest among those show us we can overcome. Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks” album is one of his masterpieces. His biographers acknowledge that Bob wrote these songs after experiencing the breakup of his marriage. As all divorcees know, it’s highly traumatic, whether you want in or out.
Dylan covers loss. But how he serves up the loss, with that Dylan edge. Part cynic, part critic, part comic, and of course, part cryptic. And he affirms that maybe, just maybe, death (the ultimate cousin of loss, losing everything) isn’t as bad as we may think. “When you think that you’ve lost everything, you find you can always lose a little more”.
Bob Dylan’s lyrics are eternal flowers. Try to define a flower. It’s not easy. You know it is a beautiful thing in nature but words don’t quite express its entire appeal. A definition of a flower doesn’t exist; it is what it is, and perhaps more importantly, it is what it is to
you.
>Written by d/visible contributor Robert Gluck.
