Ep 319 Meet Mr.Dylan

I have read some interviews with cast director etc . And have seen some excerpts , as well as heard from some friends who have seen the movie . Timothy Chalamet , who plays Dylan , has reported that he hopes that , among other outcomes , the movie will introduce Dylan and his words will introduce Dylan and his words to new generations .

Regrettably , I can't now say my guest for this episode is Bob Dylan to talk about his words . I can't even say my guest is Timothee Chalamet to talk about Dylan's words . But well , I find it remarkable that high school kids , college kids , grown people in their 20s and 30s , even ones who listen to lots of music , often don't even know who Bob Dylan is .

I've had two friends who have seen the movie tell me that the theater was full of people just like them , people just like me In the specific attribute that we share of having a shitload of lived birthdays , to our credit . We're old people , and those two friends reported that in the theater there were virtually no young people Incredible .

And yet I also know it isn't incredible . After all , when I was a young person did I know performers , even incandescent performers from a half century earlier ? Not a chance . I barely knew there had been life a half century earlier . And with music I think the situation is more true than in many other domains .

Most of us get into listening to music when we are quite young , and as we get older we tend to listen less , and often what we listen to when we are older is in any case what we listened to when we were younger .

So we don't know much music before when we got started , often not even 10 years before , much less from 50 or 60 years before we got started . And often we don't know much more music after our early days either as well , perhaps 20 years and then . Silence is not very golden . So it goes .

It is not ideal , but I suspect as a broad , though of course not universal , phenomenon , this picture is probably pretty accurate . Thus few young people seeing a complete unknown is not surprising .

Why should a teen now a 20-something adult now a 30-something adult now , hell , anyone less than 64 now take any time now to even know Bob Dylan , much less to seriously deep dive into his music . Of Bob Dylan , much less to seriously deep dive into his music . Some old folks might say well , because Dylan changed music into something it wasn't .

I think it is absolutely true that he did just that regarding duration , focus , lyrics and more . But even so , some young folks might reply okay , great , I'll take your word for it . I'm happy to hear that he did that . But why do I need to explore it ? Why do I need to deep dive into it ? That is your pool , not mine .

Well , I reply , the truth is you don't . I don't think that Dylan , having been historically pivotal to how music has developed , is sufficient reason for you to feel a great need to go back and listen , not for him or for Elvis Presley , chuck Berry , little Richard , patti Smith , joni Mitchell and so on .

You may have historical interest in those who went before and transformed the discipline , and so you may choose to listen deeply , way back , and that is fine , of course , but I don't think it's essential that people go back because of prior historical impact . The same is true , and may make the point even more clearly , in many other disciplines .

In physics , for example , you don't have to go back to read Einstein or Dirac , much less Newton and many others who changed the whole field . Yes , they did that , but that means that if you get up to date now perhaps physics being your thing then by being up to date now you are imbibing their effects on physics , along with more effects of others .

Since , or say , you love basketball , do you have to watch old videos of Dr J Bill Russell , bill Walton and Oscar Robertson to be a fan who legitimately and intelligently enjoys basketball ? Now the old-timers tend to say yes , but I don't think so . The predecessor's effects live on in the game .

So for historical insights , for the fullest possible overview , yes , you would have to dig in , but not to enjoy next Tuesday's playoff game , which is quite alright to do . Is there some other reason to visit the past in diverse fields , including music ? Yes , I think there is . For example , you may enjoy doing so . History is your drug of choice .

Or time traveling back , you might be affected by the predecessor's style and particular genius . This , of course , applies most powerfully if you are active in the discipline or the art , whatever it may be . But what if you just dabble now and then , and you mostly enjoy what's happening , what's current , that's what you like to hear .

I think there is still a reason to time travel in some fields , for some people Call the destination enjoyment , enrichment and edification . And so there is the case potentially accruing those things I claim for listening to Bob Dylan's music . But such a case requires evidence .

No one had heard anything quite like Dylan before Dylan , and I would have to say we haven't heard overly much like him since him . Big deal , you might say . Everyone is different , yes , but some are differently different . That is the big claim . Rarely true , I admit .

You can decide for yourself if it is true for Dylan , but you can't do that if you don't give his work some time . So with this episode , I admit that I am trying to provoke attention to Dylan from those who haven't yet given much .

For the rest of you , those who have attended to his work , maybe this will be a reminder of why you cared , or just a familiar trip with a few little twists .

I should perhaps say that partly for me at least , as a teenager hearing Dylan , what was mesmerizing and edifying , like with no other singer-songwriter , was his voice and the ebb and flow of the music under his songs .

But beyond that and those don't universally appeal , even if I can't perceive why they don't for me , what was and is most mesmerizing and I would wager it could be for you too , with some effort to first get into something different is his incredible lyrics . So what can I say ?

Am I just a guy with roots way back then , who was forever young about this , which in this case could mean forever blind to the scale of subsequent accomplishments ?

Or am I correct that Dylan's lyrics , even taken alone , much less taken with the melodies and sonic and social emotions that accompanied them , stand out even today as wildly different than what is current and as , even after 60 years , still more enjoyable , enriching and edifying than most and perhaps even all of the rest ?

The movie A Complete Unknown addresses just five years of Dylan's emerging public life , and in those years it addresses just a few songs , with hundreds more to follow later . What more could the film do about him or his lyrics without becoming endless ?

The movie addresses some of his life too , but I will set that aside , and the movie doesn't have Dylan's voice , though Chalamet , I am told , does a profoundly good job , not Dylan , but very good .

So I thought for this episode to take sort of a break from thinking about the deadly orange plague and how to erase it , that I would try and help along Chalamet's wish for the movie , that it bring new ears to Dylan's music , and to do that I would try to entertain and richen , edify by offering some Dylan lyrics , even without his voice and his music .

Mostly I will let the movie largely choose which songs to present , but not entirely , and yes , I think this episode might get long . Finally , I hesitate to interject comments with the lyrics , but as I read the lyrics I suspect I may at times be unable to stop myself . If my comments help a little , great .

If not , ignore my part , but take some time for Dylan's part . When Leonard Cohen , another incredible poet from the old days who is , I dare say , also worth some of your time , was asked about Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for Literature , he said quote to me the award is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain . End quote .

I will keep my comments on the mountain to an absolute minimum , not just relevant to its scales . I would wager that you all expect me now to offer up some of Dylan's more political early songs .

But first , how about a quick foray into some of his version of what is so ubiquitous nowadays Four of his relationship songs even breakup lookback songs , his relationship songs even break-up look-back songs , but with an edge . It turns out Dylan is not only an observant troubadour , he's also a human . First consider Girl from the North Country .

It goes like this Well , if you're traveling in the North Country fair , where the winds hit heavy on the borderline , remember me to one who lives there . She once was a true love of mine . Well , if you go when the snowflakes storm , when the rivers freeze and summer ends , please see if she's wearing a coat so warm to keep her from the howling winds .

Please see for me if her hair hangs long , if it rolls and flows all down her breast . Please see for me if her hair hangs long . That's the way I remember her best . I'm wondering if she remembers me at all . Many times I've often prayed in the darkness of my night , in the brightness of my day .

So if you're traveling in the North Country Fair , where the winds hit heavy on the borderline , remember me to one who lives there . She once was a true love of mine . Not complex lyrics , not mind-bending metaphors and images . No need to interject , but still he can write already .

Or consider the song All I Really Want to Do , a song that's about him and her , and imagine that you heard it as a teenager , before feminism got your attention , in fact , before anything much got your attention . I ain't looking to compete with you , beat or cheat or mistreat you , simplify you , classify you , deny , defy or crucify you .

All I really want to do is , baby , be friends with you . No , and I ain't looking to fight with you , frighten you or tighten you , drag you down or drain you down , chain you down or bring you down . All I really want to do is , baby , be friends with you .

I ain't looking to block you up , shock or knock or lock you up , analyze you , categorize you , finalize you or advertise you . All I really want to do is , maybe , be friends with you . I don't want to straight face you , race or chase you , track or trace you or disgrace you or displace you or define you or confine you .

All I really want to do is , baby , be friends with you . I don't want to meet your kin , make you spin or do you in or select you or dissect you or inspect you or reject you . All I really want to do is , baby , be friends with you . I don't want to fake you out , take or shake or forsake you out .

I ain't looking for you to feel like me , see like me or be like me . All I really want to do is , baby , be friends with you . Again , there is nothing too hard to fathom in that song , and yet the sentiments , so succinct , are also so relevant for some , maybe even so emulatable .

I want to do two more relationship songs , if you will , since even some old folks like me may not know this next one , and then I have to do one that everyone knows . First , here is a song you most likely have never heard . It's titled Can you Please Crawl Out your Window ? It was not in the movie , but it was from the same period .

It was the same time as the song Positively Fourth Street , another song that displays wit on top of acid , which I will add later if we have time . If you perhaps think I was over the top putting the word feminism in the same sentence as his song , all I Really Want to Do listen to this song from just before feminism freed countless minds .

Indeed , before my generation had by and large heard a word about it . This was sung to a particular woman , but perhaps also to many women and I would say to all men so Can you please crawl out your window ? Goes like this he sits in your room his tomb with a fistful of tacks , preoccupied with his vengeance , cursing the dead . That can't answer him back .

You know that he has no intentions of looking your way , unless it's to say that he needs you to test his inventions . I will interject . I heard that and well , I wondered is that fair ? Are we men that gross ? Then came the chorus hey , crawl out your window , come on , don't say it will ruin you . Come on , don't say he will haunt you .

You can go back to him anytime you want to . I interject . Think abused woman , not easy to move on . The song continues . He looks so truthful . Is this how he feels ? Trying to peel the moon and expose it With his business-like anger and his bloodhounds that kneel . If he needs a third eye , he just grows it .

He just needs you to talk or to hand him his chalk or to pick it up after he throws it . I have to interject . Is there a more militant critique of sexism that I missed ? Caustic Dylan is very caustic indeed . How long did it take me before . I could even really hear what he's saying in this one .

Surely not as a senior in high school , but maybe it planted some scenes . I have to wonder if Dylan himself heard this one , or just conveyed it from out of the skies . And tell me , do you not think the broad assessment of male misogyny , even with all the gains against it over the years , still resonates ?

Is the image you get listening much different than your picture of Donald Trump and Elon Musk ? The song goes on hey , crawl out your window . Come on , don't say it will ruin you . Come on , don't say he will haunt you . You can go back to him anytime you want to . Why does he look so righteous while your face is so changed ?

Are you frightened of the box that you keep him in While his genocide fools and his friends rearrange their religion of little tin women to back up their views ? But your face is so bruised . Come on out . The dark is beginning . I interject . I think perhaps it isn't surprising that this song is barely known at all . It ends ah , come on out your window .

Come on , don't say it will ruin you . Come on , don't say he will haunt you . You can go back to him anytime you want to . Of course , the women who shortly later rebirthed feminism didn't need , and probably never heard , heard Dylan cajoling them , but I did , and I have to admit I wonder about the women who voted for Trump .

Note , if it wasn't already clear Dylan's relationship to songs are in no way narrowly about narrow relationships , even if they ostensibly mainly aim to address just those . Is that true today too ? And now comes Dylan's most famous song , like a Rolling Stone , which is the one that most immediately , most proximately , changed the whole industry .

And now his words are somewhat more complex . Images pile on images and multiple listenings can yield new takes . This song and the choices to go electric at the time , is really the ending up point of the movie , dylan's move to rock from folk . But we have more to present from a bit earlier after this one .

This time it is a wealthy , even a rich woman , or maybe all materially rich women , or maybe everyone who is materially rich Dylan is singing to and about . I'm not going to repeatedly include the chorus , save for one time . Once upon a time you dressed so fine , threw the bums a dime in your prime , didn't you ?

People call , say beware , doll , you're bound to fall . You thought they were all a-kidding you . You used to laugh about everybody that was hanging out . Now you don't talk so loud . Now you don't seem so proud about having to be scrounging your next meal . And now the chorus . How does it feel ?

How does it feel to be without a home , like a complete unknown , like a rolling stone ? Ah , you've gone to the finest schools . All right , miss Lonely , but you know you only used to get juiced in it . Nobody's ever taught you how to live out on the street and now you're going to have to get used to it .

You say you never compromise with the mystery tramp , but now you realize he's not selling any alibis as you stare into the vacuum of his eyes and say do you want to make a deal ? I interject look up , get used in it . Which of three or four meanings do you think Dylan meant to evoke ? Or all of them ? About the finest schools ?

Ah , you never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns when they all did tricks for you . You never understood that it ain't no good . You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you . You used to ride on a chrome horse with your diplomat who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat .

Ain't it hard when you discovered that he really wasn't where it's at After he took from you everything he could steal ? I can't not interject Men again , rich ones , not where it's at . A princess on a steeple and all the pretty people . They're all drinking , thinking that they've got it made .

Exchanging all precious gifts , but you better take your diamond ring , you better pawn it , babe . Gifts , but you better take your diamond ring , you better pawn it , babe . You used to be so amused at Napoleon and rags on the language that he used . Go to him . He calls you . You can't refuse when you ain't got nothing . You got nothing to lose .

You're invisible . Now You've got no secrets to conceal . Okay , that one in hand . Time to go back a few years to directly consider society , what he called his finger-pointing songs . And I have to wonder would a young person listening to the following offerings now , with Trump in the societal saddle and us needing to do something about that , not hear these songs ?

Not exactly , but at least somewhat , like I and others heard them 60 years ago . First , blowing in the Wind . How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man ? Yes , and how many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand ? Yes . And how many times must the cannonballs fly before they're forever banned ?

The answer , my friend , is blowing in the wind . The answer is blowing in the wind . How many years can a mountain exist before it's washed to the sea ? Yes , and how many years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free ? Yes . And how many times can a man turn his head , pretending he just doesn't see ?

The answer , my friend , is blowing in the wind . The answer is blowing in the wind . How many times must a man look up before he can see the sky ? Yes . And how many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry ? Yes . And how many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died ? The answer , my friend , is blowing in the wind .

The answer is blowing in the wind . No need to comment , no confusion . Next , we have , with God on Our Side , a song sung certainly to my generation . Oh , my name , it ain't nothing . My age , it means less . The country I come from is called the Midwest .

I was taught and brought up there the laws to abide , and that the land that I live in has God on its side , oh , the history books tell it , they tell it so well the cavalry's charged , the Indians fell . The cavalry's charged , the Indians fell . The cavalry's charged , the Indians died . Oh , the country was young , with God on its side .

The Spanish-American War had its day , and the Civil War too was soon laid away . And the names of the heroes I was made to memorize . With guns in their hands and God on their side , the first World War boys , it came and it went . The reason for fighting I never did get , but I learned to accept it .

Accept it with pride , for you don't count the dead when God's on your side . The Second World War came to an end . We forgave the Germans and then we were friends . Though they murdered six million in the ovens , they fried . The Germans now too , have God on their side . I learned to hate the Russians all through my whole life .

If another war comes , it's them . We must fight To hate them and fear them , to run and to hide and accept it all bravely , with God on my side . But now we've got weapons of chemical dust . If fire them , we're forced to then fire them we must . One push of the button and they shot the whole world wide .

And you never ask questions when God's on your side . Through many a dark hour I've been thinking about this . That Jesus Christ was betrayed by a kiss , but I can't think for you . You'll have to decide whether Judas Iscariot had God on his side . So now , as I'm leaving , I'm weary as hell . The confusion I'm feeling ain't no tongue can tell .

The words fill my head and they fall to the floor that if God's on our side he'll stop the next war . This is early 60s . The civil rights movement is quite real , but the anti-war movement is just getting going . Dylan is finger-pointing . So what should we feel ? Heading off to school or off to war ? Do you know the Langston Hughes poem Dream Deferred ?

What happens to a dream deferred ? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun or fester like a sore and then run ? Does it stink like rotten meat or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet ? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load , or does it explode ? The next song for our survey , still very straightforward , is Masters of War .

It reveals quite graphically and unsubtly what Dylan felt . Then Come you , masters of war , you that build the big guns , you that build the death planes , you that build all the bombs , you that hide behind walls , you that hide behind desks . I just want you to know I can see through your masks . You that never done nothing but build to destroy .

You play with my world like it's your little toy . You put a gun in my hand and you hide from my eyes and you turn and run farther when the fast bullets fly . Like Judas of old , you lie and deceive . A world war can be won .

You want me to believe , but I see through your eyes and I see through your brain , like I see through the water that runs down my drain . You fasten all the triggers for the others to fire . Then you sit back and watch when the death count gets higher .

You hide in your mansion while the young people's blood flows out of their bodies and is buried in the mud . You've thrown the worst fear that can ever be hurled , fear to bring children into the world For threatening my baby , unborn and unnamed . You ain't worth the blood that runs in your veins . How much do I know to talk out of turn ?

You might say that I'm young . You might say I'm unlearned , but there's one thing I know , though I'm younger than you , that even Jesus would never forgive what you do . Let me ask you one question Is your money that good ? Will it buy you forgiveness ? Do you think that it could ? I think you will find when your death takes its toll .

All the money you made will never buy back your soul , and I hope that you die and your death will come soon . I'll follow your casket by the pale afternoon and I'll watch while you're lowered down to your deathbed and I'll stand over your grave till I'm sure that you're dead .

Imagine that you listened to that repeatedly and then went off to college or to work or wherever . What might happen next for you as the bombs blasted , indochina or today , gaza Sag or explode ?

I first got into Dylan , however , as did a great many people , via a song of his well , a part of it anyway that was sung by a group called the Birds , mr Tambourine man . So I think maybe why not include it ? It introduces Dylan writing image after image , leaving the meaning sometimes hard to perceive , much less to hold on to .

Hey , mr Tambourine man , play a song for me . I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to . Hey , mr Tambourine man , play a song for me In the jingle jangle morning . I'll come following you , though I know that even its empire has returned into sand , vanished from my hand , left me blindly here to stand , but still not sleeping . My weariness amazes me .

I'm branded , and now the chorus which I won't keep repeating hey , mr Tambourine man , play a song for me . I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to . Hey , mr Tambourine man , play a song for me In the jingle jangle morning I'll come following you . Take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship . My senses have been stripped .

My hands can't feel to grip my toes , too numb to step . Wait only for my boot hills to be wandering . I'm ready to go anywhere , I'm ready for it to fade into my own parade . Cast your dancing spell my way . I promise to go under it .

Though you might hear laughing , spinning , swinging madly across the sun , it's not aimed at anyone , it's just escaping on the run . And but for the sky , there are no fences facing . And if you hear vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme to your tambourine in time , it's just a ragged clown behind . I wouldn't pay it any mind . It's just a shadow .

You're seeing that he's chasing and take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind , down the foggy ruins of time , far past the frozen leaves the haunted , frightened trees out to the windy beach , far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow .

Yes , to dance beneath the diamond sky , with one hand waving free , silhouetted by the sea , circled by the circus sands , with all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves . Let me forget about today until tomorrow . Hey , mr Tambourine man , play a song for me . I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to .

Hey , mr Tambourine man , play a song for me In the jingle jangle morning . I'll come following you . I won't burden you with how I thought about that song after feeling its verses , except , to say best I could estimate , you can't play a song on a tambourine .

And since I thought the ancient empty streets were Dylan's mind at that moment , or perhaps the mind of the part of him that whispered the words to the rest of him , and since I thought his own parade in that case referred to his funeral , but then again , perhaps not . He is after all still alive and meanings abound .

Now I'd like to offer two in-between songs , I guess in-between finger pointing and going way more poetic . This is where the Nobel Prize judges likely looked , I think , to see what this guy had to offer . Note though that , having forsaked finger-pointing and even ridiculing finger-pointing as he did . Certainly that didn't mean not taking on the world .

Actually , it didn't even mean no more fingers aimed where he wanted . First there was a hard rains are going to fall I think he had partly in mind a nuclear rain , but then as a metaphor it works , if you take it that way now , but also for global storms .

You know , high water rising and fascism prowling , really for whatever you want to insert , even though , again , this is 60 years ago that he wrote this and yet , even with quite monumental changes since then , it could also have been written 10 minutes ago , which is both amazing and rather sad , because it wasn't .

It goes like this oh , where have you been , my blue-eyed son ? Oh , where have you been , my darling young one ? I've stumbled on the side of 12 misty mountains . I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways . I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests .

I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans , I've been 10,000 miles in the mouth of a graveyard , and it's a hard , it's a hard , it's a hard and it's a hard . Rains are gonna fall . Oh , what did you see , my blue-eyed son ? Oh , what did you see , my darling young one . I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it .

I saw a highway of diamonds and nobody on it . I saw a black branch with blood that crept dripping . I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleeding . I saw a white ladder all covered with water . I saw 10,000 talkers whose tongues were all broken . I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children .

And it's a hard , it's a hard , it's a hard and it's a hard . Rains are gonna fall . And what did you hear , my blue-eyed son ? And what did you hear , my darling young one ? I heard the sound of a thunder . It roared out a warning . Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world . Heard 100 drummers whose hands were blazing .

Heard 10,000 whispering and nobody listening . Heard one person starve . I heard many people laughing . Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter . Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley . And it's a hard , it's a hard and it's a hard rain that's gonna fall . Oh , who did you meet my blue-eyed son ? Who did you meet my darling young one ?

I met a young child beside a dead pony . I met a white man who walked a black dog . I met a young woman whose body was burning . I met a young girl . She gave me a rainbow . I met one man who was wounded in love . I met another man who was wounded with hatred . And it's a hard , it's a hard , it's a hard , it's a hard , it's a hard .

Rains are going to fall . Oh , what do you do now , my blue-eyed son ? Oh , what do you do now , my darling young one ? I'm going back out before the rain starts falling .

I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest , where the people are many and their hands are all empty , where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters , where the homes in the valley meets the damp , dirty prison , where the executioner's face is always well hidden , where hunger is ugly , where souls are forgotten , where black is the color , where none

is the number . And I'll tell it and think it , and speak it , and breathe it , and reflect it from the mountains so all souls can see it . Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start singing , but I'll know my song well before I start singing . And it's a hard , it's a hard , it's a hard , it's a hard . Rains are going to fall .

Not bad advice about knowing our song well and reaching out widely with it , about knowing our song well and reaching out widely with it . Next is one I find my mind putting into my typing fingers lines from over and over right up to now . Images piled on images . The song is it's Alright , ma , I'm Only Bleeding , and it goes like this .

Darkness at the break of noon shadows even the silver spoon , the handmade blade , the child's balloon eclipses both the sun and moon . To understand , you know too soon . There is no sense in trying . Pointed threats , they bluff with scorn . Suicide remarks are torn From the fool's gold mouthpiece . The hollow horn plays wasted words .

Proves to warn that he , not busy being born , is busy dying . Temptations page flies out the door . You follow , find yourself at war Watch waterfalls of pity roar . You feel the moan but , unlike before , you discover that you'd just be one more person crying . So don't fear if you hear a foreign sound to your ear .

It's all right , ma , I'm only sighing , as some want victory , some downfall . Private reasons , great or small , can be seen in the eyes of those that call to make all that should be killed to crawl , while others say don't hate nothing at all except hatred .

Disillusioned words like bullets bark as human gods aim for their mark , make everything from toy guns that spark to flesh-colored Christ that glow in the dark . It's easy to see , without looking too far , that not much is really sacred .

While preachers preach of evil fates , teachers teach that knowledge waits can lead to hundred dollar plates , and goodness hides behind its gates . But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked . And though the rules of the road have been lodged , it's only people's games that you got to dodge , and it's alright , ma I can make it .

That you got to dodge , and it's all right , ma I can make it . Advertising signs that con you into thinking you're the one that can do what's never been done , that can win what's never been won . Meantime , life outside goes on all around you . You lose yourself . You reappear . You suddenly find you got nothing to fear .

Alone , you stand with nobody near when a trembling , distant voice , unclear , startles your sleeping ears to hear that somebody thinks they really found you . A question in your nerves is lit , yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy .

Ensure you not to quit , to keep it in your mind and not forget that it is not he or she , or them or it , that you belong to . But though the masters make the rules for the wise men and the fools , I got nothing , ma , to live up to .

For them that must obey authority that they do not respect in any degree , who despise their jobs , their destiny , speak jealously of them that are free , do what they do , just to be nothing more than something they invest in .

While some , on principles , baptize to strict party platform ties , social clubs in drag disguise , outsiders they can freely criticize Till nothing , except who to idolize and say God bless him , while one who sings with his tongue on fire gargles in the rat race choir , bent out of shape from society's pliers , cares not to come up any higher but rather get you down

in the hole that he's in . But I mean no harm , nor put fault on anyone that lives in a vault . But it's all right , ma , if I can't please him . Lady judges , watch people in pairs . Limited in sex , they dare to push fake morals , insult and stare . While money doesn't talk , it swears Obscenity . Who really cares ? Propaganda , all is phony .

While them that defend what they cannot see with a killer's pride , security , it blows their minds most bitterly . For them that think death's honesty won't fall upon them . Naturally , life sometimes must get lonely . My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards , false goals . I scoff at pettiness which plays so rough .

Walk upside down inside handcuffs , kick my legs to crash it off , say , okay , I have had enough . What else can you show me ? And if my thought dreams could be seen , they'd probably put my head in a guillotine . But it's all right , ma . It's life and life .

Only it turns out in the 50 or 60 years since all that Dylan has written hundreds more songs for dozens of albums and who knows how many consigned to a wastebasket . Just to make evident that , if you who are hearing this do get interested , there is more to explore .

Remember what I said at the outset about how we get hooked on sounds when young and we don't really keep up . It applies to me too . I think one of the last songs I did notice was in the 90s and it is next , after that , one from still more recently , 2001 .

I think that I never heard until preparing for this , that I never knew existed , and yet he got an Oscar for it as best song . First , dignity Fat man looking in a blade of steel . Thin man looking at his last meal . Hollow man looking in a cotton field for dignity . Wise man looking in a blade of grass .

Young man looking in the shadows that pass , poor man looking through painted glass . For dignity , somebody got murdered on New Year's Eve . Somebody said dignity was the first to leave . I went into the city , went into the town , went into the land of the midnight sun , searching high , searching low , searching everywhere I know , asking the cops wherever I go .

Have you seen dignity ? Blind man breaking out of a trance , puts both his hands in the pockets of chance , hoping to find one circumstance of dignity . I went to the wedding of Mary Lou . She said I don't want nobody see me talking to you . Said she could get killed if she told me what she knew about dignity . I went down where the vultures feed .

I would have gone deeper , but there wasn't any need . Heard the tongues of angels and the tongues of men Wasn't any difference to me . Chilly wind , sharp as a razor blade , house on fire , debts unpaid . Gonna stand in the window gonna ask the maid . Have you seen dignity ?

Drinking man listens to the voice he hears in a crowded room full of covered up mirrors , looking into the lost , forgotten years . For dignity , met Prince Philip at the home of the blues . Said he'd give me information if his name wasn't used . He wanted money up front , said he was abused by dignity .

Footprints running across the silver sand Steps going down into tattoo land . I met the sons of darkness and the sons of light in the border towns of despair . Got no place to fade , got no coat . I'm on the rolling river in a jerking boat to fade , got no coat . I'm on the rolling river in a jerking boat trying to read a note .

Somebody wrote about dignity . Sick man looking for the doctor's cure , looking at his hands for the lines that were , and into every masterpiece of literature for dignity . English man stranded in the black heart wind combing his hair back . His future looks thin , bites the bullet and he looks within for dignity . Someone showed me a picture and I just laughed .

Dignity never been photographed . I went into the end , went into the black , into the valley of dry bone dreams . So many roads , so much at stake , so many dead ends . I'm at the edge of the lake . Sometimes I wonder what it's going to take to find dignity . And for the last song in this episode I have to stop somewhere .

At first I thought I would jump forward to 2000 , to a song I already mentioned that Dylan wrote for the movie Wonder Boys . I guess he was about 60 . I had never heard it . Despite that , it got the Oscar . It is called Things have Changed .

But then I decided , since Dylan changed personas over and over , leaving one version of himself and stepping to another almost as his most constant attribute always changing , perhaps I ought to convey the song Positively Fourth Street , which displayed his fierce words again , but this time directed at those who wanted him to never change .

It is called Positively Fourth Street , which refers to a street in Greenwich Village where he first joined folk singers and then , at least in their feelings about it , left them , though I would say he didn't really leave them . You've got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend . When I was down , you just stood there grinning .

You've got a lot of nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend . You just want to be on the side . That's winning . You say I let you down . You know it's not like that . If you're so hurt , why then don't you show it ? You say you've lost your faith , but that's not where it's at . You have no faith to lose , and you know it .

I know the reason that you talk behind my back . I used to be among the crowd you're in with . Do you take me for such a fool to think I'd make contact with the one who tries to hide what he don't know to begin with ? You see me on the street . You always act surprised . You say how are you ? Good luck .

But you don't mean it when you know as well as me . You'd rather see me paralyzed . Why don't you just come out once and scream it no , I do not feel that good when I see the heartbreaks you embrace . If I was a master thief , perhaps I'd rob them . And though I know you're dissatisfied with your position and your place , don't you understand ?

It's not my problem . I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes and just for that one moment I could be you . Yes , I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes . You'd know what a drag it is to see you . That was Dylan saying goodbye to the folk music community .

Next , in a song titled Farewell Angelina , he is saying goodbye to Joan Baez , I think , and as well to the then radical activist left community . Notice , there is nothing about Baez that repels him . Rather , it is something about the times , about our community that repelled him .

I think we should have listened to Dylan , not only when he said what we liked , but also when he said what he tried to convey here , what he could no longer immerse himself in , what he had to escape . Farewell Angelina . The bells of the crown are being stolen by bandits . I must follow the sound . The triangle tingles and the trumpets play slow .

Farewell Angelina , the sky is on fire and I must go . There's no need for anger . There's no need for blame . There's nothing to prove . Everything's still the same , just a table standing empty by the edge of the sea . Everything's still the same Just a table standing empty by the edge of the sea . Farewell Angelina . The sky is trembling and I must leave .

The Jacks and the Queens have forsaked the courtyard . Fifty-two gypsies now file past the guards In the space where the deuce and the ace once ran wild . Farewell Angelina , the sky is folding . I'll see you in a while . See the cross-eyed pirates sitting perched in the sun , shooting tin cans with a sawed-off shotgun . And the neighbors ?

They clap and they cheer with each blast . Farewell Angelina . The sky is changing color and I must leave fast . King Kong , little elves . On the rooftops they dance Valentino-type tangos while the makeup man's hands shut the eyes of the dead not to embarrass anyone . Farewell Angelina . The sky is embarrassed and I must be gone . The machine guns are roaring .

The puppets heave rocks . The fiends nail time bombs to the hands of the clocks . Rocks , the fiends nail time bombs to the hands of the clocks . Call me any name you like , I will never deny it . Farewell Angelina . The sky is erupting . I must go where it's quiet .

And so not only Baez but also the movement lost Dylan , at least as someone intimately immersed . It was not her fault at all , but instead the movement's fault , as we shot tin cans and heaved rocks .

And I say again , I think we should have heard Dylan not only when he sang what we were learning and trying to teach , but also when he sang about our not always wonderful effects on others . And next here is one song , not from Dylan , but from Baez to him . Well , after their split , dylan wasn't the only one who could write .

Well , I'll be damned , here comes your ghost again , but that's not unusual . It's just that the moon is full and you happen to call , and here I sit , hand on the telephone , hearing a voice I'd known a couple of light years ago heading straight for a fall . As I remember , your eyes were bluer than robin's eggs . My poetry was lousy .

You said when are you calling ? From A booth in the Midwest , ten years ago , I brought you some cufflinks . You brought me something . We both know what memories can bring they bring diamonds and rust . Well , you burst on the scene already a legend , the unwashed phenomenon , the original vagabond .

You strayed into my arms and there you stayed , temporarily lost at sea . The Madonna was yours for free . Yes , the girl on the half shell could keep you unharmed . Now I see you standing with brown leaves falling all around and snow in your hair . Now you're smiling out the window of that crummy hotel over Washington Square . Our breath comes out .

White clouds mingles and hangs in the air . Speaking strictly for me , we both could have died then and there . Now you're telling me you're not nostalgic . Then give me another word for it , you who are so good with words and at keeping things vague , because I need some of that vagueness now . It's all come back too clearly .

Yes , I loved you dearly and if you're offering me diamonds and ruffs , I've already paid . Okay , I know , I said that would be it , but I guess I lied . Dylan's life switching and tune tracking may be catching At any rate . I know I said that would be it , but I guess I lied . Dylan's life switching and tune tracking may be catching At any rate .

I don't see how I can end this without this next song , the final one , I promise . It is called Chimes of Freedom . It's on the album titled Another Side of Bob Dylan from 1964 . Dylan was born in 1941 , six years before me , so he was at most 23 when he wrote this . Like I said in the beginning , he was differently different .

The song goes like this Far between sundown's finish and midnight's broken toll , we ducked inside the doorway , thunder crashing as majestic bells of boats struck , shadows in the sounds , seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing , flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight , flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight and for each and every

underdog soldier in the night . And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing In the city's melted furnace .

Unexpectedly , we watched with faces hidden while the walls were tightening , as the echo of the wedding bells before the blowing rain dissolved into the bells of the lightning Tolling for the rebel , tolling for the rake , tolling for the luckless , the abandoned and forsaked . Tolling for the outcasts burning constantly at stake .

And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail .

The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder that the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze , leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder striking for the gentle , striking for the kind , striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind and the unpawned painter behind beyond his rightful time .

And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing Through the wild cathedral evening . The rain unraveled tails for the disrobed , faceless forms of no position , tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts all down and taken for granted situations .

Tolling for the deaf and blind , tolling for the mute , tolling for the mistreated , mateless mother , the mistitled prostitute , for the misdemeanor outlaw Chasen cheated by pursuit .

And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing , even though a cloud's white curtain in a far-off corner flashed and the hypnotic , splattered mist was slowly lifting , electric lights still struck , like arrows fired but for the ones condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting . Toiling for the searching ones on their speechless seeking trail . For the ?

L condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting . Toiling for the searching ones on their speechless seeking trail , for the lonesome hearted lovers with too personal a tale and for each unharmful , gentle soul misplaced inside a jail .

And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing , starry-eyed and laughing , as I when we were caught , trapped by no track of hours , for they hanged , suspended , as we listened one last time and we watched , with one last look , spellbound and swallowed , till the tolling ended , tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed , for the countless confused ,

accused , misused , strung-out ones and worse , and for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe . And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing . Whoops , I gotta change my mind again . When the pundits and critics called Dylan the voice of my generation , I think the song that they had in mind wasn't any of those I have cribbed above .

I think the song that they had in mind wasn't any of those I have cribbed above . It was instead the times . They are a-changing , so surely I have to offer that one too .

Come gather round people wherever you roam and admit that the waters around you have grown and accept it , that soon you'll be drenched to the bone if your time to you is worth saving , and you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone , for the times they are a-changing . Come , writers and critics who prophesize with your pen , and keep your eyes wide .

The chance won't come again . And don't speak too soon , for the wheel's still in spin and there's no telling who that it's naming , for the loser now will be later to win , for the times they are changing . Come , senators , congressmen , please heed the call .

Don't stand in the doorway , don't block up the hall , for he that gets hurt will be he who is stalled . The battle outside raging will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls , for the times they are a-changin' . Come , mothers and fathers throughout the land , and don't criticize what you can't understand . Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command .

Your old road is rapidly agin' . Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand . For the times they are a-changin' . The line is drawn , the curse it is cast . The slow one now will later be fast , as the present now will later be past . The order is rapidly fading and the first one now will later be last , for the times they are changing .

We still have to make that observation real , don't we ? So that's it . I hope the words will cause you to try some albums . The music and his voice really do add to the brew , bringing it All Back Home .

Highway 61 , revisited and Blonde on Blonde were three albums done back-to-back and are as good as any three consecutive artistic achievements , at least in my mind as ever can be found mind as ever can be found and , at any rate , are as good a place as any to start navigating Dylan , unless , of course , you start earlier or later .

So by all means , lend him your ear to help fulfill Chalamet's hope for the movie's effect , but do it please only as an adjunct to and maybe to help fuel giving Trump migraines and much worse . No-transcript .