Friday, February 6, 2009
Desolation Row
After listening to "Desolation Row" about 6 times in a row I have concluded that I will never attempt to dissect, interpret, understand or decipher any part of this song because its way to heavy and sometimes it gives me nightmares of a freak show circus on acid in which Dylan is urinating on the "American Dream". Well I guess I just put one idea out there but that is it. For the sake of our sanity I think we should all leave it alone. Why am I so afraid of this song ? Am I sniffing drainpipes on...
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the circus freak show on acid sums up desolation row rather nicely. i once heard someone say that ezra pound and t.s. eliot had a love child and his name was bob dylan. (i think it was a law & order:ci episode). makes me wonder if they really were fighting in the captain's tower or engaging in some other activity. almost like asking salvador dali and andy warhol to your tea party.
ReplyDeletethere's an old american pop standard called, "on the street where you live". is this dylan's version(vision?) of that idea? is it dylan pointing out our(his) attraction to the repulsive, or the repulsion to that attraction or both? while no one is supposed
to escape there, it seems many have already
done so, or are wishing that they could. there's an earlier quasi-electric outtake of desolation row which is interesting because
casanova is being spoon fed the "boiled guts of birds." just a thought. in any case desolation row is one of those monsters that will always be wrangled with in any discussion of dylan's most powerful lyrics,
written at the height of his poetic powers.
as for chach's fear of the song, it was first
evidenced on a long road trip to the land of
oz some years ago. i know because i was there.