--- In [email protected], "feste37" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Did anyone see Martin Scorsese's documentary on Dylan last night? > It was brilliant, absolutely riveting. Some clips of Dylan > performing I had never seen before. Such driving intensity and > authenticity. It made me realize in quite a new way just how > brilliant the guy was. I had completely forgotten "A Hard > Rain's Gonna Fall," which I used to listen to on my little record > player over and over and over in, what, 1965 or 1966. Hearing it > again after all these years was a revelation, and Allen Ginsberg > made some excellent points about the poetic quality of the lyrics. > I hadn't heard "Desolation Row" either for about 40 years. It > brought back things I had forgotten about my own adolescence. > Amazing what a song can do.
Yes, it is. They are the soundtracks to the movies of our lives. > Part two is next week, I think. Don't miss it. I have to wait until the DVD is available here in France, but I doubt it will be long. They're into Dylan here, because they are into words. But was/is arguably the most important poet of the twentieth century. The only person I can think of whose poetry possibly rocked as many people's lives (in the sense of radically shifting their states of attention) is Bob Marley. Some people don't consider them poets because they don't publish in the New Yorker. Some people can go suck eggs. There has never been another poet in the world of popular music (which, after all, affects the lives of more people than all the published "real" poets combined) who can hold a candle to him. The man is a meteor who refuses to flame out. He burns as brightly from time to time in his 60s as he did in his 20s. You mentioned Desolation Row. The other day, when Jason posted the article about Rolling Stone's picks for the Top Ten albums ever made, I reacted to it by diving for the two Dylan albums on the list. I finished that drive down Memory Row with Desolation Row. It's amazing, even now. At the time it released, it was nothing less than devastating. I remember listening to it the first time. It was the last cut on Highway 61 Revisited. The whole album was a revelation, every song taking me to places I had never dreamed of before, but Desolation Row! It was an epiphany, in every sense of the word. It changed my life forever. I was never the same person after hear- ing the first time. I sat there, shocked, the needle stuck in the last groove of the record, me unable to get up and put it back in its cradle. I remember thinking, "I didn't know it was possible to write like that." Fortunately, I have had that same experience with many other writers in the years since, but Bob was the first person to make me feel that way. Bless him. They're selling postcards of the hanging They're painting the passports brown The beauty parlor is filled with sailors The circus is in town Here comes the blind commissioner They've got him in a trance One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker The other is in his pants And the riot squad they're restless They need somewhere to go As Lady and I look out tonight >From Desolation Row Cinderella, she seems so easy "It takes one to know one," she smiles And puts her hands in her back pockets Bette Davis style And in comes Romeo, he's moaning "You Belong to Me I Believe" And someone says," You're in the wrong place, my friend You better leave" And the only sound that's left After the ambulances go Is Cinderella sweeping up On Desolation Row Now the moon is almost hidden The stars are beginning to hide The fortunetelling lady Has even taken all her things inside All except for Cain and Abel And the hunchback of Notre Dame Everybody is making love Or else expecting rain And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing He's getting ready for the show He's going to the carnival tonight On Desolation Row Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window For her I feel so afraid On her twenty-second birthday She already is an old maid To her, death is quite romantic She wears an iron vest Her profession's her religion Her sin is her lifelessness And though her eyes are fixed upon Noah's great rainbow She spends her time peeking Into Desolation Row 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 Now you would not think to look at him But he was famous long ago For playing the electric violin On Desolation Row Dr. Filth, he keeps his world Inside of a leather cup But all his sexless patients They're trying to blow it up Now his nurse, some local loser She's in charge of the cyanide hole And she also keeps the cards that read "Have Mercy on His Soul" They all play on penny whistles You can hear them blow If you lean your head out far enough >From Desolation Row Across the street they've nailed the curtains They're getting ready for the feast The Phantom of the Opera A perfect image of a priest They're spoonfeeding Casanova To get him to feel more assured Then they'll kill him with self-confidence After poisoning him with words And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls "Get Outa Here If You Don't Know Casanova is just being punished for going To Desolation Row" Now at midnight all the agents And the superhuman crew Come out and round up everyone That knows more than they do Then they bring them to the factory Where the heart-attack machine Is strapped across their shoulders And then the kerosene Is brought down from the castles By insurance men who go Check to see that nobody is escaping To Desolation Row Praise be to Nero's Neptune The Titanic sails at dawn And everybody's shouting "Which Side Are You On?" And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot Fighting in the captain's tower While calypso singers laugh at them And fishermen hold flowers Between the windows of the sea Where lovely mermaids flow And nobody has to think too much About Desolation Row Yes, I received your letter yesterday (About the time the door knob broke) When you asked how I was doing Was that some kind of joke? All these people that you mention Yes, I know them, they're quite lame I had to rearrange their faces And give them all another name Right now I can't read too good Don't send me no more letters no Not unless you mail them >From Desolation Row ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/JjtolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
