John's Other Blog

On the Street Where You Live

posted by johncgreen@gmail.com @ 2:57 AM 0 Comments

Realities of "Lifestyle Design"

I listen to music, write to friends on the Internet, tweak my web pages and run my business. I don't have a job and don't need one because I know how to take care of myself. Things are OK most of the time. Then I fall into a dark, depressing pit. Someone is screaming at me. I can't speak because the yelling doesn't stop long enough. I won't mention her name, but I know she won't read this. We begin a conversation the next day in stressful tones, then it slowly subsides to normal speaking tones as we realize that we still love each other. We're back to normal, waiting for the next explosion; we both know it will come sooner or later. We are two damaged people who can't stop hurting each other. I care for her and feel responsible for her. I don't know how this happened. She is not my girlfriend or my wife.

As an element of lifestyle design, the feelings I have for this woman are bad design. There is too much suffering. A skillful, chic lifestyle designer wouldn't use this design element. It doesn't fit the "dress for success" formula. Can I afford it? Yes, I can. I can afford it because I'm not "chic" and have nothing to lose.

posted by johncgreen@gmail.com @ 12:10 PM 0 Comments

Bob Dylan "Desolation Row"

Desolation Row by Bob Dylan (1965, from the Album "Highway 61 Revisited")

This song took Dylan about 11 minutes to perform. It is a slow song sung
in a very leisurely, precise way. The band is s sparse ensemble with only
Dylan on acoustic guitar and harmonica, Michael Bloomfield on acoustic
lead guitar and Harvey Goldstein on bass. Bloomfield's simple and very
lovely guitar obbligato is almost like a human backup chorus. Another song with a related theme, "Like a Rolling Stone", was the big hit from this
album.

Desolation Row never got on any of the hit charts because of its
length. It is too long and dense for most people to understand. I don't think it is really hard to understand, but I think it takes a little more effort to understand it than most people are willing to invest in a piece of popular music. I also think the title "Desolation Row" gives people the wrong idea about the kind of place it is supposed to be. However, this is clearly an enduring piece of American poetry. All you have to do is see how many times people have transcribed the lyrics on the Internet, almost 40 years after it was written, to realize that. Several YouTube viewers of this video said it is one of their favorite Dylan song.

This song has great meaning for me because it describes in an elegant and powerful way a perspective on life that I have had myself since I left my home town in Oklahoma and went to live in Seattle when I was 20. Another title might be "The Ballad of a Dropout". In this song Bob Dylan's narrator sees the world as a place divided into the conventional life and the unconventional life, which he calls Desolation Row. He calls the unconventional life Desolation Row because whoever chooses that life usually gives up the comforts and resources that the people living the conventional life enjoy; he has to live in desolation. In addition, that "dropout" is often punished in one way or another for dropping out.

At the same time, Dylan's narrator seems to think the choice of the
unconventional life (which might have been called the "hippie" life then
or the "beat" life in the previous decade) is worth the suffering. Some people, like his Einstein, once lived in Desolation Row and then tried to move back to the conventional life. They paid a price for that too: insanity. Once you're in Desolation Row, the narrator seems to say, you must remain there because that's where you really belong if you’re to be true to yourself.

I'm touched by this "Einstein" image. Einstein is a person who once innocently lived as "himself" on Desolation Row, then tasted the Biblical "fruit" of knowledge (became Einstein) and lost his Paradise. Cinderella is someone who is still living in Desolation Row and has not lost her innocence, despite the fact that Dylan compares her to the most cynical actress of all, Bette Davis; Cinderella can see through Dylan's "Romeo" character, so she is street-wise (not innocent), but at the same time she hasn't "sold out", and "selling out" (or selling one's soul) is the kind of loss of innocence that Einstein experienced when he left Desolation Row and gave up the electric violin. That's why he's reduced to sniffing drainpipes and reciting the alphabet.

It is fun to think about the kinds of people the narrator has in mind when he mentions these characters, and I think most of us can recognize them in ourselves and the people we know. In his last verse, he says they are all "quite lame" and makes the famous comment about rearranging their faces and giving them all another name.

He also says in the last verse that it is impossible for him to
communicate with anyone who is not living in Desolation Row. Communication from other places is trivial, like the letter "about
the time the doorknob broke".

Dylan's narrator is someone who lives in desolation row by choice. Others may live there because they do not have a way to "sell out" that will move them into the more prosperous but fallen realm beyond desolation row. The mere fact that one lives on desolation row is no protection against a corrupted soul, but living there by choice is one of the many steps one might take towards purification.

This narrator is a man of great insight and eloquence. One is tempted to say he is Dylan himself, and I'm sure this is at least partly true. I'm another inhabitant of Desolation Row. My circumstances are precarious, simple and located outside the mainstream. My circumstances are not desperate now, but could easily become so in the wink of an eye. This is the plight of most people; most of us are living on the edge, even if we don't quite realize it.

I am not on Desolation Row entirely by choice. I've tried to sell out and then found myself unable to do it. Sometimes this was because my conscience would not permit, but more often it was simply because the goods I offered to the evil powers were deemed inadequate. I hope I will grow in character and spirit and that in time I will be secure enough not to debase myself by making such offers.

*****************

Lyrics to Desolation Row

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

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

In 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 outta here if you don't know"

Casanova is just being punished for going

To Desolation Row.

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

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.

(harmonica solo)

Yes, I received your letter yesterday

About the time the doorknob broke

When you asked me 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.

posted by johncgreen@gmail.com @ 11:08 AM 0 Comments

Paul Dilorenzo "Here's That Rainy Day"

The Movie Poster Page

posted by johncgreen@gmail.com @ 2:58 PM 0 Comments

Trio Los Panchos "Flor de Azelea"

posted by johncgreen@gmail.com @ 10:29 AM 0 Comments