vulnerable

Bob Dylan was a trickster, what I always believed. American like a tall story is American, as concrete and abstract as the dream. Until I saw and heard him live in ‘75, and must expand my mind.

The lyrics of his songs were as slippery and wild as his singing pitch. Allusive, and one must think, deliberately confusing the rest of us. As if to jam one’s own sense of them, so they meant whatever Bob wanted them to mean.

Until he was in front of me, with the Rolling Thunder Revue behind. Still allusive, elusive, illusive in white face. But in his eyes, that unique trickster voice, something different, not seen nor heard before. Not ‘65 but ten years after, dream gone like his youth. And to replace that singular incandescence, only the shadows cast on one by loss.

He had the Revue. Though it could be said the Revue had him. He was the leader still, clear in Hard Rain. But I looked for ‘the look’, that withering back glance he had that put a musician, any musician, back in place, and it wasn’t there. Not that anyone could put that caravan of rebel musicians back into any place they weren’t going to already.

Bob Dylan & Rolling Thunder Revue, One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below) [via 5thdayofMay]

It was a unique, uniquely evanescent sound, Bob and the Revue. Not heard before, not to be heard since. A melding and arranging (barely) of loosed rebel musical genius, like a meandering speeding train that is only just in control. Until that train slowed, when nothing but a true, melancholy musical beauty emerged.

Your breath is sweet
Your eyes are like two jewels in the sky
Your back is straight your hair is smooth
On the pillow where you lie
But I don’t sense affection
No gratitude or love
Your loyalty is not to me
But to the stars above

One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee ‘fore I go.
To the valley below.

Your daddy he’s an outlaw
And a wanderer by trade
He’ll teach you how to pick and choose
And how to throw the blade
He oversees his kingdom
So no stranger does intrude
His voice it trembles as he calls out
For another plate of food.

One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee ‘fore I go.
To the valley below.

Your sister sees the future
Like your mama and yourself
You’ve never learned to read or write
There’s no books upon your shelf
And your pleasure knows no limits
Your voice is like a meadowlark
But your heart is like an ocean
Mysterious and dark.

One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee ‘fore I go.
To the valley below.

One word I must reach for to name what I saw and heard then and never before. Bob Dylan, the magical trickster, was vulnerable, mortal and real. And as his one act, reaching to the rest of us.