Littwin: It’s alright, Ma, I’m only bleeding

If you read anyone who says that Dylan was the soundtrack of the ’60s, stop reading. Dylan transcended time and place and everything else he touched, which is how a blues/folk singer who changed rock ‘n’ roll, with a voice never heard before or since, came from Nowheresville, Minnesota to Greenwich Village to invent a new life and, at the same time, invent a new world.

Dylan’s story is the American story, lived as the American story should be lived, all lies and dreams, told the way Woody told it first, except that Woody wanted to make us better. Dylan just cared about the music.

He ripped his songs from headlines and from dreams and from magic and from the Bible — God said to Abraham, kill me a son — to tell the stories of hurricanes, of desolation row, of — God help us — the Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll. Take the rag away from your face/now is not the time for your tears.

That Dylan would win a Nobel is, as David Remnick pointed out, a cosmic joke. That he would win this year, in the midst of this godforsaken political season, is a joke beyond even Dylan’s reckoning.

I am sympathetic to the notion that the Nobel Prize in Literature should be about real literature, and that Philip Roth must win one soon. I mean, is next year going to be Billy Joel? But Dylan is different. There is no one like Dylan. There will never be anyone like Dylan.

No one ever wrote and sang, in Dylan’s voice, words like these:

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.

When the news broke on Thursday, I tweeted that we should have a Dylan lyric a day for the remainder of this cosmic joke of an election. I chose first something from Masters of War: “All the money you made will never buy back your soul.” Today I’m going with “But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only.”

Here are some of the many suggestions I got from the Twittersphere. All of them are great. Feel free to add your own.

@AoDespair @mike_littwin
“Don’t go thinking paradise is the home across the road.”

— Jennifer Oda (@oda_jennifer) October 13, 2016

“Ain’t it hard when you discover that/he wasn’t where it’s at/after he took from you/everything he could steal.” https://t.co/euZov8Ezki

— David Simon (@AoDespair) October 13, 2016

@AoDespair @mike_littwin “inside the museums infinity goes up on trial”

— G Athanasakopoulos (@gathanasak) October 13, 2016

And I’ll stand over your grave till I’m sure that you’re dead. https://t.co/OMQ8rNLbbd

— Stu Levitan (@StuLevitan) October 13, 2016

@AoDespair @mike_littwin
Not going to any great extremes
I’d already gone the distance
Just thinking of a series of dreams

— Tom H (@Pianomover) October 13, 2016

@AoDespair @mike_littwin “disillusioned words like bullets bark / as human gods aim for their mark”

— Colin Priestner (@colinpriestner) October 13, 2016

@mike_littwin In the jingle-janlge mornin’, I’ll come following you.

— (((Susan Crites))) (@neonnurse) October 13, 2016

@AoDespair @mike_littwin
This wheel’s on fire
Rolling down the road
Just notify my next of kin
This wheel shall explode

— (((Neal Goldfarb))) (@NealGoldfarb) October 13, 2016

@AoDespair @mike_littwin “It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls…”

— j.eaton (@libboomer) October 13, 2016

@AoDespair @mike_littwin “Well the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay. You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.”

— Rick Larios (@ricklarios) October 13, 2016

“it’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves” @AoDespair https://t.co/ddleC5LH9v

— Ramón González Rey (@sonche_eue) October 13, 2016

@AoDespair @mike_littwin “there must be some kind of way out of here said the joker to the thief “

— Yuri Thomas (@YuriThomas99) October 13, 2016

@AoDespair @mike_littwin
There’s too much confusion
Cant get no relief

— (((Neal Goldfarb))) (@NealGoldfarb) October 13, 2016

@AoDespair @mike_littwin
Better jump down a manhole
Light yourself a candle
Don’t wear sandals
Try to avoid the scandals

— Eric Hunsaker (@filmcore) October 13, 2016

@mike_littwin “But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues; you can tell by the way she smiles.”

— JKChicago (@JKChicago79) October 13, 2016

@mike_littwin
“Idiot wind Blowing every time you move your teeth”

— Jeremy Meyer (@jpmeyer66) October 13, 2016

@AoDespair @mike_littwin Someone’s got it in for me
They’re planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they’d cut it out

— Trage D. (@trage_dee) October 13, 2016

@AoDespair @MrsAlSwearengen @mike_littwin Your heart is like an ocean, mysterious and dark.

— Don’t Call Me Al (@aMereWarmint) October 13, 2016

@mike_littwin I can handle whatever I stumble upon, I don’t even notice, she’s gone. Most of the time.

— Yves Giroux (@yvresgyros) October 13, 2016

@AoDespair @mike_littwin Ain’t it clear that/I just can’t fit/
Yes, I believe it’s time for us to quit

— ((AnythingBUTAngie)) (@FoodAprecianado) October 13, 2016

@AoDespair @mike_littwin Yes wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You’d know what a drag it is to see you

— Michael Smith (@mcsmythe44) October 13, 2016

@mike_littwin By the way that’s a cute hat/and that smile’s so hard to resist/But what’s a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?

— Gabriella Souza (@GSouza_16) October 13, 2016

@mike_littwin Manipulator of crowds, you’re a dream twister
You’re going to Sodom and Gomorrah
But what do you care?

— wattst (@wattst) October 13, 2016

@AoDespair @mike_littwin You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows

— Steve Cardamenis (@SCardamenis) October 13, 2016

Photo by Somvinil via Flickr, Creative Commons