MY EYES WON'T CLOSE. I TRIED TO SLEEP FOR ONCE, BUT HOLY SHIT IT JUST KEEPS COMING TO ME.
Okay, part of this story is true, I haven't been able to sleep correctly for a while now, I am kind of freaked out. Today I walked a lot with my friends, then, at 7p.m, after a full day of drinking (literally there’s this guy that forced to start drinking at 11 a.m), walking, and listening to music, I returned to my house and walked for about 40 minutes and STILL couldn't sleep.
I've gotten used to it by now, the endless nights of pillow hunting, starless, empty. Forced to populate my own room. It became a routine after a month or two, deprived of sleep, wondering about the delirious voices, and taping on the walls of my apartment, the world is always present.
My conclusion is that I am suffering of an intriguing case of unsubjectification, wonderful.
I've shred my last remnants of fixed identity, what remains are patterns, deep traces, traces in time.
My tongue is imbued by fire, and my words escape my wrist. Like a child that tries to catch the fire of a bonfire, I am left, stranded, to connect, ancle, the pillars of smoke that arise beyond the horizon, but ain't it just an illusion after all?
Never have I been more sure about the falseness and cowardice of individuality, and, on the other hand, the incessant need for individuation. A tiny, yet profound line that divides the two, wounds our flesh, immanence maybe, that is yet to fully express and be presence.
It has all become to normal to me, silences never enter my brain, but then again much of my existence is defined and surrounded by silence, silence of my eyes, of a body that is about to decide the course of their actualization, a sign in the division of paths arises, it reads:
"The writer that comes to the pen as blank as the sheet of paper and the writer that has studied, crafted a masterful method are all moved by the same forces." Pre-meditation, what lies before action is always imperceptible, but shouldn't be misjudged. automatic writing taken rigorously, is a pre-meditated state that far from being a liberation of the subject is a method of liberation from the subject. The best weapon against the machinery of precision is not exuberant randomness, humanist self-expression, authenticity as much seem to claim over the years, but another machine, the machinery of delirious imprecision, says Duchamp, the sex machine, would I like to say. Ironic distance, the kind that is used in Jarry's doctor Faustroll, the same that bugs you when you locate (not admire, not even need to look at) a ready-made in the gallery you are in. The same indeterminacy that populates Mallarmé's Coup de dés, a sort of ambivalence that resolves itself in the denial of reality and then of itself.
Says Dylan, almost as if talking about of a common friend (ain't it just like them to play tricks?), but then, almost like trying to hide it from the listener, quickly the two words come and go, but with a pause after and before: "to play", as a pivotal point-but to play what?
It is an enjambment, an especial one, an expression cut in half, loosing all its meaning and recovering it in the next line; Dylan then returns with a voice of complaint, eating some syllables "Tryynna be so quieeet!"
"We sit here stranded
but we all doin our best to denyy it"
It may seem tiny, but the next verse does not have this pivotal point, it directly cuts from "stranded" to "but", as an immediate response of the latter to the first part of the sentence.
At night, visions play with us, they remind us that we're but a trace, a shadow of another existence, a fuller one. The one from which Buñuel laughs at us, mocks us, in Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie, looking at how disjointed and noncontinuous is our life, and yet we just keep walking in circles, pretending to know where we are at all times. The characters of this movie are often seen walking, from nowhere to nowhere, stranded, and mocking the very idea of a movie being governed by the rationality of a story. If you listen close enough this existence murmures, listen, it says "your you is my me".
Read coldly, the lines of Visions of Johanna make no sense, if the night pokes at us -when we're being SO quiet- why is it that in the second verse we're stranded, and it is us that make noise, prophesize to try and fool ourselves out of it? The places have shifted, at first it is the world that moves and us that are quiet, now it is us that move and the world responds with silence to our pathetic voices, like the little organ at the back of the song, that just makes itself present in the second parts of the verses, it just follows a straight line in the other half. That little whining organ.
Anyways, it is the "to play" that turns it all, it shows that man is always played with: but it comes silently, as if Dylan became the night that will -successfully- haunt not only your dreams, but the next part of the sentence with that "tricks" that does not belong where it is.
When the "to play" makes itself noticeable, it is not in the first verse, but in the second, by its absence, we realize the fundamental and brutal nature of the situation, how disconnected, separated we are from the first part of the sentence (the world). The clash between the two parts is made more immediate, more brutal, there is no hidden pivotal point, no point d'appuis. "but we're all doing our best to deny it" comes as a reaction to silence.
Be it us reacting to the silence of the world, or the world populating our silence with images of another existence, it is always one in face of the other, the first part of the sentence does not make sense without the other "Ain't it just like the night -to play" won't come without the tricks, the human is indivisible of the world -just as a verse isn't just a collection of words or syllables, it is a complete entity that moves and is in unison- and the very idea of individuals, attempts against it.
Human interprets, and creates meaning because of the silence of the world, but that doesn't mean we create the world by interpreting it, as some may tell, because it introduces itself in us with its tricks and shapes us in turn -Remember how "to play tricks" finishes in the second part of the sentence? Sneaking into the very factory of our beings- it pokes at us, like that little "to play", discretely, far from the noise and sometimes bombastic meaning machines made by man, as seen in the second verse. All of a sudden, with his realization Dylan comes back to the reality of the song, the mundane one, defying him, demanding of him to be: to desire to be, which means to create himself and the world -that creates Dylan and thus re-creates itself through him once again. To become presence. But Dylan is never fully present, refers to himself as "he" sometimes, fully extracting himself of it all, taking a distance. When "Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting you to defy it" comes, it comes with a certain urge, it is explosive, no nuance like the other two verses, let alone the "to play", not even a dichotomy, just a scream. They demand to be seen, his lover I mean, but reality too; ain't it funny then that Dylan, facing this urge, goes to describe the scenery, not even of this room but of the opposite room?
With the most dead voice ever seen, could be seen as a romantic voice, but there is no place for romance in this song, just the primal pulsations, of existing in a place in time. These verses are much more mundane, Dylan is not being forced to be anymore, he is, he populates the room -or the room is haunting him- with sings. Everything in the room tells the singer that this place is utterly dead: even his voicing is, with the F the GH, FT and FF at the end of each verse, that are the dust setting in on everything, the silent guitar doesn't take off, just keeps scratching some monotonous chord, and the organ just fell asleep FFFFFFFFHHH -dead noise, like wind. Then, with "but there's nothing, really nothing, to turn offff"-that just goes into the most grave sound Dylan's voice can make- it is all sucked in, by the vortex of the music, of the world that reclaims what is theirs, and what is left? once again, it all starts one more time, the pure physical existing bodies demanding to be populated by signs, or just Louise, with her lover so entwined.
And yet the place is replenished of signs, suggesting ideas, Dylan ancles them, moves them, sees things in the flickering lights, in the radio tuned to a dead channel, "and this visions, of Johanna, that conquer my mind": that conquer coming as if he had the burden of the world in his shoulders, and, in a way, he has it.
-and what will be of this song, and all other works of art for that matter? aren't they themselves escaping their reality because they re being recorded, preserved through time?-
After the third stanza the song lights up and takes all the space and time, with the biblical sounds of the battery, like warning us that the ritual is about to take place, once again. The ritual that has always been going on all along the track and that seemingly will never come to an end: for after 7 minutes the song just fades, as if melting with the silence of our world. We're now bound to live life as a ritual now, bound to recreate ourselves once again, in this liminal, always shifting planes. From the intimate the song just shoots up to the very fabric of eternity, with the guitar going all up with the "infinity goes up in trial" of Dylan. But this was always implied with the song, the silence that allows the harmonica to go in its rant while the Dylan machine stops (literally, the IN of "inside the museums", is as if bob restarts the engine, "iiiiiiiinside the museums")- that is now going to go in one of the best two couple of stanzas that I've ever witnessed- serves as a unveiling of what was going on all along, this is no love song, this goes beyond Bob, the mask all of a sudden becomes clear, Bob is but a medium, a translator of the signs of the world. Dylan is never personal, Ironic distance, Bob escapes the drowning of a lot of singers and writers in their own feelings. In any case, since the first two sentences of the song this connection was made, from hey Jim "ain't just like the night…" to "we ALL doing our best to deny it".
Not gonna bother you with the rest of the song, or the album for that matter, nor answer the questions about transcendence, and Mona Lisa having the highway blues, that's on your own, it is you who has to give the album the existence it demands so eagerly, to populate it with your own visions.
Electrick pancakes 2000s