Any "Sad-Eyed Ladies" out there?

They should ban "Repeat" buttons on CD players, as well as cheap Montepulciano imports from Italy.

But it's too late now.  I'm locked in alone for the night; my daughter away with friends, and "Blonde on Blonde" on the box.  If you have Bobby, go put him on...

Who is this for?

I picture my sisters in soul, -- sisters, lovers, lovers I never knew, fallen from the same stars, and the sharp look in your eyes telling me all -- passing through this half-decade night, and the lives we expected that never arrived

"And you wouldn't know it would happen like this"

and I feel the crossbody tackle you -- we all -- received along the way, day by week by year.  Until you wake up and see a very different outcome than you thought was coming.

And now, the younger people here -- 40?  -- still expect things to turn out, somehow.  We still have an undelivered gift for them, but I don't know how we'll deliver it.

"My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,.."

I have fight in me; a lot of exhaustion, too.  My testosterone has always -- always --been turned against the bullies, not with them.  I hate bullies.  From 8 or 9, I pictured myself rescuing Joyce __ on her way home from school, threatened by the bullies on our block.

It is the job of a Man to protect.  So much protecting to be done, too.  Fatherhood has only accentuated that.

Of course, I never intervened; never saw her threatened.  But I was prepared, I thought, and occasionally, she would smile at me, from across the street.  And my day was glorious from that moment on.

Her smile, your smile.  You gave me one yesterday, in the grocery, and I soared for that hour.

"With your silhouette when the sunlight dims
Into your eyes where the moonlight swims,
And your match-book songs and your gypsy hymns,
Who among them would try to impress you?"

We thought we would take care of each other; we would be so different than the parents we watched fall into crevasses of trivia.

"With your sheet-metal memory of Cannery Row,
And your magazine-husband who one day just had to go,
And your gentleness now, which you just can't help but show,
Who among them do you think would employ you?"

Somehow, somehow... we let so many special people down.  Loyalty didn't count for very much.  And now, here we are.

We are now the elders, and the veil draws over our moment of clarity; our moment when we could have veered us all away from these perils.  Or could we?

They are getting ready to ignore us, to marginalize the edge we still feel in all of this.  Indeed, we feel more and more.  And are objectified into statuary.

They will never know the currents we swam, the hopes we felt at the high tide of freedom.  (Well, they will -- but much later...)  Unless we speak, with more piercing clarity than ever.

The prophets of our time came, and went.  We gave what we could, and now we see that it was all true.  But we also see that it was a window so rare.  It opened for a time, and we peered through, thinking it would be always open.

We thought the fight would be easy, and that we would win.  That certainty, inevitability, remember?

Truth is, quite the opposite, and not so sure.  And can we ever kick back, with what we know and have seen?

That window we peered through -- do we have an obligation, beyond all that can be said of the others?

"They wished you'd accepted the blame for the farm,
But with the sea at your feet and the phony false alarm,"

In a time when all worlds came together, were open to viewing for awhile, what heartbreak then, if we could have seen the doors closing once more?

Maybe that was the sad feeling surrounding it all?  The graveyards scenes in "Alice's Restaurant", and "Easy Rider"?  We knew this time lay ahead of us, and that full adulthood would bring heavier responsibilities than we could bear to see at the time.

Indeed, "Who could they get to carry you?"

I'm sorry that so much has clipped off your peacefully enjoying this lifetime as a woman, in a comfortable prosperous society that generations could only dream of.  And to take on a battle that should have been spared you.

I thank you for that sacrifice, and for being here.

http://bobdylan.com/...

With your mercury mouth in the missionary times,
And your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes,
And your silver cross, and your voice like chimes,
Oh, who among them do they think could bury you?
With your pockets well protected at last,
And your streetcar visions which you place on the grass,
And your flesh like silk, and your face like glass,
Who among them do they think could carry you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

With your sheets like metal and your belt like lace,
And your deck of cards missing the jack and the ace,
And your basement clothes and your hollow face,
Who among them can think he could outguess you?
With your silhouette when the sunlight dims
Into your eyes where the moonlight swims,
And your match-book songs and your gypsy hymns,
Who among them would try to impress you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

The kings of Tyrus with their convict list
Are waiting in line for their geranium kiss,
And you wouldn't know it would happen like this,
But who among them really wants just to kiss you?
With your childhood flames on your midnight rug,
And your Spanish manners and your mother's drugs,
And your cowboy mouth and your curfew plugs,
Who among them do you think could resist you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

Oh, the farmers and the businessmen, they all did decide
To show you the dead angels that they used to hide.
But why did they pick you to sympathize with their side?
Oh, how could they ever mistake you?
They wished you'd accepted the blame for the farm,
But with the sea at your feet and the phony false alarm,
And with the child of a hoodlum wrapped up in your arms,
How could they ever, ever persuade you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

With your sheet-metal memory of Cannery Row,
And your magazine-husband who one day just had to go,
And your gentleness now, which you just can't help but show,
Who among them do you think would employ you?
Now you stand with your thief, you're on his parole
With your holy medallion which your fingertips fold,
And your saintlike face and your ghostlike soul,
Oh, who among them do you think could destroy you
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

Copyright © 1966; renewed 1994 Dwarf Music  

•  Great "album"..

  ...from a poet, and not a prophet. I am glad that someone is still listening to him in 2005.

  He, you, the rest of us were all in the minority. The rest of our generation, who wasn't listening to Dylan, took over.

  Worst Generation Ever.

  by Bensdad on Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 07:57:09 PM PDT

  •  I guess I missed that part

    I hung with the minority, for as long as I could.

    And now, everyone is kind of dissolved into one big mush.

    I actually find myself trying to fight my way out of the binding gravity of my own intense experience, and see what the later generations have grown up in.  Try to relate it to the same parameters as happened for me, even if the content differs.

    It's even kind of a shock when I encounter someone with that same distilled experience I passed through. That's who this was directed to, since contact is easier through cyber-whatever now, than in person...

    by HenryDavid on Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 08:03:29 PM PDT

    •  44 years of Dylan

      and never would it have occured to me, 16 years old in 1962 when a girl I was fascinated with turned me on to Bob Dylan, that I would be marveling, 44 years later at how his words have been part of the soundtrack of my life.  Within five years or so, it had become clear to me that Dylan would be the Poet Laureate of my generation.

      You're right, HD, it's almost impossible to convey to  folks who didn't live through it, no more than a Vietnam vet can hope that a civvie could grasp what he had been through.

      What I do cherish is that I have been a part of a long continuum: how much I learned, when I was young, from the old-timers of my time, people who had lived and struggled through the Depression, the War, and the McCarthy years. Folks our age are the living bridge between the people who suffered and bled to win the benefits of the New Deal and the GI Bill, benefits that created the American Middle Class of the late 20th Century, the Golden Goose that created more wealth than had ever been seen on the planet, and the generation that will have to live with the shattering effects of the Slaughter of that same Golden Goose.

      I pretty much saw it all: the first crude attempts to harness this strange beast called "television" as a vehicle of commerce, as well as an agent of social change.  The enshrinment of the automobile as the symbol of American freedom, personal freedom. The passion of corn-fed blue-eyed blondies that took them to Mississippi to register black voters; the fire of their righteousness.  Cities burning in the urban uprisings. The lie of the War, over and over. I "ducked and covered" in elementary school, learned to grasp the concept of  nuclear anihilation, something no child has ever had to do before my generation, and should never have had to. Watched as the hopes of a generation were shot down in the streets; JFK, RFK, MLK, Kent State. Watched as Corporate America got it's act together and took over the world, and watched as laughable wingnuts took over the Rpeublican Party.

      "Interesting Times", indeed, and now we are living in them again. Times likely to go as far off the charts, if not farther, than the 60s went off the charts then in use.

      Most of us back then weren't really ready for how wild a ride it was, and I suspect most of you now aren't, either.

      Good night, and good luck. We need it.

       

      by claude on Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 09:39:16 PM PDT

      •  Your Voice

        says it all.  (My first post of the New Year, brother.  Thanks for speaking out.)

        I've run across some amazing anti-Boomer propaganda and misconceptions lately, including on the site.

        Just not getting the politics in proportion, or the demographics accurate, or even the historic timeline right.

        Which I suppose is what we did to our parents about WWII, and all the politics leading up to their "Woodstock" experience.  It's probably true that you really just can't grasp history, until you've lived it.

        I think they're getting ready to jettison us along with Social Security (Medicare's a goner, fer sure), and the "lefties" around here won't utter a peep.  The attitude's already been set up, and we won't have the angle on it to ever get it back on track.

        Me, I'm halfway to Spanish right now, and if you saw the Latina of 8 months' acquaintance I'm e-mailing my New Year's greeting to right now, you'd be.... ah well, I do get carried away with my enthusiasm sometimes, si!

        Remember "Wooden Ships"?  "We are leaving, you don't need us..."

        by HenryDavid on Sun Jan 01, 2006 at 12:17:31 AM PDT

        •  Okay....

          ..now your scaring me! I have been looking at property in France and Canada. Your comment tells me I'm on the right track!

          by Bensdad on Sun Jan 01, 2006 at 10:03:55 AM PDT

  •  According to Tom Paine

    Poets and Prophets are the same thing.

    by Moonchild on Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 08:22:55 PM PDT

    •  Sometimes poets are prophets...

      ...but Dylan runs in the other direction when you tell him he is a spokesman or a prophet. Some of what he wrote is a true today or truer than it was when written.

      I heard Lucinda Williams do his "Masters of War" recently. It was rather prophetic. Described today even more vividly than yesterday.

      Mostly, I think he was a folksinger who, uh, branched out into poetry.

      by Bensdad on Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 09:58:21 PM PDT

      •  Yes, he runs the other direction, but I think

        this is largely because people often misunderstand prophets, thinking their religious metaphors always represent psychic predictions rather than individual  observations.  He doesn't like the baggage which is understandable, but what he does can be rightly viewed that way.

        by Moonchild on Sun Jan 01, 2006 at 01:10:47 AM PDT

  •  Careful About Taking Too Much Blame

    Vietam and the Reagan Revolution were run by the Greatest Generation.

    There's no conceivable way to get to Bush without Reagan.

    And there's damned little his team brought us that wasn't put in motion by the Reagan crowd.

    by Gooserock on Sun Jan 01, 2006 at 12:06:35 AM PDT

•  "Who among them...?"

  Indeed.

  by HenryDavid on Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 07:57:33 PM PDT

•  that song...

  four of us took some mescaline in '69 & one guy wanted to listen to that song over & over. after the third or fourth playing it was really bringing us down, (i mean, the song is like, what, an hour long or something?) we put on the airplane, "crown of creation." he wanted to listen to "lather" over & over...

  by rasbobbo on Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 08:10:29 PM PDT

  •  Similar experience only it was me

    bringing everyone down with 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

    They found it quite annoying.
    
    
    
    

    by melvin on Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 08:36:32 PM PDT

    •  Selections from Ballad of a Thin Man...

      You hand in you ticket and you go watch the geek
      Who immediately walks up to you when he hears you speak
      Saying "how does it feel to be such a freak?"
      And you say "impossible" as he hands you a bone
      And something is happening here
      But you don't know what it is, do you, Mister Jones
      * * * * * * *
      You've been with the professors, and they all liked your looks
      With great lawyers you have discussed lepers and crooks
      You've read all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books
      You're very well read, its well known
      But something is happening here
      And you don't know what it is, do you, Mister Jones

      -Robyn

      by rserven on Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 08:51:49 PM PDT

      •  Just like our parents,

        when the change sweeps so much away, it will come as a shock, even if we happen to be ones who welcome the fact it is happening...

        by HenryDavid on Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 09:00:33 PM PDT

    •  Katrina --

      When I went back to New Orleans in Mid-October, I had Hwy 61 revisited on the CD, in our rental car. Desolation Row was a perfect soundtrack to that experience. Very powerful.

      Key is not to listen to it in a dark room while on Mescaline. Listen to it while driving in an open car across the City Limits into Orlean Parish and it will pierce you to the bone.

      by Bensdad on Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 10:00:54 PM PDT

  •  That was me!

    Both songs!

    Actually, I didn't develop the "repeat" habit until the past 10 years or so.  Slept all night with kd lang's "Constant Craving" on, from then on it's watching the time distension effect on my focus on work 'n' things.

    I guess it took awhile to get over the worry that we were wearing out the grooves in the records.

    Just our brains...

    It really is all about the depth of soul, that you feel in different ways, at different stages along the way.

    Somehow, I don't think my father's important and significant experience in WW2 was allowed to percolate for him to quite the same fullness as this one, although maybe there's a "Crown of Creation" song that brings it all back for him, too?

    Wouldn't know, 'cause he just can't/won't express it.

    That's my hope, here.  That we can somehow penetrate the fog, invoke the Spirits of freedom with our words/feelings/knowledge.  Cast the spell that banishes those nasty shades from Darth Cheney's Underworld.

    Everyone wakes up; walks in Peter Max flowers (ya right!) for a week, and is Excellent to one another forevermore...

    by HenryDavid on Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 08:51:19 PM PDT

•  bob is sublime n/t

  by Cedwyn on Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 09:08:53 PM PDT

•  And the other thing is

  to attempt to reach through the computer, on this N.Y. Eve, and touch the people that would have been my friends, had we met along the way.  Elicit a little from each that tells me this political quest we're on is not a dry lifeless thing, but a continuation of that thing long ago that merged it all in one.

  I gave decades to fighting the "Monster" (Steppenwolf?) and reminding America of its vision and reprimanding its behavior.  I can't stop, I guess, even though I should be tidying up messes closer to home...

  Like Archimedes in search of that fulcrum point, and the lever to do the job, I want this world moved.  In my time.

  Before the Chinese start coming at us with some of our own exemplified Imperial behavior.

  http://nwtrcc.org/

  http://warresisters.org/...

  by HenryDavid on Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 09:09:05 PM PDT

  •  Well it worked for me

     HenryDavid, you really touched my heart and soul with this post.
     I let myself really remember what it was like  and you made me open up to try and see how these weird times are being experienced by those who came after us. Still processing this.
     As a middle aged woman who has (for the most part, as much as one can) rather gracefully accepted the invisibility that comes with aging, I was startled and moved to be addressed this way by a brother from my generation. It spoke directly and immediately to me and it has done me a lot of good !
      Thank you for a grace-note at the end of a difficult year.
     AND I bookmarked the war/tax resistors websites !
    

    by Dvalkure on Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 11:50:47 PM PDT

    •  Exactly

      what I felt when that song got under my skin today -- it was pushing me out into that feeling.  Thanks for giving me that nod!

      Say -- you don't have your mudhole skinny-dipping photos from Woodstock to post here, do ya?  (jokejokejokejokejokejoke -- but, whynot?)

      That would really shake 'em up.

      (I'm still looking for my dreadlocks photos from 1970.  ;-)  A friend used to have them on her art gallery site, but gone now , boo hoo...)

      I don't think there's ever been a younger older generation headed for launching, and seems like we ought to be able to figure out something UNIQUE to do with it.

      In screenplay form, I think my working title would be "Legacy".  I want something that re-creates the environment we felt, and lets others walk in and out of it as they choose.  Let them decide where they want to go from where we left off...

      by HenryDavid on Sun Jan 01, 2006 at 12:37:07 AM PDT

•  Dylan is Awesome

  But tonight I needed something a little rawer to start the new year. I'm listening right now to side one of Neil Young's "Rust Never Sleeps." "Better to burn out than fade away" indeed.

  Happy new year.

  john

  by jabney on Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 09:13:02 PM PDT

  •  "Why burn your candle at both ends...

    when you can attack it in the middle with an acetylene torch.  There's less aesthetic value, but twice as many people can see the flame."
    --Richard Farina
    --Been down so long it looks like up to me

    by rserven on Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 09:29:46 PM PDT

•  Get all your Dylan lyrics

  Here

  Ahh, nostagia
  

  While riding on a train goin' west,
  I fell asleep for to take my rest.
  I dreamed a dream that made me sad,
  Concerning myself and the first few friends I had.

  With half-damp eyes I stared to the room
  Where my friends and I spent many an afternoon,
  Where we together weathered many a storm,
  Laughin' and singin' till the early hours of the morn.

  By the old wooden stove where our hats was hung,
  Our words were told, our songs were sung,
  Where we longed for nothin' and were quite satisfied
  Talkin' and a-jokin' about the world outside.

  With haunted hearts through the heat and cold,
  We never thought we could ever get old.
  We thought we could sit forever in fun
  But our chances really was a million to one.

  As easy it was to tell black from white,
  It was all that easy to tell wrong from right.
  And our choices were few and the thought never hit
  That the one road we traveled would ever shatter and split.

  How many a year has passed and gone,
  And many a gamble has been lost and won,
  And many a road taken by many a friend,
  And each one I've never seen again.

  I wish, I wish, I wish in vain,
  That we could sit simply in that room again.
  Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat,
  I'd give it all gladly if our lives could be like that.

  by BOHICA on Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 09:31:04 PM PDT

•  Tangled Up In Blue

  I understand what you're trying to say.  I've often tried to figure out how to express it too.  I can't.  It is a something/feeling that doesn't translate anymore.  You're right - the people that can relate hardly seem to exist anymore - at least in my day in and day out life.  When I think about how close the social transformation came - and then look at how far it missed (now) I can hardly believe it.

       

  by hoody on Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 11:37:17 PM PDT

  •  "how close it came..."

    Yes, but.  Reasons pro, reasons con.  I felt, and feel, the sadness to, at the "Falling Back."

    First of all, the Middle Class is never revolutionary.  Don't remember where I read that, but it seems to be part of the cyclical nature of humans.  Comfortable people don't revolt against their own comfort!

    Our discomfort was psychological -- shocked by the hypocrisy we saw around us, and that we'd be expected to join in and perpetuate.

    Shocked by the destruction and plundering of peoples outside our borders.

    Shocked and scared by the destruction of nature, that would eventually become the destruction of our grandchidren.

    Most of us took by default the viewpoint of ourselves as "World Citizens", whether or not we joined any organizations or parties with such titles.  A necessary broadening that came from one part, education, and the other, the desire to self-educate going forward.

    SO -- the "close" we felt was really a highwater mark that was happening to the self-selected percentage that wanted to join in with the rest of Life outside of a sick, settler society.

    We dragged that society forward a bit, but what a weight!  And it wasn't exactly a self-starter at wanting to reform.  Just think of Nixon's "Southern Strategy", which probably even Karl Rove didn't think he'd get to play another two rounds of 30 years later.

    No, we weren't really anywhere close, not to a solid changeover, anyway.

    Just individuals, out on point, like our brothers in combat in the wrong place, wrong time, taking fire.  Only, we happened to be in the right place, right time.

    And THIS is how I spent my New Year's turnover minutes, writing this to you, Hoody!  Have an EXCELLENT New Year, with and for us all!

    by HenryDavid on Sun Jan 01, 2006 at 12:05:47 AM PDT

    •  asdf

      I think that I have to agree to disagree as to how far and how much was changed.  To me, everything changed.  How does one distill a subjective experience? I suppose it depends on where we lived exactly, what are siblings did (i.e. which riots they were in), our friends and their siblings...our teachers...

      I actually did join the "World Citizens" by the way.  And I ran a legal aid office for many years.  

      Happy New Year to you as well.  Thank you for the thoughtful response.

      by hoody on Sun Jan 01, 2006 at 12:28:48 AM PDT

•  First song of 2006

  OK, so I turned off Dylan (thanks, Bob!) and started the New Year with Pink Floyd, and my fingers can barely stay on the keyboard and off the guitar strings:

  (only I change the lyrics around a little bit:)

  "I-I-I

   WON'T become

  Comfortably Numb."

  (That's the solo I want to go out with, at the very end, if they can just prop me up on stage, with a big bad amp -- that goes all the way to 11, of course -- and an audience with a high tolerance level.  Call it enhanced karaoke, whatever...)

  by HenryDavid on Sun Jan 01, 2006 at 12:42:30 AM PDT

•  The Greatest Poet Ever

  He may not like being called the voice of his generation, but wouldn't it be nice if on his new album due out in mid 2006 that he would write another protest song. He will be on XM satellite with a weekly show in March and I can't wait!    

  by freewheelin on Sun Jan 01, 2006 at 01:57:39 AM PDT

•  And the first movie of the New Year

  Apocalypse Now.  Better than I had remembered.

  by HenryDavid on Sun Jan 01, 2006 at 02:56:58 AM PDT