Refer to the lyrics at www.bobdylan.com
catherine yronwode wrote:
Seriously, this is great stuff, Nate and Dan -- to which i would like to add that Dylan is a Gemini, the sign of the twins. I believe that he is aware of this, and whether or not he "believes" in astrology, he uses many images of doubling, and twinning, not confining himself to mere "mirror" imagery.
For instance, when he gets the "Memphis blues again," he is "waiting to find out what price you have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice."
And in Brownsville Girl, "there was a movie I seen one time, I think I sat through it twice," while, in the same song, i hear an eerie echo of the mirror-like Louise -- who made it "all too concise and too clear that Johanna's not here" -- when the narrator declares, "I know she ain't you but she's here."
John Howells wrote:
There are many, many more of these instances of doubling...
"I fought with my twin, that enemy within" - Where are You Tonight
"I still believe she was my twin" - Simple Twist of Fate
"You're the other half of what I am, you're the missing piece" - The Wedding Song
"You see, you're just like me, I hope you're satisfied" - Memphis Blues Again
I've always felt that "Memphis Blues Again", in particular, used this twin imagery to its finest. I think the entire song is a dialogue between "twin Dylans". In other words, ALL the characters in the song are meant to represent the other half of the narrator.
--
nate wrote:
>what is the texas medicine????
hmm....just going through my trusty copy of Naked Lunch i see a crazed trip through Texas and No-Horse towns strictly from cough syrup....
ok....speed balls, or goof balls - mix 'em with alcohol & you get zonked. way bad.
that's my guess, although Richard Fierstein's snake oil looks like a good answer too.
that railroad gin seems like what the hobos would get by collecting all the last drops of whisky from hundreds of empties together in one bottle. yuck. or a mulligan stew if you will of those bottles.
or something they distill on their own, like moonshine.
>oh and also, can someone explain to me this line:
>"he just smoked my eyelids and punched my cigarette"
as mentioned, the Albert Grossman reference looks very good. the idea that a manager in the music business is similar to a railroad man, say in the old west coming through your land whether you like it not, resonates well.
of course, my old chestnut here is from smoking dope. pot was often stashed in a tin, like those that come with tobacco. they were sort of shaped like a lid for a large jar. not that that has anything to do with why pot was carried around in small batches termed "lids".
another sommon technique of those days was to take a filter cigarette and roll out the tobacco. then you would put in the pot or a mixture of pot & tobacco back into the tube and smoke that. if you mixed it, you were "punching" the cigarette.
but to go on, the train line would stand for your drug infrastructure and also echo the term "mainlining", a horse term. stay away from the railroad men, cause they start you out on pot, then some pills, acid, coke, moving you on up the ladder, until they get you to try mainlining. the trick was to draw the line way before that.
so the only pusher that bob has run into so far was smoking the very same dope he was supplying to bob. ;-) funny! like Harpo's dollar on a string trick.