Written by Bob Dylan (1967)
In this song you’re locked up. You’ve got time to think. You hear voices crying out from in your head and all around you. Thick walls block you from humanity and reflect back every right or wrong deed that you’ve ever done. Your psyche replays moments from your past. Images of the ones you love, the ones who hurt you, all of the reasons why you’re here. You make friends, you hear stories. People tell you why they’re not meant to be here. What could anyone do to deserve this? And then in the midst of all of the pain and darkness you start to rise above it. The loneliness and the suffering guides you to something that you’ve always known about but could never put your finger on. It hits you like a ton of bricks. Now you can see it. You see the light, small but getting bigger. You know it’s coming. Any day now.
In his book Man’s Search For Meaning Viktor Frankl writes about his experience as a prisoner in Auschwitz concentration camp. He describes a moment when he was nearly in tears from pain, repeatedly thinking of his unimaginable circumstances. But then he became unwilling to continually let his mind play these images on repeat. He forced himself to think of something else. He suddenly saw himself giving a lecture about his experiences in the concentration camp. He rose above it and saw it from an objective viewpoint. He quotes Spinoza:
“Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.”
Frankl was able to see that his suffering had a purpose. He decided that he would go on to influence generations of people based on the horrors he was experiencing. He immediately knew, like C.S. Lewis writes, that “the highest does not stand without the lowest.”
Sometimes it can feel like you’re locked up in your head. Like the whole world has narrowed to this one moment and this moment is not good anymore. Circumstances can turn dark quickly and the light is hard to find. But it’s always there. And forming a clear picture of it brings relief. Like Dylan writes in the song, “I swear I see my reflection / somewhere so high above this wall.” This song is a catharsis. It’s a recognition that the highest cannot stand without the lowest.
In July of 1966 Bob Dylan was just in a terrible motorcycle accident that forced him to stop touring. He had also faced a year of brutal backlash after “going electric” and shifting away from the folk music that his fans loved. He retreated to a Big Pink house in Woodstock, New York with the band he had been touring with (who later became The Band). He wrote this song in the basement of that house.
My favorite version of this song is when Dylan played it with The Band (and many others) at the Last Waltz. His studio outtake from 1971 is also great. My second favorite version is Jeff Buckley’s from the Live at Sin-é album. And I can’t not mention Nina Simone’s version.
Talk to you next week!
Dawson
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