September 30, 2024

"Everybody’s building the big ships and the boats. Some are building monuments. Others are jotting down notes...."

16 comments:

Lamont said...

Beautiful

Kai Akker said...

A song that means.... ?

Iman said...

https://x.com/KreatelyMedia/status/1840187948383248817

tim in vermont said...

I like the way that Dylan uses rhyme to take the imagination to places it would probably never have gone and to make it seem like that's where our thoughts should have headed all along.

traditionalguy said...

Yes, a beautiful soul. Makes you look forward to Heaven to meet him there.

Deep State Reformer said...

BD deserved that Noble. In a better time he'd have been a poet instead of a musician. People don't read poetry that much anymore and BD's gift is just too valuable to waste. RIP Kristofferson too btw.

Ice Nine said...

Kris was an excellent songwriter.

He should have limited himself to writing the songs.

Ice Nine said...

Heh, you ask that about a Dylan song?...

Kirk Parker said...

Kai,

If you are looking for expository meaning, you are definitely looking in the wrong place.

This kind of highly allusive writing is not about explaining, it's about evoking.

Skeptical Voter said...

Yup--Bob Dylan deserved the Nobel Prize. And in that regard so did Merle Haggard who wrote some 500 songs. Although Merle is a piker compared to Dolly Parton who supposedly wrote 2,000 songs.

William said...

I always thought that Quinn the Mighty Eskimo was a reference to the Eugene McCarthy candidacy, but maybe Dylan was referring to some drug or drug deliveryman. There were more sly references to drugs back then than there were sly references to sex in Cole Porter lyrics.....Alas poor Kris. The best rendition of his best song was not by him, and here he is remembered with a song he did not write.

Jay Vogt said...

I always admired him.

"Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free"

Kai Akker said...

OK. Then I think I prefer: 'Twas brillig, and the slythy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe......

The rule of Lemnity said...

To get to Wits End Drive, you got to Jot ‘Em Down Road, Gainesville Georgia.

Narayanan said...

https://youtu.be/BAoJbnT45Q4?si=1L85_0fLX8kJzy-Z

Amexpat said...

The song was written during the Base,ent Tape sessions where alot of the songs BD wrote were off the cuff goofing around. BD likes films and most likely he was riffing off of a movie where Anthony Quinn played an Eskimom