This Dream of You

I dream just of you.
It's the reason I'm alive.
But you're not around.

This song from 2009's "Together Through Life" is another in those "she keeps haunting me" songs that Bob Dylan has been specializing in for the past few years. It's also yet another one with a remarkable photophobia on his part. He begins the song with "How long can I stay in this nowhere cafe, 'fore night turns into day. I wonder why I'm so frightened of dawn. All I have and all I know is this dream of you which keeps me living on." I start to wonder after a while if he's portraying himself as a vampire or a ghost, so torn and worn thin by love that he can't stand the day and can only haunt the night.

I handled verse 1 directly. Here are the others:
- Everything old becomes new again, but he might have missed that moment. He just keeps the dream of you alive.
- Shadows dancing on the walls seem to know it all. He doesn't want to believe what's in front of his face, but he has n o choice.
- Maybe he's blind, maybe his heart deceives, but he can't cry anymore, he can only believe... in you.
- You always seem like you're here, but every time he tries to touch you, you disappear.
- He sat in a sad room and watched a shooting star. And he renewed his dream of you, which is all that keeps him moving.

Shake Shake Mama

Young sexy mama
Is worth a little heartbreak
For an old codger.

"Shake Shake Mama" is another one of the "you girls are a little too wild for me" songs that Bob Dylan has been writing for the past 15 years. This one appeared on the 2009 album "Together Through Life."

1. He gets the blues for you when he looks at the sun. Come back so you both can have some fun.
2. It's early evening and he's walking up heartbreak hill.
3. Shake like a ship going out to sea. You took my money and gave it to Richard Lee.
4. Judge Simpson's walking down by the river. Old Simpson, that clown, shocks him more than anything.
5. Some women really know they're stuff, but oh dear, those torn clothes and rough language.
6. He has no mother, father or friends. 
7. Mama ought to raise her voice and pray, and when she goes home, she had better go the shortest way.

My Wife's Home Town

My wife is trouble.
She makes me do bad things, and
Her home town is hell.

"Hell is my wife's home town." It's one of the stranger choruses that Bob Dylan has ever sung, and I like it. "My Wife's Home Town" is a Dylan/Robert Hunter composition with a big dose of Willie Dixon in it. I don't know who the wife is supposed to be in this song, but she sounds like the crusty old Dylan who put this on the 2009 album "Together Through Life" has met his match.

Regarding the wife:
- Hell is her home town
- She makes you steal
- She makes you rob
- She gives you hives
- She makes you lose your job
- She makes things bad
- She makes things worse
- She has more potent poisons than a gypsy curse
- She will make me kill someone
- She makes me lose my reason
- She ensures that I love only her

My favorite lyrics from the song:

"Well there's reasons for that and reasons for this
I can't think of any just now, but I know they exist."

"Well there's plenty to remember, plenty to forget
I still can remember the day we met."

"State gone broke, the county's dry
Don't be looking at me, with that evil eye
Keep on walking don't be hanging around
I'm telling you again that Hell's my wife's home town"

Life Is Hard

I made it alone,
But I find that life is hard
When you're not with me.

Everybody knows what a bummer it is not to have your sweetheart by your side. Bob Dylan explores this theme in "Life Is Hard," a slow number off the 2009 album "Together Through Life," and the opposite of the wish that the album title suggests:

1. Evening winds still. No way no will. On guard, life hard, no you near me.
2. You were a good friend, but now you're gone. By school yard, life hard, no you near me.
3. Empty since you left. Don't know what's wrong or right. Need strength to fight the world.
4. No more touch, heart locked up, haven't felt that much. Life hard, no you near me.
5. Sunset, time to go, chilly breeze. No memories, just dreams locked up. Life hard, no you near me.

Jolene

This is a decree
From the king: You are informed
That Jolene is queen.

"Jolene" -- not the Dolly Parton song of the same name -- is an inoffensive enough song on "Together Through Life." The lyrics reinforce one major point:

"Baby, I am the king and you're the queen."

Jolene's other qualities include walking down High Street in the sun, making dead men rise because of her charms, making Bob get a gun and sleep by your door, making Bob willing to sacrifice himself for you, arousing Bob toward feelings of possessing you, making him keep his hands in his pockets and moving along, steering Bob toward thoughts of gambling, her big brown eyes that set off sparks and her ability to make a pessimist feel like an optimist.

It's All Good

It's all bad, really.
People make trouble and fight.
Why should I worry?

There's nothing I don't love about Bob Dylan's 2009 album "Together Through Life," and "It's All Good," the last song, is no exception. The song is a catalogue of misery, topped by Dylan's insistence of, whatever, it's all good.

1. Talk about me. Stir the pot. I'd do it too. You know what they say...
2. Politicians tell lies. Restaurant kitchen has flies. You know what they say...
3. Wives leaving their husbands. I wouldn't change it. You know what they say...
4. You could drown in a teacup. You know what they say...
5. People on the land are sick. They would move away if they could. You know what they say...
6. Widow cry. Orphan plea. More misery everywhere you look. Come with me, baby. You know what they say...
7. Killer stalking the town. Cop cars at a crime scene. Buildings falling down. You know what they say...
8. I'll remove your beard and throw it in your face. I'll be eating your lunch tomorrow. You kow what they say...

If You Ever Go to Houston

Bob's Houston advice
Should keep you safe from the cops,
But not loneliness.

"If You Ever Go to Houston" is another one of Dylan's recent rueful songs of lessons learned late. It's also a beautiful song. It borrows the title line from the song "Midnight Special," but heads in its own direction from there. It's a time-warp trip through the oil city of today and the old days of the Texas republic, steeped in barbeque sauce and regret:

Instructions for Houston trip:
1. Walk right. 
2. Hands in pockets.
3. Don't look for a fight.
4. Watch out for the sheriff at the corner of Bagby and Lamar.
5. Know where you're going or stay where you are.

Instructions for Dallas trip:
1. Say hellow to Mary Anne.
2. Tell her I've still got my finger on the trigger.
3. If you see her sister Lucy, apologize for my absence.
4. Tell her sister Betsy to pray for this sinner.

Why Bob knows all this:
1. He nearly got killed there in the Mexican war.
2. Something keeps him coming back.
3. He knows about restlessness and having to keep moving forward.

Instructions for policeman:
1. Please find my gal.
2. She was last seen at the Magnolia Hotel.
3. Be my friend.

Instructions for trip to Austin, Fort Worth and San Antonio:

1. Visit the bar rooms I used to get lost in.
2. Send me home my memories.
3. Put my tears in a bottle. Seal fast.

What's at the corner of Bagby and Lamar:
1. Deloitte & Touche human resources office
2. Houston Public Library - central branch
3. Sam Houston Park
4. The Heritage Society
5. Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co
6. Societe Generale
7. Houston Volunteer Lawyers
8. Bus stop for routes 18, 36, 37 and 40.

Regarding Bagby and Lamar:

Who was Thomas Bagby (1814-1868)? He was a businessman and civic leader from Virginia who moved to Texas. He petitioned the legislature to emancipate a black female slave in 1847, but his petition was rejected. He was a Mason, a Presbyterian and an alderman of Houston's Fourth Ward.

Who was Mirabeau Bounaparte Lamar (1798-1859)? He was the president of the Republic of Texas, born near Louisville, Georgia. He played an instrumental role in repulsing the Mexican army at the Battle of San Jacinto, and called for the execution of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. His two opponents for presidency of the republic killed themselves on the same day, providing him with an easy win. He later died of a heart attack, having survived the death of his daughter.

I Feel a Change Comin' On

We're gonna be friends,
Lovers together at last,
Now that I am old.

"I Feel a Change Comin' On" is the second-to-last song on the 2009 album "Together Through Life." It feels like a valedictory, the finale to the album, whereas the last song, "It's All Good," is more like an epilogue. This song is an invitiation to an old man's current sweetheart to take the relationship one step further. As Bob sings, "If you want to live easy, Baby, pack your clothes with mine." The repeated reference to the "fourth part of the day," which is "already gone," sounds like the beginning of Act V, often the last act in a Shakespeare play. And of course, all the world's a stage, so it's easy to see this sweet, sentimental song as a preparation for death.

1. Bob sees the world in front of him and, zooming in, sees his sweetheart coming his way, along with the village priest (time to get married).
2. They have a lot in common, and "I just can't wait for us to become friends."
3. Life is for love; love is blind. Let's get together.
4. Why dream? They don't work anyway and we have better things to do in the waking world.
5. She's so sexy, she could start a fire. She drives him crazy, robs him of reason.
6. Meanwhile! He is listening to Billy Joe Shaver and reading James Joyce. And to make the rhyme complete, he notes that "Some people they tell me I got the blood of the land in my voice."
7. Everybody else has: money, nice clothes, flowers. Bob doesn't have a single rose (except you, of course)

Forgetful Heart

When the heart forgets
How it used to love, the mind
Is doomed to recall.

The Bob Dylan of recent years writes elegies to love and companionship, but usually with a dose of misanthropy. I loved you, you loved me. We parted, and you know what? I'm lonely and I'm in pain with loneliness, but screw it, I've had enough of people. Get off my lawn. "Forgetful Heart" from 2009 doesn't contain any "get off my lawn." It's regret and loss in fifth gear.

1. Heart forgets the good times. Of all the organs, who would remember them better? That's a tragedy.
2. Heart and I used to laugh. Heart was the answer to my prayer. Now it's just one day to the next.
3. Heart and I loved love. Surviving alone is intolerable.
4. Insomnia, pain, the door is closed to heart. There's a strong chance that there never even was a door.

Truly dough without a levity agent, as it were.

Here is a live version from Berlin in 2013.

Beyond Here Lies Nothin'

Stay with your old man.

Let's consider our future

And forget the past.

"Beyond Here Lies Nothin'" opens the album "Together Through Life" from 2009, which I suppose is a joke because there's plenty that lies beyond this song, and all of it is good. "Together Through Life" is a variation on the snaky blues-song readymades that Bob Dylan has been assembling from other songs perhaps as much as writing since 1997. While "Time Out of Mind," "Love and Theft," "Modern Times," "Together Through Life" and "Tempest" all have their own differences in sound and production, they feel almost like pastiches from the great American blues, folk and country-and-western songbooks. That's fine with me because it couches the starry sky of Dylan's meanderings in easy-to-understand chords and melodies rather than challenging the listener to take heed of musical innovations at the same time as the poetry. "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'" is also of a piece with many of these songs: Dylan's an old man, he's singing songs of love to a woman, whether she's the same one who has so often abandoned him or whether she's someone new. Either way, he's old, mistrustful, bitter and reminiscing, while at the same time new vistas for life open up. Whether she's with him or without him in this song, is up to the listener to guess.

The video for this song is unaccountably violent and not suitable for work vieweing, and it didn't sit well with me at all. It's a short film of mutual domestic abuse in which the woman, who has been tied to a bed by the man, frees herself. They go at one another with punches, frying pans knives and a big car, and if there's a metaphor here about the passion of relationships among people who really really really love each other, then it's diminished by the graphic violence in the scenes. Having said that, I've heard people say more violent things to each other than what these two do.

You might prefer this live performance from Tucson, Arizona.

Beyond Here Lies Nothin'

Our love won't be over,
Even after all this time.
Let's keep going, girl.

Beyond Here Lies Nothin'

This love will be ours
After all this time searching.
What's past is prologue!