Notes on Tambourine Man

*Following notes build on a response I wrote over at bob-dylan.org.uk - a great site, exploring the meaning of countless Dylan songs. The Tambourine Man entry suggests that the song is a reflection of a drug-induced experience, or hallucination.

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Though I know the evening’s empires
have vanished from my hand
left me blindly here to stand
but still not sleepy

This to me speaks of a crumbling fantasy: a momentary drug-delusion perhaps, but also the disillusion of the very basic, fundamental fantasies which form the bedrock of our lived experience. It’s those moments when the blinders are stripped from our eyes, where the towering visions we dream and use to navigate through the world are crushed beyond repair, leaving us standing alone in the haunted wasteland of human desire. Despite the stumbling despair of a dying dream, Dylan’s tone of voice through this passage is particularly soft, dreamy and almost carefree - he's been here before, and will be here again. The message in Dylan's tone is perhaps positive: take it on the chin, and soldier on.

im ready to go anywhere
im ready for to fade
into my own parade
cast your dancing spell my way
I promise to go under it

Again, these lyrics could refer to dropping acid or smoking pot, but also I feel, touch on more profound elements of human existence. It’s tripping in the most basic sense of the word: those moments when life catches us by a stunning surprise, and we can do nothing but follow our instincts, even as they begin to appear alien to us. This could be falling love, but it could be the dreamy-eyed gaze of the wanderer in a new home, or the artist dancing, without a single inhibition to the tune of a muse. There’s so much in all of these lines to speak about – they say so much to me on every single level, and Dylan’s lyrics I think succeed in the many faces they wear and show at the very same time.

‘Ready for to fade into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way - I promise to go under it’ – there’s a very powerful and I think deeply political anti-egotism to this line, which blows me away everytime I hear it. To recognise the sprawling parade of one’s own ego, and to fade from it willingly, into the spell of something stronger and infinitely more promising: what else is this but the revolutionary dream of political salvation from a world of suffering?

Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
down the foggy ruins of time
far past the frozen leaves
the haunted frightened trees
out to the windy beach
far from the twisted reach
of crazy sorrow
yes to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
silhouetted by the sea
circled by the circus sands
with all memory and fate
driven deep beneath the waves
let me forget about today until tomorrow

These lyrics are for me, the best lyrics I’ve ever listened to – I don’t really know what to say about them, they just say too much for me to even begin! The haunted trees of memory, the howling sorrows of time, and the running freedom of a waving hand – do any other words capture what it is to be alive more so than these? Simply breathtaking.