Bringing it all Back Home is a huge breakup with the listener.

The first half, rollicking, is the demonstration of the new Dylan, the one we wish hadn't come along. The one that really spoiled the whole messiah vibe he had going for him. This was the death of a celebrity with a soul (or what we thought showed a soul). Maybe he we showing us that that image was soulless, and that this was soul, or maybe he was saying it was impossible to ever convey soul through music, and that he wasn't even trying. Or maybe his martyrdom was that he was trying, so we that we wouldn't have to.

And you know what? You can't help but love it. That sharp guitar in Subterranean Homesick Blues, that voice that vibrates to your soul? The harmonica- for what reason, exactly? Coddling? And the didactic lyric, Dylan showing us what he thinks of us, our capability for meaning for existence. "Don't follow leaders, a-watch your parkin' meters." "Twenty years of schoolin' and they put you on the day shift." He's describing an industrial dystopia. And it's awesome.

And now we've got sort of a soundtrack-to-your-mind Dylan song. It's supposed to lead succession of images in the listener's mind (like a lot of his songs), and the music reinforces that mood in an understanding way, a coddling way, that Dylan doesn't often bring out (Just Like a Woman, Like a Rolling Stone). A way that makes us feel good for listening to it, because the universe it creates is sympathetic for the song's existence. Desolation Row was a cab ride. Come on. This is heartbreak! This is transcendence!

So now we get a protest song, and it becomes clear: Dylan is parading out his former selves. We got a "funny-cool-deep" song (Talking World War Three Blues, Motorpsycho Nightmare), an "emotional song with resonance" (Don't think Twice, It's Alright, It ain't Me, Babe), and an "anti-establishment in a biting and funny way" song (I Shall be Free & I Shall be Free no. 10, John Birch Society Paranoid Blues).This is horrible. He knows what we're thinking. The lack of a real "Blowin' in the Wind" type song speaks to Dylan's ability to take the distilled essense of that distinctive quality about the song and dilute it into all his songs, making us get closer to them to feel the same way. Sucking us in.

And here's a horror of a song. For two minutes, this is the most adorable, heartwarming song. Yet it still totally insults the listener: we're the ones "drawing conclusions on the walls" and "talking of situations." We're the pawns holding grudges. He's doting on someone on his level, someone who understands what he says. They're laughing at this song. But then the last verse, he trows that under the bus. It's like he's undercutting everyone under them in order to make her seem great, and then we at least see soul in that, but then he undercuts even her! Is he a solipsist? or what?!

Now here comes the real new Dylan. He shows us that ^ is what he's been doing. "Ain't it hard to stumble and fall into some lagoon." And he "won't hang no picture," or even a frame. He might look like the assassin of soul, of humanity, he says no, I am the Hero of this story. He then goes on to aspouse his virtues.

On the Road Again is Dylan telling us why he has to move on from our town, our reality. We're the ones asking why he doesn't want to live here, with us. Here's what he says: he's in the bed with our women, and our fathers don't like it and wear "Napoleon Bonaparte" masks. He goes on to aspouse the banality of our lives. Can you believe what he put to tape for millions of people to hear? I mean, do you really think his thinking only gets as far as broadcasting to a mass? He's selling music to an atomized crowd. And he knows it.

Bob Dylan's 115th Dream is one of the artist's finest works, in my opinion. It begins with a false take, Dylan solo with guitar, only he can't do it and cracks up. How hilarious, that Dylan should want to do an acoustic song? What the fuck do those people think I am? Dylan doesn't think of the folk genre as something he's expanding; he's exploding it, transcending it. And goodbye to anyone who thinks he telling you anything different that what you are. In this song Dylan brings up the major parts of industrial life: the police, money, etiquette, funeral homes, banks, collateral, Columbus, France, homeless protests, trucks, poverty, hunger, the American Flag, Jesus (a great line about him), irony and humour, absurdity, Moby Dick, cabs, "fab", "advertising Brotherhood," Bowling balls, pay phones, etc. And all the verses are the same! Set up sitiuation, introduce quirk, then in the last four lines blow it all to hell and proffer commentary. The music shows this too, with that "twilight zone" tone toward the end of each verse. He's travelling through our universe, where he used to live, and showing us its riduculousness. He's returning to the cave to show the shadows of our shadow world, what is possible when you realize it's all only a dream.

Mr. Tamborine man is the biggest coddle job on the whole disc. It's the idyllic Dylan, here again. He is arisen! It only took the picking up and flipping of the record. That side was the other, this is the familar, the true. Any number of daulistic metaphors could be made here. But all this is only the background of the songs text. It is the context for his message. Dylan speaks through our voice for the last time here, and our song is directed at him. He is the Tamborine Man. The song is our plea to go with him, to take him with us as he travels on some other mystical plane, and suddenly Dylan is implying that what we just left behind was ourselves, our level. What we can understand. Suddenly it's no longer about anything between Dylan and me. He's saying I can't understand it. I feel he then drops the heavy shit on us.

Gates of Eden is one of the richest songs I've heard. Fuck, man. rich? Class struggle, class struggle. I guess it's got what you'd call soul, but maybe that's just a structure of Class power, too. Whom does not lying serve, anyway? The authorities. Anyway, the plurality of possible derivations of meaning from this song is amazing, a true masterpiece of structuralism, almost a Gordian knot of a song- you know the key is Eden, but what next? And in between, it's all like "this is you. no, this is you. or is this them? or is that them? or those other ones, with the bread crumb sins? huh? me? you? soup?"

Then It's Alright Ma, (I'm only bleeding) is kind of ridiculous. How much more explicit could he be in downright manipulation? Like, it's a fuckin' bandsaw of a song, if you let it be. It's resonated with me to the core. But then you see what it is, image rap. Bam, Bam, Bam. Short story after short story, until it all sort of runs together as a sort of lecture. A slam poetry-rollickin'-beat-masterpiece-transmission of the human soul lecture. Maybe he's saying "these are the basic emotions. learn these, and then we can talk." Except not even really, because he's not going to meet millions of us. We're not all going to be able to make this guy a part of our lives. It's folly, it's idolatry. And this, somehow, is part of the lecture. And it's so in character! But think: where, in the real world, would you see a song like this performed? Nowhere? Someone we'd think was depressed and weird? It's the imposition of an other, or, if the listener's already on his level, or thinks he is, he sees the song as a great list of things to think about. This is how I thought about it for a long time.

Let him spell it out for you: It's All Over Now. That "Baby Blue" kind of softens that blow, doesn't it? This is him saying, alright, I've gotta go now, you only get this from me. Affirmation isn't on this record.


My interpretation is very theoretical, and I wish more music reviews were. Think about it: it's the discourse on the most beloved media transmissions of all time. It can build our consciousness of them, unless we let the media themselves do it. But then, reviews are media, yadayada. But anyway, more personal reviews yeah!!!

I am inspired by the idea that music artists know their music will be heard by the itemized and alienated masses, and write music for each individual listener to relate to in a totally different way. Maybe we show our love the same way (the same dance move, the same quotation and incorporation into our lives), but its origins can be vary multiduniously in each person who views these media. This excites me because I think reaction to media can become an art form in its own right, the next logical step in the semblence of truth in media.