"Last Night I Danced With A Stranger"

I find myself listening to a lot of Bob Dylan of late. By "of late" I mean "the past few years." Ever since I saw him in concert back in August of 2001, I've been somewhat obsessed, to be honest.

Dylan is an acquired taste, to be certain. I know lots of folks can't stand his stuff, either because of his voice, his cryptic lyrics, or his penchant for songs that have ten or eleven verses and no bridge. But I'm fascinated by his work, whether it's his early solo acoustic folk, or the electrified folk rock of 1965-66, the biblical parablism of the late '60s, the emotive acoustic full band of the '70s, or the world-weary, full-circle Americana of the '90s and '00s. I try to forget that the '80s existed, mostly because most of his stuff that decade was subpar (except for a few isolated tunes and his work with the Traveling Wilburys).

Anyway, one of my favorite albums is the latter-day masterpiece Time Out of Mind. It's a very heavy, emotive album, and Dylan sounds weary, exhausted, and defeated throughout most of it. Its an album populated with drifters, lovesick men and women, old men sitting in diners smoking cheap cigars and wondering when the hell the world they fought so hard for became this one. The whole CD is great, but the song I've been stuck on the past few days is "Standing in the Doorway."

"Standing in the Doorway" is Dylan at his most emotive. Say what you will for his raspy, throaty vocals, he lends a tone and effect in this song that tugs at the heartstrings. The music is slow, mournful, a dirge of a waltz to a love who walked away. Over the course of seven minutes and five verses, Dylan sketches the image of a man worn out, exhausted by the effort of surviving the day to day grind. On top of all that, the narrator has lost his woman, and has "nothin' to go back to now." He is haunted by this woman, tormented by her memory. It colors his world in a very dark and very murky way. I think the line that really does it for me is when he sings, "Last night I danced with a stranger, but she just reminded me you were the one." His voice quavering, cracking, rasping, the sheer emotional intensity of the phrases...Dylan's voice may be shot, but one starts to think that's possibly the best thing that could have happened. He is no longer the social crusader of the early '60s, nor the cryptic poet laureate of the new music revolution of the mid '60s. He's not the troubadour of the '70s, or the religious convert of the '80s. He is a weary, lonesome man, one who has dragged his body down the road for too long, seen the revolution fail, seen the world he fought hard against come into being anyway, and has yet survived. That's exactly what Dylan and his characters are--survivors of the counter-revolution, those who saw everything fall apart, and yet still find a reason to go on. Whether that's wisdom or stupidity is yet to be seen.

Somewhere out there on the road is a man, perpetually traveling, never arriving. The eternal drifter, the man who knows only the journey, walks the same road for his whole existence, seeing nothing else and never finding a resting place to call "home." Dylan has tapped into that primal traveler, exposed his core and soul and channeled it through music. And we're lucky enough to hear it.

~chaos cricket

Song of the Moment: Bob Dylan, "Standing in the Doorway"