"Face Down Like The Jack Of Hearts"

My obsession with Bob Dylan is old hat to most the folks who know me. It's just an accepted quirk amongst most of them, I think, and a tolerated nuisance to everyone else.

What I've always dug about Dylan was the way he turns phrases so effortlessly. Regardless of whether you like his work, voice, or style at all, the man can rattle of the most natural-sounding phrases that make perfect sense and no sense all at once.

"Face down like the Jack of Hearts" is exactly the sort of phrase I'm thinking of. It comes from a song off Blood on the Tracks, "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts." It's not even a song I care for all that much--musically, it's pretty bland, the story the song tells doesn't really engage me that much, and I just think there are better songs on the album. But even with that being said, I find this phrase/line amusing and thoughtful. One of the characters, the titular Jack of Hearts, wanders into the saloon and goes to the corner, where he sits down and apparently lays his head on the table. There's a wonderful double meaning to it--there's a card game metaphor that runs throughout the entire song (various characters are playing cards, for instance), and the character Jack lying face down is a wonderful reference to getting a new card in a game of poker or blackjack (where a new card would be placed on the table face down).

I think this is what Dylan does best, and why I love his stuff so much--even in an otherwise mundane or lackluster song, he always tosses out a phrase or two that can grab your attention and shake your mind. And you get the feeling he could just rattle off phrases like this all day long--hell, on some of his songs, he does--and it wouldn't be a strain.

Yeah, that's all. Just something I wanted to yammer about.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Bob Dylan, "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts"