And never sat once at the head of the table
And didn’t even talk to the people at the table
Who just cleaned up all the food from the table
What has always kicked my ass about this song is this next line, showing off as audacious a leap in meaning and lyric as I can recall ever seeing.
And emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level
The words themselves seem a little strange … but I don’t think anyone fails to get what they mean, what an artist of the young Dylan’s caliber made them mean.
I know we sure “got it” at the time. Dope was all about Getting It. Although smoking whatever it was we smoked then (anything we could get our hands on) produced an incessant series of Aha experiences. Quite exhausting, in the end.
Hell, we didn’t know we were smoking Shake. The trash you lot brush off the table. That was marijuana, mary jane, dope, Weed! Lord knows I am not responsible for spoiling of America’s children with this idea of bud. Think of it as the natural progression of industry.
Point being, (one of my blogging rules is, never say point being) that line, the image it generates, stands on its own. You don’t have to get high to recognize, to feel the thrill that genius conveys.
All you have to do is be in love with words, music, literature … to embrace the state of fucking wonder that all these offerings induces, page after page, site after site.
For one, Art calls us to the Commons, (that would be the tubes) where what do we do but we nudge one another, Hey, listen to this, read this, here, I’ll link you, I’ll tweet you a TinyURL.
killed by a blow,
lay slain by a cane
That sailed through the air
and came down through the room,
Doomed and determined
to destroy all the gentle.
And she never done nothing
to William Zanzinger.
What can I say. Really, just point at that which shimmers with meanings, which pulls off the risk and pulls it all together in a line. When the genius-y risk succeeds, we have treasure.
