collisionwork | I'm Not There, I'm Gone

A mixed bag of things to post:

After getting back home Sunday night from seeing Ten West at The Brick (great show, unfortunately only in town for the weekend and closed), I finally got to see Todd Haynes' movie (or "Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan") I'm Not There for the first time and was completely blown away and then spent yesterday morning with the bonus material from the 2-disk set on and going in the background on the computer as I started writing this -- as I was rewatching the film with the director's commentary on, I wound up stopping my writing; couldn't concentrate on both.

The film completely knocked me out and I recommend it highly, though I have no idea how it'll play anyone other than a Dylan-obsessive who can also sit there and tick off with glee all the 60s movie references as they go by (8 1/2, Petulia, Performance, lots o' Godard, Blowup, etc. etc.). Berit digs Dylan, but not to the same degree, and wouldn't get most of the film refs, but seemed to like it (she had the same reaction to much of it she had when seeing some of the real footage of Dylan in No Direction Home, re: the fans who turned on the man when he went electric and the press - especially the British press - who were always trying to figure out what his hustle was - "What a bunch of assholes!").

In any case, the movie = amazing.

I wound up glad about one thing I didn't think I would, as well. The movie is named for a great GREAT Dylan song from the Basement Tapes sessions which has been known from bootlegs for 40 years but never officially released until the soundtrack album. The song is actually named ("mysteriously" as Haynes says of its subtitle in one of his comments on the DVD), "I'm Not There (1956)". It's a beautiful, fragile song - simple, hypnotic, heartbreaking, and - crucially - mostly unintelligible. You catch bits of words and thoughts but they just fade in and out of understanding as the "whirlpool" of a song (as Haynes puts it, I think quoting Greil Marcus) goes by. Dylan was probably making up the words right as he sang them, so who knows how much sense they were making anyway.

Here's the song, behind a cut, with video accompaniment:

So a great deal of the beauty and mystery of the song - how ultimately unknowable it is - derives from its abstractness, never really comprehending what the words are, just kinda vaguely making them out. I figured then, that with a final official release - and a cover version by Sonic Youth on the same album - the words would be "settled" - Dylan or someone who could make them out from the master tape would give us the "correct" words.

Nope.

There are two sets of subtitles on the DVD, one of English for the hard-of-hearing, and one for just the song lyrics. Wonderfully, when the song finally comes up in the film itself, the two different sets of titles have almost completely different interpretations of Dylan's words. Then the Sonic Youth version plays over the end credits, and it's a third version of the words! Obviously, everyone's just been left on their own still to decide for themselves what the lyrics are (and I've found many versions online, no two the same, with some overlap here and there, all of which sound plausible if you listen to them next to the song).

For example, in this cut, here's three versions of a chorus-verse-verse-chorus sequence from the song, as subtitled three different ways on the DVD:

FROM THE "SONG SUBTITLES" ON THE DVD:

Heaven knows that the answer is
She don’t call no one
She’s the way, a sailing beauty
For she’s mine, for the one
And I lost her habitation
By temptation less it runs
But she don’t holler me
But I’m not there, I’m gone

Now I’ll cry out tonight
Like I cried the night before
And I’m leased on the highs
But I dream about the door

So long, she’s forsaken
By fate worse to tell
It don’t hang proclamation
She smiles fare-thee-well

Now I went out to the levee
I was born to love her
But she knows that the kingdom
Weighs so high above her
And I run but I race
But it’s not too fast for Slim
But I don’t perceive her
I’m not there, I’m gone

FROM THE "ENGLISH SUBTITLES" ON THE DVD:

Heaven knows that the answer
She don’t call no one
She’s the way for sailing beautiful
She’s mine for the one
And I lost a heavy tension
By temptation as it runs
But she don’t follow me
But I’m not there, I’m gone

Now I’ll cry tonight
Like I cried the night before
And I’ll feast on the highs
But I’ll dream about the door

So long, Jesus, savior
Blind faith is the tale
It don’t have confirmation
She smiles fairly well

Now, when I choose to live it
I was born to love her
But she knows that the kingdom
Waits so high above her
And I run then I race
But it’s not too fast to stand
But I don’t perceive her
I’m not there, I’m gone

SUBTITLES TO THE SONIC YOUTH VERSION:

Heaven knows that the answer is
She don’t con no one
She’s the way, forsaken beauty
She’s mine, for the one
And I lost her hesitatin’
By temptation as it runs
She don’t holler me
I’m not there, I’m gone

Now I’ll cry tonight
Like I cried the night before
And I’ll feast on the highway
But I’ll dream about the door

It’s alone, she’s forsaken
By her fate, worse to tell
It don’t have approximation
She smiled fare-thee-well

Her smile is contagious
I was born to love her
But she knows that the kingdom
Waits so high above her
And I run, but I race
But it’s not too fast to stay on
But I got the fever
I’m not there, I’m gone

Perfect.

Images seen recently to be shared - here's one I grabbed from Bryan Enk's Facebook page (hope that's okay, Bryan) that brings back fond memories of theatre on Ludlow Street. Yuri Lowenthal and me sitting on the garbage bins outside The Piano Store theatre as I give notes to the cast of my first production of Film Is Evil: Radio Is Good, Summer, 1998:

Meanwhile, ANYTHING is possible with the power of RADIO!

Howabout some videos, inside this cut?

John McCain gets BarackRolled:

The USS Enterprise becomes The Love Boat:

The Cleveland Indians have some trouble with a squirrel:

Someone cuts up bits of Disney's Alice in Wonderland to make a cool new song and video:

And in 1963, Kraft brings you Suspense Theatre! - the real interest here is in the ad that plays from 1:08 to 2:15 - showing a fine fine superfine dish you can make with Kraft products . . . yum YUM!

Enjoy.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm going through an intense phase of listening to Bob's entire oeuvre, or at least up to Empire Burlesque. I'm looking forward to watching I'm Not There, and No Direction Home, when I've digested the majority of his back catalogue, or "back pages" as it were.
TXC

Why stop at Empire Burlesque, when he hits such a big upswing in the 90s?

I have a nice 13.5 hour playlist of just about all the Dylan I have that I've been fixing up, with live and bootleg material in there where needed to patch the story together - I'm really short of material between 1968-1974 and 1978-1992, but I have most of what's needed.

I just got four disks worth of Basement Tape material though, to go through and figure out what to put in there as well . . . that'll take a while.

Good choice to wait on the films until after - then I'd watch the doc and then the fictional interpretation. Great stuff.

I was planning to stop after Blood on the Tracks, but then decided to work my way up to Slow Train Coming, so getting the way to Empire Burlesque has been a bit of a slog.

I'll have many more comments about Dylan which I'll impart when we meet again in person. For now, I'll just say that I've got "Joey" stuck in my head, and that's apparently universally regarded as one of Bobby's worst songs!

I had a weirdly mixed reaction to INT, though I'll admit, my incredibly high hopes ("Todd Haynes plus Bob Dylan? This shall be the greatest movie of all time!") may have contributed. Much of the time I felt like it was basically conventional wisdom, albeit beautifully presented conventional wisdom (though I did appreciate how it gave much more weight to Dylan's marriage than "No Direction Home").

But given some time since viewing, the "beautifully portrayed" part is winning out---the image of Dylan as a bright child playing in a 1963 living room to suburbanites with their hands in their laps, among many, is perfect. And I love the Richard Gere sections too, not least because of my immense soft spot for 70s freakout Westerns (when, oh when shall we get a DVD of The Last Movie?). Definitely one that I'll rewatch some time soon.

I do wonder if it makes any sense at all to non-Dylan fans---the motorcycle crash, in particular, is wonderfully elliptical if you know about it, but unintelligible if you don't---but hell, maybe that's not such a bad thing.
-D McK

I'm Not There, I'm Gone

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