Tarantula
Xav...@aol.com
Unpunished" writting to me. I am having a hard time understanding this
exerpt. I know most of this stuff has different meaning to different people
but enlighten me with your thoughts.
Xavier Garcia
Nate Smith
COMING SOON TO RMD!!! The Complete TARANTULA Annotated
well, at least that's what i have in mind soon. my plan is to post an
excerpt and then we all have at it, making hypertext link notations to be
incorporated in a web page. for example, the very first word, aretha,
when you click on it, you get a short bio on aretha franklin & some quick
reason she is mentioned, if possible. all differing views will be held.
- nate, who did not bring his copy home for the weekend.
JfryBlair
get ahold of two recent books, Bob Dylan's Words by Wissolk and The
Cracked Bells, A Guide to Tarantula by Robin Witting. Both, of course,
available from Rolling Tomes.
Nate Smith
i received some e-mail from Mel & after we talked it over, he thought it
was okay if i posted it.
===========================================================================
From: MELJOHN%MAINE....@mitvma.mit.edu
To: na...@ll.mit.edu
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 95 14:09:59 EST
Status: R
A couple of suggestions, mostly technical in nature:
Why not number the lines of the text? See, for instance, any Greek or Lati
n text put out by Loeb (any many other texts are handled this way too -- Shakes
peare for instance!) If you number all lines, including section headings, skip
ped lines, etc., while maintaining line breaks true to the text as published, t
hen annotations can take line numbers:
1 Guns, the Falcon's Mouthbook
& Gashcat Unpunished
aretha etc.etc.
5 drunk
crippled
& ye
whom
cannot
10 shades
etc.etc.etc.
6 El dorado, as we all know, is a referemce to stepphen scobie, etc.
Ride the Blinds is, as you suggest, a common blues phrase:
I'm leaving this morning if I have to ride the blinds,
Been mistreated and I don't mind dyin'
I've always taken this to mean railroads, as in hopping a freight, a blind bein
g an empty car. I've looked in a number of slang dictionaries and haven't yet
found it, but I'll keep after it.
You're welcome to bounce this communication to scobie, or to post all, or parts
, to r.m.d. in the hopes of kicking up some discussion. I think it's a very in
teresting project, and I'll try to add what I can.
Mel
=============================================================================
i thought a blind being an empty car sounded right. i had earlier found the
notion of a boxcar closed up so you couldnt see where you were rather clumsy
in my own head....
given the scobie followup with 2a, 2b, 2c, 2d, 2e and so on, perhaps we ought
to switch over to line number for the annotation. let me consolidate what we
have up to this point (not a whole lot, yet!) and repost....
- nate
Nate Smith
Mel (MELJOHN%MAINE....@MITVMA.MIT.EDU) suggests:
> Why not number the lines of the text? See, for instance, any Greek or Lati
n text put out by Loeb (any many other texts are handled this way too -- Shakes
peare for instance!) If you number all lines, including section headings, skip
ped lines, etc., while maintaining line breaks true to the text as published, t
hen annotations can take line numbers:
1 Guns, the Falcon's Mouthbook
& Gashcat Unpunished
aretha etc.etc.
5 drunk
crippled
& ye
whom
cannot
10 shades
too which i think my answer is Yes. but i'd like to change it as follows:
each section is denoted Snn, where nn is the serial number counting as we
do 1, 2, 3, ... The title would be referenced by Snn. each line in the
section begins at 1 all over again. blank lines are not counted - it's
hard to tell how many blanks lines in a row there might be at a time. the
above would now look like:
S1 Guns, the Falcon's Mouthbook
& Gashcat Unpunished
1 aretha/etc.etc.
drunk
crippled
& ye
5 whom
cannot
shades
...
any line can be referenced Snn.ii, so S1.62 is the last line in the small
chunk i posted to begin with. then we have (including all remarks so far):
(laziness precludes me from put the line numbers at the beginning of the line
in this section)
===========================================================================
this is an ongoing project to annotate certain writings of Bob Dylan
collected together and published under the title "Tarantula".
Tarantula consists of many _sections_ that would not properly be called
chapters, but are nonetheless headed by a title. they are not numbered.
the uneven line length is due to its porportional font printing in the
original. line breaks have been carefully reproduced as they appear there.
over time we should take this opportunity to examine each section & make
annotations showing how much of what swims around in this book is connected
to his life & his other works & his time. since this is a work of fantasy
& imagination, we should also work at it that way - free association is the
operative term here. rather than take in the whole work in one gulp, this
project will only consider small nibbles at a time for research & analysis.
participants should ask all questions about anything. contributors should
be many & repeated. there should be a consensus about what each annotation
will look like in its final form.
until we know better, the annotation should be indicated by section number
or line number referring to footnoted annotations in the posted article.
later we can discuss how to create a hypertext document of some kind.
sections discussed so far:
Guns, the Falcon's Mouthbook & the Gashcat Unpunished (parts 1 & 2 of 7)
current section:
Guns, the Falcon's Mouthbook & the Gashcat Unpunished (parts 1 & 2 of 7)
=============================================================================
=============================================================================
Guns, the Falcon's Mouthbook
& Gashcat Unpunished Section1:S1
aretha/crystal jukebox queen of hymn & him diffused in 1
drunk transfusion wound would heed sweet soundwave 2
crippled & cry salute to oh great particular el dorado reel 3
& ye battered personal god but she cannot she the leader of
whom when ye follow, she cannot she has no back she 5
cannot . . . beneath black flowery railroad fans & fig leaf
shades & dogs of all nite joes, grow like arches & cures the
harmonica battalions of bitter cowards, bones & bygones
while what steadier louder the moans & arms of funeral
landlord with one passionate kiss rehearse from dusk & 10
climbing into the bushes with some favorite enemy ripping
the postage stamps & crazy mailmen & waving all rank &
familiar ambition than that itself, is needed to know that
mother is not a lady . . . aretha with no goals, eternally
single & one step soft of heaven/ let it be understood that 15
she owns this melody along with her emotional diplomats
& her earth & her musical secrets 17
the censor in a twelve wheel drive semi 18
stopping in for donuts & pinching the
waitress/ he likes his women raw & with 20
syrup/ he has his mind set on becoming
a famous soldier
manuscript nitemare of cut throat high & low & behold the 23
prophesying blind allegiance to law fox, monthly cupid &
the intoxicating ghosts of dogma . . . nay & may the boat-
men in bathrobes be banished forever & anointed into the
shelves of alive hell, the unimaginative sleep, repitition 27
without change & fat sheriffs who watch for doom in the
mattress . . . hallaluyah & bossman of the hobos cometh
& ordaining the spiritual gypsy davy camp now being infil- 30
traded by foreign dictator, the pink FBI & the interrogating
unknown failures of peacetime as holy & silver & blessed
with the texture of kaleidoscope & the sandal girl . . . to
dream of dancing pillhead virgins & wandering apollo at 34
the pipe organ/ unscientific ramblers & the pretty things 35
lucky & lifting their lips & handing down looks & regards
from the shoulders of adam & eve's minstrel peekaboo . . .
passing on the chance to bludgeon the tough spirits & the
deed holders into fishlike buffoons & yanking ye erratic
purpose . . . surrendering to persuasion, the crime against 40
people, that be ranked alongside murder & while doctors,
teachers, bankers & sewer cleaners fight for their rights,
they must now be horribly generous . . . & into the march
now where tab hunter leads with his thunderbird/ pearl
bailey stomps him against a buick & where poverty, a per- 45
fection of neptune's unused clients, plays hide & seek &
escaping into the who goes there? & now's not the time to
act silly, so wear your big boots & jump on the garbage
clowns, the hourly rate & the enema men & where junior
senators & goblins rip off tops of question marks & their 50
wives make pies & go now & throw some pies in the face &
ride the blinds & into aretha's religous thighs & movement 52
find ye your nymph of no conscience & bombing out your
young sensitive dignity just to see once & for all if there
are holes & music in the universe & watch her tame the sea 55 7
horse/ aretha, pegged by choir boys & other pearls of
mamas as too gloomy a much of witchy & dont you know
no happy songs 58
the lawyer leading a pig on a leash 59
stopping in for tea & eating the censor's 60
donut by mistake/ he likes to lie about
his age & takes his paranoia seriously 62
----ANNOTATIONS----------------------------------------------------------
S1 if William Burroughs describes women in "Naked Lunch" as "gashes"
and "cat" is slang for a man, is a gashcat a dragqueen? - nate
1 The ancient classics used the epic poem form. The standard practice
was to begin with an invocation of the muses appropriate to the
story. i see dylan here doing a similar thing with a tribute to
aretha franklin, rising out of the myriad imagery he must put
down in what follows. indeed this book gives her respect. - nate
Aretha Franklin was not exactly closely associated to Dylan in 1965/66;
the invocation of her here indicates the unexpected breadth of Dylan's
musical tastes. The fact that she sang a lot of gospel music is of course
relevant for Dylan's later development. Aretha is here described as a
"Queen": in the early 80s, Dylan called his backup group of Aretha-ish
gospel singers "the Queens of Rhythm." - sscobie
2 Does "wound" rhyme with "spooned" or "sound"? Given the very loose, open
syntax, either would work. A lot of "Tarantula" depends on word-play and
associations, puns and multiple meanings. In the first line, note the
obvious "hymn/him" pun; a few lines down, the phrase "bones & bygones"
seems to be generated as much by spelling as by meaning. Similarly,
"aretha" is a near-anagram for "earth," as is acknowledged in the last
line of this first paragraph ("her earth"): so the gospel singer is also
the Earth Mother Goddess (complement to the sky-god Apollo: see note 34).
-sscobie
3 "el dorado reel" -- presumably the movie El Dorado, directed by Howard
Hawks, starring John Wayne and Robert Mitchum -- except that my "TV
Movies" guidebook lists it as 1967, which makes the timing rather tight.
-sscobie
El dorado, as we all know, is a reference to stephen scobie, etc. -Mel
15 No real comment: just to say that "eternally single & one step soft of
heaven" is one of Dylan's greatest poetic lines. - sscobie
27 The notion of hell as "repetition without change" may owe something to
Jean-Paul Sartre's play "Huit Clos" ("No Exit"). - sscobie
30 donovan's old friend Gypsy Davey also appears in Tombstone Blues:
Gypsy Davey with a blowtorch he burns out their camps
With his faithful friend Pedro behind him he tramps
And fa-antastic collection of stamps
To win friends and influence his uncle.
donovan mentions "the gypsy boy" in an early song of his that has
a chorus:
And who's gonna be the one
To say that its no good what i done
I dare a man to say that i'm too young
For i'm gonna try for the sun. - nate
In addition to the references listed by Nate in note 3: "Gypsy
Davey" is a traditional song, originally based on a Scottish ballad "The
Gypsy Laddie," or "The Gypsy Rover," or... etc. In its American form, it
was part of Woody Guthrie's repertoire, and there are early recordings of
Dylan singing Guthrie's version of it. Years later, Dylan returned to it
in slightly different form, as "Black Jack Davey," on GAIBTY. The song in
its various versions contains lines about "gloves" and/or "boots" "made of
Spanish leather," which Dylan used in his song "Boots of Spanish Leather."
- sscobie
34 how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? what a cute turnaround
to describe the pill-popping teenyboppers. - nate
Apollo was the god of the sun, and also of poetry. Cf "Changing of
the Guard": "caught between Jupiter and Apollo" (1978), where Jupiter (big
bossman god) stands for institutional authority while Apollo stands for
artistic inspiration. -sscobie
35 more Tombstone Blues: the sweet pretty things are in bed now, of course.
- nate
52 "ride the blinds" is a common phraselet - we even see it much later in
"Ragged & Dirty" on _World_Gone_Wrong_. - nate
"I'm leaving this morning if I have to ride the blinds,
Been mistreated and I don't mind dyin'"
I've always taken this to mean railroads, as in hopping a freight, a
blind being an empty car. I've looked in a number of slang dictionaries
and haven't yet found it, but I'll keep after it. -Mel
55 OK, I know this is far-fetched, but... The question is whether
Dylan ever read Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess." (It is, or used to
be, a common anthology piece for high-school poetry anthologies; and
Michael Gray has pointed out that the "sandal/handle/vandal" rhyme from
"Subterranean Homesick Blues" also occurs in Browning.) The final lines
of "My Last Duchess" contain a description of a statue of the god Neptune
"taming a seahorse." Here we have the phrase "tame the sea horse";
Neptune appeared 9 lines above (as well as, of course, in "Desolation
Row"). -sscobie
doesnt seem far fetched at all! - nate
***************************************************************************
JfryBlair
destination, also known as "riding blind."
(Hmm...now that I'm looking around for a source for this assertion I can't
find one, perhaps it's just what I've always assumed...makes more sense to
me than meaning an empty boxcar though... especially when one considers
that variation in phrasing)
-Jeff
jules n. binoculas
>& Gashcat Unpunished Section1:S1
>aretha/crystal jukebox queen of hymn & him diffused in 1
refer to leon russell's song: _crystal closet queen_,
about ex-preacher rocker "little richard"; "queen of
hymn & him"; crystal = crystal meth?
of course leon's _shelter people, album came out
after this -- so maybe dylan was precognitive ;),
or, more likely, leon read _tarantula_
- jnb1
when was _tarantula_ written?
>people, that be ranked alongside murder & while doctors,
>teachers, bankers & sewer cleaners fight for their rights,
compare to: _love minus zero/no limit_: "in dime stores and
bus stations/people talk of situations/read books, repeat
quotations/draw conclusions on the wall"
...
"the country doctor rambles/bankers' nieces seek perfection/
expecting all the gifts that wise men bring"
- jnb2
>bailey stomps him against a buick & where poverty, a per- 45
>fection of neptune's unused clients, plays hide & seek &
according to homer: neptune, or the greek god, poseidon,
hated odysseus and kept him from returning home to ithaca
for years;
odysseus blinded a cyclops (polyphemus), but
in a foolish act of enraged hubris, odysseus
moronically revealled his own true identity to
the beast (nearly negating the brilliant strategy
of saying his name was "nobody" so the cyclops
screamed: "nobody blinded me! nobody blinded me!"
and his cyclopean neighbors thought he'd gone crazy,
giving odysseus and his men a chance to later escape);
after odysseus' loose-lipped indiscretion, polyphemus
vowed to have poseidon get revenge and sink odysseus'
boat, but athena and zeus (jupiter) protected odysseus;
_like a rolling stone_ always reminds me to pay homage
to odysseus and his alternations of cunning and stupidity:
how does it feel/to be on your own/like a complete
unknown/with no direction home/like a rolling stone"
after 20 years of wandering, odysseus finally does
return home and finds his house out of control
with music, wine, food, and partying suitors
trying to steal his wife and kill his son;
whether one suitor had thick lips and started
a four-man combo because he "couldn't get
no satisfaction," is a point which has plagued
philological scholars for eons.
- jnb3
Craig Jamieson
: "Ride the Blinds" means to hop on a railroad car with no idea as to its
>52 "ride the blinds" is a common phraselet - we even see it much later in
> "Ragged & Dirty" on _World_Gone_Wrong_. - nate
> "I'm leaving this morning if I have to ride the blinds,
> Been mistreated and I don't mind dyin'"
> I've always taken this to mean railroads, as in hopping a freight, a
> blind being an empty car. I've looked in a number of slang dictionaries
> and haven't yet found it, but I'll keep after it. -Mel
Blind in this sense does not mean not knowing where it is going, the
hobo knows that. It does not mean empty either.
The "blind" that you ride is a baggage car which has one exit to the next
car in one direction, but no exit in the other. It is often the mail car
next to the engine. It is blind in the same sense a cul de sac is blind,
you cannot get out that way.
So for instance a blind is used for a mail car to give extra security,
it cannot be entered from the train driver's end. This also appeals
to the hobo who need only watch one entrance for railway police or
worse.
The term is well established by the 1890s. A definition appears in
Scribner's Magazine XXIX 429/1 1901, "The train's got a blind baggage
car on... that's a car that ain't got no door in the end that's next
the engine."
>destination, also known as "riding blind."
= riding [a] blind [baggage car]
The earliest phrase is "beating the blinds", meaning to steal a ride
on such a car. Later one sees "jumping the blinds" and "riding the blinds"...
Craig
Mark Lynch 1
|> Ride the Blinds is, as you suggest, a common blues phrase:
|> I'm leaving this morning if I have to ride the blinds,
|> Been mistreated and I don't mind dyin'
|>
|> I've always taken this to mean railroads, as in hopping a freight, a blind bein
|> g an empty car.
============================================================
|>
|> i thought a blind being an empty car sounded right. i had earlier found the
|> notion of a boxcar closed up so you couldnt see where you were rather clumsy
|> in my own head....
|> - nate
i remember seeing (though i don't remember where i saw it) one blues
discographer decipher the blinds as the ties under the rails, which,
if you look into the perspective view resemble window blinds.
(studiouly inept ascii illustration to follow):
-//----\\-
-//------\\-
-//--------\\-
-//----------\\-
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ Mark T. Lynch olc...@lafayette.unocal.com @
@ @
@ Obligatory disclaimer follows... @
@ @
@ "Everyone is entitled to my opinion, which, @
@ being cogent, pithy and erudite may in no @
@ way reflect that of my employer." ;-) @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Craig Jamieson
: i remember seeing (though i don't remember where i saw it) one blues
: discographer decipher the blinds as the ties under the rails, which,
: if you look into the perspective view resemble window blinds.
: -//----\\-
: -//------\\-
: -//--------\\-
: -//----------\\-
Great graphic! Appalling lexicography... :-)
Nate Smith
this is an ongoing project to annotate certain writings of Bob Dylan
collected together and published under the title "Tarantula".
Tarantula consists of many _sections_ that would not properly be called
chapters, but are nonetheless headed by a title. they are not numbered.
the uneven line length is due to its porportional font printing in the
original. line breaks have been carefully reproduced as they appear there.
over time we should take this opportunity to examine each section & make
annotations showing how much of what swims around in this book is connected
to his life & his other works & his time. since this is a work of fantasy
& imagination, we should also work at it that way - free association is the
operative term here. rather than take in the whole work in one gulp, this
project will only consider small nibbles at a time for research & analysis.
participants should ask all questions about anything. contributors should
be many & repeated. there should be a consensus about what each annotation
will look like in its final form.
until we know better, the annotation should be indicated by numbers to the
right of column 64 (if they fit) referring to footnotes in the posted article.
later we can discuss how to create a hypertext document of some kind.
sections discussed so far:
Guns, the Falcon's Mouthbook & the Gashcat Unpunished (parts 1 & 2 of 7)
current section:
Guns, the Falcon's Mouthbook & the Gashcat Unpunished (parts 1 & 2 of 7)
=============================================================================
=============================================================================
Guns, the Falcon's Mouthbook
& Gashcat Unpunished S1
teachers, bankers & sewer cleaners fight for their rights, 42
they must now be horribly generous . . . & into the march
now where tab hunter leads with his thunderbird/ pearl
bailey stomps him against a buick & where poverty, a per- 45
fection of neptune's unused clients, plays hide & seek &
escaping into the who goes there? & now's not the time to
act silly, so wear your big boots & jump on the garbage
clowns, the hourly rate & the enema men & where junior
senators & goblins rip off tops of question marks & their 50
wives make pies & go now & throw some pies in the face &
ride the blinds & into aretha's religous thighs & movement 52
find ye your nymph of no conscience & bombing out your
young sensitive dignity just to see once & for all if there
are holes & music in the universe & watch her tame the sea 55
horse/ aretha, pegged by choir boys & other pearls of
mamas as too gloomy a much of witchy & dont you know
no happy songs 58
the lawyer leading a pig on a leash 59
stopping in for tea & eating the censor's 60
donut by mistake/ he likes to lie about
his age & takes his paranoia seriously 62
------------------------------------------------------------------------
S1 if William Burroughs describes women in "Naked Lunch" as "gashes"
and "cat" is slang for a man, is a gashcat a dragqueen? - nate
1 The ancient classics used the epic poem form. The standard practice
was to begin with an invocation of the muses appropriate to the
story. i see dylan here doing a similar thing with a tribute to
aretha franklin, rising out of the myriad imagery he must put
down in what follows. indeed this book gives her respect. - nate
Aretha Franklin was not exactly closely associated to Dylan in 1965/66;
the invocation of her here indicates the unexpected breadth of Dylan's
musical tastes. The fact that she sang a lot of gospel music is of course
relevant for Dylan's later development. Aretha is here described as a
"Queen": in the early 80s, Dylan called his backup group of Aretha-ish
gospel singers "the Queens of Rhythm." - sscobie
refer to leon russell's song: _crystal closet queen_, about ex-preacher
rocker "little richard"; "queen of hymn & him"; crystal = crystal meth?
of course leon's _shelter people, album came out after this -- so maybe
dylan was precognitive ;), or, more likely, leon read _tarantula_.
- jnb1
2 Does "wound" rhyme with "spooned" or "sound"? Given the very loose, open
syntax, either would work. A lot of "Tarantula" depends on word-play and
associations, puns and multiple meanings. In the first line, note the
obvious "hymn/him" pun; a few lines down, the phrase "bones & bygones"
seems to be generated as much by spelling as by meaning. Similarly,
"aretha" is a near-anagram for "earth," as is acknowledged in the last
line of this first paragraph ("her earth"): so the gospel singer is also
the Earth Mother Goddess (complement to the sky-god Apollo: see note 34).
-sscobie
NOTE:
i suggest we call any such pun-like instance (there are scads of them!)
in the text a "zimmer". - nate :-)
42 compare to: _love minus zero/no limit_: "in dime stores and bus stations/
people talk of situations/read books, repeat quotations/draw conclusions
on the wall" ... "the country doctor rambles/bankers' nieces seek
perfection/ expecting all the gifts that wise men bring" - jnb2
45 according to homer: neptune, or the greek god, poseidon, hated odysseus and
kept him from returning home to ithaca for years; odysseus blinded a cyclops
(polyphemus), but in a foolish act of enraged hubris, odysseus moronically
revealled his own true identity to the beast (nearly negating the brilliant
strategy of saying his name was "nobody" so the cyclops screamed: "nobody
blinded me! nobody blinded me!" and his cyclopean neighbors thought he'd
gone crazy, giving odysseus and his men a chance to later escape);
after odysseus' loose-lipped indiscretion, polyphemus vowed to have poseidon
get revenge and sink odysseus' boat, but athena and zeus (jupiter) protected
odysseus; _like a rolling stone_ always reminds me to pay homage to odysseus
and his alternations of cunning and stupidity: how does it feel/to be on
your own/like a complete unknown/with no direction home/like a rolling stone
...after 20 years of wandering, odysseus finally does return home and finds
his house out of control with music, wine, food, and partying suitors trying
to steal his wife and kill his son; whether one suitor had thick lips and
started a four-man combo because he "couldn't get no satisfaction," is a
point which has plagued philological scholars for eons. - jnb3
52 "ride the blinds" is a common phraselet - we even see it much later in
"Ragged & Dirty" on _World_Gone_Wrong_. - nate
"I'm leaving this morning if I have to ride the blinds,
Been mistreated and I don't mind dyin'"
Various suppositions:
I've always taken this to mean railroads, as in hopping a freight, a
blind being an empty car. I've looked in a number of slang dictionaries
and haven't yet found it, but I'll keep after it. -Mel
"Ride the Blinds" means to hop on a railroad car with no idea as to its
destination, also known as "riding blind."
(Hmm...now that I'm looking around for a source for this assertion I can't
find one, perhaps it's just what I've always assumed...makes more sense to
me than meaning an empty boxcar though... especially when one considers
that variation in phrasing) -Jeff
Some people have been talking about the phrase "ride the blind." As far
as I can gather it's a hobo term. I think it refers to hobos who used to
catch free rides on the outside of cars. In between one car and the
next. It seems that engineers would sometimes allow the hobos to ride
this way. Listen to Blind Willie McTell's "Travelin' Blues," in which
the singer pleads with the engineer, "Mr. engineer, let a poor man ride
the blind." To which the engineer responds, "I wouldn't mind it fellow,
but you know this train ain't mine."
"Riding Blind Baggage" is another term for the same thing. - Matt
i remember seeing (though i don't remember where i saw it) one blues
discographer decipher the blinds as the ties under the rails, which,
if you look into the perspective view resemble [venetian] window blinds.
(studiouly inept ascii illustration to follow):
-//----\\-
-//------\\-
-//--------\\-
-//----------\\- - Mark T. Lynch
(i think its a good ascii. this also would work with "cant see through
my blinds" in the same "Ragged & Dirty" -nate) ...BUT...
Currently held CORRECT view from Craig Jamieson:
Blind in this sense does not mean not knowing where it is going, the
hobo knows that. It does not mean empty either.
The "blind" that you ride is a baggage car which has one exit to the next
car in one direction, but no exit in the other. It is often the mail car
next to the engine. It is blind in the same sense a cul de sac is blind,
you cannot get out that way.
So for instance a blind is used for a mail car to give extra security,
it cannot be entered from the train driver's end. This also appeals
to the hobo who need only watch one entrance for railway police or worse.
The term is well established by the 1890s. A definition appears in
Scribner's Magazine XXIX 429/1 1901, "The train's got a blind baggage
car on... that's a car that ain't got no door in the end that's next
the engine."
"riding blind" = riding [a] blind [baggage car]
The earliest phrase is "beating the blinds", meaning to steal a ride
on such a car. Later one sees "jumping the blinds" and "riding the blinds".
He is not asking to ride on the outside but on the inside in a car
which usually would not be empty. The implications if the engineer
is caught letting hobos ride in the blind baggage car are considerable,
it is a free ride where there are things which could be stolen,
often mail. - Craig Jamieson
55 OK, I know this is far-fetched, but... The question is whether
Dylan ever read Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess." (It is, or used to
be, a common anthology piece for high-school poetry anthologies; and
Michael Gray has pointed out that the "sandal/handle/vandal" rhyme from
"Subterranean Homesick Blues" also occurs in Browning.) The final lines
of "My Last Duchess" contain a description of a statue of the god Neptune
"taming a seahorse." Here we have the phrase "tame the sea horse";
Neptune appeared 9 lines above (as well as, of course, in "Desolation
Row"). -sscobie
doesnt seem far fetched at all! - nate
===============================================================================
Robert McNamara
>i remember seeing (though i don't remember where i saw it) one blues
>discographer decipher the blinds as the ties under the rails, which,
>if you look into the perspective view resemble window blinds.
>(studiouly inept ascii illustration to follow):
>[ascii illustration deleted...]
I guess there's no definitive answer, however I'd read somewhere that the
phrase "riding blind baggage" was common in hobo parlance, and has roots
back to the nineteenth century; it referred to hopping a train and riding
between the cars; a passenger riding in that position, of course, couldn't
see much. I'd always figured that "riding the blinds" was a corruption
(evolution?) of that.
As noted previously, the phrase probably appears in innumerable blues
songs; I noticed it in "Country Blues," on the fairly recent CD of Muddy
Waters, as recorded by Allan Lomax for the Library of Congress in the
early 40s. (Which, by the way, I'd recommend highly; Dylan fans would
probably enjoy it immensely.)
-- Robert
Leigh
> >[ascii illustration deleted...]
> -- Robert
Actually, the term "blinds" refers to an open-sided mail car. Typically
luggage would be placed near the open doors, and a daring hobo could hide
behind mail/luggage.
Or so I've read.. --Leigh.
Nate Smith
ok...i'll take a crack at some of these:
=================================================================S1==========
...[]...
ing no attention to this toilet massacre to be hereafter
called LONZO & must walk the streets of life forever with 75
lazy people having nothing to do but fight over women
. . . everybody knows by now that wars are caused by 77
money & greed & charity organizations/ the housewife is
not here. she is running for congress 79
...
the senator dressed like an austrian 80
sheep, stopping in for coffee & insulting
...
you have seen him sprout up from a dumb hill bully into a 89
bunch of backslap & he's wise & he speaks to everyone as if 90
they just answered the door/ he dont like people that say
...
ments & die crazy deaths & bellowing farce mortal farm 98
vomit & why for Jesus Christ be Just another meathead?
...
& fingering eternity come down & save your lambs & 134
butchers & strike the roses with its rightful patsy odor . . . 135
...
the good samaritan coming in with the 145
words "round & round we go" tattooed on
...
oil in the window washer's union hall & these people con-
sider themselves gourmets for not attending charlie stark- 170
weather's funeral ye gads the champagne being appropriate
...
one will have any money . . . broad save the clean, the
minorities & liberace's countryside. 177
...
Moines, Iowa & good old debbie, she comes along & both 210
her & dale, they start shacking up in the newspapers & jesus
who can blame 'em & Amen & oh lordy, & how the parades
...
but people kill for paper & anyway you cant buy a thrill 217
with a dollar as long as pricetags, the end of the means &
only as big as your fist & they dangle from a pot of golden
rainbow . . . which attacks & which covers the saddles of 220
noseless poets & wonder blazing & somewhere over the rain-
bow & blinding my married lover into the ovation maniacs/
...
behind a pillar & sometimes a tornado destroys the drug- 230
stores & the floods bring polio & leaving Gus & Peg twisted in
the volleyball net & Butch hiding in madison square garden
. . . Bearface dead from a flying piece of grass! I.Q. - some- 233
where in the sixties & twentieth century & so sing aretha
...
i will nail my words to this paper,
an fly them on to you. an forget about 249
them . . . thank you for the time. 250
youre kind.
love an kisses
your double
Silly Eyes (in airplane trouble) 254
============================================================================
77 one of the first photocopies i got of Tarantula ended at this
line! how exasperrating, "wars are caused by...". - nate
80 dont forget "the senator came down here, showing everyone his gun"
in "Stuck Inside Of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again" - nate
89 "dumb hill bully" another zimmer. - nate
98 in another photocopy i got later, this line went: ...[].."& farch
foul farm vomit". the verb "to farch", curiously changed now. - nate
134 mike seeger, among others, recorded "The Darby Ram", a song i
thought of here, for some reason. - nate (didnt he ramble!)
135 wasnt patsy cline allergic to roses? or was that loretta lynn? - nate
145 "the good samaritan, he's dressing. he's getting ready for the show"
- nate
170 charlie starkweather, a notorious killer. details, anyone? - nate
176 it's a "god save the queen" zimmer! - nate
210 perhaps a tabloid rumor about Dale Evans & Debbie Reynolds. - nate
217 "i've been up all night, leaning on the window sill" - nate
220 just when did "Blazing Saddles" come out anyway? - nate
233 this is curious to me, because i remember in grade school reading
about tornados (line 230 just above). in the textbook was a
picture showing a piece of straw going clean through a telephone
pole. it is not inconcievable that the young bob may have seen this
same picture as well. hmm. - nate
249 it is in this little letter portion that dylan deviates from
using the ampersand for every occurance of "and" for the first
time. it must be in the style of Silly Eyes. :-) - nate
============================================================================
Nate Smith
this is an ongoing project to annotate certain writings of Bob Dylan
collected together and published under the title "Tarantula".
Tarantula consists of many _sections_ that would not properly be called
chapters, but are nonetheless headed by a title. they are not numbered.
the uneven line length is due to its porportional font printing in the
original. line breaks have been carefully reproduced as they appear there.
over time we should take this opportunity to examine each section & make
annotations showing how much of what swims around in this book is connected
to his life & his other works & his time. since this is a work of fantasy
& imagination, we should also work at it that way - free association is the
operative term here. rather than take in the whole work in one gulp, this
project will only consider small nibbles at a time for research & analysis.
participants should ask all questions about anything. contributors should
be many & repeated. there should be a consensus about what each annotation
will look like in its final form.
each annototation should reference the line number shown to the right of the
test. the complete line number tag is the section number (S1 or whatever), a
period, then the line number shown (or reckoned from nearest shown).
later we can discuss how to create a hypertext document of some kind.
sections under discussion so far:
Guns, the Falcon's Mouthbook & the Gashcat Unpunished (parts 1 & 2 of 7)
current section:
Guns, the Falcon's Mouthbook & the Gashcat Unpunished (parts 3-7 of 7)
=============================================================================
the hospitable grave being advertised & given away in 63
whims & journals the housewife sits on. finding herself
financed, ruptured but never censored in & also never flush- 65
ing herself/ she denies her corpse the courage to crawl -
close his own door, the ability to die of bank robbery &
now catches the heels of old stars making scary movies on
her dirt & her face & not everybody can dig her now. she
is private property . . . bazookas in the nest & weapons of 70
ice & of weatherproof flinch & they twitter, make scars &
kill babies among lady shame good looks & her constant foe,
tom sawyer of the breakfast cereal causing all females pay-
ing no attention to this toilet massacre to be hereafter
called LONZO & must walk the streets of life forever with 75
lazy people having nothing to do but fight over women
. . . everybody knows by now that wars are caused by
money & greed & charity organizations/ the housewife is
not here. she is running for congress 79
the senator dressed like an austrian 80
sheep, stopping in for coffee & insulting
the lawyer/ he is on a prune diet &
secretly wishes he was bing crosby
but would settle for being a close
relative of edgar bergen 85
passing the sugar to iron man of the bottles who arrives 86
with a grin & a heatlamp & he's pushing "who dunnit"
buttons this year & he is a love monger at first sight . . .
you have seen him sprout up from a dumb hill bully into a
bunch of backslap & he's wise & he speaks to everyone as if 90
they just answered the door/ he dont like people that say
he comes from the monkeys but nevertheless he is dull & he
is destroyingly boring . . . while Allah the cook scrapes
hunger from his floor & pounding it into the floating dishes
with roaring & the rest of the meatheads praising each 95
other's power & argue over acne & recite calendars & point-
ing to each other's garments & liquid & disperse into seg-
ments & die crazy deaths & bellowing farce mortal farm
vomit & why for Jesus Christ be Just another meathead?
when all the tontos & heyboy lose their legs trying to frug 100
while kemosabe & mr palladin spend their off hours remain-
ing separate but equal & anyway why not wait for laughter
to straighten the works out meantime & WOWEE smash
& the rage of it all when former lover cowboy hanging up-
side down & Suzy Q. the angel putting new dime into this 105
adoption machine as out squirts a symbol squawking &
freezing & crashing into the bowels of some hideous soap
box & even tho youre belonging to no political party, youre now
prepared, prepared to remember something about some-
thing 110
the chief of police holding a bazooka 111
with his name engraved on it. coming in
drunk & putting the barrel into the face
of the lawyer's pig. once a wife beater,
he became a professional boxer & received 115
a club foot/ he would literally like to
become an executioner. what he doesnt know
is that the lawyer's pig has made friends
with the senator 119
gambler's passion & his slave, the sparrow & he's ranting 120
from a box of platform & mesmerizing this ball of
daredevils to stay in the morning & dont bust from the fac-
tories/ everyone expecting to be born with whom they love
& theyre not & theyve been let down, theyve been lied to
& now the organizers must bring the oxen in & dragging 125
leaflets & gangrene enthusiasm, ratfinks & suicide tanks from
the pay phones to the housing developments & it usually
starts to rain for a while . . . little boys cannot go out &
play & new men in bulldozers come in every hour deliver-
ing groceries & care packages being sent from las vegas . . . 130
& nephews of the coffee bean expert & other favorite sons
graduating with a pompadour & cum laude - praise be & a
wailing farewell to releasing the hermit & beautifully ugly
& fingering eternity come down & save your lambs &
butchers & strike the roses with its rightful patsy odor . . . 135
& grampa scarecrow's got the tiny little wren & see for your-
self while saving him too/ look down oh great Romantic.
you who can predict from every position, you who know
that everybody's not a Job or a Nero nor a J. C. Penny . . .
look down & seize your gambler's passion, make high wire 140
experts into heroes, presidents into con men, turn the even-
tual . . . but the hermits being not talking & lower class or
insane or in prison . . . & they dont work in the factories
anyway 144
the good samaritan coming in with the 145
words "round & round we go" tattooed on
his cheek/ he tells the senator to stop
insulting the lawyer/ he would like to
be an entertainer & brags that he is
one of the best strangers around, the 150
pig jumps on him & starts eating his
face 152
illiterate coins of two head wrestling with window washer 153
who's been reincarnated from a garden hoe & after once
being pushed around happily & casually hitting a rock once 155
in a while is now bitter hung up on finding some inferior.
he bites into the window ledge & by singing "what'll we do
with the baby-o" to thirsty peasant girl wanting a drink
from his pail, he is thinking he is some kind of success but
he's getting his kicks telling one of the two headed coins 160
that tom jefferson used to use him around the house when
the bad stuff was growing . . . the lawrence welk people
inside the window, theyre running the city planning divi-
sion & they hibernate & feeding their summers by convers-
ing with poor people's shadows & other ambulance drivers, 165
& they dont even notice this window washer while the fam-
ilies who tell of the boogey men & theyre precious & there's
pictures of them playing golf & getting blacker & they wear
oil in the window washer's union hall & these people con-
sider themselves gourmets for not attending charlie stark- 170
weather's funeral ye gads the champagne being appropriate
pagan & the buffalo, tho the restaurant owners are vague
about it, is fast disappearing into violence/ soon there will
be but one side of the coin & mohammed wherever he
comes from, cursing & windows washers falling & then no 175
one will have any money . . . broad save the clean, the
minorities & liberace's countryside. 177
the truck driver coming in with a carpet 178
sweeper under his eyes/ everybody says
"hi joe" & he says "joe the fellow that 180
owns this place i'm just a scientist. i
aint got no name" the track driver hates
anybody that carries a tennis racket/ he
drinks all the senator's coffee & proceeds
to put him in a headlock 185
first you snap your hair down & try to tie up the kicking 186
voices on a table & then the sales department people with
names like Gus & Peg & Judy the Wrench & Nadine with
worms in her fruit & Bernice Bearface blowing her brains
on Butch & theyre all enthused over locker rooms & vege- 190
tables & Muggs he goes to sleep on your neck talking shop
& divorces & headline causes & if you cant say get off my
neck, you just answer him & wink & wait for some morbid
reply & the liberty bell ringing when you dont dare ask
yourself how do you feel for God's sake & what's one 195
more face? & the difference between a lifetime of goons &
holes, company pigs & beggars & cancer critics learning
yoga with raving petty gangsters in one act plays with
V-eight engines all being tossed in the river & combined in
a stolen mirror . . . compared to the big day when you 200
discover lord byron shooting craps in the morgue with his
pants off & he's eating a picture of jean paul belmondo & he
offers you a piece of green lightbulb & you realize that
nobody's told you about This & that life is not so simple
after all . . . in fact that it's more than something to 205
read & light cigarettes with . . . Lem the Clam tho, he
really gives a damn if dale really does get nailed slamming
down the scotch & then going outside with Maurice, who
aint the Peoria Kid & dont look the same way as they do in Des
Moines, Iowa & good old debbie, she comes along & both 210
her & dale, they start shacking up in the newspapers & jesus
who can blame 'em & Amen & oh lordy, & how the parades
dont need your money baby . . . it's the confetti & one
george washington & Nadine who comes running & says
where's Gus? & she's salty about the bread he's been making 215
off her worms while dollars becoming pieces of paper . . .
but people kill for paper & anyway you cant buy a thrill
with a dollar as long as pricetags, the end of the means &
only as big as your fist & they dangle from a pot of golden
rainbow . . . which attacks & which covers the saddles of 220
noseless poets & wonder blazing & somewhere over the rain-
bow & blinding my married lover into the ovation maniacs/
cremating innocent child into scrapheap for vicious con-
troversy & screwball & who's to tell charlie to stop & not
come back for garbage men arent serious & they gonna get 225
murdered tomorrow & next march 7th by the same kids &
their fathers & their uncles & all the rest of these people that
would make leadbelly a pet . . . they will always kill gar-
bage men & wiping the smells but this rainbow, she goes off
behind a pillar & sometimes a tornado destroys the drug- 230
stores & the floods bring polio & leaving Gus & Peg twisted in
the volleyball net & Butch hiding in madison square garden
. . . Bearface dead from a flying piece of grass! I.Q. - some-
where in the sixties & twentieth century & so sing aretha
. . . sing mainstream into orbit! sing the cowbells home! 235
sing misty . . . sing for the barber & when your found
guilty of not owning a cavalry & not helping the dancer
with laryngitis . . . misleading valentino's pirates to the
indians or perhaps not lending a hand to the deaf pacifist in
his sailor jail . . . it then must be time for you to rest & 240
learn new songs . . . forgiving nothing for you have done
nothing & make love to noble scrubwoman 242
what a drag it gets to be. writing 243
for this chosen few. writing for any-
one cpt you. you, daisy mae, who are 245
not even of the masses . . . funny thing,
tho, is that youre not even dead yet . . .
i will nail my words to this paper,
an fly them on to you. an forget about
them . . . thank you for the time. 250
youre kind.
love an kisses
your double
Silly Eyes (in airplane trouble) 254
============================================================================
ooo...carpal tunnel syndrome....
- nate