Mr. Tambourine Man - 2

"Then take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time,
Out past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, sheltered trees,
Out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow."

The lady I told you about was here on vacation with her daughter and her daughter's husband, and they hung around for a couple weeks after the festival. I ran into them at Legs Inn one evening and they invited me to go watch the sunset over Lake Michigan with them. We drove to the old Indian Church near the tiny village of Goodhart. According to the historical plaque, some missionaries came by a few hundred years ago, converted some of the local Indians, and inspired them to build this little church which is still in use today. Nobody was using it when we got there, so we parked in the church parking lot and followed this foot path through the woods down to the beach. There were no signs marking this path to the beach, it was the kind of thing that, if you didn't know it was there, you wouldn't know it was there.

It was kind of spooky in those woods, not scary spooky, mystical spooky. Maybe the place was guarded by the spirits of long dead Indians. If so, they didn't seem upset by our presence, but we kept our voices respectfully low anyway. It was already pretty dark in the forest, and we needed a flashlight to find our way back after the sunset. The wind was flat calm, and all the leaves on the those "haunted, sheltered trees" held perfectly still in the semi darkness, like time itself had been frozen in place. It occurred to me that might have been what Dylan meant by the "frozen leaves", not frozen by cold, just frozen in the stillness of time.

Musicians and other stage performers commonly hold parties after their show. They're all pumped up and need something to wind them down, kind of like the way they walk a horse around for awhile after it's been working or racing. The more I thought about it, I was pretty sure that's what Dylan was talking about in Mr. Tambourine Man. There probably were some drugs involved, but I don't think the song is primarily about drugs. It's about how it's sometimes good to just let go and let the moment carry you.

"To dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow."

*****************************************************************************

I think what you're talking about is called "cultural relativism", the belief that one culture is as good as another for the people in it, and that it ain't nobody's business but their own. It kind of makes sense, but I think there are exceptions to this rule. In the movie "Around the World in 80 Days", Phineas Fogg rescues this Indian lady (Indian Indian, not American Indian) who is about to be burned alive along with her dead husband in keeping with the local customs. Should he have just let her burn? I don't think so! Besides, she had been educated in England, and India was under British rule at the time. Shouldn't the locals have refrained from burning the lady out of respect for British customs?

Have a nice weekend.