Mr. Tambourine Man

Everyone was always looking for the hidden meaning in Dylan's songs, and maybe there was one, but I remember him saying in an interview once that his songs "mean what they say". I guess that's one of the characteristics of a true work of art, different people will see different meanings in it, and the meaning that the artist originally intended might be none of the above.

The Bliss Fest runs for three days, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Many of the patrons have to be back to work on Monday morning, but those who don't stay over Sunday night. It's easier to break camp in the daylight, and you don't have to drive home drunk that way. Monday morning, about noonish, the volunteers set to work taking down the tents and other temporary structures and cleaning the place up. Sometimes the civilians will jump in and help if they're not in a hurry to get out of there. Monday evening is the Survivor's Party for anybody who's still hanging around. Most of the survivors leave after that, but there's always a few diehards who stumble back to their camps to sleep off the effects of the Survivor's Party before bidding each other a fond farewell. You'd think that, after four days of wine, women, and song, a guy would just go back to camp and crash for the night, and many of them do, but sometimes you get a second wind and aren't ready to give up just yet, so you hold the Survivors of the Survivor's Party Party.

"Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.
In the jingle-jangle morning I'll come following you.
Though I know that evening's empire has returned unto the sand, vanished from my hand, 
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping.
My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet, I have no one here to meet,
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming."

One year, back in the 1990s, when I was at the peak of my involvement with the festival, I and this lady found ourselves the sole survivors of the Survivor's Party. It was a warm night, with heat lightning flashing on the horizon, and we vowed to keep making music until the storm broke upon us, but it never did. At one point, there was lightning flashing all around us, miles away, while the sky overhead was clear and starlit. We took it as a sign.

Sometime before dawn, she asked me if I knew "Mr. Tambourine Man". I knew what cords to play, but I wasn't sure that I remembered all the words. She said that she knew some of them and that, between the two of us, we might be able to put it together. I sang some, and she sang some, and both of us sang some together. Between the two of us, I think we got it all. As we were belting out the last verse, it dawned on me that the song was really about us, and I'm not ashamed to say that it brought a tear to my eye. After all those years of trying to decipher the hidden meaning that Dylan had encrypted in the song, it turned out that it indeed, "meant what it said".

Not that it's any of your business but, just so you know, nothing happened between my and that lady. Well, something happened, but not what you think, you dirty old man.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about "the frozen leaves" and the "haunted, sheltered trees".