Throwback Thursday: Every Grain of Sand: Dylan Finds a Basis for Hope in the Darkness of Despair

Bob Dylan floored me tonight. I've seen him before and felt meh, but tonight he delivered a stunning show. That Every Grain of Sand encore had me in tears.--Adam Handman tweet

One of the nice surprises for a lot of fans attending the Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour has been Dylan's selection of "Every Grain of Sand" for the encore each night, though by now no one should be surprised. It's the perfect pinnacle to climb toward for these shows. On Monday a friend noted this selection, surmising that the song reflects an emotional place of being depressed. 

In 2017 I wrote the following about this sublime song, the final track from Shot of Love. 

17 SEPTEMBER 2017

Paul Bond: And what is his (Dylan's) best song, lyrically?
Scott Marshall: "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" or "Every Grain of Sand" — it's too tough to pick merely one.
--The Hollywood Reporter

A Rolling Stone readers poll listed it as #3 on the 10 best Dylan songs of the 80's. It's always been a personal favorite, and since I've not yet tackled it as a theme today is as good a day as any, because we live in a world that often cuts us and bruises us and blinds us and seems determined to thwart our dreams.

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The song begins with a broken narrator, in the hour of his deepest need, his dark night of the soul as it were. There's a dying voice within -- being strangled? suffocated? -- reaching out, it knows not how, reaching out to connect to something, someone. He mentions danger, and it is indeed a dangerous game, and then he creates this interesting phrase: "the morals of despair."

What are the morals of despair? Despair is not only the loss of all hope, but also the loss of all meaning. It's that empty-soul vacuum where right and wrong feels meaningless.

He doesn't have the inclination to look back on his life's mistakes. The landscape is already too familiar. And then another great line: "Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break." This is another feature of despair. It is a paralysis of will. Instead of living, instead of choosing, we are folded up, passive. We watch life instead of choose life. Passivity goes hand in hand with hopelessness. It is a resignation to fate.

But the two quatrain verse ends with the miracle: "In the fury of the moment" he sees the Master's hand. Where? In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.

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The second verse elaborates on the root of this despair, "the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear." Dylan here references Jesus' parable of the sower. Just as Socrates taught by asking questions, Jesus taught by sharing stories. Nietzsche once stated that Jesus and Socrates were the two greatest lights in human history. It is interesting that neither of them were writers, but that their followers recorded their words and deeds.

The parable tells about a sower who sows "good seed" but that it takes root or fails to take root based on the condition of the soil where it lands, meaning the soil of the heart. Jesus explains the different kinds of soil -- stony, or on the footpath, etc.-- with the third example being the thorny soil. Dylan's line "the weeds of yesteryear, like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer." The seed is good, and even the soil is good, but there has been no weeding, and the seed is choked off.

Once again there is a reference to the passivity that has led to this condition, "the pain of idleness." In the Old Testament book of Proverbs the wise King Solomon writes, in chapter one, "the complacency of  fools destroys them."

The second half of this second stanza is striking because it parallels the reality of humankind. There are two voices calling. Again, see the first eight chapters of Proverbs. Wisdom calls out to us, but so does Folly. Each voice knows us by name.

But the wise man/woman who keeps walking on his/her journey toward the light comes to understand that "every hair is numbered like every grain of sand."

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This song is the last track on what is considered to be Dylan's third album in his Gospel period, Shot of Love, released in August 1981. What's striking about the songs Dylan wrote at this time is how astutely he observed and creatively interpreted the spiritual activity he witnessed within and around him. The freshness of his imagery is what stands out all through his writing, with deliberate avoidance of the multifarious cliche-laden language that most people use because it is easy and we all tend to be lazy. Cliches like "the sky's the limit" may work in an office water-cooler conversation, but not for serious writers. Hence some of the people most floored by Dylan are writers who have been impressed by the inventive ways Dylan uses language in lines like "but for the sky there are no fences facing" in Mr. Tambourine Man, and "the ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face" in Visions of Johanna.

And yet, rules about the use of a hackneyed phrase or cliche, even those can be broken, and Dylan does so directly to open the third pair of stanzas: "I have gone from rags to riches..."

It's followed by a string of prepositional phrases of parallel construction:
"In the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer’s dream,
in the chill of a wintry light
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face..."

So here we see that money alone does not buy happiness. Simultaneous to his rags to riches experience he's seen sorrow, violence, chills, bitter loneliness and the "broken mirror of innocence."

The broken mirror, in pop culture, is a symbol of bad luck, or to be more specific seven years of bad luck, seven itself being a symbol of perfection or, more precisely, the perfect amount of time. And where do we see this broken mirror? We see it on the scarred hearts of youth. Over and over again we see and hear stories that show how humanity's sins result in suffering children, children whose innocence has been shaken, torn, scarred. The abusive alcoholic father, or the parents who abandon their young, the children carrying "guns and sharp swords" in war-torn Nigeria, the children of Sarajevo, and on and on, the children cited in "Hard Rain's Gonna Fall."

In the last stanza, Dylan hears again the ancient footsteps, like the motion of the sea, swelling and receding, and in this ambiguous encounter he realizes that he is "hanging in the balance of the reality of man." This is our human situation. We're "hanging in the balance." In what way? "Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand."

Dylan again references a parable that Jesus told in Matthew 10:29-31. "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows."

Every Grain Of Sand

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There’s a dyin’ voice within me reaching out somewhere
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair

Don’t have the inclination to look back on any mistake
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master’s hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay

I gaze into the doorway of temptation’s angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer’s dream, in the chill of a wintry light
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand

Copyright © 1981 by Special Rider Music

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The album began with its title plea "I need a shot of love" while detailing all the reasons we can end up in this place of need. "I seen the kingdoms of this world and it's making me feel afraid." It ends with this song of consolation.

In need of further consolation? Try this passage from the Sermon on the Mount.