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| Haight-Ashbury Mural, 2008 |
This week I've been having a blast playing with an A.I. writing assistant called Sudowrite. What follows is a blog post from seven years ago this week about Dylan's "She Belongs To Me." As an addendum I've added Sudowrite's reconfiguration of the lyrics. Or rather, I have used four lines from the first stanza as a seed prompt to see what Sudowrite would generate. At the end of this post you'll find three versions using the same prompts.
EdNote: It will be awhile before A.I. can outdo Dylan, but the results are still curiously fun.
24 November 2014
As everyone following the current edition of the Never Ending Tour is aware, the playlist is pretty much set in stone, beginning with "Things Have Changed." Most of the songs in the two-part show are of more recent vintage, many from his last studio album Tempest. The second song of the set, "She Belongs To Me," is not. With the exception of his eternal classic "Blowing in the Wind" which has become the kickoff to his encore, it's the only one from the Sixties, with Bob at center stage and Donnie on pedal steel.
"She Belongs To Me" is a song Dylan has now performed 362 times as of Saturday night, and in some ways it seemed a curious selection considering all the scintillating songs of that period. But then, there may be good reasons for its inclusion.
First off, maybe it gives him a chance to play his harp early in the show, though a hundred songs could have given him that chance. So maybe the answer lies elsewhere.
It's a truly intriguing song. When you inhale the lyrics you find it contains a variety of flavors difficult to identify. Perhaps when released on Bringing It All Back Home it got lost between the kicker "Subterranean Homesick Blues" which opens the album and "Maggie's Farm" which produced a deep resonance with a portion of that generation, my generation, when it appeared. In fact, that whole album is so loaded with treasures it's easy to see how a subtler, nuanced song might get lost.
The song's structure is traditional blues where the first line is repeated twice followed by a payoff. The Delta blues classic "Rolling and Tumbling" is an example of such a structure, recorded by a host of performers from Muddy Waters and Cream to Jeff Beck and Fleetwood Mac. (Dylan himself created a whole new set of lyrics for his Modern Times CD, only retaining the first lines, tune and structure.)
"She Belongs To Me" carries this same format, but what a marvelous piece of lyrical craftsmanship. John Hinchey, whose book Like A Complete Unknown analyzes the poetry of Dylan's Sixties music, writes this about the song:
"She Belongs to Me" and "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" are the other two songs that magnificently manage to escape the limitations of the simplistic myth that informs side one. [of Bringing It All Back Home] In both songs Dylan invokes his muse -- perhaps for no better reason than to flaunt her before the bourgeoisie -- but having invoked her, he finds himself in the presence of someone beyond his reach. Her very inaccessibility seems to activate Dylan's deepest artistic impulses, forcing him to acknowledge -- and provoking him to attempt to overleap -- the limits of his imagination.
"She Belongs To Me" demolishes bohemian sentimentalities from the inside, with a surprising portrait of the muse as unapproachable yet imperious dominatrix.
The song's complexity is part of what makes it compelling. And if you've ever been there, you understand.
SHE BELONGS TO ME
She’s got everything she needs
She’s an artist, she don’t look back
She’s got everything she needs
She’s an artist, she don’t look back
She can take the dark out of the nighttime
And paint the daytime black
You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees
You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees
But you will wind up peeking through her keyhole
Down upon your knees
She never stumbles
She’s got no place to fall
She never stumbles
She’s got no place to fall
She’s nobody’s child
The Law can’t touch her at all
She wears an Egyptian ring
That sparkles before she speaks
She wears an Egyptian ring
That sparkles before she speaks
She’s a hypnotist collector
You are a walking antique
Bow down to her on Sunday
Salute her when her birthday comes
Bow down to her on Sunday
Salute her when her birthday comes
For Halloween give her a trumpet
And for Christmas, buy her a drum
Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music
* * *
She Belongs To Me, Regeneration One
She’s got everything she needsShe’s an artist, she don’t look back
She can take the dark out of the nighttime
And paint the daytime black
She’s got everything she needs
She’s got a strong foundation
She can build a bridge to the other side,
Or just use the walkway over the river
She can take a stand or sit on a bench
She’s a woman, she don’t need no man
She’ll do it all by herself,
she don’t need nothing at all from nobody.
Sitting here, I can hear her singing
I can hear her voice in the wind, wild and clear
She’s got everything she needs.
She Belongs To Me, Regeneration Two
She’s got everything she needs
She’s an artist, she don’t look back
She can take the dark out of the nighttime
And paint the daytime black
She can cause commotion
She can put your house out of order
She’s got everything she needs
She knows if she don’t look good
She ain’t going nowhere
She’ll wear high heels just to go shopping
She can shake, shake, shake
It don’t matter to her if it rains or freezes
She’s got a lot of love to give away
And there ain’t no way she can lose
She can give you everything, everything, everything, ooh
And you know that she loves you
And you know that she cares.
She Belongs To Me, Regeneration Three
She’s got everything she needsShe’s an artist, she don’t look back
She can take the dark out of the nighttime
And paint the daytime black
She takes the sorrow out of the morning
And throws it all away
She’s got everything she needs
And if you ask her how she’s doing
She don’t look back that way
She’s got everything she needs
And if you want to leave her
Well, that’s just a mistake
She can take the guilty out of the guilty
And throw it all away.
I’m not what I appear to be
I’m just a poor boy in a rich man’s world.
Oh, when you ask me what I want in life
I tell you that I’m not a woman, I’m a man
Man with a capital “M”
I want a woman with a capital “W”
That’s what I want in life
That’s what I am.
I think I know who I am
But you can never tell.
* * *
