Claude-Angele BONI's It's Alright, Ma + Eden

"It's alright Ma I'm only bleeding and
there are no truths outside the gates of Eden"

Over the years I have frequently repeated the quote, "If a man is worth knowing at all, he is worth knowing well." The saying applies to women equally well, obviously, and the one I am applying it to here is Claude-Angele BONI, a French artist who has been immersed in Dylan-inspiration for five decades or more. 

In 1993 she published a book of her Dylan-themed paintings and collages titled Stuck Inside of Mobile (With a Rhapsody for Bob Dylan.) The more I see of her work the more I have been enthralled, not simply by the imagery but by the stories behind the pictures.

Here are some notes from our correspondence that help shed light on the painting here displayed.

She first heard "Gates of Eden" and "It's Alright, Ma" in 1966. Though she did not speak English she was impressed by the few words she was able to understand. For years she listened to his songs translated into French, so it wasn't until 1976 that found Writings and Drawings and was able to understand exactly what he was talking about, word by word. "I was amazed! I started to analyse those songs so mysterious and clear at the same time, like some "charade", some enigmas, so I left aside the conception I had of him based on his special voice and his fragile and innocent look and I started to consider him as a wise sphinx," she says.

"As soon as I had been free to paint again, in 1974, I made a painting on those two songs. It was the one I chose to offer him in 1978, the year I saw him in the flesh for the first time. It changed my life. Then I started to read a lot of books on history and psychology... The Pandora Box was opened! I started to consider my environment with my eyes wide open... " 

Of the painting itself she writes:

   

"It's alright ma I'm only bleeding'' is the main title. It refers to the struggle of life and "Gates of Eden" refers to resilience and faith. The complete title might be: "It's alright Ma I'm only bleeding and there are no truths outside the gates of Eden. 

This painting is about a son who has stayed long enough with his mother and needs to 'cut the cord' as we say in French when a boy remains too long dependent on his mum. Bob Dylan on the first plane is thinking about what it takes to reach his goal only by himself. Just on his left Bacchus and his bacchanalia will show him the good side of the emancipation, but first he has to 'kill the father.'

Beginning with Elvis laying down in his swimming trunks in Hawaii, like the young David, he will have to fight his opponents with courage using tricks and weapons. Many times, he will remember his mother who blessed him when he left and as soon as his trip really begins he will have a look at the door he has to close behind him, and take a deep breath before he enters the purifying waters. 

I copied David from a picture I had of a bronze by Donatello. I had just visited the city of Firenze (Florence, Italy) and the museum Palazzo Bargello. When I saw the statue, I felt like I was meeting again someone I used to know... I felt a lot of affection for this little David. 

At the Uffizi Gallery I also had the same feeling when I saw the painting by Caravaggio of a young "mischievous" Bacchus. So It gave me the great need to start a painting with Bacchus and David and the idea to add Bob Dylan came as an evident link to David. At the back, the Virgin Mary is a copy of The Annunciation by Leonardo da Vinci. As I have, first of all, an Italian background I have a lot of affinity with the Italian painters. 

Thanks for making me have this look back at my beginning.

* * * *

Related Links
French Artist Claude-Angele BONI Explains Two Dylan-Inspired Treasures
Fun With Collage: Claude-Angele BONI's Lily, Rosemarie and the Jack of Hearts, Vers. 1 & 2

This week is Duluth Dylan Fest
Many events this week will be streaming.

Duluth Dylan Fest Links

www.bobdylanway.com

www.duluthdylanfest.com

www.facebook.com/duluthdylanfest/

It's Alright, Ma: Dylan's Scathing Look at Contemporary Culture Through Jaundiced Eyes

Dylan at his best. Dylan at the height of his powers. Dylan as Dylan.

Bringing It All Back Home is the first of a trio of albums Dylan released in the mid-Sixties, the albums that many would argue changed everything, and certainly affirmed Dylan's place in rock history. Little did we know then that he'd still be performing more than half a century later, and what's more, he was still performing this song 50 years later. (Though recorded in 1965 he wrote and first performed it the summer before.)

I like this commentary on the song from the Songfacts website:
Dylan vents about subjects such as commercialism, hypocrisy and warmongering in this song. In the book, Bob Dylan, Performing Artist, author Paul Williams states this song sees Dylan acknowledge "the possibility that the most important (and least articulated) political issue of our times is that we are all being fed a false picture of reality, and it's coming at us from every direction."

Williams adds that Dylan portrays an "alienated individual identifying the characteristics of the world around him and thus declaring his freedom from its 'rules'." *

Dylan has performed the song 772 times in concert and has publicly called it out as a favorite. I have likewise, many times, called it a personal favorite. It was this song, used in the soundtrack for Easy Rider, that pierced me like no other, expressing things that were rattling around inside me but that I was not yet able to articulate.

Like a book of aphorisms or proverbs, there are so many one liners here that have been repeatedly asserted and affirmed since they were penned.

"he not busy being born is busy dying"

"and sometimes even the president of the United States must have to stand naked."

"Meantime, life goes on all around you."

I wish I were able to find the time to dissect this masterpiece. Life does indeed all too often get in the way. For a thought-provoking take on the song I once again defer to Tony Attwood's Untold Dylan. Attwood notes that the message here is bleak, and I suspect that it's not a very appetizing message, yet for me it was an arrow to the heart. Someone was saying something that I completely identified with. Writes Attwood: We can protest for ever, the master says, but “There is no sense in trying” because all the words are wasted. Why? Well you have to wait until the last line to find out, but of course we now know why. Because this is how it is.

There's been a lot of enthusiasm generated by the national student protests regarding gun violence in the schools. It's probably good for young people to be idealistic and hopeful. I was out of step at the time, and probably still out of step.

I've occasionally compared the events of the Sixties to a head injury causing a mild, or maybe not so mild, concussion. The JFK assassination, the realities of racism in the deep South, the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, riots in the streets and, of course, the ubiquitous reality of Viet Nam. 

To borrow a line from a later Dylan songs, "I been hit too hard, seen too much."

For what it's worth, I thought I might highlight or underscore some of the passages from this song that spoke to me back in 1969.

What’s astonishing is how relevant the song continues to be today. And today again, as when it was released in 1964, there’s nothing like it being played on the radio, absolutely nothing that so tells it like it is so vividly, with such poetic precision. It's the Yin of our culture's manufactured Yang.

It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying

Temptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover that you’d just be one more
Person crying

So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked**

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it

Advertising signs they con
You into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit
To satisfy, insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies***
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something they invest in

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes must get lonely

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed
Graveyards, false gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough, what else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only

Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music

Here's a live performance of the song. It's not just lyrics, it's the way he delivers them that just rivets you. While Dylan was writing this, Mr.  Tambourine Man, Gates of Eden and Subterranean Homesick Blues, The Beatles owned the top of the pop charts with She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand. 

Postmodern deconstruction? Existential angst? Or siimply Dylan being Dylan?

* Songfacts, It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

** This song, as noted, has been performed continuously through 2014, with many presidents, and this line ever relevant.
*** I was too young still to "despise my job" but I read recently that 70% of Americans hate their jobs according to one poll. That feels high to me, but job dissatisfaction is a fairly widespread phenomenon.

Like His Hero Woody Guthrie, Dylan Spoke the Language of the Disenfranchised

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed
Graveyards, false gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough, what else can you show me?
--"It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)"

In the Old Testament story of David, there came a time when the young giant-slayer's reputation and honor was such that he became a threat to King Saul, who was a symbol of the established order. (See I Samuel 17-19.) After slaying Goliath David became part of the king's household, as armor bearer and poet/musician. Eventually Saul put him in command of a small army. David's achievements were heroic and greatly celebrated by the masses, public adulation that tormented Saul to the point that David's life was endangered, and ultimately David had to flee.

The young poet/musician took refuge in the wilderness, hiding in caves and moving about the surrounding hills. As word got around (even without social media or news corporations the buzz travelled fast) it is written that "everyone who was in distress, everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented gathered to him." (I Samuel 22:2 KJV) The New Century translation of this verse states, "Everyone who was in trouble, or who owed money, or who was unsatisfied gathered around David, and he became their leader."

What comes to mind when I think of Dylan's early songs is how they resonated with the disenfranchised. In fact, Dylan used to cite this story of David while introducing his song "When the Ship Comes In." Longtime Dylan fans are familiar with the early live recording where he stated, "Nowadays there are crueler Goliaths who do crueler and crueler things, but one day they're going to be slain, too." It's a familiar story and a metaphor that captured something of Dylan's appeal in the Sixties.

Where did this attitude and sensibility come from?

It's well-known that young Bob Dylan identified with the folk roots of his hero Woody Guthrie. Guthrie's story goes like this:

"At the age of just 14, Guthrie and his siblings were left to fend for themselves while their father worked in Texas to repay his debts. As a teenager, Guthrie turned to busking in the streets for food or money, honing his skills as a musician while developing the keen social conscience that would later be so integral to his legendary music.

"Guthrie left his family in 1935 to join the thousands of "Okies" who were migrating West in search of work. Like many other "Dust Bowl refugees," Guthrie spent his time hitchhiking, riding freight trains, and when he could, quite literally singing for his supper.

"In 1937, Guthrie arrived in California, where he landed a job with partner Maxine "Lefty Lou" Crissman as a radio performer of traditional folk music on KFVD in Los Angeles. The duo soon garnered a loyal following from the disenfranchised "Okies" living in migrant camps across California and it wasn't long before Guthrie's populist sentiments found their way into his songs."*

Four times in the 1940s American author John Steinbeck was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature before achieving it in 1962 "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception." His novel The Grapes of Wrath poignantly tells the story of the disenfranchised for whom Woody Guthrie labored.

This mix of ingredients along with lessons learned growing up on the Iron Range permeated Dylan's early sensibilities. I think here of Hollis Brown, who "lived on the outside of town."

Even though a majority of the Boomer generation grew up in suburbia, which was supposed to be "the good life," many of the youth of that time felt an emptiness and confusion about the times they inhabited.

Early on Dylan keyed in to this generational angst in songs like "Hard Rain" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'," at a time with others were singing "He's So Fine" and "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." His music performed a role similar to the icebreakers on the great Northern Lake that was hugged by the port city where he was born. Carrying a torch that had been lit by his hero Woody Guthrie, his songs lit many other torches and in a few years we had "For What It's Worth" (Buffalo Springfield), "Ball of Confusion" (The Temptations), "Eve of Destruction" (Barry Maguire),  "Fortunate Son" (CCR) and more. By the early 1970s everyone was wondering "What's Goin' On?"

* * * *

Longtime fans and followers of Dylan's music and performances have commented to me that they're seeing a resurgence of interest in Dylan by growing numbers of young people attending his concerts in recent years. Some have wondered if it's simply a response to his "celebrity status," especially now having won the Nobel Prize. But there are others who have suggested that it's not that at all, rather that having grown up in homes where their parents listened to Dylan, they've now themselves begun to understand what he was singing about, and the lyrics are beginning to connect.

After a lifetime of hearing about the massive growth of our national debt, there's an unreality about it all for most Boomers. But there's no unreality for our young people about the high cost of health care, dental care, housing, taxes and even death (for those left behind) And then there's all that unpaid college debt, while being perpetually reminded that you're never too young to start saving for retirement.

The themes in It's Alright, Ma are as relevant to today's young people as when they were penned more than 50 years ago.

So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing

And so it goes.

*Biography    

Bob Dylan and Philosophy: It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Thinking)

I've long been a fan of books with collections of essays around a theme. The public library has shelves full of books in the literary criticism section dealing with the works of famous and lesser known authors. I discovered Nobel laureate Andre Gide through one of these books. I later purchased a fairly fat Norton Anthology that was a collection of essays on Joseph Conrad's story Heart of Darkness. The books can be compared to a curated art show featuring works by different artists, except that in this case the "art" comes in a literary form.

In 2015 I purchased a book of this ilk called Bob Dylan and Philosophy. Published in 2006 by Open Court Press, it has been my current bedtime reading for the past couple weeks or so. I only recently noticed that it is numero 17 in a series called Popular Culture and Philosophy. Other topics in the series include Seinfeld, the Simpsons, The Matrix, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Lord of the Rings, Baseball, Woody Allen, the Atkins Diet, Superheroes and the Chronicles of Narnia, among others. The subtitles are clever. The Seinfeld subtitle is A Book About Everything and Nothing. The Superheroes essay is subtitled Truth, Justice and the Socratic Way. In other words, there's a playfulness in their seriousness.

The sixteen essays in this book are served up as if tracks on an album. The first eight are listed as Side 1 in the table of contents. The second set is, naturally, Side 2.

I've not finished yet, but every passage I've read has been solid. The writers, who are listed as The Mongrel Dogs (a reference to a line, or concept, in "My Back Pages") have bios in the back of the book that include playful references to yet other Dylan songs. Francis Beckwith's begins, "ever since he was street legal (he) knew he had to strengthen the things that remain.

Playful as their asides might be, the essays contain seriously rich insights into the philosophical subtext of Dylan's life, drawing from not only his lyrics but also his interviews, his performances and his writings.

The first essay compares Planet Waves to Plato's Symposium. Doug Anderson proposes that the album is essentially a collection of songs with various answers to the question "What is love?"

The second essay examines the existentialism that runs through Dylan's work in an essay titled I Used to Care, but Things Have Changed: Passion and the Absurd in Dylan's Later Work. The author here takes his cues from Kierkegaard and Camus, and deftly extracts the repeated themes of existential philosophers through the past two centuries, echoed in the lyrics of a half century of Dylan. This chapter ends with a summing up that begins, "Dylan looks directly at a world lacking any clear purpose and makes an appeal that is filled with absurd faith in what is still possible. This is what may remain after a person has sounded out the depths of existential despair and come to terms with a finite and sometimes tragic life on the other side. In a universe from which all the stars have been torn down, a human being feels like a stranger. But it is not impossible to keep on living under such conditions, and Dylan shows us how it might be done."

The third essay in this book focuses on the question "Who Killed Medgar Evers?" As everyone familiar with the song knows, Dylan somewhat absolves the actual killer by saying he was only a pawn in a bigger game. This is not to say Dylan is asking the murderer to go free, but he uses the incident to point to a much more pervasive issue, institutional racism. After introducing the story, writer Avery Kolers points to other "morally charged songs" by Dylan. One of these is the story of a boxer, "Who Killed Davey Moore?" which Kolers calls a companion piece to Only A Pawn.

"Who Killed Davey Moore?" is a song about a boxer who died as a result of blows from his opponent. In the song, the narrator interrogates the suspects, and each declares innocence--the referee, the angry crowd, the gambling man, the sportswriter, and ultimately the man "whose fists laid him low."

It's interesting that in The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, which appears on the same Side B as Only A Pawn (The Times They Are A-Changing), the one who struck her with his cane is mentioned by name, along with other details of the crime. In this song, Dylan avoids mentioning Byron de la Beckwith so as to spread the blame across to the various politicos and law enforcement agencies that helped foster the culture that produced this act of senseless violence.

It's a powerful essay about a powerful song, one still relevant in our current cultural landscape.

Other themes explored include bootlegging (The Great White Wonder), the meaning of freedom, post-modernism, Christianity and Dylan's gospel influences, the Second Sex, creativity, truth, predestination and free will.

I like the cover copy on the back, which calls Dylan "the Troubador who has given English more phrases than any poet since Shakespeare." Interestingly, when Dylan was selected to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature this past fall, the Shakespeare comparisons were a-plenty.

Much more can be said but we'll close shop here. The book is a penny used or 17 bucks new here at Amazon.

* * * *
NOTEWORTHY
Plans for the 2017 Duluth Dylan Fest are taking shape. Currently you'll want to bookmark the DDF page on BobDylanWay.com. As events firm up information here will be updated here. Wherever you are, you're invited to celebrate with us here in the Northland, May 21-28.

Meantime life goes on all around you. Get into it.

It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) -- Dylan Sets The Hook

This is the song that locked me in. That is, when I was a kid living through that convulsive cultural concussion that included Kennedy assassinations, a war in Southeast Asia that made no sense, cities burning and ongoing black oppression despite the new laws that had been passed --- and television escapism that entertained and diverted everyone's attention but did nothing to feed the soul -- this is the song that told me someone was out there who understood what was rattling around inside my head... or soul.

Arrows have barbs for a reason. Bow hunters from ancient times to the present understood that arrows needed arrowheads or barbs to embed them in the sinews and keep them from falling out.

Fish hooks likewise have barbed tips for the very same purpose. No matter how that fish squirms and shakes, waggles and flops, that hook is only going to penetrate deeper, tangled in the sinews.

So it is that a song's lyrics can penetrate ever so deeply into unprotected, unarmored tissue, the soft underbelly of the soul.

I wasn't the only one to be pierced.

What I remember from my youth is hearing that "the drug problem" was only a problem when it wasn't contained in the ghetto. That racism wasn't an issue as long as it stayed in the Deep South. Books like Steinbeck's Travels With Charley, a first person account of a road trip with his dog, caught many readers off guard when he wrote frankly about the last leg of his journey, through our southern states, and what he saw there.

Hollywood's Easy Rider was also a road trip story. Hippies were also not welcome in the Deep South. This song accompanied the soundtrack from that film, and produced the most profound effects upon its hearers, at least those like me whose hearts were experiencing disillusionment with the way things were. Were we living the American Dream? How could we have so much and feel so empty?

It's Alright, Ma is a song about innocence lost.

* * * *

The elements of existential philosophy are all here. The sense of the absurd. Disillusionment. The tragic sense of life. But when you reach the end Dylan's response is not resignation. As the narrator goes kicking, upside down inside handcuffs, he kicks his legs to crash it off. 

The existential sense of living within an absurd world becomes a recurring theme throughout the decades with Dylan. His music took root because we ourselves felt it, understood in some inarticulate way. His songs put into words the nebulous things we were feeling. You can especially feel it in his Grammy-winning Time Out Of Mind. "I've been down to the bottom of a world full of lies, I ain't lookin' for nothin' in anyone's eyes," he sings. "Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear... it's not dark yet. But it's getting there."

* * * *

It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying

Temptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover that you’d just be one more
Person crying

So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it

Advertising signs they con
You into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit
To satisfy, insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something they invest in

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes must get lonely

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed
Graveyards, false gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough, what else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only

Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music

Who but Dylan wrote songs like this? I know not one.

Meantime, life goes on all around you.