Dylan's Man in the Long Black Coat

Throughout his career Dylan's been something of a man of mystery. And it seems like no matter what he does or says or doesn't do, someone is commenting on it.

While listening to Oh Mercy recently a line near the end of Dylan's "Man in the Long Black Coat" caught my attention: "Somebody is out there beating a dead horse."

Many of Dylan's songs contain strange imagery and some people have spent a lifetime analyzing his lyrics to gain access to the secret meanings in the songs, much like ancient mystics who used numerology to decode Judaism's sacred texts. In Desolation Row it's the last verse that offers up a key to unlocking the song, but how does one unlock All Along the Watchtower?

Knowing all this made me wonder if there were something more significant here than an arbitrary bizarre image that serves simply to make a rhyme. I thought it worth further investigation.

* * * *

The song begins with an ominous ambiance created by sparse bass and en electronic effect that sounds like crickets chirping. It feels dark, like the edge of dusk at the rim of nowhere. The effect appears designed to correspond with the song's opening line.

Crickets are chirpin’, the water is high
There’s a soft cotton dress on the line hangin’ dry
Window wide open, African trees
Bent over backwards from a hurricane breeze
Not a word of goodbye, not even a note
She gone with the man
In the long black coat

So we have an unidentified narrator telling a story, and thus far there are two characters, "she" and the man in the long black coat.  It has the feel of an old Western, the small house on the edge of a wilderness. The second verse offers clues regarding this stranger.

Somebody seen him hanging around
At the old dance hall on the outskirts of town
He looked into her eyes when she stopped him to ask
If he wanted to dance, he had a face like a mask
Somebody said from the Bible he’d quote
There was dust on the man
In the long black coat

Here's this man who no one seems to know and he's hanging out at the old dance hall. She's there, too, and she takes the initiative.

The town has a church, and the preacher there once gave a message that went like this:

Preacher was a talkin’, there’s a sermon he gave
He said every man’s conscience is vile and depraved
You cannot depend on it to be your guide
When it’s you who must keep it satisfied

This is not the popular view today, though. I remember a discussion four decades ago which began with this question. I was asked, "If the heart were a checkerboard, is it basically white splattered with black, or black splattered with white? That is, are we good underneath or bad underneath?" The young woman who asked this had just completed a philosophy class on Plato and was attempting to sort out some of the concepts. I'm not sure how I replied other than to make some kind of know-it-all statements which she proceeded to refute. I was so much older then....

It ain’t easy to swallow, it sticks in the throat
She gave her heart to the man
In the long black coat

What's not easy to swallow? The message from the preacher, or the fact that she gave her heart to the man in the long black coat? Perhaps it's both. Dylan once again is the master of ambiguity.

Before moving to the last verse there's a bridge offering another way of seeing things followed by the narrator's response. In a world with worldviews in conflict we can try to get along, but we don't have to all agree.

There are no mistakes in life some people say
It is true sometimes you can see it that way
But people don't live or die, people just float

She went with the man
In the long black coat

What's going on in this song? Clearly it's a lament. Everything is drenched with it. She left town with the man in a long black coat and she left somewhat suddenly. Her dress is still hanging on the line. She's never come back and no one ever heard from her again.

There’s smoke on the water, it’s been there since June
Tree trunks uprooted, 'neath the high crescent moon
Feel the pulse and vibration and the rumbling force
Somebody is out there beating a dead horse
She never said nothing, there was nothing she wrote
She gone with the man
In the long black coat

Copyright © 1989 by Special Rider Music

Does the line "Somebody is out there beating a dead horse" offer a clue here or is Dylan stringing things together to amplify the feeling of mystery while looking for a rhyme? (As some people say.) The expression "beating a dead horse" means, to bring up an issue that has already been concluded; something that's considered to be pointless.

If an argument erupts and it's one that has been previously settled, then the idiom "beating a dead horse" might be said by someone who sees any further discussion on the topic to be futile. "Come on, man, you're beating a dead horse."

The spot in Turin where Nietzche collapsed.

For some reason the image that came to mind for me was that of Nietzsche's nervous breakdown while staying in Turin, Italy. Whatever internal torments he had had bottled up burst like a dam when he witnessed a man beating his horse after it had collapsed in the street while pulling his carriage. Nietzsche purportedly ran over and embraced the horse, whose suffering was more than he could bear. After this breakdown he spent the last ten years of his life in a Basel asylum.

In the opening line of the last verse, smoke on the water just happens to be the title of a Deep Purple song which is itself about a tragedy, the fire in the Casino Montreux in Switzerland in 1971. The scene described in this verse includes uprooted tree trunks, the aftermath of that hurricane force wind that blew through, altering the landscape of our narrator's life.

Perhaps when all is said and done the narrator's despair is tied to his inaction. He watched passively, stood at a distance. Had she been waiting for him to step forward? For how long. Instead he remained paralyzed within himself. She finally took an action of her own. She initiated a relationship with her ticket out of town, the man in the long black coat.

The song is gloomy. And sometimes life can be, too. 

Nietzsche’s Concept of Eternal Recurrence

"This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything immeasurably small or great in your life must return to you-all in the same succession and sequence-even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over, and you with it, a grain of dust." ~Friedrich Nietzsche

“Do you remember what you told me once? That every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around.” ~ Tom Cruise as David Aames, Vanilla Sky

Some people consider Friedrich Nietzsche one of the most exciting philosophers of all time. Certainly his ideas have been influential and his writing dramatic. And whatever your take on his point of view, the themes he addresses are provoking enough to give us something to gnaw on and make us think. And in the end, to some extent, maybe that was all he intended in a world where people generally just went about their business and accepted the values of the culture they were immersed in.

The quote above addresses one of his original constructs, the idea of life being an eternal recurrence. Christian teaching is not alone in giving weight to the decisions of this life by indicating their significance with regard to eternal outcomes. Nietzsche, on the other hand, chooses to suggest our decisions in this life have weight because how we choose to live today will be replayed over and over again unto eternity.

It’s a very unusual perspective in some respects, a variant on reincarnation, which also has us returning indefinitely, but in differing capacities. Scholars have argued whether the idea is meant as a serious conjecture or a concept to make us more thoughtful about our behavior here and now.

I would suggest that Nietzsche’s sole intent with this concept of eternal recurrence was to get us plugged in to the significance of our acts. His was a brilliant mind, but as far as I am aware he does not offer a supporting argument for the notion proposed. It is a certainty that he understood that even if we ourselves were recurring, our circumstances would not be, for times change, culture changes, history is unfolding all around us.

This theme of eternal recurrence is echoed in Cameron Crowe’s film Vanilla Sky. Once one grasps the film’s premise, the viewer is like Theseus following Ariadne’s thread to find his way through the labyrinth. In the film, David Aames is unaware that he is experiencing this “eternal recurrence”, but only knows that something is terribly wrong. The climactic scene on the rooftop brings a number of historically significant philosophical questions to the surface.

Of Nietzsche, we know that his ideas went on to influence innumerable existential philosophers and lay the groundwork for postmodern explorers. He lived passionately, a philosopher whose roots were less grounded in reason (the dominant theme of the Rennaissance and modern rationalism) and drawn more from the Dionysian, the experiential and the irrational.

While living in Italy, Nietzsche had a nervous breakdown while witnessing a man beating a horse. Embracing the horse, whose suffering was more than he could bear, Nietzsche fell apart and spent the last ten years of his life in a broken state.

Nietzsche’s writings are challenging to put your mind around in part because he did not believe it necessary to have a systematic, rational viewpoint. More than once he declares his distrust of systematizers. In this regard he may have foreshadowed the postmodernists who do not find it necessary to be altogether consistent in their own views. He may have even suggested that atttempts to be consistent are a waste of time.

What matters, he asserted, is not getting everything figured out, but experiencing our lives as fully as possible and becoming all we’re meant to be. “The present moment is all, so let us make the best use of it and of ourselves.” With that I would agree; the truth is true wherever it is found.

The two photos on this page are of the house where Nietzche lived in Turin, at via Carlo Albierto 6, when he had his nervous breakdown and of the plaque stating that Nietzsche lived there. In 1861Turin was the first capital of united Italy. The capital later moved to Florence and ultimately to Rome.

I painted the portrait featuring Nietzsche’s famous mustache, above right, this past weekend.