Lights flicker from the OppOsite lOft; In this-room the hEatpipes Just oOugh; The cOuntry-music stAtion plays sOft But there's nOthing, rEally nOthing tO tUrn Off, Just Louise--and her lOver--sO Entwined And these visions--of JohAnna--that cOn--quer mY mind.

Dylan sets "Johanna"'s scene with this richly connotative sketch, a vignette in line with such earlier triumphs of concretion as "Love Minus Zero," (Opus 5):

The--bridge-at midnight trEmbles; The cOuntry-dOctor rAmbles. BAnkers nieces--seek perfEction, ExpEcting All the gifts that wise-men bring. The wind hOwis--like a hAmmer, And the night blOws rAiny. My lOve, she's like some rAven, At my window with a brO--ken wing.

Parodic, iconoclastic, "Johanna" moves to

Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial. Voices whisper "this is what--salvation must be like after a while"

The "visions" are an obvious pretext for threading together autonomous images and scenes, the sort of pretext Dylan has abused in earlier long songs like "Desolation Row," (Opus 6). But here there is sustained a consistent, liking, mood of dim light, vast space, and timelessness, a mood common to the above examples, and to the following long line and image

We can hear the night-weishman click his ashlight, ask himself is it him or them that's insane

Dylan makes this monster function among five-stress lines, inflated by its 17 syllables to of hysteria.

Little can be said about the most powerful of these songs. "Sad Eyed Lady of the lands" has no lyric language quite as beautiful as its title; it could only be misrepresented by summary or excerpting. Let it be note that the "lowlands" seem to be the opposite of "pot's "highlands," and that the song seems already to have acquired some reputation psychedelic roadmap. No doubt they that will know will know. Here below, we can only await the next installment of Time Magazine's running gloss on pop music drug allusions.

In summary, it should be admitted that this is a pretty smooth album, low on outright cacaphony of the sort you get in "Tombaton" (Opus 6), or in "It's Allright, Ma" (Opus 5). To some extent this is just the problem of Blonde on Blonde is easy not to listen to, even played loud. Few lyrics are as said imposing as these reckless un-set texts:

Disillusioned words like bullets bark As human gods aim for the mark, Make everything from toy-guns that To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the it's easy to see without looking too far That not much is really sAorEd ("It's Allright) John the Baptist, after torturing a thief, Looks up at his hero, the commander-in-chief, Saying "Tell me, great hero, but please make it brief, Is there a hole for me to get sick in? ("Tombstone

Nowhere now do we find ambition, or excitement all running as high as 4's "Chimes of Freedom":

In the wild cathedral evening, the rain unravelled tales To the disrobed faceless forms of no position... Majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sound As we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

These older, reckles lyrics excited me because their contagion was evident; ears attuned to them gained appetites for "poeticism" and a lot of earnest, though not always men leapt up to supply them. Paul Simon (Garfunkel's partner) gives us lines freshly fallen silent shroud of snow," important, he gives us his own self-image: "A poet with a one-man band." "I have my bo--oks/And my po--e--try to protect me, he says. Mick Jagger write a 7-stress line Off My Cloud" and resuscitates the blues poetry of Sam Cooke, Otis Red Dog Herskovitz. The Lovin' Spoonful "jump-cut" provocatively among narratives, and interrogatives; such lively imagination no-one demanded or would have appreciated a few years ago. One can see Dylan's influence sifted down to the bottom of the heap when a dullard like P.F. Sloane ("Eve of Destruction") manages a rime as interest

The lOve I once fElt, I don't fEel and for-you; This time I'll Even--Open the door--for-you

Dylan obviously interests me as a potentil cultural Messiah; he just as obviously care how he interests me, or you. I trick public eyes and ears into attention were his goal. It does not seem to be do not seem to be public; his artistic in seems to grow even deeper. After a disappointment, one came come to his abstention from our purposes and categories; Dylan can stand as a figure for freed.

I don't want to track or trace you Or define you or confine you

he said in one of the manifestoes on expecting some reciprocity. "I'll die first before I decay," he told a national magazine this month. Since the turn against ideology announced in Opus 4's "My Back has been true--if nothing else--to the caution sounded on that album in "Ramons

Everything passes, everything changes. Just do what you think you should