| blob | 10b08650ddaa9a0fce1964e30bc57e79852e97be |
6 <head>
8 <!-- Minus AutoDato -->
10 blues</title>
16 <!--
17 h3 {
18 font-variant: small-caps;
19 text-align: center;
20 letter-spacing: 2px;
21 }
22 -->
23 </style>
24 </head>
26 <body>
28 <h1><img alt="logo_liten.gif (3613 bytes)" src="../graphics/logo_liten.gif" width="200" height="75" /></h1>
29 <hr />
32 or<br />
33 Time Out Of Mind and the Blues</h1>
36 <p class="first"><span class="dropcap">T</span><em>ime Out Of Mind</em> is a blues album. Dylan finally sounds like the old blues man
37 he wanted to be when he was 20. In the beginning of his career - before the folk music got
38 in the way - he was considered a blues singer first and a folk musician second. His voice
39 treatment and his phrasing, as well as the songs he performed and the models for the songs
40 he eventually began writing himself - they've all got their roots deep down in the Delta.
41 Robert Shelton wrote in his review of Dylan's first major gig - the review that may have
42 helped Dylan get his first record contract: </p>
43 <p class="quote">Mr. Dylan's voice is anything but pretty. He is consciously trying to recapture the
44 rude beauty of a Southern field hand musing in melody on his porch. All the "husk and
45 bark" are left on his notes and a searing intensity pervades his songs [...]
46 Elasticized phrases are drawn out until you think they may snap. He rocks his head and
47 body, closes his eyes in reverie and seems to be groping for a word or a mood, then
48 resolves the tension benevolently by finding the word and the mood (from the liner notes
50 <p class="first">The blues: twelve or eight fixedly patterned bars of three-chord music - seemingly a
51 low standard for exellence. But that depends on the perspective. One thing is that the
53 numerous variations within the pattern. These are still small, though, and it doesn't
54 raise the bar considerably. The real excellency of a good blues musician lies elsewhere:
55 in the phrasing, in the tiniest rhythmical changes (which is what creates the
57 instrumentally - always seems to give a nod to the rules of vocal delivery - and being
58 plentifully rewarded for it. Sometimes it could be seen as a way of speaking more than a
59 way of singing, with all the almost unnoticeable nuances of speaking available, to help
60 achieving the goal of speech - to express oneself and to be undestood. This is available
61 to a large extent because of the blues' freedom from the confines of notation. But at the
62 same time, what gives the blues it's peculiar power is the combination of the
63 expressiveness of speech with that of music (See <a href="http://www.finearts.yorku.ca/mdaley/stone.html">Mike Daley's article</a> on <em>Like
66 systems for how this organization is to be brought about: rhythmical hierarchies, harmonic
68 <p>One of the most fundamental features of this organized object called music, is the
69 regulation of tension. It can be defined as that expectation of a release, a return to a
70 level of rest, which is created by a deviation from this level. This is a very open
71 definition, which must be supplied with extra information specific to each particular
72 style, such as: what counts as a deviation, what counts as a return, which means are
73 considered adequate to effect this return, and which musical parameters are involved? </p>
74 <p>So what is the neutral level for a blues melody? There is the key note, of course.
75 That's where most melodies start and end, and what comes between is what is supposed to
76 compell us to keep listening. If no deviation from this note occurs, we lose interest, of
77 course. Then there is the 12-bar pattern itself, using some kind of variation of the three
79 </em>(a fifth higher). But there are other such neutral levels. The blues is an oral
80 musical tradition, and like most of these, it consists of a highly devloped set of
81 standardized formulae - short snippets that are appropriate in specific connections. They
82 can range from the shortest lick to a complete melody. This is a feature that is has in
83 common with both indian raga and gregorian chant. Now, what separates an expert performer
84 from the strummers and hummers, is the ability to use these licks in an interesting way:
85 to balance between the traditional material which defines the style, and the new, the
86 inventive. As a harmonica tutorial puts it, after giving numerous examples of blues licks:
87 "To play a blues solo, all you have to do is to put some of these licks together. To
88 play a good blues solo - now that's a different matter." To rephrase this using our
89 terminology: the licks of blues may in themselves represent a neutral melodical level,
90 where a new twist to a well-known formula, may suddenly give it that compelling character
91 that keeps us seated (or perhaps: brings us to our feet, dancing).</p>
92 <p>Similar elaborations can be made concerning rhythm and hamony: what is musically
93 interesting is (among other things) the interaction between the basic pulse and the tiny
94 expressive deviations I've been talking about above, or between the 12-bar scheme and
95 whatever changes is made to it.</p>
97 <p class="first">So how does this relate to Dylan's music in general and Time out of Mind in particular?
98 Let's begin with the quotation from Shelton's review: "Elasticized phrases are drawn
99 out until you think they may snap. He ... seems to be groping for a word or a mood, then
100 resolves the tension benevolently by finding the word and the mood." Anyone who has
101 heard Rocks and Gravel from the Second Gaslight tape (The Gaslight Café, NYC, Oct 1962)
102 immediately understands what Shelton is talking about. Here Dylan halts every phrase on
103 some word, stretches it out and leaves it hanging in thin air for longer and longer time
104 as the verses unfold. "Takes Rocks and gravel-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l, baby, make a
105 solid road". This takes place over an unchanging D major chord in a monononous
106 fingerpicking pattern. </p>
107 <p>A long held note over an accompaniment where nothing happens - how can that create
108 tension? For two reasons. One is that to hold a tone like that is actually not normal
109 procedure - it is in itself a deviation from the neutral level of melody. The other reason
110 is that you never know how long he's going to hold the tone - there is nothing in the
112 unsuccessful first single Mixed up Confusion, also from 1962. The similarities are
113 striking, but so are the differences. Even here there are long held notes once in a while,
114 in much the same fashion as Rocks and Gravel. But this time there is a band involved, and
115 that makes all the difference. For a band to function, the band members must know when to
116 enter, when to change chords, when the verses end. So the long notes are of pre-defined
117 length, and the same length every time. It takes exactly one verse for the listener to
118 discovered the trick, and that robs it of any tension-creating force it may have had.
119 Predictability and interest never were close friends.</p>
121 <p class="first">He apparently liked this trick, especially early in his career. In the Evening from the
122 Minnesota Hotel Tape from December 1961 synthesises what I've had to say about this. In
123 the Evening is a standard 12-bar blues tune (with a text that is so paradigmatically
124 bluesy that once when I was howling my own on-the-spot improvised blues clichés to this
125 tune while washing the dishes, I suddenly found myself singing exactly the same words as
126 Dylan...). Half ways through there is a harmonica solo which consists of one long draw
128 <p>The first time I heard this song, it struck me as a subtly brutal way of creating
129 tension. With a single sweep, all the conventions of blues licks are swept aside, leaving
130 us with an unfinished beginning. For it is normal to hold a note for some time - only not
131 this long. And it is normal to begin a lick with a long note on the dominant, which is the
132 note Dylan stretches here - but then only as a beginning of a lick that is supposed to end
134 fact, on can say that melodically speaking this kind of descent back to the key note
135 represents the neutral level of rest in this situation, and remaining on the dominant is a
136 way of creating momentum through standstill. </p>
137 <p>Equally interesting is the end of the song. Another harmonica solo, another long held
138 note. In fact the second solo is almost identical to the first one - identical on all but
139 one point: the effect on the listener. Where the listener - this listener anyway - was captivated by the single note
140 the first time - how long is he going to hold it? when does
141 the expected ending phrase come? how much air does he have left? (was it true what he
142 said, that he can hold his breath three times as long as Caruso?) - with all attention
143 fixed on that single note, the second time it falls flat to the ground. It's like reading
144 a crime novel for the second time. We know who killed Mr Black. We know it wasn't Mrs
145 White, as the author would have us believe in chapter three. The similarity with the crime
146 novel is striking, because in both cases the effect depends on a rather crude - in the
147 case of the crime novel, literally brutal - technique, and the cruder the technique, the
148 faster its aesthetic effect wanes, since everything depends on one single card. Once that
149 card has been played, whatever power it had has been spent.</p>
150 <p>In musical terms, we can say that what the first time was surprising because of its
151 defiance of stylistic rules, the second time has itself become part of the "work
153 listeners attention, and slides into the background, while other things become more
154 important, such as the guitar playing.</p>
157 even outside the very free declamation of Rocks and Gravel, but that there is a thin line
158 between success and failure. If the effect is to be maintained throughout a longer song,
159 the technique must be reshaped in different form - eiter more powerful or more subtle. </p>
161 <p class="first">In 1976 <em>I Pity The Poor Immigrant </em>was sung in a similar manner. It was sung in
162 duet with Joan Baez, and as so often was the case, this is just as much a duel. It all
163 starts in the instrumental introductory verse: Guam, the band, plays through the whole
164 song apart from the last line, but instead of tying up the whole thing with the expected
165 reprise of the first line, everybody stops playing, except Bob himself, who does some odd
166 strumming, as if to tune the guitar (that was my first impression when I first heard it:
167 they have stopped, something went wrong, they have to tune the guitars) (maybe they should
168 have...!). Then, suddenly, Guam breaks loose again for the final line, and the song starts
169 again. This time with the vocals, one of the legendary Bob and Joni duets. </p>
170 <p>The performance, preserved for eternity on the <em>Hard Rain </em>TV special, is very energetic, until they reach the same place in the song. Once again
171 the instruments stop. But Bob and Joni go on. </p>
177 <p>They hold their tones for three hours, twenty-three minutes and fourteen seconds. Maybe
178 a little less, maybe only for the fourteen seconds, but the point is: they cross a line,
179 the line between what is a normally long held note, and what becomes abnormal. </p>
181 second or third hearing you realize that the tones aren't that long - he's not out there
182 to prove that he has bigger lungs than her. Besides, they did this on every show (and on
183 other songs - the most wonderful moment of this kind is the final note of "Railroad
185 in love with Joan, it would have had to be there), and although they obviously have their
186 little onstage skirmishes going on during the tour, it is not fought on this trivial level
187 - in short: it's not a trick. </p>
188 <p>The renaissance music scholar Rob Wegman has commented on a passage in one of the
190 (quite a lot in this case) to the Immigrant case. One of the fundamental principles of
191 renaissance music, is variety. Therefore it is quite remarkable when Obrecht, after a
192 passage of a few measures, repeats the passage one step lower, then repeats this procedure
193 again. And again. The third or fourth time the whole situation is beginning to feel
194 uncomfortable. But when Obrecht just continues, the situation is transformed. Just like
195 Dylan, he crosses the line between the normal and the abnormal. This
196 is a dangerous line to cross; there is a thin ice between what is abnormal and what is
197 ridiculous or mad. So what is this? Is it ridiculous, mad or something else? </p>
198 <p>Let's examine more closely what is at issue here. What is he trying to prove? Or more fundamentally: what does this <em>mean</em>? It is easier (and more trivial) to do this when one has recourse to a text, but the idea here is a musical idea of some sort. Musical ideas are generally more difficult to grasp than other ideas, because they are not connected with a conceptual system, they don't automatically <em>mean </em>anything. Any talk of meaning in music must either refer indirectly to and get its supply of meaning from an external conceptual system, such as a program or a text, or create its own meanings, which are then relevant only within the system: a purely <em>musical </em>meaning does not mean anything in the outside world. But it is also my contention that in order for an extra-musical meaning to be assigned to music (to say "this music is sad, this describes a sunrise over a desert" etc), this will have to be related to the musical meaning, through analogies or conventions of interpretation. </p>
199 <p>By dragging an effect out of the ordinary, as in the case of the poor immigrant, the focus is shifted from the expected <em>goal </em>of the effect, to the <em>effect itself</em>, including the ability of the effect to reach the goal. The effect becomes a meta-effect, pointing to itself and its own effect-ivity. The danger lies in the possibility that the effect is not strong enough to bear the closer scrutiny that this metastasis involves. </p>
200 <p>The effects that are highlighted in this performance could be described from the point of view of both these spheres. On the musical level, Dylan creates <em>a temporary point of repose in a cycle of hierarchical tonal relationships</em>, but on a tone which is usually characterized by momentum rather than by standstill: he highlights an otherwise melodically unessential tone beyond the normal by stretching it out in time, and by doing so, he emphasises its <em>directionality </em>by singeling out the <em>potentionality </em>which on the face of it nulls out that very directionality. By standing still on the dominant, he holds time, musically speaking. </p>
201 <p>What is going on on the extramusical level, is necessarily less clear to define. A striking element of the performance, as we can witness it on the TV special, is how tired Dylan looks during the first few songs of the show. The circumstances certainly sound defatigating: an obligation to produce a TV concert, unceasing rain, a soon-to-be-divorced wife on the set, and, for all I know, a drink or two the night before. I'm not trying to say that the musical effect of holding a certain tone in a certain song a little longer than usual is what brought energy back to the band and the bard, but still, the change from the beginning to the end of the recorded part of the show is so pronounced, that I would hardly have raised a brow had someone told me that this was a carefully planned, staged enactment of questions of fatigue and energy, all set to music and culminating in this particular line. </p>
202 <p>Another possible approach is through the comparison with "Lo and Behold!", which, in Greil Marcus' exellent interpretation stops and starts as if someone put another coin in the machine, with little or no regard for musical logic. Likewise with the Immigrant: it continues after the dissolution as if nothing has happened. No matter how exhausted the singer is, or how complete the break-down of musical material is, the end of the verse is splendidly unaffected. </p>
204 <p class="first">If <em>I Pity the Poor Immigrant </em>is stopping time by brute force, but thereby
207 holding back time, only to brutally realize its power.</p>
209 E /d# C#m E/b
210 I'm walkin' through the summer nights
211 E /d# C#m E/b
212 the jukebox playing low
213 E /d# C#m E/b
214 yesterday everything was goin' too fast
215 E /d# C#m E/b
216 Today it's movin' too slow
217 A D/a A D/a
218 I got no place left to turn
219 A D/a A A B
220 I got nothin' left to burn
221 E /d# C#m E/b
222 Don't know if I saw you if I would kiss you or kill you
223 E /d# C#m E/b
224 It probably wouldn't matter to you anyhow
225 A E B F#
226 You left me standing in the doorway cryin'
227 A E
228 I got nothin' to go back to now.</pre>
230 <p class="first">It's all in the chords. During the first part of the verse, nothing happens. Nothing at
231 all. What we have is basically an E major chord, sustained all through the first four
233 the bass, but it doesn't really change anything. This is a waiting progression, a
234 technique for the prolongation of a chord, which usually takes place on a dominant chord,
237 after the chorus. In both these cases, it works as a suspension: the fourth time around
238 the bass continues its descent, and reaches the tonic, the key note, and we're home again.
240 we reach the Subdominant. This is quite in accordance with the general blues scheme: even
241 here the subdominant is the first new chord that appears. Here the subdominant (A)
242 alternates with its own subdominant (D), in such a way that it can be regarded as a
243 sustained A with an embellishment. This too is replicated exactly in the blues - it is
244 what lies behind the commonest blues patterns of all:</p>
246 E (tonic) A (subdominant)
247 . . . . . . . .
248 |-------------------------| |-------------------------|
249 |-------------------------| |-------------------------|
250 |-------------------------| |-------------------------|
255 <p class="first">Or to put it in musicologist's cipher: T-T6/4-T and S-S6/4-S. After this it is
256 back to the tonic (E) again for the final four lines. So far, and with the reductions we
258 </p>
259 <p>But then it happens: the second time the waiting/sustaining bass line reaches the
260 subdominant, it doesn't stay there, as it did the first time. What happens instead is a
261 straight and persistent line, up through chords a fifth apart in the dominant direction: A - E - B -
262 F#. Incidentally, this sequence occurs at the point which corresponds to the shift to the
263 dominant in the 12-bar blues. The rapid chord sequence can be likened with going up the
264 stairs: each new step costs some energy, but also increases the potential energy in the
265 form of a higher position. The energy it costs must be taken from somewhere, and in this
266 case it is as if a lot of tension that has been held back during the first two parts of
267 the verse, is suddenly released, and bursts out in one single, sudden and climactic
268 effort. Then it is as if this was too much to take: in the last line we are back to the
269 subdominant A again, which, after the rocketing of the previous line, seems like an
270 anticlimax. We are back more or less where we started: to the motionless state of ...
271 What?</p>
272 <p>What kind of immobility does this song deal with? Is it a still summer evening at a
273 lake, lying on the bank, with only the slightest ripple on the surface? Or is it a sultry
274 day, flies buzzing around your ears as you lay in the grass, sipping at a cold beer, which
275 is all you have the energy to do? </p>
278 here". Here's the heavy summer night and the quiet jukebox, streets where things move
284 killing - and leaving. The emotional climax of the text, the title line, which contains
286 climax, followed by the deceptive return in the last line, of the music as well as the
287 text.</p>
289 guitar, which doesn't sound very happy at all; the possibility of an ominous threat come
290 true - only that it won't happen, not here and now, anyway; then the church bells ringing,
292 </p>
294 the last part of the verses. As the verses unfold, it becomes clearer and clearer that the
295 forced inability to act is caused by this ghost: its presence (it "will not go
296 away") is completely overpowering any initiative on
298 reminded me you were the one") - to the point that any attempt to fight its
301 <p>And the last line of each verse: always back to the mire of the first parts, made even
302 more desperate by the recurring intermezzo. </p>
304 world in italics.</p>
308 yesterday everything was goin' too fast<br />
312 <strong>Don't know <em>if I saw you</em></strong> <em>if I would kiss you or kill you</em><br />
313 It probably wouldn't matter to you anyhow<br />
319 The stars have turned cherry red<br />
323 Don't look like it will anytime soon<br />
329 I know the mercy of God must be near<br />
330 I been ridin a midnight train <br />
333 It would go up against every rule<br />
339 I wonder who they're ringin' for</strong><br />
341 But my heart just won't give in<br />
344 You left me standin' in the doorway cryin'</em><br />
347 And live my life on the square<br />
348 And even if the flesh falls off of my face<br />
349 I know someone will be there to care<br />
350 It always means so much<br />
351 Even the softest touch<br />
352 I see nothing to be gained by any explanation<br />
353 There's no words that need to be said<br />
356 <p class="first">The last verse is special. It seems conciliatory at first. The first part does not have
357 the desperate apathy of the other verses - rather a reconciled contentment, a satisfaction
358 with the small details of life (if you can call the softest touch a small detail). More
359 than in the other verses, the words seem to be directed at someone - maybe
360 "you", maybe just "someone". The effect is quite similar to that of <em>Desolation
362 we're heading with all this: what the music is all about): after a long tirade reflecting
368 the verse, this time the inactivity takes over the place in the verse where
370 and so is the singing.</p>
371 <p>Which brings us back to the music and the question that was left hanging: what kind of
372 immobility. What is described - musically - in this song, is a way of stopping time,
373 holding back time. Or maybe rather: disregarding time, saying that it doesn't matter. And
374 at the same time it is a realization that it can't be done - time is too strong to be
375 overlooked.</p>
376 <p>There are three elements in this musical story. First the long standstill itself. Just
378 itself creates tension. The longer the standstill, the more imperative it is that
380 the standing itself.</p>
381 <p>The standstill is accomplished through a figure that is normally associated with
382 suspense and preparation for a return - but a return to the point where we already are. I
383 don't know if this kind of restlessness - because that's what it really is - has a name:
384 the feeling that you ought to go somewhere, get something done, but you can't think of
385 anything else to do or to be than what you're already doing, being. This is the kind of
386 inactivity: the apathy that stems from a dissatisfaction with anything you're doing, no
388 standing in the way of trivialities such as happiness, trout fishing or the coldness of
389 the beer on a warm summer evening.</p>
390 <p>And the third musical element is the consequence of this intense immobility. The
391 dominant of the 12-bar blues is stretched, beyond the breaking point. And when something
392 is stretched that far, it breaks. It's a crash on the levee, so to speak. In accumulated
393 desperation you run up the stairs, too fast to notice that there are only four steps, and
394 you fall flat, despite the effort.</p>
395 <p>The brilliance of all this, is the way he uses a blues-pattern as a template for the
396 writing of an elaborate song, where the various parts of the pattern contribute to the
397 expressive force of the song, but where this force is not limited to the pattern, but
398 draws on sources lying way beyond the simple pattern. This is to say: it is not the blues
399 that tells the story, it's the way the (purely musical) elements of the blues are combined
400 with other elements (a descending figure, a chord progression) and - through a web of
401 expectations, connotations and analogies - to the text. </p>
403 <p class="first">He's used the same elements before, without telling the same story: the bridge in <a href="../31_ohmercy/ring_them_bells.htm"><em>Ring them bells</em></a> is one of the most
404 prominent examples. First: the same kind of standstill-like pendular alternation between C
405 and Am that has earlier been used as an interlude between the verses:</p>
407 C G/b Am
408 Ring them bells
409 G/b C
410 for the blind and the deaf,
411 G/b Am
412 Ring them bells
413 G/b C
414 for all of us who are left, </pre>
416 breaks loose in the kind of seemingly never-ending progression that brings a smile to your
417 face, a tear to your eye and a strong conviction that man can fly (luckily, I was living
418 on the ground floor at the time when I first heard it, so I'm still alive). I've asked
419 myself why this bridge differs so much from the bridge in <a href="../31_ohmercy/shooting_star.htm"><em>Shooting Star</em></a> from the same album.
420 Harmonically they are almost identical. </p>
424 C G/b Am
425 Ring them bells
426 Am/g#
427 for the chosen few
428 Am/g
429 Who will judge the many
430 D7/f#
431 when the game is through.
432 F
433 Ring them bells,
434 C/e
435 for the time that flies,
436 Dm7
437 For the child that cries
438 F/g
439 When innocence dies.</pre>
440 </div>
442 Am
443 Listen to the engine
444 Am/g#
445 listen to the bell
446 Am/g
447 As the last firetruck
448 Am/f#
449 from hell
450 F
451 goes rolling by,
452 G C
453 all good people are praying
454 Am
455 It's the last temptation
456 /g#
457 the last account
458 /g
459 The last time you might hear
460 /f#
461 the sermon on the mount
462 F F/g
463 The last radio is playing.
464 </pre>
465 </div>
467 <p class="first" style="clear:left; width: inherit;">Again the main difference, it seems, is one of pacing and phrasing. In Shooting star, the whole chromatic bass descent is part of the same phrase, just filling out the interval between Am and F, in a fairly straightforward chord progression Am-F-G-C, which is then repeated. This "one-dimensionality" applies to the melody as well: it is all one phrase, beginning and staying on the same, high note and ending with a cadential turn. </p>
468 <p>Ring Them Bells works differently, in both these areas. The downward chromatic progression is slowed down. Every step gets its
470 is given enough time to work. It is almost like a paragraph with short
471 sentences. All the sentences separated by a full stop. </p>
472 <p>This is another way of saying that the sense of direction (or directionality)
473 is different. The passage in Shooting goes back to the three chords which
474 dominate blues, folk, and the rest of western (as in Western civilization, not
476 of which it is closely related, harmonically, but as a chord in its own
477 right it can be disregarded. It works like this: </p>
478 <p style="margin: 1em 0; text-align:center;"><img src="../graphics/Am_F_G_C.gif" width="161" height="135" class="quote" /></p>
480 pattern, going through three fixed levels.</p>
482 <p style="margin: 1em 0; text-align:center;"><img src="../graphics/Am_C.gif" width="346" height="148" class="quote" /></p>
485 and gives it a character of its own, as the chord that sets a progression in
486 motion that spans the whole bridge, a continuous progression through the whole
487 scale. </p>
488 <p>This changes our perception of the first half of the bridge, of course, but
489 the strongest effects are on the second half, after the F chord – the
490 half where Dylan's voice and delivery really takes off and leaves the ground,
491 flying. It has to do with the F chord and where in the scheme of the bridge it
492 enters, but even more with the G chord, which isn't even there until it is
493 hinted at at the very end of the bridge.</p>
494 <p>The F chord first: It enters after four measures which in other cases, such
495 as Shooting Star, would have led back to C again. I.e., it takes the place of
496 the stable chord, and assumes its role. F becomes a second firm ground and a new
497 starting point – like a landing in a staircase – not just a stage on the way back to C. </p>
498 <p>But G is the real beauty of this passage. In a sense, the second half is dominated by this chord, even though it is
499 not heard. It is the complete
500 absence of this chord that explains the expansive character of the second part of the
501 bridge - the feeling that the music just goes on and on without ever coming
502 to rest, ever needing to. The last phrases hover around the resolution that we know has
503 to come, the final turn to G and C. This hovering begins with D7/f#, whose
504 natural resolution would be to go to G, as the first step in a chain of chords a fifth apart which
506 detour to the F with its freshly gained stability, but it is only a temporary
507 stability. And it is this ambiguity between fixity and progression which lends
508 the bridge its special character, its expansiveness and its transcendency. </p>
509 <p>Another reason for the effect of this bridge is the contrast with the verses, which are also dominated by a descending bass line. It is like a twisted echo: where the verses sweep through a whole octave in one breath, the bridge is a slow chromatic movement, where the melody on each step of the descent becomes a phrase of its own. </p>
510 <p>Seen in isolation, each of these mini-phrases sounds quite like all the
511 others, but taken together, they almost form a musical narrative: there is a
512 certain expansiveness to the whole bridge, the voice seems to wish to break out
513 of the repetition of the same phrase. (Does it succeed? Sometimes when I hear
514 the song, I think so, other times not.)</p>
515 <p>Even live the same element has been used, this time more as a part of a purely musical
517 acoustical arrangement with Bucky Baxter's slide guitar solo as the climax. In
519 calm all the way through. Then, at the last harmonica solo all hell breaks loose. on that
521 (and it worked: the audience went wild, of course).</p>
523 <p class="first"><em>Time Out Of Mind</em> ends with the seventeen minutes long <em>Highlands</em>. It is the closest Dylan ever comes to a successful attempt at stopping time. It succeed, not by trying to stop it in the tracks or hold it back, but by realizing that time goes on regardless of everything, and by tapping into its flow and disregarding it, instead of fighting it.</p>
524 <p>For this, the blues is a perfect vehicle. Musically, the blues is not a fixed structure with beginning, middle, and end, but an infinite loop, which can begin or end anywhere - or nowhere at all. The little riff that dominates the song is pronounced enough to be recognized as a separate entity, but unobtrusive enough to quickly fade into the background, like a clock ticking. </p>
525 <p>Time is an explicit topic in the song: turning back the clock, going back, stopping time. But more essential (to this interpretation, anyway) is its fragmented character, consisting of episodes without a combining narrative, interspersed with flashes of indefinite past and future. </p>
526 <p>A piece of wood drifting in a river does not move. An apple is completely still only when it falls from the branch. Free fall is weightlessness. "Highlands" is free fall translated to music, freedom from the bonds of time, possible, in the end, only through complete submersion in time.</p>
527 </div>
528 </body>
529 </html>