Welcome to Desolation Row.
Obviously you’ve all listened to this most fantastic of Dylan songs and probably you’ve wondered: “What they hell is he on about?”
Well, it seems to me that it's a lesson many need to learn, so I've taken it upon me to do the explaining.
So, as a public service to you and mankind in general, let me guide you through the lyrics (yes. This is loooooong post, creative and educational. If you don’t like it, don’t read it).
They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row
What a bloody opening! You are impressed, I can sense it. This sets out the gist of the song. “The blind commissioner is in a trance, he’s tied to a circus artist and is masturbating.”
The police are restless, they need to arrest people. Freaks, the lot of them. Lady (a reference to Lady and the tramp) and the singer (obviously the tramp) are not in the picture though. They’re looking on…from desolation row.
Note, however, that the police, the commissioner, beauty parlours and sailors are all everyday people who do every day things!
Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning
"You Belong to Me I Believe"
And someone says," You're in the wrong place, my friend
You better leave"
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row
Romeo is the typical macho. But he’s done something rather stupid for dull and typical people. He’s wondered onto desolation row and swiftly gets sent out. We don’t want people like that near us. Cinderella could have went with him. But she’d prefer to clean up on desolation row than tag along with a nobody.
Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortune telling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row
Well, the good Samaritan is getting out of the way of the storm. He’s a good person. He’s going to desolation row. Cain, Abel and Quasimodo are the only people left outside of Desolation row who are not expecting rain (or making love).
Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah's great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row
To me this is one of the most powerful pieces of verse ever written.
Ophelia is the average girl. Her job is all important and she has no life beyond it. She’s a career girl and she’s going nowhere and getting there fast. That’s her great sin.
Now, if she was content in that role, all would be fine, one could even say she was half-way to joining us on Desolation row. But she’s not content, is she? How could she be? She looks in envy at others who are free of the restraints which confine her and her joyless life. She doesn’t dare go, but she’s forever longing for a one way trip to desolation row.
Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
Now you would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row
This is tragic. Someone once was on Desolation row, but turned mainstream. Lost all artistic merit and now may as well sniff sewers and try to remember meaningless strings of letters.
Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They're trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She's in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy on His Soul"
They all play on penny whistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row
This is about crappy people doing crappy everyday things disguised in expensive words, which always was and always will be the way to sell that which is pointless.
Across the street they've nailed the curtains
They're getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
A perfect image of a priest
They're spoon feeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls
"Get Outta Here If You Don't Know
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row"
Casanova looked into Desolation row and realised that what he’s doing is pointless. That’s very dispiriting. So they’re boosting him up again, rubbing his shoulders like one would do a boxer and telling him he can make it.
Going back to that which one deems pointless is a punishment.
Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row
The CIA and the FBI. They’re rounding up everyone, not who knows too much, but knows more than they actually do. Fear. You can smell it. Everybody is guilty. It can’t be otherwise.
Bring them in to torture them or bend them back into the moulds you want them to fit in. Even the insurance men are making sure you don’t flee to Desolation row. They really don’t want the likes of you being free.
Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody's shouting
"Which Side Are You On?"
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row
Basically: Keep them busy, whether it’s natural disasters or Idols, keep them busy. They don’t want you to be thinking about freedom, about why things are, about desolation row.
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the door knob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row
Stop bombarding me, says the singer, with your useless and pointless trivia. Who cares about door knobs? You keep talking about useless nobodies in pathetic situations; people who feel that they themselves are important; people who buy houses and have gardens and cars and cupboards; people who when they are 70 will look back on their lives and weep, knowing they did nothing, were nothing and are now going to die…nothing.
No, if you want to talk to me again, do it from Desolation row.
--------------------
How cool is that song??
So what is Desolation row?
It’s easy to say what it is not: 9 to 5 jobs (working to make someone else rich), petty people, the enforcers of pettiness (CIA, FBI, the police force, the media, the politicians), lack of creativity, etc.
To me, Desolation row is where I stand right now. Right here. Looking at you and your petty accusations of nice people, authentic people and creative people. Accusing them of cheating. Accusing them without evidence of small things which don’t matter. Ruining their enjoyment.
How dare you? How bloody dare you sit there, all smug behind your computer; sipping your orange juice; high, dry and mighty and point fingers at people you don’t even know?
How tragic must your life be to really want to screw people like that? How petty must your mere existence be to enjoy chasing people away, to criticise attempts at creativity, to defame someone for something you could never know for sure.
You make me sick. Go back to the slimy depths you oozed from, multiply fruitfully, make other people rich, do as you are told and die old and sad.
I’ll stay here on desolation row, without you. Thank you.
Originally posted by shavixmirDyan..the lyrical genius...ahhhh
Welcome to Desolation Row.
Obviously you’ve all listened to this most fantastic of Dylan songs and probably you’ve wondered: “What they hell is he on about?”
Well, it seems to me that it's a lesson many need to learn, so I've taken it upon me to do the explaining.
So, as a public service to you and mankind in general, let me guide you through the ...[text shortened]... you are told and die old and sad.
I’ll stay here on desolation row, without you. Thank you.