Dylan's Visions of Sin
Page 9
The first words of Blind Willie McTell are “Seen the arrow”. Does this arrow point to the man who gave the world the most famous of all arrow anecdotes? William Tell’s arrow hit the apple on the head of the apple of his eye, his son. Since Mc means “son of”, the son of William Tell may be living in another country under another name: William, or Willie, McTell. There are filaments, strings.
The story of William Tell’s skill in shooting at and striking the apple which had been placed on the head of his little son by order of Gessler, the tyrannical Austrian bailiff of Uri, is so closely bound up with the legendary history of the origin of the Swiss Federation that they must be considered together.104
It seems that the Tell story is first found in a ballad written before 1474, within an oral ballad tradition apt enough to the world of Blind Willie McTell. And “legendary history”, like tyranny, ripples out, too. Not just to McTell himself as legend and as history, but to the cruelly unjust world of the song, tyranny, and dismay at power and greed.
Seen the arrow on the doorpost
Saying, this land is condemned
Psalms 11:2: “For, lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string”. The bow is a stringed instrument, like the guitar that looses its arrow.
I glanced at my guitar
And played it pretendin’
That of all the eyes out there
I could see none
As her thoughts pounded hard
Like the pierce of an arrow
But the song it was long
And it had to get done
(Eternal Circle)
Blind Willie McTell had no eyes with which to see that of all the eyes out there he could see none.
But the song it was long
And it had to get done
But nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
Handy Dandy
On Positively 4th Street, envy was what was coming off the person who had it in for the person who was telling us about it. The retaliation was armed with the word “got”, but not the “got” of possessions that we might envy, and certainly not of an enviable self-possession.
You got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
You got a lotta nerve
To say you got a helping hand to lend
Handy Dandy, on the other hand, does have a helping hand to lend, or even to give with, but a sinister hand:
He’ll say, “Ya want a gun? I’ll give you one”. She’ll say, “Boy, you talking crazy”
And the world of the scoundrel Handy Dandy is full of things that invite and excite envy, most of them got hold of with the little envy-catcher “got”:
He got an all girl orchestra and when he says “Strike up the band”, they hit it
Handy dandy, he got a stick in his hand and a pocket full of money
He’ll say, “Oh darling, tell me the truth, how much time I got?”
She’ll say, “You got all the time in the world, honey”.
He got that clear crystal fountain
He got that soft silky skin
He got that fortress on the mountain
Handy dandy, he got a basket of flowers and a bag full of sorrow
– at which, at last, we might be tempted to thank our lucky stars that we haven’t got what he’s got, for who would want a bag full of sorrow? Except that the person who’s got a bag full of sorrow isn’t likely to be someone who has a heart full of it, and he’s probably carrying it around in a bag after collecting it or so that he can give it to other people. We might want to think again about all these things that he has got.
Handy Dandy is a sequence of filmy moments, or photo importunities, about the life-and-death styles of the rich and famous. Or infamous. The first thing that we learn about him? “Controversy surrounds him”. The song summons the celebrities (the lavish people before whom we are slavish) about whom we yearn to learn the worst so that we will not be eaten up with envy about their having on the face of it the best, the best of all impossible worlds.
The sin of envy, along with its sibling sin covetousness, is gleefully activated by the gossipy glossies such as People or Hello!, while at the same time these glamorous journalistic evokers know that they would do well to bring home to all us ordinary readers that these extraordinarily affluent famosities are gratifyingly in trouble, in danger, and even, with any luck, in despair. Do you really want to be them? No, or Nope. But the envy is still there all right, skilfully played upon, and the form of lust that is envy may often enjoy itself most as prurience, all prying and clucking.
Handy dandy, controversy surrounds him
He been around the world and back again
Something in the moonlight still hounds him
Handy dandy, just like sugar and candy
The words, the melody, the voicing, all have a swagger to them, an exultation that is partly that of Handy Dandy himself and partly his infecting us with the wish to go along with it. But concessions to us are proffered straightaway, so that we may enjoy safe sexploitation, flirting with the thought of being him in his world, or being with him there, without actually wanting to be. Controversy, eh. Lucky dog, though: “He been around the world and back again”. There’s luxury for you, sheer needlessness, since unless the guy got back again, he wouldn’t have been around the world. An odd way of putting it (unlike, say, He been to the ends of the earth and back again), but having a strong appropriate whiff of redundancy, of extravagance, of a menacing over-insistence: “around the world and back again”. (The world comes back around in “You got all the time in the world, honey”.) But then “around” itself had arrived in the second line of the song by courtesy of “surrounds” four words earlier, and “around” will come back around again in the sound of “hounds him”. (There had been a hint of danger: surrounds him as though cornered.) “Something in the moonlight still hounds him”. That’s nice to know. We wouldn’t want our celebrities to be unhounded. For one thing, this lends them an air of mystery (Something in the moonlight?). For another, it reconciles us to our position and our place (at least we aren’t hounded).
Mystery and detection (and violence) are in the air of the song, so perhaps it isn’t a vacant coincidence that the celebrity hound from the world of mystery and detection did his hounding by moonlight. Within a page and a half of The Hound of the Baskervilles (chapter 2), we meet, first, the hounds “in the moonlight”, and then the “hound of hell”. We hear about the revellers, “some calling for their pistols . . . and some for another flask of wine”. (Handy Dandy: “Ya want a gun?”; “Pour him another brandy”.) We hear of “their crazed minds”, “so crazed with fear”. (Handy Dandy: “you talking crazy”.) “The moon shone clear above them”, “The moon was shining bright” above the “hound of hell”, “shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound”, “the hound which is said to have plagued the family so sorely ever since”. Plagued the family, and perhaps – since Handy Dandy is something of a gangster (crook? rogue? thug?) – plagued The Family. “Something in the moonlight still hounds him”.
It is his scene. Him he him he he he: so it goes, with other people at his beck-and-call or part of the decor. Handy Dandy is at once so cool and so hot. A shady character. But he has more than a touch of insolent charm, so he may be (in Beckett’s weird phrase) a well-to-do ne’er-do-well. He swaggers well, but he wouldn’t have to be doing this genuinely brave thing if his were not a dangerous world. So, given the incipient violence that is strong in the song, the word “if ” has a way of suggesting “when”: “Handy dandy, if every bone in his body was a-broken he would never admit it”. Phrases that might be innocent in a way, albeit sexually suggestive (“He’ll say, ‘Oh darling, tell me the truth, how much time I got?’”), get darkened as though by dramatic irony: how much time has he got? (Before someone from this sleazy world puts paid to him.) “Okay, boys, I’ll see you tomorrow”. Maybe. They are his last words in the song. Might be his l
ast words.
You’ll say, “What are you afraid of?”
He’ll say, “Nothing neither ’live nor dead”.
There is in all this an affinity with T. S. Eliot: “I was neither / Living nor dead, and I knew nothing”,105 and with his poem about killings, paranoia, danger, and finishing drinks, Sweeney Among the Nightingales.
Heated and poisonous, the atmosphere. The erotic surroundings and glamour are agog at the easy brutality with which girls and music may be made: “He got an all girl orchestra and when he says ‘Strike up the band’, they hit it”. There is an air of purchasable sexual favours (“a stick in his hand and a pocket full of money”), and of diffused lust, “soft silky skin”, that sort of thing. It comes as something of a surprise, though a fair cop, when, after his fountain and his soft silky skin, there immediately comes, not “He got that mistress”, but “He got that fortress”. Sensible man.
There is instilling and distilling of fear in this gangsterish world. Question and answer can mount to interrogation or inquisition. A question is countered not with an answer but with a question.
You’ll say, “What are ya made of?”
He’ll say, “Can you repeat what you said?”
You’ll say, “What are you afraid of?”
He’ll say, “Nothing neither ’live nor dead”
That whole You’ll say / He’ll say routine is as if someone is being instructed in a code of behaviour, or coached not to blow it, some meeting with someone scary. And when you are asked to repeat your question (“Can you repeat what you said?”), perhaps asked threateningly, you will wisely substitute, thanks to the rhyme (made of / afraid of), words that just might make your listener think that he misheard you the first time. “What are ya made of?” might have been asking about the human qualities of which a man is made, compacted. (Chaucer: “A man maked all of sapience and virtue” – not our Handy Dandy, clearly.) But “What are you afraid of?” is a set-up, a silver salver with a brandy on it, an ingratiation pretending to be a challenge, perfectly happy with the answer that it knew it would precipitate: “Nothing neither ’live nor dead”.
But say we stay a moment with that first question: “What are ya made of?” One answer is as plain as the hard nose on Handy Dandy’s face: he is made of money. And sure enough, in no time at all the word can be heard to clink and to clinch. “Handy dandy, he got a stick in his hand and a pocket full of money”. The line takes much weight in the song, partly because this is the moment when the hand of Handy Dandy extends itself – and is immediately underlined by and.
“What are ya made of?” Well, this is a song that includes an all-girl orchestra and a girl named Nancy and “Boy, you talking crazy” and “Okay, boys”, so why not summon the traditional question and answer?
What are little boys made of?
What are little boys made of?
Frogs and snails
And puppy-dogs’ tails,
That’s what little boys are made of.
What are little girls made of?
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice
And all that’s nice,
That’s what little girls are made of.
Handy Dandy chimes all through the song with “sugar and candy”. This may suggest that he is sexually ambiguous, in with the sugar and spice girls. For there is a whole underworld or undergrowth of sexual equivocation here. The man who “got an all girl orchestra” and who “got that soft silky skin” may or may not be made of sugar and spice. A candy-bar punk is “a convict who has become a passive homosexual in prison”.106 “A girl named Nancy” might make us think of what a nancy boy would be (“an effeminate male homosexual”). “‘Anybody plays a guitar’s a goddamned nancy,’ said Lensky” (Sheldon, 1951). “He got a basket”: “Esp. Homosex. the scrotum and penis, esp. as outlined by the trousers”. And as for that “bag of sorrow”: notum the scrotum, an item there in Evan Hunter (1956), who, like Sheldon, shows us Handy Dandy types: “I was hooked clean through the bag and back again” – which just happens to chime with “around the world and back again”. Whereupon I call to mind that “around the world” is “to kiss or lick the entire body of one’s lover”.
Okay, boys, I’ll pull myself together. But Handy Dandy is an itchy scratchy raunchy song that does have affinities with an earlier world of Dylan’s, that of The Basement Tapes, of Million Dollar Bash and Please Mrs. Henry and Tiny Montgomery. The linguistic underworld may further remind us that the world of Handy Dandy might have a soft spot for hard drugs. Candy all around my brain. Sugar and candy are drug words, and so is crystal (“Narc. methamphetamine in powdered form”), and a stick, and a bag: “Narc. a small packet, typically an envelope or folded paper, containing heroin, marijuana, or the like”. He got “a bag full of sorrow”. Sorrow, not the ecstasy that you were hoping for.
But then candy is wonderfully capacious, happy not to exclude anything whatsoever that is “excellent, easy”: “Fine and dandy. You’re all the candy”.107 A candy kid is “a fellow who is lucky, successful, or held in high favor, esp. with women”, and a candy-leg “a wealthy fellow who is attractive to women”.
The point of all this rooting around in suspect words is not that Handy Dandy tells a clear story about the drug world or the gangster world or the polymorphous perverse world. An unclear story is the point, with sharp vignettes glimpsed within the murk. There is a multitude of sins swilling around in the song: envy and covetousness, plus greed – “sugar and candy”, “Pour him another brandy”108 – and a touch of sloth: “Handy dandy, sitting with a girl named Nancy in a garden feelin’ kind of lazy”. That undulating line is long and languorous, with all the time in the world, honey, and with the participles “sitting” and “feelin’” stretching their legs, and with the rhymes stretching themselves too: Handy dandy . . . Nancy . . . lazy . . . crazy. Many sins, and some guilt perhaps, and all this then set against a disconcerting reminder of innocence. For nursery rhymes – “What are little boys made of?” – recall innocence, even if it is innocence lost. And Under the Red Sky, the album that houses Handy Dandy, is a combination of ancient nursery rhymes and of modern malaise: cursery rhymes (not cursory ones). Such is the title song itself, Under the Red Sky, and such is 10,000 Men, and 2 x 2. Ding Dong Bell: Cat’s in the Well.109
Handy Dandy is a game, one that Handy Dandy is happy to play rough.
A person conceals an object in one of his two closed hands, and invites his companion to tell which hand contains the object in the following words: Handy-Bandy, sugar-candy, Which hand wun yo have?110
Often the game has a further act of hiding in it, hiding the hands behind one’s back before offering them. One oddity is that the figurative application of “handy dandy” gets an earlier citation in The Oxford English Dictionary than does the game itself (1579 as against 1585). Sugar-candy has long been the due rhyme (“Handy pandy, Sugary candy, / Which will you have?”), but other jinglings like “prickly prandy” have found themselves called on.111 “Handy-spandy, Jack-a-dandy, / Which good hand will you have?” The conjunction of this question – “Which hand?” – with that other nursery-rhyme question, “What are little boys made of?”, underlies the run of four questions in the song’s bridge, beginning “What are ya made of?” And it is apt to the atmosphere of the song that “handy dandy” came to have the meaning “Something held or offered in the closed hand; a covert bribe or present.” He got “a pocket full of money”. In his poem The Quip, George Herbert heard this cunning clinking of a bribe:
Then Money came, and chinking still,
What tune is this, poor man? said he:
I heard in Music you had skill.
But thou shalt answer, Lord, for me.
Money and music and the music of money: Handy Dandy has an ear for all this.
One variant of the game’s jingle goes:
Handy dandy, riddledy ro,
Which hand will you have, high or low?
“Riddledy ro” mi
ght remind us that Handy Dandy is himself something of a riddle.
Michael Gray saw what Dylan had got in his hand and up his sleeve.112
He got that clear crystal fountain
He got that soft silky skin
He got that fortress on the mountain
With no doors or windows, so no thieves can break in
Riddledy ro:
In marble halls as white as milk,
Lined with a skin as soft as silk,
Within a fountain crystal-clear,
A golden apple doth appear.
No doors there are to this stronghold,
Yet thieves break in and steal the gold.
The answer to the good riddle is an egg.113 Handy Dandy is a bad egg. And Handy Dandy might be an alias for Humpty Dumpty. I wouldn’t envy him, or them, if I were you. Easy to fall into, though . . .
There is comedy in what Dylan makes of the world of the nursery rhyme. But there is danger, too, and tragedy. For the celebrated instance of “handy dandy” is the one from King Lear. Justice, the cardinal virtue, is everywhere vitiated by corrupt justices. The mad King interrogates the blinded Earl.
LEAR: No eyes in your head, nor no money in your purse? Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse in a light, yet you see how this world goes.
GLOUCESTER: I see it feelingly.
LEAR: What, art mad? A man may see how this world goes, with no eyes. Look with thine ears. See how yond Justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark in thine ear: change places, and handy-dandy, which is the Justice, which is the thief.
(IV, vi)
If I were a writer of songs, I would prick up my ears at “Look with thine ears”. The merciless indifference of “handy dandy” is set within an exchange that speaks of the world (“how this world goes”, in tune with “all the time in the world” and “around the world”), and of madness (“What, art mad?” – “you talking crazy”), and of money (“There’s money for thee”, “no money in your purse”), and even of “O let me kiss that hand”. All of these might be felt to figure within Handy Dandy, as do both the sin of envy and the sin of lust, which Lear excoriates in this scene. And as does the vision that Lear has of sin and of its wealthy imperviousness to the virtue that is justice: