“Time passes slowly and fades away” – this, too, is an estranging thing to say. There is a glimpse of the lethal state of mind that asks only to kill time. But old Father Time never dies, he only fades away, or rather fades from our fading sight.
Clothes Line Saga
The not-caring, the nothingness, the depths beyond apathy even, at the heartland of Time Passes Slowly is as nothing compared to the vacuity of Clothes Line Saga, which raises small talkative mindlessness and affectlessness from down there in the Basement. Family values, of a sort, flat, faithful, not careless, just not caring. The two things that make it possible for us not to scream (“Why aren’t they screaming?”, in the words of Philip Larkin, The Old Fools) are that the song is stringently straight-faced and that it does give an adolescent’s-eye-view. The adolescent, after all (it may be a long time after – the song begins with the words “After a while”), usually turns out to be a worm that turns. (“Well, I just do what I’m told” – Do you now . . .) Time passes slowly, and so does adolescence but it does pass. Teenagers age. Meanwhile here is a vinegary vignette, the vinaigrette dressing that is Clothes Line Saga. It is sung levelly at a steady sturdy rhythm of monumental unconcern.
CLOTHES LINE SAGA
After a while we took in the clothes
Nobody said very much
Just some old wild shirts and a couple pairs of pants
Which nobody really wanted to touch
Mama come in and picked up a book
An’ Papa asked her what it was
Someone else asked, “What do you care?”
Papa said, “Well, just because”
Then they started to take back their clothes
Hang ’em on the line
It was January the thirtieth
And everybody was feelin’ fine
The next day everybody got up
Seein’ if the clothes were dry
The dogs were barking, a neighbor passed
Mama, of course, she said, “Hi!”
“Have you heard the news?” he said, with a grin
“The Vice-President’s gone mad!”
“Where?” “Downtown.” “When?” “Last night”
“Hmm, say, that’s too bad!”
“Well, there’s nothin’ we can do about it,” said the neighbor
“Just somethin’ we’re gonna have to forget”
“Yes, I guess so,” said Ma
Then she asked me if the clothes was still wet
I reached up, touched my shirt
And the neighbor said, “Are those clothes yours?”
I said, “Some of ’em, not all of ’em”
He said, “Ya always help out around here with the chores?”
I said, “Sometime, not all the time”
Then my neighbor, he blew his nose
Just as papa yelled outside
“Mama wants you t’ come back in the house and bring them clothes”
Well, I just do what I’m told
So, I did it, of course
I went back in the house and Mama met me
And then I shut all the doors
The song makes its point about pointlessness, and the title as given in Lyrics 1962–1985, Clothes Line, was the better for not letting sarcasm have the last word, as against Clothes Line Saga.
It feels like a parody of a way of lifelessness. And so it is, while taking a shot at a previous shot at this: Bobbie Gentry’s Ode to Billie Joe, which had been a hit with its doggèd tedium, its Papa said, and Mama said, and Brother said. Hard to get flatter-footed than the Ode.148 Hard, but not impossible. For along came Dylan and levelled it some more, the flatly faithful flat-liner. Full of mindless questions, the song is an answer of a sort, and something of a parody.
As so often in Dylan, there may be a touch of the nursery rhyme (and nursery rhymes like to accommodate parodies).
The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes,
When down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose.
The song avails itself of this in its nose / clothes lines, but its social setting doesn’t have any maids to help out around here with the chores. And there will be nothing as penetrating as a peck, although there is a pecking order: “Papa yelled outside ‘Mama wants you t’ come back in the house and bring them clothes.’”
It starts bored, and it stays that way.
After a while we took in the clothes
Nobody said very much
To put it mildly. This is classic boredom, the more so because not really admitted to, with not just the vacancy but the vacuum of smalltown small talk. Why are you telling me all this? “Well, just because”.
Just some old wild shirts and a couple pairs of pants
Which nobody really wanted to touch
Really? And they are bleached of any real wildness, those “old wild shirts”. The Oxford English Dictionary has, under “wild”:
U.S. slang. Remarkable, unusual, exciting. Used as a general term of approbation . . . “amazing range of colours (including some wild marble-like effects)”.
Exciting? Amazing? Forget it. “It was January the thirtieth / And everybody was feelin’ fine”. (“Feelin’ fine” has never been so evacuated in the delivery. Not tonic, catatonic.) January the thirtieth, eh. Why that day? (King Charles I’s deathday? The birthday of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had run for Vice-President but had not “gone mad”?) Who knows? Who cares? Just being retentive as to the annals, that’s all. “Hmm, say, that’s too bad”. Sloth, which shoulders nothing, shrugs its shoulders, shrugs everything off. “Well, there’s nothin’ we can do about it”. Or can do about anything, come to that. Or can do, period.
The conversation from the start has proceeded apace. A sluggish pace.
Mama come in and picked up a book
An’ Papa asked her what it was
Someone else asked, “What do you care?”
Papa said, “Well, just because”
The boredom is always edgy, on the brink of bad temper (you might think of the opening scenes of the film Badlands, with its smalltown voice-over of incipient family violence). Everything is a matter of course: “Mama, of course, she said, ‘Hi!’” – the voice flattening the exclamation mark, since not-caring is never marked by exclamations. “Well, I just do what I’m told / So, I did it, of course”. Everything just takes its course. And nothing courses, least of all through anybody’s veins.
“The next day everybody got up” – No!!?*!?!* You gotta be kidding.
If people ask you pointless questions, you do well to stick to your rights, and to answer with matching pointlessness:
I reached up, touched my shirt
And the neighbor said, “Are those clothes yours?”
I said, “Some of ’em, not all of ’em”
He said, “Ya always help out around here with the chores?”
I said, “Sometime, not all the time”
The empty questions, the cagey answers, let nothing out, give nothing away. (Here’s some nothing for you, says the song all the way through.) Nothing to give, nothing gives. Or rather, not quite nothing, for there is that one surprising yelp or yodel from Dylan, exultation even, of “Yoo ooh” in the last verse just before the end, as though signalling a way out, an end, an escape from a world in which when “my neighbor, he blew his nose”, that just might be the most interesting thing that you’ll ever hear from him. Hold on to that little yelp, for it is just about all that might give you a glimpse of hope. For the end of the song doesn’t sound as though it can imagine much of a way out:
Well, I just do what I’m told
So, I did it, of course
I went back in the house and Mama met me
And then I shut all the doors
Faintly sinister? Or would that be paranoid? Just nothing? Yet I’m reminded of the disconcerting close of another parodic piece that achieves more than it bargained for: A. E. Housman’s Fragment of an English Opera (“designed as a model for
young librettists”).149 Reminded, not just because of words for music, and not just because of the family: Father (bass), Mother (contralto), Daughter (soprano).
DAUGHTER:
I am their daughter;
If not, I oughter:
Prayers have been said.
This is my mother;
I have no other:
Would I were dead!
That is my father;
He thinks so, rather:
Oh dear, oh dear!
I take my candle;
This is the handle:
I disappear.
FATHER & MOTHER: The coast is clear.
I beg your pardon? Is it curtains for the primal scene?
And then I shut all the doors. Which shuts the song. And shuts the rhyme-scheme, too, as no previous verse had done. The first verse: much / touch; was / because; line / fine. The second verse: dry / Hi; mad / bad; forget / wet. But the last verse: yours / chores; nose / clothes; course / doors. Of course.
Among the undertakings of an artist, there may be the wish “To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay” (Every Grain of Sand). Idleness may be all the worse when it doesn’t rise to pain but sinks into numbness. In British English, couldn’t care less, but in American English, oddly, could care less. (A sarcasm? See if I care?) Why? “Well, just because”. Anyway, “What do you care?”
Artists care. And share. This entails their not talking glibly, as institutions like to, about the caring and the sharing. The line about sharing –
We’ve been through too much tough times that they never shared
– may find itself sardonically paired:
Now all of a sudden it’s as if they’ve always cared
(Let’s Keep It Between Us)
Artists will on occasion have to give voice to unsentimentalities: “I used to care but things have changed” (Things Have Changed).
Lay Down Your Weary Tune
Nobody in the world of Clothes Line Saga would know the word “accidie”, but that is what they are suffering from – or perhaps not suffering from, just sick with: a spiritual malaise. Such sloth is a malign growth. Cut it out.
Fortunately, blessedly, there are the other (benign) forms that stretched-out leisureliness may take, with no need for all of us to be at full stretch every waking minute of every day. (Even January the thirtieth.) We owe it to ourselves sometimes to heed the gentle admonition, Rest yourself. And music, given how often it takes a musical rest, is in its element in such a fluent urging.
Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself ’neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum
So it opens, this tender pitying admonition that is sung with sweet solemnity and yet has its own implicit comedy. For there must be something rueful about starting a tune by saying that it is time to stop it. Andrew Marvell began his great poem about war and peace, An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland, with the paradox that this is no time to be writing poems or even reading them:
The forward youth that would appear
Must now forsake his muses dear,
Nor in the shadows sing
His numbers languishing.
’Tis time to leave the books in dust,
And oil the unusèd armour’s rust . . .
Dylan sings that ’tis time to sing his numbers languishing no longer. But his strings weave so many exquisite variations on this that we find ourselves wanting the song to go on for ever saying that it should not go on. For ever? So it has seemed to some.
Joan Baez: “He could never resist singing what he had just written, and he had just written Lay Down Your Weary Tune, it was 45 minutes long.”150
Scaduto: “The one that somebody called ‘War and Peace’?”
Baez: “Right, it was just endless. Of course, I was perfectly happy, except I was concerned. I’ve always had an audience conscience. I’ve always worried about making them tired or whatever, and he wasn’t.”151
Or whatever.
Dylan has a note on Biograph: “I had heard a Scottish ballad on an old 78 record that I was trying to really capture the feeling of, that was haunting me. I couldn’t get it out of my head.” Not only could he not get it out of his head, he could not get it out of our heads once he had started to put it into them.
The song both begins and ends with its refrain or chorus, and is describing an eternal circle – as does another of his songs about singing, Eternal Circle. An eternal circle not infernal but paradisal.
Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself ’neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum
The refrain or chorus is at once utterly simple and unobtrusively intricate in its utterance. The modulation quietly changes what it urges: “Lay down your weary tune” is one thing, and the immediately ensuing “lay down” both is and is not the same thing. Is, in that it may simply urge again that you lay down your tune; is not, in that as a unit on its own it may be – in American English, in Lay, Lady, Lay – an intransitive verb: not lay down your tune, just lay down. The next one, “Lay down the song you strum”, is transitive again all right, but then “And rest yourself ” not only calls back to “lay down” (lay down and rest), but gives us something that ought sometimes to trump both a transitive and an intransitive verb: a reflexive verb, “rest yourself ”, five times in the song. Fifteen times there comes the injunction “lay down”, which mostly means “relinquish” but is alive to the wish still to play, since – in the usual weird way that language has – “lay down” can mean “set up”: The Oxford English Dictionary, 51, “To set up or establish (a certain beat).” The dictionary lays down “beat”, “stomp”, “rhythm”, and this: “The soloist can play anything he chooses to play on the time that I lay down for him” (from Melody Maker, 6 April 1968). The song lays down a tune, unwearyingly.
Dylan’s voice swells and elongates the word “weary” with what feels like stoical resilience. The schoolbook would tell you that in the phrase “your weary tune” the word “weary” is a transferred epithet – you are the weary one, not the tune. (You are thirsty for blood, not your sword.) Poetic licence, but we need to ask what the poet does once he has gained his licence, and what he does here could not be more apt. Weariness is just the right thing to transfer, a musical burden to lift from your own shoulders and transfer to the tune. This, in the confidence that the tune will not grow weary really, and that the listeners will not weary of it.
As often in Dylan’s songs about singing, he is sensitive to the need to acknowledge gratefully such powers as are not his own (whether a person’s, say, Woody Guthrie’s or Blind Willie McTell’s, or a creature’s, say, birdsong), and so to rise above envy or the wrong kind of competitiveness. This is effected here by means of the telling words “no voice can hope to hum”. Not even my voice, gentle listener. For the natural kingdom is a divine orchestra, and Dylan’s strings evoke the other instruments and their indispensability: the breeze like a bugle, the drums of dawn, the ocean like an organ, the waves like cymbals, the rain like a trumpet, the branches like a banjo (an instrument that puts on no airs), the water like a harp. (Like both kinds of harp perhaps, living from hand to mouth, and with such different class associations.) And “like a hymn”, since there are not only kinds of musical instrument, there are other kinds of musical and poetical form. Lay Down Your Weary Tune itself both is and is not a hymn.
It plays its own sounds with unostentatious dexterity. Oh, “strum” into “strength” into “strings” – and then into “Struck by the sounds before the sun”. No hiding of the alliterative litheness, and no brandishing of it, either. No competitiveness, for the preposition “against” is not in opposition when it sets the breeze “Against the drums of dawn” (sets musically, not combatively), or the waves “Against the rocks and sands”. And no vanity: “The cryin�
� rain” – which was not in tears, though raindrops may look like teardrops – “sang / And asked for no applause”. A lesson to us all, the singer included. But not too saintly, for there is a little room for manoeuvre: “And asked for no applause” might mean asked positively that there be none, or might mean did not ask that there be any. Anyway “The water smooth ran like a hymn”: no applause in church, please. Meanwhile, when it comes to an audience, you can’t better the winds:
The branches bare like a banjo moaned
To the winds that listened the best152
Come gather round, winds . . . Not just the best of them all, the best of us all.
Baez: “Right, it was just endless.” Such was indeed the impression that the song meant to give (to give, rather than to make, since it is not in the making-an-impression game). So how does Dylan bring it to an end without stopping it in its track? With some movements of mind. First:
The last of leaves fell from the trees
And clung to a new love’s breast
The branches bare like a banjo moaned
To the winds that listened the best
“The last of . . .” is an intimation of an ending, and Dylan then tips us a wink of his hat by doing what he has not once hitherto done in the song: not following the four-line verse with the four-line refrain. Instead, and trusting that this registers upon us, he moves at once to another four-line verse, and then – with great imaginative coherence in the substitution – he has this verse be fully reminiscent of the refrain, of which it offers a variant along the same rhymes. So that the end runs like this:
The last of leaves fell from the trees
And clung to a new love’s breast
The branches bare like a banjo moaned
To the winds that listened the best
I gazed down in the river’s mirror
And watched its winding strum
The water smooth ran like a hymn
And like a harp did hum
Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself ’neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum
Dylan's Visions of Sin Page 14
