![]() This makes perfect sense to me & seems right. The starting point would be "All along the watchtower" & then after the line "Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl", the next line would be "There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief", the joker & the thief being the two riders who were approaching, of course. The thing that stuck with me from the article was that Williams compared the structure of the song to a moebius strip (because the starting point of the lyrics is actually in the middle of the song & the song opens with the middle part of the lyrics) & felt it gave the song a claustrophobic feel (because you come into it & leave it in the middle). I remember reading an article about this song when it first came out (I believe 1968) by Paul Williams in Crawdaddy magazine, which was a cheaply produced, but very serious, intellectual magazine published by Williams. Death is coming for the princes, the servants, the women, the joker and the thief.and even the wildcat. "Outside in the cold distance a wildcat did growl"īeyond the walls of man, nature is out there, wild and infinitely mysterious.ĭeath. "All the women came and went, barefoot servants too"- Women and barefoot servants, just like princes, come and go-that is, they're Born, and then they Die. "Princes kept the view"- In life, some men rule over other men, like kings. Basically, it describes the world of men. The third stanza shows the context in which this conversation takes place. Because life is short and our deaths are coming, buddy. So let's not bullshit about accepting meaninglessness or commiting suicide. We're not going to commit suicide, either. Many people who ask existential questions become nihilists-they no longer think that life has any meaning.īut you and I are not going to think of life as a joke, we're going to keep searching for meaning. "There are many here among us.life is just a joke" A lot of people have wondered why we exist. "No reason to get excited" - The thief, who's a bit saltier and wiser than the Joker, says "Listen, there's no reason to get excited about all this "existing" stuff. "Businessmen they drink my wine." Then the Joker comments on the ignorance-is-bliss blindness of average people, who never ask "Why are we alive?" They drink wine and plow the earth, but they don't know what it's worth-that is, they don't ask why they're doing what they're doing. He's saying "Holy shit, I'm really alive in the world, I'm a suffering human being, how do I get out of here?" There's also something suicidal about this, I think-in asking "There must be some way out". ![]() "There must be some way out of here, "there's too much confusion -The joker is having an existential crisis. It's a song about two thinking beings confronting the existential questions of existence. Not to toot our collective horns, but I think this is right. It's funny, I've been searching all over for someone who interpreted the song the way I did. This is why Dylan was and still is considered one of our culture's great voices. This song, in its three little stanzas, is wonderful writing and courageous personal philosophy. It's a description of the land where a seeker of truth must find his own way, whatever the dangers may be. So, it's the opposite of an endorsement of Christianity or any other religion. But there is no going back once you have cast off conventions -"You and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate, let us not talk falsely now the hour is getting late." This is a crisis, he's saying, a crisis of existence itself. One must be very brave to be outside those walls. ![]() I read these as metaphors for the psychological dangers one must face when throwing off easy explanations of life's meaning. They are outside of the walls of psychological safety, where the regular social order still holds, despite the threats from wolves and howling winds. The two personalities are both outsiders, a joker who lacks conventional dignity and a thief who lacks conventional morality. What is there to believe in? What has real meaning? is there anyone we can trust? What is the risk of stepping outside the norms and commonplace meanings of things and looking at ourselves directly? This song, I think, borrows a mythical style and setting to set up the problem of meaninglessness in our existence. But he had written poetry for a long time about the meaning of life and our dilemmas as thinking beings. Back then Dylan was not writing or talking about Jesus at all, certainly not in any way that foreshadowed his conversion experience ten years later. I've been listening to this song since 1968 and have a few thoughts. It's cool that a 35 year old song can still get people to think and more, to discuss meaning. ![]()
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