#tangled up in blue

[rolloroberson]

Thunder (Thorsdagr)

**(Prologue)**

I need a sip of thunder

To make these bones move again,

A shimmering shelter from the darkness

In her cold, dead eyes.

I’ll dip back into the shadows

Of a convenient alleyway—

Bring violence out of the closet

And shove it through your face,

That Vogue mask you wear,

Dusty tricks to sop up the blood

Of children broken by your prideful lust.

I need a sip of thunder

And a bag of fresh snow

To make this heart beat faster,

A volley of magic spoken by Moshe

On the mountain,

To shatter the black morass,

Escaping from your soulless lips.

From Norway’s fjords, where sky meets sea,

To the Highlands' whispers, where spirits run free,

We sailed through storms, our fates intertwined,

With ghosts of ancestors etched deep in my mind.

Through shadows of history, I tread on their ground,

In Carolina’s heart, where lost souls are found.

I need a sip of thunder

And a bag of fresh snow

To make this heart beat faster,

A volley of magic spoken by Moshe

On the mountain,

To shatter the black morass,

Escaping from your soulless lips.

In the galleys of memory, where the past lingers still,

I’ll bring vengeance from the embers of defeat, bend it to my will.

With the weight of my lineage, I rise from the dust,

To confront the demons born of pride and lust,

Glistening in your face, that Vanity Fair mask,

Slick with deception's grace.

I’ll carve a path through chaos,

With thunder in my veins, I embrace the chase,

Exposing your ashen corpse

To the condign sunlight.

I need a sip of thunder

To make these bones move again,

A shimmering shelter from the darkness

In her cold, dead eyes

(2025picturesandwords©️RolloRoberson)

“I been double-crossed now for the very last time and now I’m finally free

I kissed goodbye the howling beast on the borderline which separated you from me

You’ll never know the hurt I suffered nor the pain I rise above

And I’ll never know the same about you, your holiness or your kind of love

And it makes me feel so sorry

Idiot wind, blowing through the buttons of our coats

Blowing through the letters that we wrote

Idiot wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves

You’re an idiot babe,

It’s a wonder you can even feed yourself.”- Bob Dylan

[victormalonso]

tangled up in blue | victor m. alonso

[archivist-crow]

Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks (1975)

On this day, January 20th, 1975, Blood on the Tracks, the fifteenth studio album by Bob Dylan, was released. Though initially the album received mixed reviews, Blood on the Tracks is now almost universally claimed as one of Dylan’s finest achievements and among the greatest albums of all time. A commercial success as well, the album hit the no. 1 spot in the US and no. 4 in the UK with the single “Tangled Up in Blue” peaking at no. 31. An intensely personal album released at a time amid his own personal struggles, the album was not only a stunning comeback for Dylan but it has since become a benchmark of sorts for musical achievement.

[rastronomicals]

9:46 AM EDT July 18, 2024:

Bob Dylan - "Tangled Up In Blue" From the album Blood on the Tracks (October 12, 2007)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

★★★★

[onemorecupofcoffee]

“on the road” by jack kerouac // “tangled up in blue” by bob dylan

[omgmusic]

The Indigo Girls - Tangled Up In Blue

[bobdylan-n-jonimitchell]

Bob Dylan “Tangled Up In Blue” Wembley Arena, July 1984—Real Live, November 29, 1984.

[myimaginaryradio]

Tangled Up In Blue - Bob Dylan

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Tangled Up In Blue : Bob Dylan

[jt1674]

[pisswizrd]

We always did feel the same, we just saw it from a different point of view

Tangled up in blue

[hauntedgardenking]

“Early one morning the sun was shining

I was lying in bed

Wondering if she’d changed at all

If her hair was still red”

[victormalonso]

Tangled Up In Blue · Bob Dylan

[dollarbin]

Sandy Saturday #15:

The Sea Captain

Some songs birth worlds. Tangled Up in Blue, Famous Blue Rain Coat, The Diamond Sea, The Bells, Will To Love: sure, they appear on albums alongside other tracks, but really they serve as their very own beginning, middle and end. Unique characters arise alongside the riffs; otherwise untouchable landscapes are established within the beats.

Our attention is altogether seized when a song births a new world. There's no topless bar out there where the staff are currently standing by, ready to bend down and tie the laces of your shoe. But you can go to such a place anyway, right now, by simply dropping the needle on Dylan and letting him unfold such a space for you.

The Sea Captain, a humble, understated and self-penned track from Sandy Denny's second solo record, may seem like an unlikely choice for such distinction. But hear me out.

First, let's let Sandy tell her story:

At first we are in familiar territory for anyone who's ever listened to Liege and Leif (if you are sitting around reading this and you have not listened to Liege and Leif that is really, really weird): Sandy embodies not the titular captain but instead a deserter who takes to the sea to escape their troubles. They may be fleeing war; they may be fleeing their own family or past crimes. We don't know what they're running from, but we're instantly on their side: after all, they sing with Sandy Denny's voice.

But something weird is going on. Simply, put I'm not altogether sure that the deserter, our narrator, is human. They "fly" from the shore; later, when the ship catches fire, they once again "fly" away from it. Is it a bird? A storyteller? A ghost?

Denny switches perspectives in the final, equally elusive, verse to observe, rather than embody, the deserter as he passes by not just the boat, but also the song itself: he's gone and we cannot go with him because we, like the Sea Captain, cannot take to the air and fly.

Or, something? Likely, I've got all of it wrong. But I don't know if Sandy herself knew what she was writing; it's a poem, not a math problem.

Even so, the more I think about Denny's graceful, dense and obscure lyrics the more I remember reading an incredible piece years and years ago about another world building song, Geeshie Wiley's Last Kind Word Blues: the author is some kind of genius, and he goes on and on and on about the song, about Wiley and about the meaning of life. Imagine Greil Marcus, only with an editor and a fact checker: incredible depths.

Meanwhile, The Sea Captain is the perfect compliment to Ian Matthews' Please Be My Friend, which we featured a few days back, in that both songs present the young and aspiring Richard Thompson in the best possible light. I encourage you to listen to the track again; only this time just listen for Richard: he creeps in early, under Sandy's second verse, steps up to offer his solo, then cradles her tenderly for the rest of the track.

Thompson has called his solo on this piece one of the best in his career, and I concur. It's so quiet, so delicate; maybe the deserter dies in the ship's fire within this song, and that's how he is able to pass by the boat and fly his soul onward, leaving everything behind; if so, Thompson's solo is the sound death.

And if that's what death sounds like, wow: we have absolutely nothing to fear.

[rastronomicals]

11:31 AM EST December 17, 2023:

Bob Dylan - "Tangled Up In Blue" From the album Blood on the Tracks (October 12, 2007)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

★★★★

[fizzy-watches-and-listens]

GUYS I LOVE BOB DYLAN

i could actually cry

tangled up in blue just started playing and i nearly screamed