A Different Point of View

Bob Dylan “Tangled Up in Blue”

There is no timeline in “Tangled Up in Blue,” just scattered memories of small moments burned into the mind of the narrator, who could be singing about one woman or several different women over the course of his life. It’s all deliberately unclear, to the point that sometimes he might be a different person too. Some sections seem like vivid recollections, and others feel more like fantasies. But memory is shaky and unreliable, and is mostly just the story you tell yourself to make sense of your life and define yourself. People change over the years. I prefer to hear this song as being about just two people drawn to one another but almost always out of synch. It’s more romantic that way, and more tragic.

In “Tangled Up In Blue,” love is easy but life is complicated. Every moment of profound connection is fleeting, and every commitment is subject to change. Love gives him focus and purpose but it’s inevitably thwarted, and he’s often complicit in the failure. The music moves in circles, mirroring the way these people orbit one another, and suggesting that they will eventually connect again. There’s a brightness in the notes, a glimmer of hope. She may be gone for years on end, but she never escapes his mind. His lingering love for her and regret about losing her flattens and scrambles his timeline. It’s always her, somehow. And in his heart, it’s always her, someday.

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