Being still and Bob Dylan don’t go together.  He is always moving, changing, on the go, gone even before he gets there.  Many of his songs are about moving on, being unable to keep still, being on the road again, wind blowing him up and down the street, freewheeling Bob, never able to gather moss, much like a rolling stone.  But “still” as in continuous, as in rhyming Simon’s “still crazy after all these years,” is suited to Dylan much better.  His self-dubbed never ending tour gets him into places where his appearance inspires, “Is he still around, still touring, still singing, still putting out records, still performing, still singing “Blowin In The Wind”?  And the answer is yes to all—still doing what he’s been doing since he first arrived in Greenwich Village six decades ago.

“Still” examined as a Dylan rhyme word has the promise of revealing stillness and movement in his songs.  I’m certain movement will win out, but maybe it sometimes will in contrast to what Dylan makes still for us.  Each song is a like a photograph—movement caught in repose, sometimes deep repose as in the silence one finds in say the still of the night or in the “still” rhyme that begins “Life Is Hard”:

The evening winds are still
I’ve lost the way and will

Still winds are no winds at all, just as losing your way and will suggests no way and no will at all, nothing to you at all.  No wind, no way, no will.  A chilly wind appears at the end of “Life Is Hard”:

The sun is sinking low
I guess it’s time to go
I feel a chilly breeze
In place of memories
My dreams are locked and barred
Admitting life is hard
Without you near me
Be still the song seems to say and then you can still move again.

**********************************************************************************************************************

At the end of the first verse in “Scarlet Town,” Dylan keeps the rhyming couplets alive (as he does throughout the song) but uses “still” as an internal rhyme kicker:

In Scarlet Town, where I was born
There’s ivy leaf and silver thorn
The streets have names that you can’t pronounce
Gold is down to a quarter of an ounce
The music starts and the people sway
Everybody says, “Are you going my way? ”
Uncle Tom still workin’ for Uncle Bill
Scarlet Town is under the hill.

It’s the only verse that ends that way.  The “is” in the middle of the last line also keeps the assonance maintained, “Bill,” “is,” “hill.”  This all seems constructed by someone who knows his rhyming, not over the hill with use of it, not over the hill like Scarlet Town isn’t, described instread as being “under the hill.”  Still plenty to do and experience when not over the hill.  “All things are beautiful in their time” the last verse states.  But Dylan’s time has not come, his bell still rings, after all.

Give a listen, with scenes from, Masked And Anoymous (thank you SYDHARTHA SHIVA whoever and wherever you are).

**********************************************************************************************************************

“Shake, Mama, Shake” has “still” in it the way I hoped and expected Dylan to use it, that is as a way to show the movement in stillness and the stillness in movement, as John Keats does so well in the last stanza of “To Autumn,”

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Such movement, such arousal of the five senses, but all so quiet, mellowed, lazy, and serene.

“Shake” is packed with three line verses all with line ending rhymes, the second verse with “still” repeated with “hill”:

Well it’s early in the evening and everything is still
Well it’s early in the evening and everything is still
One more time, I’m walking up on heartbreak hill

The speaker is walking, thus the movement, but everything is still, but just maybe everything is still including the speaker.  Heartbreak hill may not be a place, but a feeling inside, not unlike the feeling of doing 21 miles and hitting heartbreak hill in Boston.  Emotionally that is the feeling of heartbreak, but who would know, often heartbreak is kept inside relegated to a stillness of the mind and body while the heart is moving–just ask the Tin Man when he says goodbye to Dorothy.

Usually, I like to keep the audio and video of songs on this blog to Dylan himself, but I found a video of  Canadian Ryan Boldt, lead singer and guitarist of The Deep Dark Woods (speaking of stillness) that is quite moving (pun not intended).   I find his voice both penetrating and soothing; like the bow leaving the violin, his voice remains after the song is over:

**********************************************************************************************************************

“Still” is used 9 times in “Ain’t Talkin,” not surprising since it appears in the refrain of this long song.  The short i vowel sound dominates the refrain with “still” echoing from all the “talkin” and “walkin” going on in it.  There’s much “burnin” and “yearnin,” too, all working to muster a short i-fest throughout the song.

the 8th time “still” appears is the only time it links with a word to create a clean rhyme, and the rhyme is all internal:

Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’
Walkin’ ever since the other night
Heart burnin’, still yearnin’
Walkin’ ‘til I’m clean out of sight

“burnin still“/”walkin til” is the full rhyme, not just “still” with “til.”

Much has been made of Dylan’s borrowing from Ovid in this song, from a text that Ovid probably wrote while exiled. Dylan sings it like an exiled wanderer, walkin, burnin, and yearnin.

Here’s a video of it done with much walkin:

*********************************************************************************************************************

Of “Positively Fourth Street.” Christopher Ricks says the song “has an extraordinary sense of powerfully moving while threateningly not moving.” Of the second line in the last verse of “Not Dark Yet” with “still” completing the couplet rhyme with “will,” Ricks says, “This as contemplation,  not as confrontation.”  So not so threatening then, but hard to conceive.  It would be easier to conceptualize a person standing still but whose mind is moving; here Dylan says he’s moving or it looks that way yet he’s standing still.  I guess we’re all moving since the earth we live on is and that kind of movement is against our will as well, just like being born and dying though not from suicide.

What Dylan does will in this song is many rhymes; each two lines are couplets, and he sings each one in such an unforced fluent and achingly beautiful tone.  Yes, the next to last verse shows his movement from Paris to the sea, but the speaker’s mind is stagnant, numb even, he sings (love that “numb”/”from” rhyme):

I was born here and I’ll die here against my will
I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standing still
Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb
I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from
Don’t even hear a murmur of a prayer
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

Ricks observes the Keatsian influence in the song–namely to “Ode to a Nightingale.” Much heartache in both, much nearness to the end (not dark yet), fading, even half loving death.  “Do I wake or sleep?,” Keats ends the poem, “not dark yet, but it’s getting there.” Still moving but standing still.

This song is always worth a listen:

*********************************************************************************************************************

By the time you get to the end of “Neighborhood Bully,” Dylan starts pounding away with questions.  Not only is the message clear that we still have to endure bullying and being bullied, stereotypes, propaganda, politics, war, etc., but we still have to put up with having to ask these same damn questions.  How much longer? How much longer?  The “hill”/”still” rhyme in the last stanza is housed amidst questions and time as a factor:

What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill
Running out the clock, time standing still
Neighborhood bully

Running out the clock while time stands still is a paradox–one that gets to the complexities involved with the Middle East.   Both the bully on the hill and time are still, standing targets, the bully with time on his side, but the clock is ticking, how much longer?

Good collage of Bob with this 1983 recording session of “Neighborhood Bully” from vimeo:

**********************************************************************************************************************

“Heart of Mine” uses “still” as in calm down, suppress y0ur restlessness.   Dylan commands his heart in this song, advising it to resist giving into passion and thereby deflecting the commitment, hurt, and guilt that will come from it.  It’s a song that does not trust trust in a relationship.  But while doing so it also accuses the heart, his heart of being “malicious and so full of guile,” not trusting it either or most of all. The first line uses “still” to set the tone:

Heart of mine be still
You can play with fire but you’ll get the bill
Don’t let her know
Don’t let her know that you love her
Don’t be a fool, don’t be blind
Heart of mine

(Taken from Norbert Baro’s website I’ve Got a Song to Sing)

*******************************************************************************************************************

“Senor” is an exhausting song, or rather its about exhaustion.  Its universe is the long trail, the dusty unending road, where people on it just keep asking questions like, “Do you know where we’re headin’?” and “How long are we gonna be ridin’?”  It’s a song begging to use the word “still.”  And Dylan does use it all at once three times in the third verse:

There’s a wicked wind still blowin’ on that upper deck
There’s an iron cross still hangin’ down from around her neck
There’s a marchin’ band still playin’ in that vacant lot
Where she held me in her arms one time and said, “Forget me not”