Going Back To New York City

Written for Thursday’s Inspiration #268
It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

Today in Thursday Inspiration, Jim Adams has tossed out several topics from which to choose; I’m going with the word ‘trying’ and how it’s portrayed in Bob Dylan’s song, “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”. I love this song from his 1965 Highway 61 Revisited album. With its repetitive lyrics and sense of desperation, it depicts the feeling of being stuck and constantly trying to find a way out.

Bob Dylan doesn’t need his career validated by anything or anyone other than the internal connection to his creative muse. Since he first came on the scene in the early 1960s, Dylan marched to the beat of his own drum. He sang what he wanted to sing and said what he wanted to say. Little stopped that pursuit.

“Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” is a testament to never-ending youth, the driving force that takes us in different directions in life, always trying to find a place to call “home”.  It’s a criticism of the New York City of the 60s that left many artists feeling unfulfilled and searching for a new place for inspiration. Dylan sings about leaving New York and ultimately returning but there’s still the fight between fulfillment, inspiration and the need to stay obscure. It is a melodic and often melancholy song that’s constantly seeking to lift itself up.

It’s Easter and Dylan sings about finding himself in Juarez, Mexico, amidst sickness, despair, saints and sinners. While there, he encounters corrupt authorities, loose women, drugs and alcohol. The song establishes an occasionally nightmarish vision as the singer is influenced by gravity, negativity, sex, drugs, drink, illness, remorse and memory. In the song’s final verse, the singer decides he has had enough and announces his intention to leave and head back home to New York City.

In “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, we will meet some ‘hungry women‘. It may be assumed that ‘Saint Annie‘ and ‘Sweet Melinda‘ are both prostitutes in one of Juarez’s brothels. However, it’s also possible that the ‘women‘ are merely ciphers for different forms of narcotic.

“Housing Project Hill” comes from the Jack Kerouac novel Desolation Angels. Dylan would later say that he came to find the lifestyle espoused in Kerouac’s books to be pointless, but his first impression was very different. “I read On the Road in maybe 1959“, Dylan has stated. “It changed my life like it changed everyone else’s.“

In a 2005 readers’ poll published in Mojo magazine, “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” was listed as the #13 all-time greatest Bob Dylan song; in 2002, Uncut magazine listed it as the #38 all-time best Dylan song.

This is “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” by Bob Dylan. Keep an eye out for Dylan’s traveling companion at the 2:10 mark.

LYRICS

When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez, and it’s Easter time too
And your gravity fails, negativity don’t pull you through
Don’t put on any airs when you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there, and they’ll really make a mess outta you

If you see Saint Annie, please tell her thanks a lot
I cannot move, my fingers they are all in a knot
I don’t have the strength to get up and take another shot
And my best friend, the doctor, won’t even tell me what it is I’ve got

Sweet Melinda, the peasants call her the goddess of gloom
She speaks good English, invites you up into her room
And you’re so kind and careful not to go to her too soon
And she takes your voice and leaves you howling at the moon

Up on Housing Project Hill, it’s either fortune or fame
You must pick one or the other, neither of them are what they claim
If you’re lookin’ to get silly, you better go back to from where you came
Because the cops don’t need you, and man, they expect the same

All the authorities, they just stand around and boast
How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms into leaving his post
And picking up Angel, who just arrived from the coast
Who looked so fine at first, but left looking just like a ghost

I started out on Burgundy, but soon hit the harder stuff
Everybody said they’re right behind me when the game got rough
But the joke was on me, there was nobody even to call my bluff
I’m going back to New York City, I do believe I’ve had enough

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Bob Dylan
Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues lyrics © Special Rider Music, Universal Tunes

Thursday Inspiration #268 It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

And that’s all she wrote. See you on the flip side. 😎

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