a creature void of form

blood on the tracks

I figured out this morning that if I pick the coffee grinder up off of the butcher block counter top while I’m grinding, it sounds less like a weedeater and more like a dremel tool.

It’s something about the proximity…the counter top is a sounding board or something…making something small hard to take.

Of course, when everyone in the house is still asleep on a Sunday morning, the cat mewling for its food sounds kind of loud, too.

It’s hard to be quiet enough when you’re shooting for silent.

I woke up with a Dylan song swirling in my head.

It really was this one line…really even just part of a line…at the beginning of the song, “I came in from the wilderness… A CREATURE VOID OF FORM…”

Our minds are so funny (someone, somewhere, is thinking “speak for yourself…MY mind is anything but funny.”).  Why would I have a snippet of lyric swirling like that?

And then I start looking for the references and can’t recall and get a little freaked out and wonder if it’s time to start doing a lot of Sudoku puzzles.  Gads, maybe it’s early onset…shoot, what was that disease called?  WHERE’S MY PUZZLE? I CAN’T FIND MY PUZZLE…HAVE YOU SEEN MY PUZZLE?!!

Dylan is kind of hard for me to listen to now.  He’s got a pretty distinctive voice that’s gotten even more distinctive with the passing years.

Pretty croaky.

But he’s an old man, so what should I expect?

I guess I sort of picture him singing all froggy in that Victoria’s Secret commercial.  That’s the only Victoria’s Secret commercial that I remember, and there it was only the froggy Bob Dylan singing that made it memorable.

Whew…dodged that bullet.

It really was only the singing.

Here’s another Bob Dylan song from the same album…probably one of my favorites out of all his songs…

“A creature void of form..” was the line that was swirling….I’ve got to get back to that original thought.

Swirling is a good way to define it.  My mind isn’t a tornado…that’s too defined and controlled.  I don’t know if my mind is even a hurricane…that’s too powerful.

Maybe my mind is a dust devil…some irritation and blowing, undefined and temporarily effective.

A swirling collection of passing fancies blowing hard for a while across an empty prairie.

That probably describes it best…just a swirling that comes and goes.

That first bunch of lines in “Shelter from the Storm” are so great. That’s the thing about Dylan…he drops these lines that sound so conversational and that have so much meaning when you dig a little.

If your head isn’t swirling before you listen, it will be after a couple of songs.

“I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form…”

“Come in, she said, I’ll give ya Shelter from the Storm”

Blood on the Tracks is probably one of the greatest collections of mature love songs that’s ever been released.

It’s the ending and fond remembrance of the beginnings. I guess he wrote it during his separation from his wife Sara.

This album was released in 1975, and still has me occasionally waking up thinking about its lyrics.

Do you think I’ll be pondering that Miley Cyrus song where she’s swinging on the Wrecking Ball that many years later?

What was that Miley song called?!

Where’s my puzzle?  WHERE’S MY PUZZLE?!!

Right…the Sudoku…have you seen it?

 

About Peter Rorvig

I'm a non-practicing artist, a mailman, a husband, a father...not listed in order of importance. I believe that things can always get better....and that things are usually better than we think.

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