Bob Dylan - She's Your Lover Now

Bob Dylan, "She's Your Lover Now" (rapidshare link)

Bob Dylan, "Farewell, Angelina" (rapidshare link)

It's been about 24 hours now since I got an email from my ex where she mentions that she's dating someone new (and makes a joke with it, I shit you not). Always good to know that, y'know, just in case we ran into each other at some cheesy Bowery bar. Oh wait, that wouldn't happen. I ain't even gonna try to get into this or analyze it, as it's time to look forward and this ain't therapy. 2006 has been a bad year personally in a lot of ways, but I'm glad that this is going down now. 2007 is just a few days away and I cannot wait. I have big plans for this site and no good can come of wallowing (okay, I'll wallow for a few days, but you get my point). We're going to spend the next few posts wrapping up the past year, gearing up for the new year and all that it holds. Please let me know if you have any recommendations for what you'd like hear, suggestions on ways to make this site better, your own favorites from 2006w.

This song, "She's Your Lover Now," is dedicated to my ex and her new man. Leave it to Bob Dylan to have even covered me in this situation, the fucked up remains of a broken relationship. Let me quote the liner notes from Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3, as it sums up the song perfectly: "It's a brilliant and complex piece of writing, a dramatized scene for three players, but only one speaker - the singer- who's attempting to unravel a tangle of complicated emotions: anger, resentment, recrimination, dismay, disgust, love, loss, responsibility in the presence of an ex-lover and her new boyfriend. The feelings he has within himself are just as confused, and they make themselves variously felt, ever more grotesquely, either towards her or towards him or towards himself, as the song progresses."

It's one of Dylan's greatest songs, which amazingly was never released. What makes it so great to me, and so much of Dylan's writing does this, is the fact that it's never black and white. While this song (and this post) might seem angry and pitying, there's much more behind. There's as much anger at himself hereThis version is the full band one, and it ends prematurely as Dylan messes up the final verse. Here's the lyrics to that last paragraph from one of Dylan's unreleased masterpieces, as good and angry and complex as "Positively 4th Street" and "Idiot Wind."

Now your eyes cry wolf
While your mouth cries I'm not scared
Of animals like you
And you, there's been nothing about you I can recall
I just saw you that one time
And you were just there, that's all
But, I've already been kissed
I'm not gonna get into this
I couldn't make it, anyhow
You do it for me
You're her lover now

I may take a few days off from posting here, just to get a handle on things and prepare my end of the year lists. Sorry for this, I just need this fucking year to end already.