Bob Dylan, 1978 – Where Are You Tonight (Journey Through Dark Heat)

Where Are You Tonight (Journey Through Dark Heat)

Editor’s note: Today’s posts are for all the sad folks I have had to listen to for most of my adult life who said they couldn’t get past the voice (actually many voices) that this year’s Nobel Laureate for Literature spoke so much truth in. It is also for the illiterate who say he never matched what he did early in his career. (No music here because the Dylan folks limit access to the recordings via video.)

*

There's a long distance train rolling through the rain, tears on the letter I write

There's a woman I long to touch and I miss her so much but she's drifting like a satelite

There's a neon light ablaze in the green smoky haze, and laughter down on Elizabeth Street

And a lonesome bell tone in that valley of stone where she bathed in a stream of pure heat

Her father would emphasize you got to be more than street-wise but he practiced what he preached from the heart

A full-blooded Cherokee, he predicted it to me the time and the place it would start.

There's a babe in the arms of a woman in a rage

And a longtime golden-haired stripper onstage

And she winds back the clock and she turns back the page

Of a book that nobody write

Oh, where are you tonight ?

*

The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure, to live it you have to explode

In the last hour of need, we entirely agreed, sacrifice was the code of the road

I left town at dawn, with Marcel and St. John, strong men betitled by doubt

I couldn't tell her what my private thoughts were but she had some way of finding them out

He took dead-center aim but he missed just the same, she was waiting putting flowers on the shelf

She could feel my despair as I climbed up her hair and discovered her invisible self.

There's a lion in the road, there's a demon escaped

There's a million dreams gone, there's a landscape being raped

As her beauty fades and I watch her undrape

I won't but then again, maybe I might

Oh, if I could just find you tonight.

*

I fought with my twin, that enemy within, 'til both of us fell by the way

Horseplay and disease is killing me by degrees while the law looks the other way

Your partners in crime hit me up for nickels and dimes, the man you were loving couldn't never get clean

It felt outa place, my foot in his face, but he should-a stayed where his money was green

I bit into the root of forbidden fruit with the juice running down my leg

Then I dealt with your boss, who'd never known about loss and who always was too proud to beg

There's a white diamond gloom on the dark side of this room and a pathway that leads up to the stars

If you don't believe there's a price for this sweet paradise, just remind me to show you the scars.

There's a new day at dawn and I've finally arrived

If I'm there in the morning, baby, you'll know I've survived

I can't believe it, I can't believe I'm alive

But without you it just doesn't seem right

Oh, where are you tonight?

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