The Never Ending Pool

The lyric changes in “Mississippi” between the “original” version now revealed to us on TTS Disc 3 and the one we first knew on L&T show Dylan adjusting the song from one in which he speaks directly to an unrequited love to a more generalized collective audience. He does this by changing only eight full lines of verse and tweaking or reordering a few others. In both versions, “Mississippi” has twelve quatrains of aabb rhyme scheme, split into three sets of four that culminate with the refrain: “Only one thing I did wrong; stayed in Mississippi a day too long”.

Six of the eight lines Dylan modified are placed right at the beginning of the L&T version. Consider these lines we first heard on L&T which are not found in the earlier take: “Every step of the way we walk the line; your days are numbered, so are mine. Time is piling up, we struggle and we scrape; we’re all boxed in, nowhere to escape. City’s just a jungle, more games to play; trapped in the heart of it, trying to get away.” With Dylan one always must be careful about reading too much into his choice of pronoun usage, but I always got the sense this song was addressed to the collective “we”, to everyman, to all of us. Later in the song there certainly were times when he spoke of and to a love he was lanquishing for, but for the most part this “Mississippi” always felt to me like it was written for all of us and he was addressing it to all of us.

Now contrast this with the initial lines he first wrote in 1997 now shared on TTS Disc 3: “I’m standing in the shadows with an aching heart; I’m looking at the world, tearing itself apart. Minutes turn to hours, hours turn to days; I’m still loving you in a million ways.” Right from the beginning in this version although Dylan remains in a first person narrative, “we” are not the person being addressed rather he was speaking directly to the love who was causing him such pain. This sets an entirely different tone for the whole song as does the obvious Daniel Lanois influence in the overall arrangement. The first line of “I’m standing in the shadows with an aching heart” gets right to the point. There is no hiding behind words or interpretation here. Dylan frequently has used “shadows” in his lyrics, almost always to conjure anguish and its associated darkness. Other classic songs on Time Out Of Mind contain similar imagery. “Not Dark Yet” begins “Shadows are falling and I’ve been here all day” and “Standing in the Doorway” is another song of unrequited or failing love which has Dylan choosing the phrase “standing in the” to reflect his plight. “Doorway” is another word commonly used by Dylan, but that could be a subject of another lengthy digression. There also is obviously prolonged anguish in “minutes turning to hours and hours to days”. This is dramatized and reinforced by Dylan in another couple of the replaced lines found in the later portion of this “original” version of “Mississippi”: “Winter goes into summer, summer goes into fall; I look into the mirror, don’t see anything at all.” These images of the passage of time eventually culminate with the ultimate trump card “The emptiness is endless” as the song concludes. In this couplet Dylan also worked with the earlier line, “Feeling like a stranger nobody sees” which always evoked sympathy to my ears to painting the picture of a recluse so distraught he is unable to even see his own reflection when looking into the mirror.

The first two lines after the initial refrain of “Only one thing I did wrong; stayed in Mississippi a day too long” also were replaced by Dylan on the “Mississippi” we got to know in 2001 on L&T. On TTS they went: “Well, I’ve been loving you too long, I know you ain’t no good; It don’t make a bit of difference to me, don’t see why it should.” Again these lines were not only directed to a second person listener, “you”, but didn’t leave much to interpretation. A couple of the lines to which Dylan made slight adjustments also are rather revealing. “Well, the devil’s in the alley, mules in the stall” on L&T replaced “Well, the devil’s in the alley, there's a mule kicking in my stall” which had personalized both the stall and the kick but was subsequently substituted with an indirect object, “the”. This helped generalize the listener, the person being addressed by Dylan. Perhaps “Well, everybody’s moving, God knows where; but I’m still here and you’re still there” being replaced with “Everybody’s movin’ if they ain’t already there; everybody’s got to move somewhere” demonstrates best how Dylan changed “Mississippi” to a song speaking to “everybody” from one speaking directly to the painful love who has broken his heart.

It is amazing to me how the modification of only eight of forty-eight lines could change the feel of the song so dramatically. Both of these versions of “Mississippi” are well constructed and well developed. One speaks directly to an unrequited love and the other speaks to all of us. Ironically so many of us are able to hear Dylan no matter to whom he is speaking.

Many thanks for that. I commend your analysis. I was also struck by the metamorphosis of the song from person to general but hadn't realised that a mere eight lines had changed to do it. Clever chap that Bob Dylan.

thanks.

a nice read, thanks!

Bang! Post of the month. 'Right on target, so direct.'

I'm looking forward to the 'Big Kahuna Set' (c) arriving here sometime soon.

Cheers, SLuggy

Nice piece-but which version do you actually prefer? I haven't made my mind up between the album or Disc 3? Or indeed Disc 1? I'm fairly confident in saying Disc 2 is the weakest of the 4 (although I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand either) and I suspect in the long run I'll probably revert to the album take as my favourite (just) but Disc 1 and 3 offer beautiful alternatives as a listening experience.

I'll reserve comment until I've heard the disk 3 version. I'll just say that I wouldn't describe eight lines out of forty-eight as "only." It's possible to change a lot less than that and still change everything. A single word can be enough, as in the edition of the Bible that left "not" out of the seventh commandment: "Thou shalt commit adultery." Or the few bits of amino acid that make up all the difference between us and the chimpanzees. Eight lines is a lot, really.

JudasPriest wrote:

QUOTE:
Nice piece-but which version do you actually prefer? I haven't made my mind up between the album or Disc 3? Or indeed Disc 1? I'm fairly confident in saying Disc 2 is the weakest of the 4 (although I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand either) and I suspect in the long run I'll probably revert to the album take as my favourite (just) but Disc 1 and 3 offer beautiful alternatives as a listening experience.

I confess to being a creature of habit. At this point I'd have to say my preference would be the one from L&T, but that indubitably has to do with the more than three hundred listens I estimate I have had of that version over the past seven years. At this time it is engrained as the definitive version in my mind and to my ears. The overall lyrics of "Mississippi" fit better for me when the targetted listener is universal, but I do find the Disc 3 version to be very intriguing.

I must say however I am really enjoying becoming more familiar with all three "new" versions on TTS. I could listen to an entire disc of this song. The "Mississippi's" found on Disc 1 and Disc 2 are quite similar in their tempo and lyrics. The lyrics pretty much match those eventually released on L&T. The biggest difference between them is in the musical accompaniment of guitars only (D1) versus the full band (D2). Right now, I'm loving the rhythmic shuffle the band establishes throughout the Disc 2 version, it reminds me of a horse sauntering along "every step of the way"...

VERY interesting analysis, an A+ piece of writing...

I haven't heard the d3 version yet--still waiting for a copy from a friend who had more money to spend than I did. But as of now, I'm leaning toward the d1 version on TTS. I love the simplicity of the guitar accompaniment which gives the performance a more soulful, warmer sound, imo.


re: "With Dylan one always must be careful about reading too much into his choice of pronoun usage."
Agreed--he does seem to shift his pronouns around from first to third person almost arbitrarily at times. But I also find "reading too much" into them at times fascinating stuff, as in Stepen Scobie's discussion of "I" and "eye" in his book Alias.

Great post, thanks for sharing.

Personally, I still find the L&T take to be my favorite - but as someone else said, this is a song I've always loved and have listened to hundreds of times. I definitely find the Disc 3 take to be the most interesting alternate version; Disc 1 is nice but doesn't really improve on the song, and Disc 2 is interesting but inferior to the others.

onehandwavingfree wrote:

QUOTE:
The lyric changes in “Mississippi” between the “original” version now revealed to us on TTS Disc 3 and the one we first knew on L&T show Dylan adjusting the song from one in which he speaks directly to an unrequited love to a more generalized collective audience. He does this by changing only eight full lines of verse and tweaking or reordering a few others. In both versions, “Mississippi” has twelve quatrains of aabb rhyme scheme, split into three sets of four that culminate with the refrain: “Only one thing I did wrong; stayed in Mississippi a day too long”.

Six of the eight lines Dylan modified are placed right at the beginning of the L&T version. Consider these lines we first heard on L&T which are not found in the earlier take: “Every step of the way we walk the line; your days are numbered, so are mine. Time is piling up, we struggle and we scrape; we’re all boxed in, nowhere to escape. City’s just a jungle, more games to play; trapped in the heart of it, trying to get away.” With Dylan one always must be careful about reading too much into his choice of pronoun usage, but I always got the sense this song was addressed to the collective “we”, to everyman, to all of us. Later in the song there certainly were times when he spoke of and to a love he was lanquishing for, but for the most part this “Mississippi” always felt to me like it was written for all of us and he was addressing it to all of us.

Now contrast this with the initial lines he first wrote in 1997 now shared on TTS Disc 3: “I’m standing in the shadows with an aching heart; I’m looking at the world, tearing itself apart. Minutes turn to hours, hours turn to days; I’m still loving you in a million ways.” Right from the beginning in this version although Dylan remains in a first person narrative, “we” are not the person being addressed rather he was speaking directly to the love who was causing him such pain. This sets an entirely different tone for the whole song as does the obvious Daniel Lanois influence in the overall arrangement. The first line of “I’m standing in the shadows with an aching heart” gets right to the point. There is no hiding behind words or interpretation here. Dylan frequently has used “shadows” in his lyrics, almost always to conjure anguish and its associated darkness. Other classic songs on Time Out Of Mind contain similar imagery. “Not Dark Yet” begins “Shadows are falling and I’ve been here all day” and “Standing in the Doorway” is another song of unrequited or failing love which has Dylan choosing the phrase “standing in the” to reflect his plight. “Doorway” is another word commonly used by Dylan, but that could be a subject of another lengthy digression. There also is obviously prolonged anguish in “minutes turning to hours and hours to days”. This is dramatized and reinforced by Dylan in another couple of the replaced lines found in the later portion of this “original” version of “Mississippi”: “Winter goes into summer, summer goes into fall; I look into the mirror, don’t see anything at all.” These images of the passage of time eventually culminate with the ultimate trump card “The emptiness is endless” as the song concludes. In this couplet Dylan also worked with the earlier line, “Feeling like a stranger nobody sees” which always evoked sympathy to my ears to painting the picture of a recluse so distraught he is unable to even see his own reflection when looking into the mirror.

The first two lines after the initial refrain of “Only one thing I did wrong; stayed in Mississippi a day too long” also were replaced by Dylan on the “Mississippi” we got to know in 2001 on L&T. On TTS they went: “Well, I’ve been loving you too long, I know you ain’t no good; It don’t make a bit of difference to me, don’t see why it should.” Again these lines were not only directed to a second person listener, “you”, but didn’t leave much to interpretation. A couple of the lines to which Dylan made slight adjustments also are rather revealing. “Well, the devil’s in the alley, mules in the stall” on L&T replaced “Well, the devil’s in the alley, there's a mule kicking in my stall” which had personalized both the stall and the kick but was subsequently substituted with an indirect object, “the”. This helped generalize the listener, the person being addressed by Dylan. Perhaps “Well, everybody’s moving, God knows where; but I’m still here and you’re still there” being replaced with “Everybody’s movin’ if they ain’t already there; everybody’s got to move somewhere” demonstrates best how Dylan changed “Mississippi” to a song speaking to “everybody” from one speaking directly to the painful love who has broken his heart.

It is amazing to me how the modification of only eight of forty-eight lines could change the feel of the song so dramatically. Both of these versions of “Mississippi” are well constructed and well developed. One speaks directly to an unrequited love and the other speaks to all of us. Ironically so many of us are able to hear Dylan no matter to whom he is speaking.

It is obvious that he is talking to a Collective All, as soon as I heard We're all boxed in, I knew that. I have always looked at Mississippi as a universal song despite the location. It is also obvious that the version on disc 3 is more personal, Dylan has made a habit of this through the years with the changes in Idiot Wind and Caribean Wind, I find it intriguing that he has actually recycled a line from Wind in Mississippi

As the days turned to minutes and the minutes turned back into hours

which is a little more elegant than the variant in Mississippi, at one point the whole of Caribean Wind was highly personal and Bob became self conscious of this and decided to depersonalise it and this resulted in an insincerity of the lyrics, and except for a couple of lines weaker metaphors etc.

While the changes in Caribean Wind were most probably deliberate I am not so convinced about the changes in Mississippi, I don't believe those changes were done in order to alter the narrative from a personal one to a universal one, I think he just knew the earlier lyric was crap and felt the need to make a few changes and the end result was accidental, I don't believe that Bob is the conscious lyricist that we all think him to be, you can have intentions yes but you are not always aware of those intentions, it is also clear that Bob has been repeating himself for the last 10 years (most likely more) however I don't believe for a minute or an hour or a second that this diminishes his body of work in any way

I also agree with PlainJane that it only takes one change and the door is off its hinges, the table is overturned and the room has completely shifted, one wrong word can prevent a lyric or a poem from serving its purpose, one change can make the sun rise in the middle of the night.

I havent done the side by side yet but this topic is fascinating as was the change of person for Simple Twist...or Tangled..

Do ya think it was this difference that was in dispute with Lanois? - or the technical sound of the track...?

LaughsLikeTheFlowers wrote:

QUOTE:
VERY interesting analysis, an A+ piece of writing...

I haven't heard the d3 version yet--still waiting for a copy from a friend who had more money to spend than I did. But as of now, I'm leaning toward the d1 version on TTS. I love the simplicity of the guitar accompaniment which gives the performance a more soulful, warmer sound, imo.


re: "With Dylan one always must be careful about reading too much into his choice of pronoun usage."
Agreed--he does seem to shift his pronouns around from first to third person almost arbitrarily at times. But I also find "reading too much" into them at times fascinating stuff, as in Stepen Scobie's discussion of "I" and "eye" in his book Alias.

The I and eye was deliberate, maybe not consciously deliberate but deliberate nonetheless, I wish he'd do that one more often.