Of itself, it is an ancient theme, as ancient as the Vikings certainly, with their three spinners who control everyone’s life, and the saying “Gæð a wyrd swa hio scel” (“Fate goes ever as she shall.”) It is not the western way, where we are taught that with hard and solid work, we can achieve, we can change the world, we can fulfil our destinies. But Dylan is presenting a different sort of life, and in this life he can’t just stop, he has to finish the song, he has to stay on tour, and so she is gone, and he’s become … Bob Dylan. If it had been a movie, he could have left the stage and just walked to her, and the audience would have parted, and gasped, and looked in amazement, and then as he took her in his arms they would have cheered, and we’d have a romantic setting. He wants to reach out to her, but he can’t. Here, in this song, the singer is up on the stage looking as this wonderful lady in the audience. We are only a pawn in the game, whatever the game. “Only a pawn” does this is an utterly different context – but the feeling is the same – for all that we want, and all that we try to do to create a world that we want, we don’t get what we want. Saying I don’t know when I’ll be comin’ back again

So I’ll bid farewell and be down the roadĪnd elements of “Girl from the north country” where the singer can do no more than be asked to be remembered to the girl, and “Boots of Spanish Leather” The never ending tour.Īs such there are elements of Restless Farewell… It is a theme that dominates so much of Dylan’s music – the theme of moving on, not taking opportunities, not being able to take opportunities, just being on the road. It is still a song of deep sadness, but now it is a song of passing, of missed opportunity, of not being able to take your chances, of being trapped in one’s own world unable to escape. It can however be allied to Taoism, the Way is eternal, you can either go with it, or try and fight against it, but such a fight is always doomed.ĭylan takes the concept and removes it from its linkage to all things, and instead fixes the notion into the setting of the singer on the stage. It is the opposite of the concept within most religions that we have the choice to be good and so go to heaven, or not, in which case it’s hell. The philosophy can be a simple one – time has not beginning nor an end – or a tragic one, in which we are all doomed to be of the same flux of the universe – free will is ultimately an illusion. In the eternal circle, life (or if not your life, then the universe, or maybe just life in general) repeats and repeats.

Circle of life lyrics meaning