conversation from the start has proceeded apace. A sluggish pace.
Mama come in and picked up a book
An’ Papa asked her what it was
Someone else asked, “What do you care?”
Papa said, “Well, just because”
The boredom is always edgy, on the brink of bad temper (you might think of the opening scenes of the film Badlands, with its smalltown voice-over of incipient family violence). Everything is a matter of course: “Mama, of course, she said, ‘Hi!’” – the voice flattening the exclamation mark, since not-caring is never marked by exclamations. “Well, I just do what I’m told / So, I did it, of course”. Everything just takes its course. And nothing courses, least of all through anybody’s veins.
“The next day everybody got up” – No!!?*!?!* You gotta be kidding.
If people ask you pointless questions, you do well to stick to your rights, and to answer with matching pointlessness:
I reached up, touched my shirt
And the neighbor said, “Are those clothes yours?”
I said, “Some of ’em, not all of ’em”
He said, “Ya always help out around here with the chores?”
I said, “Sometime, not all the time”
The empty questions, the cagey answers, let nothing out, give nothing away. (Here’s some nothing for you, says the song all the way through.) Nothing to give, nothing gives. Or rather, not quite nothing, for there is that one surprising yelp or yodel from Dylan, exultation even, of “Yoo ooh” in the last verse just before the end, as though signalling a way out, an end, an escape from a world in which when “my neighbor, he blew his nose”, that just might be the most interesting thing that you’ll ever hear from him. Hold on to that little yelp, for it is just about all that might give you a glimpse of hope. For the end of the song doesn’t sound as though it can imagine much of a way out:
Well, I just do what I’m told
So, I did it, of course
I went back in the house and Mama met me
And then I shut all the doors
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