No Direction Home

Continuing the theme of home and homelessness, that borrowed title comes from Dylan’s song “Like a Rolling Stone.” The tone conveys not quite, but almost, an atmosphere of schadenfreude, as the speaker inventories in a kind of letter or rant to a former friend a causal argument of falling, in this case, apparently, falling from a position of false security or privilege, of having a good time home to being alone, friendless, homeless. “I told you so,” is in a sense the message. “How does it feel,” the speaker asks, who knows perfectly well how it feels. The theme is Gatsbyesque, peels away the thin skin covering the old reveling times, exposing the hollowness and emptiness of a gilded life, the phony friends, the gold leaf too thin to sustain any doubt, the common metallic iron at the core showing through, glitter gone down the drain. Dylan’s clown dressed in rags becomes the anti-hero living on the streets, rock and roll bottom, gutter run, where everybody’s stuff gets swept away. The title’s source is cliche proverb: A rolling stone gathers no moss. What is moss? A day in the moss, collecting stuff for winter needs. In Dylan’s song, we assume the moss includes all those hangers-on who did not and could not know the real Gatsby, not the Great Gatsby, but the rolling stone Gatsby, the Gatsby whose funeral almost no one attends. The party’s over, things change, everybody’s moved on. One middle class reading of course might not see it this way, still wanting to rise, move up, get a bigger home, nicer car, fancier clothes, borrow a real necklace to wear to the party, the better to feel fitted in to the in-class. And in that same reading, that the rolling stone individual is not a fallen character, for that would suggest it’s possible for any one of us to fall, at any time, for any reason. No, that middle class reading must place blame on the individual, calling their predicament a choice, wanting to recognize that they didn’t fall, couldn’t fall, because they never actually belonged to begin with, even if their fall was, paradoxically, their choice. Either way, they couldn’t win, born to lose. And the beat response? We all need someone to look down on, and if you want to, you can look down on me.