Visions of Johanna by Bob Dylan!!!!!!!
Here's the full lyrics for anyone who wants to read a good piece of poetry:
http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/72949/#73014549770
I love this song so much. It's such a good piece of writing, and the melody and chords are so simple yet powerful.
The intro lines is interesting to me:
"Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're trying to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we're all doing our best to deny it.
And Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting you to defy it."
Bob Dylan's lyrics are brilliant for many reasons, one of which is that they are specific enough that you can have a sense of what he's talking about, but vague enough to fill in your own meaning. I guess most good lyrics are like that, but there's just so many in this one song that inspire me. He really is a poet (in case you thought that was hype), and it shows during this song. He doesn't really tell a story in this song, but it's more like flashes of events in his life that remind him of Johanna, and how there's so many falsehoods in this world that people chase when they should just be focusing on love. That might be a stretch, but it sounds good to me, and that's the thing with poetry, any thing that comes to your mind as a result of reading a poem is a perfectly valid response. It's the more natural way of deciphering meaning, IMO, than simply breaking down each song line by line and trying to find out their literal meaning. The visions and thoughts that pop into my head throughout this song make me feel awesome.
This song is about going through life being burdened by memories of a past love, Johanna, while at the same time trying to move on and realizes that the girls he finds aren't a replacement. Louise is the girl who is basically throwing herself at him, but she's too clingy and delicate, and that's not his style. Johanna seems to be much more than just a past love though, she could also be the source of his inspiration, his muse, as well as the cause of his suffering. She seems to be the lens through which he is viewing the world. Maybe she's a representative of his higher power, and he's struggling with his faith in humanity?
He introduces some interesting other characters throughout the song as well.
One that I can relate to:
"Little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously. He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously."
In this line he knocked me out of my own depression and feeling sorry for myself. He grabbed me by the ears as was like "cut it out, you don't need to be wallowing in your own problems. We all got shit to deal with, quit being so useless."
Another line I love, it's the line that I first fell in love with during this song:
"Inside museums infinity goes up on trial. Voices echo 'this is what salvation must be like after a while.' And Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues, you can tell by the way she smiles."
Just the imagery and cleverness of this line made such an impression on me.
Everyone in history, since that painting came out, was like "oh Mona Lisa has such a mysterious smile, I wonder what Leonardo Da Vinci was thinking." But simple ol' Bob comes around and's like, "she's just got the blues, don't you see?"
There's so much to this song I could probably write quite a lot about it, but I'll quit while I'm ahead.