Tuesday, May 12, 2020

still in this all-night café




     It was weird -- last week after I posted the lyrics to Bob Dylan's "Watching the River Flow," I was reading over it and realized that even if you are not listening to the song at the time, if you just read over the lyrics, the music seems to flow out to you, somehow.  (Well -- I said it was weird....)


     If one reads over the lyrics, either silently, or aloud -- like a "rap" -- you can hear, or sense, chord progressions and beat:

     What's the matter with me
I don't have much to say
Daylight sneakin' through the window
And I'm still in this all-night café...


Bob Dylan Greatest Hits Vol 1 Rar


    The instrumental at the beginning -- the primal yet controlled musical shriek -- is, I believe, the "five-string" guitar-playing Keith Richards writes about in his book, Life.

     Read this part out loud, and see where it takes you.

People disagreein' everywhere you look
Makes you wanna stop and read a book
Why only yesterday I saw somebody on the street
That was -- really shook!

But this ol' river keeps on rollin' though
No matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow

And as long as it does I'll just sit here
And watch the river flow

Watching the river flow " | a track by Bob Dylan from the … | Flickr

     It's kind of like when I was blogging the film, Manhattan Murder Mystery here, I came to realize as I went along that the story, per se, was simply and naturally bubbling up right out of the dialogue.  People just conversed, remarked, observed, lobbied -- and a story emerged.

Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)

     I've been sort of watching how stories come out -- how they are told -- on Netflix, I clicked on Last Tango In Halifax, a product of the BBC...

     I didn't not-like it:  I thought it was good, but then I started to feel like, Oh my gosh, it's one thing after another!  At one point I thought, "OK, this is soap opera, I'm not watching this."  

But then -- it was good -- and I was trying to learn about story, so I kept it on...  It is so well-acted.  The British have really high standards for writing, and acting, I think.


     I had to kind of laugh at one point (and some of it is funny) -- What next?  Come on!  It's always another "drama" erupting.

     Thought, OK, the couple gets married pretty early in the story -- wouldn't their friends and relations begin to wonder, "How come all these dramas and emergencies started happening, one right after the other, since their wedding?  What's up with that?!"



     Also, after noticing how often some character will say to another, "I need to talk to you," or "I've got to tell you something..." I started thinking, "No - NO!  Don't sit down with him! - Don't listen, don't let her tell you anything!!"

     LOL, like in horror movies where the main character starts down the stairs to the dark basement and the audience is, "NO!  Don't go down there!!..."

171 (tie) – Notorious (1946), dir. Alfred Hitchcock | Fan With a ...


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