Talking WWIII Blues - Bob Da

Talkin’ World War III Blues
WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN

Some time ago a crazy dream came to me

I dreamt I was walkin’ into World War Three

I went to the doctor the very next day

To see what kinda words he could say

He said it was a bad dream

I wouldn’t worry ’bout it none, though

They were my own dreams and they’re only in my head



I said, “Hold it, Doc, a World War passed through my brain”

He said, “Nurse, get your pad, this boy’s insane”

He grabbed my arm, I said, “Ouch!”

As I landed on the psychiatric couch

He said, “Tell me about it”



Well, the whole thing started at 3 o’clock fast

It was all over by quarter past

I was down in the sewer with some little lover

When I peeked out from a manhole cover

Wondering who turned the lights on



Well, I got up and walked around

And up and down the lonesome town

I stood a-wondering which way to go

I lit a cigarette on a parking meter and walked on down the road

It was a normal day



Well, I rung the fallout shelter bell

And I leaned my head and I gave a yell

“Give me a string bean, I’m a hungry man”

A shotgun fired and away I ran

I don’t blame them too much though, I know I look funny



Down at the corner by a hot-dog stand

I seen a man

I said, “Howdy friend, I guess there’s just us two”

He screamed a bit and away he flew

Thought I was a Communist



Well, I spied a girl and before she could leave

“Let’s go and play Adam and Eve”

I took her by the hand and my heart it was thumpin’

When she said, “Hey man, you crazy or sumpin’

You see what happened last time they started”



Well, I seen a Cadillac window uptown

And there was nobody aroun’

I got into the driver’s seat

And I drove down 42nd Street

In my Cadillac. Good car to drive after a war



Well, I remember seein’ some ad

So I turned on my Conelrad

But I didn’t pay my Con Ed bill

So the radio didn’t work so well

Turned on my record player—

It was Rock-a-day Johnny singin’, “Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa

Our Love’s A-gonna Grow Ooh-wah, Ooh-wah”



I was feelin’ kinda lonesome and blue

I needed somebody to talk to

So I called up the operator of time

Just to hear a voice of some kind

“When you hear the beep it will be three o’clock”

She said that for over an hour

And I hung up



Well, the doctor interrupted me just about then

Sayin’, “Hey I’ve been havin’ the same old dreams

But mine was a little different you see

I dreamt that the only person left after the war was me

I didn’t see you around”



Well, now time passed and now it seems

Everybody’s having them dreams

Everybody sees themselves

Walkin’ around with no one else

Half of the people can be part right all of the time

Some of the people can be all right part of the time

But all of the people can’t be all right all of the time

I think Abraham Lincoln said that

“I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours”

I said that

Copyright © 1963, 1966 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1994 by Special Rider Music

Bergman - Revisited_Summer with Monika (Sommaren med Monika) - 1953

Summer with Monika (Sommaren med Monika) is a 1953 twelfth film by Ingmar Bergman.

The Film surveys the life of a totally irresponsible fellow with his father in the hospital and he chucking his job and eloping with a girl, thinking he has rebelled against the world, spending his time with the girl in isolated places - dreaming - leading a low life and illusive happiness. This is what is comprehended in the beginning.

Afterwards it’s like a nice guy meets a rotten girl story. The female protagonist is depicted as a totally reckless, unstable minded and unlikeable character.

Monika doesn't get along with her parents. Her only escape from the harsh family life is romantic cinema and her boyfriend, Harry. The distressing life of Monika and Harry pushes them to escape the city to “Sweden’s backwaters” during the summer. When the summer's ends and they come back, the love ends. The worldly realism starts to eat into romanticism.

This work deals with love, romance between teens, youth, initial infatuation, abandoning family, teenage unwed sex, young parenthood (which is still a current subject of worry and discussions), hunger, marriage, disillusionment, despair, frustration, abandoning the unplanned child, brutality of life, delirium, reality, boredom and ultimate disaster.

The Film shows the truth in a very realistic light, without any glamour and dramatization.

One of the best amongst many was an incredible scene when Monika gazes at the camera directly, whilst the Big Band Jazz plays in the background, perhaps making it one of the first endeavor by any director to break the 4th wall. The gaze of Monika was full of meaning – the director left it to the viewer to interpret.

By the way, it was after watching Lars Ekborg, the leading actor, one is reminded of the later days Leonardo DiCaprio.


Despite a little bit of nudity, this would be a fantastic film to show the teens who think they know everything and plunges into serious and passionate relationship before they are even psychologically ready.

Bergman - Revisited_Secrets of Women (Swedish: Kvinnors väntan) - 1952

The master of flashbacks – Ingmar Bergman in his 11th movie Secrets of Women (1952) explores Infidelity, boredom, frigidity, extra-maritial affairs, baby out of affairs, persistent unfaithfulness - creating disharmony amongst the couple, a lot of chit-chat about this and that, mostly of weather.

Four Women, Marta, Annette, Karin and Rakel are halting at the family summer house on a Swedish Island with their children and Marta's 17-year-old sister Maj. At some stage in time while waiting for their husbands, Martin, Fredrik, Paul and Eugen, who are all brothers and part of a family firm, to return home from a business trip in Copenhagen, the four women starts to carve up stories about their affairs and relationships which makes a deep impression on Marta's sister Maj, who is in love with Annette and Paul's 22-year-old son Henrik.

Incest?

While the women wait for their husbands in the cottage, the immediate question arises – how close are you to your husband? Or does all marriage ends with Good Morning-Goodbye-Good Night etc without any true intimacy or hearty discussions.

Not a very depressing work of Bergman like his later films

By the way even those days, the Swedes had this ethical notion not to drink and drive !

Bergman - Revisited_ Summer Interlude (Sommarlek-1950)

The 10th Film by Bergman called Summer Interlude (Sommarlek-1950) is a story of lost love, carefree youth, brief teenage love affair, tragic end to the affair and its consequence to future life and sentimental stuff.


There are plenty of wonderful close-ups and shots of Stockholm, old people gossiping about a young woman, lamentations of lost youth and love, the strong fear that youth and life will vanish someday, in the darkness, in the unknown, in the nothingness, getting nostalgic, sorrow and a recollection by the female protagonist on how life goes on with the living while the male protagonist lies dead and decaying. Question again arises on the meaning of life, Such is existence.

For the first time, Bergman introduces us to the character’s view who claims that there is no god. And if there is one, she hates him, she shall hate god until she is dead. If god was in front of her, she would spit on his face. She will hate him all her life. She will never forget. She will hate him for life.

A bit of a contradiction here - If you claim there is no god – you possible can’t hate him – for to do so, you acknowledge his existence.

It is not a philosophy-heavy, mentally-straining analysis about how human being functions film.

Ah, that youthfulness, whiling away the time, picking up wild strawberries, walking around aimlessly, jumping from one small cliff to another, throwing pebbles and small rocks in the sea, stone skipping, rowing away in the summer sun, falling in love – overall doing nothing


It was difficult, awkward and absurd trying to hide all that wrinkles and creases in a flashback from a twenty eight year old woman to fifteen year old young girl

At one stage too much scenes and some of them prolonged, of puppy love, may bore and irritate a serious viewer


The scene where a circle of dark cloud was captured when the young protagonist has an accident in the cliff is astounding. The dark cloud fades to become the face of death.

Some original scores, some scores by Chopin -
* Nocturne No.2 in Eb Major, Op.9
* 12 Etudes Op. 10 No. 12 in C Minor - 'Revolutionary'
filled the void with of course the Waltz from Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

Bergman - Revisited_To Joy (Till glädje) - 1950

To Joy (Swedish: Till glädje) is a 1950, 9th Film by Bergman and mainly explores the complicated human relationship especially in marriage coupled with the destructiveness of marriage….

The leading and not a very particularly likeable character is a mediocre violinist and has an incredibly inflated view of his abilities - actually quite unpleasant, self-centered, self-involved, pessimistic, disgusting and neurotic, like most of Bergman's films………. It's when the character starts to communicate that the trouble really begins to brew.


Drunken outbursts, insecurity, hysterical (and in the verge of insanity) protagonist, irritable, silly, crazy and stupid character, the protagonist opines that marriage is both time consuming and nerve-racking, how he hates children and does not want them, questions if the world is good enough to come to and that he would prefer extinction, that even after marriage he feels he is all alone and wants to be left alone, lots of word diarrhea

Somewhere one of the Bergman’s character mentions that there is so much indifference, laxity and misery in body and mind. In the end one doesn’t believe in anything. One thinks that’s how it is. That’s the whole meaning. There has to be a meaning. If there isn’t then one has to make one up. Otherwise one can’t live. Existential crisis.


One can see the influence of Johan August Strindberg, a contemporary of Henrik Ibsen, on Ingmar Bergman.


Classical music was used quite abundantly. Bergman tried to show what happens (while rehearsing) if one plays his own tune in an orchestra - Nothing by chaos surfaces. And when the conductor takes over – music emerges.

The film starts with:

Beethoven’s Symphony 9 in D Minor, Op 125, “Choral” : IV. Presto - Allegro assai - Choral Finale/

In Between :

Egmont, by Beethoven – overture to the tragedy, Op. 84 - pieces for the 1787 play of the same name by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe/

The Bartered Bride (overture) by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana/

Mozart’s Flute Quartet in A major, K.298/

Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, I Allegro molto appassionato/

Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64, II Andante (C major)/

Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64, III Allegretto non troppo – Allegro molto vivace (E major)/

Mozart’s The Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183, III Menuetto & Trio/

Beethoven’s Symphony No 1 in C Major, Op 21, IV Finale, Adagio – Allegro molto e vivace/ E

And ends again with a repeat of:

Beethoven’s Symphony 9 in D Minor, Op 125, “Choral” : IV. Presto - Allegro assai - Choral Finale.


By the way one would wonder how one of the characters (the conductor) got his thoughts and images across audience, while the leading actor was in a flashback mode?

Bergman - Revisited_‘This Can't Happen Here’ – 1950 (Sånt händer inte här)

‘This Can't Happen Here’ – 1950 (Sånt händer inte här) is somehow an odd, eighth, un-Bergman film throwing in conspiracy, connivance, endeavoring to bump off people, and secret envoys.

No wonder, Ingmar Bergman being a serious man, this film looked like a joke and the title suits the film. Expected much from Bergman – but this was a stupid movie. Period.

Bergman - Revisited_Thirst (Törst) – 1949

Inescapable, difficult and doomed human relationships, the title “Thirst” (Törst - 1949) interprets human being as thirsty for anything which will alleviate his existential restlessness.

Human beings trying to escape the drudgery of existence in brief moments of miserable relationship, with extra marital affairs ending in abortion, frustration from existence, Lesbianism, hysterical women, dominant men, threshold of nervous breakdown and suicide reflects an ongoing pattern of Bergman plunging himself into the hopelessness of life

In the middle of the film we see at last a little bit of joy from Bergman when he displays ‘joie de vivre’ in the theatre whilst the girls dance to old ragtime music. Probably the only piece of radiance so far leading to his 7th film.