A Watchtower Parable

 

Parables turn conventional thinking inside-out to reach a deeper understanding of things.

Parables put elusive ironies into plain speech and images, there to be sifted for clarification.

While I was compiling the previous two Notes from Halibut Point, Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" played incessantly in my mind. Also Jimi Hendrix's electrifying version of the song delivered on the Isle of Wight in 1968, that caused Dylan to radically amplify his own performances thereafter.

The lyrics feature a conversation between a joker and a thief as they ride toward a watchtower. On one level they seem to refer to getting beyond a sense of victimhood and exploitation at the hands of the music industry.

There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief.

Business men, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth

None will level on the line
Nobody offered his word.

No reason to get excited
The thief, he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But, uh, but you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us stop talkin' falsely now
The hour's getting late.

Halibut Point Watchtower, moonlight 2025

All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants, too
Well, uh, outside in the cold distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
And the wind began to howl, hey

All along the watchtower

All along the watchtower.

Great Blue Heron

Bob Dylan is the master of teasing, provocative metaphors that reveal both the glories and inequities of life. Eventually he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In writing "All Along the Watchtower" he likely drew on these lines in the Book of Isaiah.

Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink: arise ye princes, and prepare the shield./For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth./And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with much heed./...And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.

 

The previous postings on the Halibut Point watchtower noted its roles in national defense and a promontory for birds. Dylan's artistry challenges to vigilance in keeping faithful to our values in character and culture.