Bob Dylan Song #70: Visions of Johanna

Most of us are familiar, I assume, with Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett's legendary play about two men's comic misadventures waiting for a person that never shows up. There have been a legion of interpretations since the play's release, casting Godot as God Himself, or turning the story into an allegory about the Cold War, all in the vain hopes of trying to pin down meaning onto this most elusive of plays. To me, the interpretation of the play is the simplest - Man's eternal search for the ethereal, for something that we desperately want but always seems just outside of our reach. That's why you've got two characters that always stay in the same place despite constant entreaties to each other to just get up and leave, doing everything possible to stave off "terrible silence", no matter how trivial or slight. Forgive the philosophical nonsense for a second, but that sounds a lot like what we do with our own lives, falling into endless routines and habits in order to avoid the pain of searching for a deeper meaning which, by definition, will always be just outside of our grasp. No wonder Waiting for Godot has been so enduring for so long - we're endlessly fascinated by our own existence, and the play touches on both the tragic and comic sides.

"Visions of Johanna" doesn't quite touch that same level of deeper meaning, but the idea is still the same to me - the narrator, with visions of a woman that never makes a physical appearance throughout the course of the song, finds himself in a world both dully realistic and totally surreal, and yet all that matters are those visions that he sees. And just like Godot, people have been trying to figure out just who Johanna actually is (I kinda hope it's not Joan Baez, not just because I don't think she needs that ego boost, but because the song would lose something if it was just pining for his ex-lover). My personal favorite of those theories is that "Johanna" is related to "Gehenna", a Hebrew word for Hell - and considering that the song's narrator appears to be some kind of purgatory, that might actually make some sense. As for me, much like Godot, I think of Johanna as a basic term for that which we cannot reach, no matter what we do.

What really gets me, after having heard the song X number of times in its electric and acoustic forms, is just how desolate the world of the song feels to me. I mean, Dylan wrote a song called "Desolation Row" that isn't as desolate as the landscape he paints here, in all its urban burned-out glory. To me, that line in the first verse is the key to what Dylan had on his mind - "we sit here stranded/Though we all do our best to deny it". And in the song we see that isolation everywhere we turn, from the lone companion of the song (Louise) who always seems to be keeping her distance, to the useless little boy lost muttering to himself, to that vast museum where infinity goes up on trial (I picture the halls of the Louvre, so famously run through in Band of Outsiders, utterly devoid of any human visitors, only the paintings and the all-encompassing vastness they inhabit), and to the narrator himself, whose only constant companion are those visions of that whom we never, ever get to see. And, in a way, that narrator is us, constantly struggling to find meaning in our lives, rarely ever going so far as to outright admit that we are.

And I know that there are going to be many of you partial to the Live 1966 version, where Dylan bites off his syllables with particular gusto and the acoustic accompaniment throws those lyrics into even sharper relief. But, to me, the studio version is one of his great accomplishments, the perfect melding of one of his greatest lyrics and a musical accompaniment that meshes to it with Superglue-like strength. I still remember one description of "Visions of Johanna"'s finest musical moment being that perfect little guitar lick after the "infinity goes on trial" line, and Robbie Robertson is certainly at his economical best on this song. And a lot of credit needs to be given to the drums/bass rhythm section that so gracefull holds down the track, and Dylan's stinging harmonica at the end of every verse. But, to me, it's the organ (Kooper again?) that really stands out to me, a ghostly apparition that almost acts like Johanna's representative within the song, on the outskirts of the track without really feeling like a part of it the way Robertson's guitar. In fact, a goofup I've always loved serves as example of that organ's separate nature - in the final verse, as Dylan goes into the fourth line of the pre-chorus the organ ramps up like it does before every chorus, only Dylan doesn't go into the chorus and the organ has to go back into ramp-up mode. That moment means as much to me, in its own way, as any lyric in the actual song.

In a funny way, Dylan could very well be talking about himself in "Visions of Johanna"; after all, he talked on and on about how the "thin, wild mercury sound" and how this song was the closest he ever came to capturing what he always heard in his head. Maybe that's what the visions mean to him - not an image of what we mean as humans, but what he meant as a musician and what he strived for in every song that he wrote. And doesn't that seem like something that might preoccupy him every day of his life? Imagine being a man who has written great song after great song all his life, waking up every day knowing that you never really reached what you feel you can reach as a musician, and that no matter how many people love what you've written and sung it just isn't good enough for the inner critic inside yourself. Who knows, maybe Bob still feels that way today. For his sake, I hope not. If Vladimir and Estragon are any indication, that wait can be absolute hell.

Author's note: EBDS is taking a break for the holiday season - "Visions of Johanna" seemed like a good place to close up shop for 2008. I look forward to picking up where I left off in 2009. Thank you all once again for reading and commenting; my big resolution for '09 will to be more of an active commenter, so that it doesn't feel like I'm putting you on an island, but that you're as much a part of this site as I am. Have a great holiday, whichever yours may be, and see you in the New Year!