If'n You Don't Know By Now
Bob Dylan: 'Don't Think Twice, It's All Right' + Breakups + Old friends + Jewish grandmas
MELLIFLUOUS TV VOICE: PREVIOUSLY, ON TRACKS ON TRACKS …
I sang the praises of Sam Cooke’s upbeat nightclub take on “Blowin’ in The Wind.” This piece was featured in
, bringing in a welcome crop of new subscribers, making the essay to #2 on the “most-read” chart, and prompting me to write a little re-introduction to what’s going on here.I launched TRACKS ON TEEVEE, a recurring series focusing on special moments of song in movies, on TV shows, and across the Internet’s vast video expanses.
And now, without further ado… guest writer Howard Axelrod on Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” breakups, old friends, Jewish grandmas, and more…
My best friend and I were walking around the block where I grew up, and he was telling me about his breakup. He was 23, I was 22, and this kind of postmortem—the tender gravity, the deep-water feeling of discoveries about our own lives and possibly life in general hidden nearby—was nothing new. We’d been college roommates. Most nights, he’d shown up in my bedroom doorway just after I turned off the light, as though stepping into the privacy of a confessional, wanting to talk about this poem, or that song, or that girl. In the year since graduation, he’d been playing minor league tennis, and I’d been in Italy writing a terrible novel, so we had some catching up to do. The break-up was top of the list.
I want to send her that Dylan song, he said, “Don’t Think Twice.”
To be walking down the hill I’d flown down on my ten-speed as a kid made me feel wise, and I had the feeling of seeing everything from a distance. Why? I said wisely.
So she’ll know how I feel. Well, there ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe, if’n you don’t know by now. That’s fucking perfect.
If’n, I repeated, appreciating its flick of anger, like casually swatting a fly.
And there ain’t no use in turning on your light, babe, the light I never knowed. That’s how it was. She never put on her light for me, you know?
Right, I know. But once she listens to the song, what’s supposed to happen?
He jerked his head up like a fractious horse. I don’t know. She’ll get it. And apologize. And she’ll know not to do it to the next guy.
And it won’t matter, like in the song, you won’t take her back. And then she’ll feel even worse?
Fucking A right!
Something hit me then, something about shame, which was as familiar as the hill we were on. Isn’t Dylan channeling a Jewish grandmother? I said. Don’t worry, don’t bother turning on the light, the light you never put on, don’t worry about me, don’t think twice, boychik, it’s fine, it’s alright.
I don’t know, he said. Maybe you’re projecting?
If you tell someone not to think about something, I said, what you’re really trying to do is to get them to think about it. At least every Jewish grandmother is.
I could see him coming around to my theory. But she’s not Jewish, he said, she won’t catch that.
So you want to shame her, as long as she won’t know that’s what you’re doing?
Right, he said. Shit. Right.
About ten years later, when I was going through my own break-up, I didn’t feel so distant and wise. One night, “Don’t Think Twice” came on in the grocery store, the same place I used to shop with my ex, and the lyrics felt so right, so justified. She had moved from Columbus to Boston to live with me, but still had never really committed to the relationship. You just kinda wasted my precious time, but don’t think twice, it’s alright: that was how I felt, or wanted to feel—my heartbreak turned to a cool departing glance that took her measure. I put the CD on when I got home, and at first the song kept working, a star witness for the case I’d been trying in my head, the one where I marshalled evidence to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she was the reason our relationship had failed and that I didn’t really care it was over.
But on the second play it turned on me. I give her my heart but she wanted my soul. The testimony was supposed to prove that my ex wanted too much, but now I heard an inadvertent indication of my guilt. She wanted something I couldn’t give her—that was true. But maybe it wasn’t my soul. Maybe it was something reasonable, like more closet space or a nice couch in the living room. Maybe I was the one who hadn’t fully committed. Exhibit A: the set of plastic drawers I’d bought her at The Container Store.
By that time, my best friend and I were living in the same city, getting dinner together once or twice a week. It wasn't the same as talking every night before bed, but he still knew more about my daily life than anyone else. When I told him Dylan was a slippery witness, he said, My therapist says every relationship is a dance. You’ve got to take responsibility for your part.
Can I still send her the song?
He laughed, which helped, and in a different way than the song had. With the song, I’d been feeling what I wanted to feel—guiltless and over it. With his laugh, and the decades-long history of our friendship behind it, I could start feeling what I really felt: sadness, regret.
My friend and I are both married now. We talk less often, and when we do, rarely does either of us mention a poem or song. I don’t know exactly when we slid into the kind of male friendship we used to laugh at—conversations mostly about sports and politics—but that’s what we have now. Since he missed my wedding, I’ve been tempted to pull away even more, and I’m fairly sure he has, too. But I know what I really need to do is send him a link to “Don’t Think Twice,” and say we’re too old, or too young, to be acting like Jewish grandmothers.
We never did too much talkin’ anyway—that just isn’t true. ✹
I love this essay. I’ve already sent it to two people this morning. One of those is my ex-husband. I had this cassette tape in my glovebox the night we met, he found it, and that was the beginning of 25 years.
Here you go--I posted this last week but forgot to come back around and share it here. My riff on your riff on Dylan's song, thinking more about the line that comes before: https://laurajeffries.substack.com/p/freewheelin-ekphrasis?r=23gpml