Let’s start with this. As anyone who has ever been to a writers conference or who has read books on writing knows, the big no-no in writing is cliches. Using cliches ranks up there with the “to be” verb as the premiere badge of laziness, the ultimate sin for writers.
To create alternative ways of saying things, however, requires imagination, a form of mental labor that the average writer evades because it ain’t all that easy to produce fresh and new ways of saying things in place of that which rolls easy off the tongue.
I begin here because when we hear a Dylan song, we frequently overlook what he’s achieved in his lyrics. This year Mr. Dylan received a Nobel Prize “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” Someone asks, “Can you give me an example?” Listen to these lyrics, written and composed in early 1964.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you
Though I know that evenin’s empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you
Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship
My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip
My toes too numb to step
Wait only for my boot heels to be wanderin’
I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way
I promise to go under it
