I’ll Keep it With Mine

One of the best Bob Dylan songs without a doubt is I’ll Keep it With Mine. It’s so good, of course, that PJ Harvey quotes it in her song Oh My Lover. “Give me your troubles, I’ll keep them with mine.”

There is, of course, the famous Nico version:

You will search, babe, at any cost.
But how long can you search for what is not lost?

Everybody will help you.
Some people are very kind.

But if I can save you any time…

Come on, give it to me, I’ll keep it with mine.

Bob Dylan, of course, sings it best. If you’re one of those people who “doesn’t like” his voice then of course, you’d not want to listen to him singing it but you have to go to the source on stuff like this. The source is that voice. The way he plays piano on this.

Turns out Marianne Faithful covered it too:

And here is Richard and Linda Thompson’s version:

I don’t know why the photo they chose for this is from the Manchurian Candidate but that’s how YouTube rolls, I guess.

Sometimes it feels like we’re living through a time where nothing new can be invented. No new films, no new music. Maybe that’s true but music and songwriting has been around for hundreds of years at least, maybe even thousands of years. It’s not going anywhere any time soon. Bob Dylans come around once in a while but they appear to be more rare than anyone could have ever figured. Probably that’s because Dylan’s brain is wired for this and he happened to get lucky that he found the exact right thing to do with it.

We all find ourselves on paths when we start out in life. We are met with people who will help us and people who will hurt us. If you’re lucky, you don’t get stuck with the latter. For Dylan, he found his gift way before anything else could destroy him. It’s not the same for everyone. You will find this is true if you live long enough to look back on your life and assess where you were going and where you ended up. Most of us don’t end up in the place we wanted to be, not even close, and we’re baffled by why we couldn’t get there. What got in the way? What didn’t we do right? What was done to us?

Some people believe we have choices in how we end up, that we can game the system – we can have self-esteem and confidence. We can get really lucky and chase after our dreams and catch a few of them. Women are raised to believe that dream is a mate. Men are raised to believe that they will rise to the occasion of their births and make something of themselves. Most people fall somewhere in between.

Some people also believe there is no “right” or “wrong” there is just how we live out our lives, with or without success. A friend of mine once tried to nurture a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest. They could not keep the bird as a pet and so when it grew to adult size they decided it was time to set it free. They had their video cameras ready to film the bird’s ascent into the wild. Th moment the bird was let out, a hawk swooped down and ate the poor defenseless bird. That is what life is. It’s meant for those who have a plan.