Just had breakfast at the break of dawn = the first meal in the morning after a night of fasting; "breaking" the fast. We expect the break of day, the break of dawn, broken relationships, broken English...we understand these metaphors without problems.
Tom Wait's *Well, the moon is broken / And the sky is cracked* is frightening and archaic but not too surprising. *there is a crack, a crack, in everything, that's how the light gets in* (L. Cohen, Rumi, the psychoanalyst V. Tausk).
"Ain't no use jiving
Ain't no use joking
Everything is broken".
(Dylan, Everything is broken, Album: Oh Mercy).
A cracked or broken moon can easily be imagined, painted, photoshopped and is - at least for me - less disturbing on a poetic level than the unexpected "break of noon" in Dylans "It's Alright, Ma", one of his most powerful songs. One could write a book about every line of these lyrics, and this is only the beginning:
"Darkness at the break of noon
shadows even a silver spoon.
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know to soon
there is no sense in trying."
There is no sense in trying? Let's try anyway. What a powerful poetic nightmare. When Dylan sings "It's alright, Ma, I'm only bleeding?" we think: "I don't think so! You're not only bleeding, we are not only bleeding - everything is broken!"
Maybe Dylan has read Arthur Koestler's kafkaesk novel Sonnenfinsternis (Darkness at Noon), in which the hero becomes a victim of the Stalinist show trials: "To understand you know to soon - there is no sense in trying" / "Everything is broken".
To end on a lighter note: I'd rather have frogs inside my socks! (cf. #MyDailyDylan 1).
Tom Wait's *Well, the moon is broken / And the sky is cracked* is frightening and archaic but not too surprising. *there is a crack, a crack, in everything, that's how the light gets in* (L. Cohen, Rumi, the psychoanalyst V. Tausk).
"Ain't no use jiving
Ain't no use joking
Everything is broken".
(Dylan, Everything is broken, Album: Oh Mercy).
A cracked or broken moon can easily be imagined, painted, photoshopped and is - at least for me - less disturbing on a poetic level than the unexpected "break of noon" in Dylans "It's Alright, Ma", one of his most powerful songs. One could write a book about every line of these lyrics, and this is only the beginning:
"Darkness at the break of noon
shadows even a silver spoon.
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know to soon
there is no sense in trying."
There is no sense in trying? Let's try anyway. What a powerful poetic nightmare. When Dylan sings "It's alright, Ma, I'm only bleeding?" we think: "I don't think so! You're not only bleeding, we are not only bleeding - everything is broken!"
Maybe Dylan has read Arthur Koestler's kafkaesk novel Sonnenfinsternis (Darkness at Noon), in which the hero becomes a victim of the Stalinist show trials: "To understand you know to soon - there is no sense in trying" / "Everything is broken".
To end on a lighter note: I'd rather have frogs inside my socks! (cf. #MyDailyDylan 1).
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