“I wake up in the morning, fold my hands and pray for rain, I got a headful of ideas that are driving me insane. It’s a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor…”.

This morning I folded my hands in prayer for a friend in need. It had nothing to do with the song here above quoted, but the line emerged in my mind and kept lingering as the day went by. This actually happens to me every now and then, I do something, can be anything really, and my mind subconsciously connects with some lyrics I heard a long time ago. It is funny, because often I don´t even notice at first, and when I do, a new meaning, still very appropriate to what is going on around me, emerges. It seems to say something about how one’s subconscious works, soaking in data by itself, displaying it at the right time.

Of course, I spent many years listening to songs, contemplating their meaning, not the least the songs by Bob Dylan, who is a favorite of mine. This song, “Maggie’s Farm”, originally appeared on the album “Bringing it all back home”, and was released in March 1965. By June 1966 he had not only also released the Album “Highway 61 Revisited” but the double-album “Blonde on Blonde” too. Doubtlessly, he was in an expansive state of creation. Well, he still is some 60 years later. Which is kind of amazing. Anyhow, this particular song kept lingering in the back of my mind, and at some point I had to give it some attention.

I realized that it came to me as I was folding my hands in prayer, which was fine, but then a deepened sense of relevance found in the lyrics struck me. The song seemed to be an existential contemplation of many facets.

“I pray for rain”, - what is that? Well, it is begging for dramatic, urgent change of Biblical proportions.

“I got a headful of ideas, that are driving me insane”, - what is that? It is a frank description of a creative mind that digests overwhelmingly many layers of truth, at the same time understanding the impossibility of describing them all, knowing that no one will ever understand it anyway.

“It’s a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor”, - what is that? It is the powers that be, - here personized by “Maggie”, - furthermore, it is a recognition of the greatness we all hold inside, which gets shamefully wasted on tasks far below our capacity.

Such was my momentary interpretation. And how did it relate to me? Well, sometimes I feel that I am in bondage, that I cannot escape, that I am trapped by the circumstances of the world, bound to scrub the floor, so to speak. Society holds me down, - history holds me down, - a lack of understanding holds me down. So, the song told me something about the world, and it told me something about myself, and finally it illumined why I dig Bob Dylan, - he always seem to have trusted his own inner voice, even when he’s been up against the tide. And that is why he always been my hero. And the fact that he is a marvelous poet, of course.