Early one mornin’ the sun was shinin’
I was layin’ in bed
Wond’rin’ if she’d changed at all
If her hair was still red

Her folks they said our lives together
Sure was gonna be rough

The song begins in a usual manner raking strong feelings and emotion, trying to know if things have changed, if she is so or has changed with time after parting the ways. Does she remain changed or is the same persona seen before and with the same attachment and affection? Lying in bed, he thinks about her. Whose mistake is it for which things have taken such a route?

Life was going well, but how did it get tangled up in blue?

Tangled Up In Blue, we search for the meaning, but feel it at the crossroads, nonplussed as for to mean it, make it out what is its meaning, the sense of the lyric, the context of the script read in a narrative format of expression, but so moody, nasal and lyrically going is the gloss, the reflection made over with a passing reference but without any regret and remorse and the sense is one of basking in love and lost love without repenting for. Whose tangle is it that he is telling it? How did he get tangled up and with what? Did the blue of the sky draw him close to? No, it is not. Or the horizons touching the sea? It too may not be. Other than all this, we may try another question. Or is it something different from all that? This sounds true to some extent, comes to our expectation. It is a tangle of love and lost love that he is feeling and ruminating. How could it happen? How did things take a turn?

There is a joy of taking love philosophically. This happens in love relationship and can often be seen in the life of a musician, a singer. Woman comes and goes, as has it, but let the music of life continue, the song of life catching the cadence and rhythm. How is our beating of the heart, how is the pulse, the heartbeat? How the thrill and joy of life and living? Let’s enjoy. Let us ruminate. To be complacent is to come to a stop and to be untidy is to be hankering after. Perhaps he is whistling a different song, he is singing a different song of life. It is love which draws, it is love which repels, sometimes situations seem to be compelling upon, and one finds it hard to come by grappling with. As a singer, what has he got, what has he missed, what has he lost? He goes down the memory lanes of love and lost love to gather the remnants and these bouquets of his lyrics. The song of life he sings, the music of life he strings. But the lover in him is not loyal, the musician in him catchy and humming, the songster scripting emotions and feelings, the singer singing after placing the diary on the iron stand, trying to give vocals and voice.

Sometimes it is career which tells upon and sometimes it is man who does not remain committed to the promises made. But memory can never lie that. Man can forget relationships, break them, but it is the heart which knows. But it is a fault with Dylan he does not remain faithful as he keeps tangling up and breaking the chords. A romantic songwriter, he is like a hippie, a romantic, a trendy singer and a songwriter. He sings, taking the spirit in mind, the mood and temper of the audience, the current generation but has always fared well with the old and the young, as has been in light for decades. A pop artist, he is a pop heartbeat, an album singer. He is connected with the romance, thrill and joy side of life, the bands, performances, concerts and fusions, things of his own.

They never did like Mama’s homemade dress
Papa’s bankbook wasn’t big enough
And I was standin’ on the side of the road
Rain fallin’ on my shoes
Heading out for the East Coast
Lord knows I’ve paid some dues gettin’ through
Tangled up in blue

Tangled Up in Blue is one of the top songs of Bob Dylan which have come to us tumbling down from his pen, so replete with personal loss and grief, sweet remembrance and reminiscence but wrapped under a cover, shrouded in mystery. He reads the olden love-letter of his life through poetic reflections and broodings, tries to memorize reclining in an armchair. He could not believe that the blue would strike in such a way as the relationship came to an unexpected end. It was like a bolt from the blue. But unmindful of all that cursory autobiographical narrative, it glosses over in its way and comes to generalizations. The song evokes the memory and reminiscence of love, lost love with which it has been scripted. How did he come to love and like? How did he lose her? What happened? And broke the relationship? As he had expected so it did, and he could never believe it. But things take to in their way. Only for the blue blued he his song under the blue of the sky. A pop singer, he rocked and rolled with, jazzed he with music and song, bluing the scene.

What happened was to happen. If she had to exit the theatre, she exited herself from the theatre of life just like an artiste, a dramatic persona. A pop musician and a singer his life too is but the name of some pop music and pop song. The musician in him keeps it experimenting, the songwriter in him always keeps trying with new rhythms. Style is the man, goes the adage so take your life stylistically and the world is yours, yours.

Tangled Up in Blue, does it mean the blue of Nature or the blues of love? Written as a memory, a reflection, a lyrical tribute, it celebrates and sings of the free spirit of joy and independent living with a leaning towards nostalgia, lost love and strange reunion. Something one sacrifices for; something gets lost when a career takes a call upon and the desire to climb the steps of success clutches along for an onward journey. A pop musician and singer, he has loved to forget and miss his mistress only in the musical melody of the orchestra. A romantic, he falls short of being called a hippie, a bohemian, a wandering gypsy and even though he is not a gypsy, but surely is by heart. Going down the memory lanes of love, lost love, he climbs to the balcony and corridor of thought and idea and reflection to dream and delve deep into revelries of fancy and imagination. Where do the roads reach really? What is the gap between fantasy and reality? How has man to compromise as for career?

When he met her for the first time, she was but a married woman and as thus began his story of love, his story of romance. He remembers how it had been the dark night when he was travelling in a car, and he dropped her at a place. And how did the road bifurcate from each other? Could he restrict himself to him? 

She was married when we first met
Soon to be divorced
I helped her out of a jam, I guess
But I used a little too much force
We drove that car as far as we could
Abandoned it out West
Split up on a dark sad night
Both agreeing it was best

A woman’s heart is kind and tender and loving even the fissures seem to be developing, she bids him goodbye with a promise of meeting again. Here the lines tell of the break-up and dismemberment.

She turned around to look at me
As I was walkin’ away
I heard her say over my shoulder
“We’ll meet again someday on the avenue”
Tangled up in blue

He drifted away as for work and engagement to different places and the things appeared to be falling apart. He had some menial work to do, labors to be made and made too moving to as was the urgency of the hour. He tried his luck and was on the boil.

I had a job in the great north woods
Working as a cook for a spell
But I never did like it all that much
And one day the ax just fell
So I drifted down to New Orleans
Where I happened to be employed
Workin’ for a while on a fishin’ boat
Right outside of Delacroix

But wherever he went, the specter left him not behind, it went on haunting him and he felt it haunted by too. Leaving her, he went ahead, trying not to look behind. But it is the inner heart of man which feels the affection, sympathy and bonding even sometimes. The mind, even though he wants it not goes to, reverts back to the unsought about. The past can never be separated.

But all the while I was alone
The past was close behind
I seen a lot of women
But she never escaped my mind, and I just grew
Tangled up in blue

Situations change and so do circumstances. Accidently or incidentally there come upon some occasions on which even though one does not want to meet get. How will things get swapping positions? None can say it about. How can you avert the gaze of loved ones?

At the busy places of brittle business and clamor, he met her while stopping to take a break for beverage and drink. There he could manage it view her having cast a look by the way and it was good luck to find her behind his chair standing by with as and when the crowds thinned. She came and stood behind the chair to ask if he could recognize her.

She was workin’ in a topless place
And I stopped in for a beer
I just kept lookin’ at the side of her face
In the spotlight so clear
And later on as the crowd thinned out
I’s just about to do the same
She was standing there in back of my chair
Said to me, “Don’t I know your name?”

How do the same couple turn into strangers not known to each other? But here she is courteous enough. She comes, shows sympathies and exchanges words. She comes, stands by close and asks him if he can recognize her or has forgotten completely. Has he deleted her digitally out of his mind, to change the metaphor, just like the puffs taken and the stub smoked off, thrown off to be crushed under the hi-heel boots?

Instead of all that, she took care of what one would not expect. She had the capacity to read his mind, and she could read what he felt ashamed of.

I muttered somethin’ underneath my breath
She studied the lines on my face
I must admit I felt a little uneasy
When she bent down to tie the laces of my shoe
Tangled up in blue

Even though she had separated, she expected a hello from him. What was that made him silent? Instead of asking , talking, gesturing gently, she gave him a book of poems to hone in his lyrics and songs. It was her lyrics which helped him in getting enriched with.

She lit a burner on the stove
And offered me a pipe
“I thought you’d never say hello,” she said
“You look like the silent type”
Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century

The poems really helped him to get to know poetry, music and song more. The pipe she offered, the burner she burnt, went down in him, adding to hospitality and reception. She knew well what he wanted, how to serve him. In poem after poem, page after page, things seemed to be catching his craze and love, and he could identify with.

And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burnin’ coal
Pourin’ off of every page
Like it was written in my soul from me to you
Tangled up in blue

He lived with them in a basement down the stairs with music around in the cafes and revolution in the air. But there came a stage when the protagonist seemed to be grappling with the slaves which led to his collapse. She too felt it compelled to sell what she had. A state of feeling froze inside within. But when the things came to naught, he withdrew it and turned indifferent. 

But to escape from, can it be the answer? It can never be as it is but a trait of an escapist. The romantic flies away when fraught with bare reality. The gypsy heart can never be believed always. Where will the hippie go finally? The bivouac cannot be the shelter for ever. Under the blue sky, one cannot be life-long. The hypnotisms of the blue eyes now should quell the sea waves of the surging heart. Let there be quiet. Let there be peace.

I lived with them on Montague Street
In a basement down the stairs
There was music in the cafés at night
And revolution in the air
Then he started into dealing with slaves
And something inside of him died
She had to sell everything she owned
And froze up inside
And when finally the bottom fell out
I became withdrawn
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin’ on like a bird that flew
Tangled up in blue

What do the people say or the folks who do not care about whoever is the speaker. What he got to know is to enjoin. How are things joined, not broken and separated? Who are what, who have said what is no business of his, it is no matter of concern and reckoning. He has got to know about life, the lessons it teaches, the instructions it gives.

Leave you the talk of the mathematicians and carpenters’ wives. Let me be a carpenter of my own learning carpentry. Let him join, enjoin. Now he does not need anyone, anybody’s service. Enough is enough, now he has learnt what he got to do, what he ought to have. Now the illusion is broken. How did he tangle up with the blue? How did the blue tangle up?

So now I’m goin’ back again
I got to get to her somehow
All the people we used to know
They’re an illusion to me now
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenters’ wives
Don’t know how it all got started
I don’t know what they’re doin’ with their lives
But me, I’m still on the road
Headin’ for another joint
We always did feel the same
We just saw it from a different point of view
Tangled up in blue