Tuesday 30 June 2015

Odessey & Oracle


In the kitchen, to the hissing sound of the burning kettle, Dylan’s “She’s Your Lover Now” was playing again and again. We were discussing the Bootleg Series and laughing about it: the song, possibly his best, was brilliantly misogynistic.

But that was weeks later.

Before that, I was lying on the floor playing ice-hockey with an adorable 9-year-old girl. His daughter. She hated losing and I wasn’t especially keen on winning. Rather, I was keen on The Zombies’ LP from 1968 playing in the background. Out of all the albums we were listening to in those days, Odessey & Oracle was her clear favourite (‘Dylan is too croaky’, she once told me; I think she only had time for “Ballad Of A Thin Man”, and that’s only because of the piano). This time, though, she was all in the game while I could not stop caring for cell 44 and those unfortunate casualties of the First World War.

I was lost in that album, irretrievably. And as for the game, she was winning and I was losing. Also, I enjoyed watching her smile triumphantly and give a little whoop each time the puck hit the back of my goal. Until at some point, score 23:7 in her favour, she gave me a particularly black look and screamed: “But you are not trying, you are losing to me on purpose!” 

So next time I tried. I tried hard. And… lost again. She whooped. “Time Of The Season” was seducing me with its melody and its heavy breathing.