For more than 50 years, I’ve often thought of this Bob Dylan song.

Today I was learning how to use a feature in my recording software, and I needed a vocal take to use as an example. I’ve been much concerned this winter with events that seem (as Thomas Hardy once wrote) to be “in the breaking of nations.” I guess I thought that busying myself with learning might let me take a break from that dread, and when I opened up a mic to sing, this was the song that came out of my mouth. I think it asked to be here today.

Songs and poems can do that. They aren’t necessarily mystic fortune-telling omens — they’re more at waves in the air or memory that come in to rattle your bones and vibrate your vocal cords or synapses.

The story in “All Along the Watchtower’s”  lyric is a repeating loop, the last verse’s approaching riders are the two foreground characters arriving to speak and open the song.  So, “All Along the Watchtower’s”  story doesn’t unfold — it refolds — and I chose to point that out in my version today. To illustrate this song for the video I dealt out some tarot cards. I don’t believe those cards are omniscient omens either, but the pictures can flip and spread for a receiving eye and mind. Perhaps all symbols, songs, fables, poems, pictures — all foolishness and wisdom — rotate around themselves like that.

Is this short post a break from Black History Month, so soon in this February? Well, maybe, but the song “All Along the Watchtower” is  best known from a monumental version performed by Jimi Hendrix.

Here’s the video of my version:

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