99. All You Have to Do Is Dream

It seems strange to me that a song as winning as this one should have neither been covered by a slew of appreciative artists, nor ever made it into Bob Dylan’s live sets, nor even become much of a cult favorite. But seeing as it’s one of the hundred-plus originals Dylan penned in 1967 alone, and that it appeared on neither the Great White Wonder in 1969 nor on The Basement Tapes in 1975, I can shrug and go on loving the song all on my (seeming, only seeming) lonesome.

Disc 5 of the Bootleg Series edition of the Basement Tapes, where you'll find All You Have to Do Is Dream, also features such marvels of Dylan/Band originals as Santa-Fe, Minstrel Boy, Wild Wolf, and Goin’ to Acapulco, a listen to any of which shows how telepathic the Big Pink musicians had gotten with each other at this late point. With most of the songs that have multiple takes, I have a clear favorite performance that I think is much stronger than the other(s), but not so here. I prefer the second take because there are more group vocals, because Robbie Robertson plays wilder guitar, and because of the drawn-out and ecstatic ending. But I also like the laid-back soul groove of the first take, and I love how in that performance the group vocals only appear at the end, like an emphatic punctuation mark.

I love that Dylan came up with floorbirds. There’s something so surrealistically pleasing about the image of winged creatures, whom we usually see flitting from branch to branch, tree to tree, or house-eave to house-eave, instead speeding along at cat level, so to speak—kind of like penguins sliding over the long ice, but more striking because I imagine the floorbirds have their wings going hard, like their air-borne compatriots do.

In Revolution in the Air, Clinton Heylin suggests that the floorbirds fly from door to door. I hear dawn to dawn, as Eyolf Østrem does. Both are fine images and I’m happy to nurture them with equal attention as I listen:

If they fly from door to door, we gain the further contrast of birds whose motion is limited to the inside of a house rather than to the “chains of the skyway,” but not caged like pet birds either. Loose and free, rather, albeit in limited dimensions. Much like Dylan in 1967, come to think of it.

If it’s from dawn to dawn that they’re flying, then the image suggests, with the earthiness we tend to expect from a Basement Tapes song, that it’s all right to stay rooted. You don’t need to soar fast and free through the air, it’s okay to move along on ground level, you’ll still get where you’re going. Much like Dylan in 1967, come to think of it. And thenceforth, for that matter, too: a musician doesn’t need to consistently sell out arenas like the Rolling Thunder Revue tried to in 1976. A musician can go from theater to theater for thirty-plus years, playing to small crowds, and still reach the dawn. All you have to do is dream…

…which isn’t a sentiment that’s always or necessarily even often true, I think. But it’s not a bad thing to keep in mind either.

In the ecstatic ending of the second take, I love how appreciatively Dylan lingers over the image he has made: “Look at that old floorbird, he just…!” “Look at that crazy floorbird!” “What a floorbird!” Yes. What a floorbird indeed.