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Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble,
Ancient footprints are everywhere.
You can almost think that you're seein' double
On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs.
Got to hurry on back to my hotel room,
Where I've got me a date with Botticelli's niece.
She promised that she'd be right there with me
When I paint my masterpiece.
Oh, the hours I've spent inside the Coliseum,
Dodging lions and wastin' time.
Oh, those mighty kings of the jungle, I could hardly stand to see 'em,
Yes, it sure has been a long, hard climb.
Train wheels runnin' through the back of my memory,
When I ran on the hilltop following a pack of wild geese.
Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody
When I paint my masterpiece.
Sailin' 'round the world in a dirty gondola.
Oh, to be back in the land of Coca-Cola!
I left Rome and landed in Brussels,
On a plane ride so bumpy that I almost cried.
Clergymen in uniform and young girls pullin' muscles,
Everyone was there to greet me when I stepped inside.
Newspapermen eating candy
Had to be held down by big police.
Someday, everything is gonna be diff'rent
When I paint my masterpiece.
Ancient footprints are everywhere.
You can almost think that you're seein' double
On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs.
Got to hurry on back to my hotel room,
Where I've got me a date with Botticelli's niece.
She promised that she'd be right there with me
When I paint my masterpiece.
Oh, the hours I've spent inside the Coliseum,
Dodging lions and wastin' time.
Oh, those mighty kings of the jungle, I could hardly stand to see 'em,
Yes, it sure has been a long, hard climb.
Train wheels runnin' through the back of my memory,
When I ran on the hilltop following a pack of wild geese.
Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody
When I paint my masterpiece.
Sailin' 'round the world in a dirty gondola.
Oh, to be back in the land of Coca-Cola!
I left Rome and landed in Brussels,
On a plane ride so bumpy that I almost cried.
Clergymen in uniform and young girls pullin' muscles,
Everyone was there to greet me when I stepped inside.
Newspapermen eating candy
Had to be held down by big police.
Someday, everything is gonna be diff'rent
When I paint my masterpiece.
Lyrics submitted by gracelyn
Track duration: 04:18
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There are famous paintings of the "Spanish Steps" and "Inside the Colosseum".
And I'm reasonably sure that in the "original" Bob's date was with "Botticelli's VENUS",
a very famous painting. Not his niece.
I don't know about the verse in Brussels. Maybe the clergymen, young girls and newspapermen
are subjects of more modern paintings, that "greeted" Bob when he stepped inside a museum.
Or maybe the verse is just the stuff of Bob's life. It might be obstructing his painting
his masterpiece, or at least not inspiring it. The irony being that it did inspire him to
"paint" this masterpiece of a song.
I don't know anything. Just puttin it out there.
Of course, it's a little bigger than that; the course of civilization is, in a way, mirrored in the individual. This goes along with the observation that as Dylan matured, he stopped talking about the social and started talking about the personal. Here, both are wedded perfectly.
He starts in Rome; this is mankind's religious era. When he talks about "dodging lions and wasting time", he's talking about how apologetics (groomed argumentation on behalf of your religion) is wasted energy.
The reference to the Spanish Stairs is an allusion to the idea that, in spite of the seeming linear structure to pageantry, there are pockets of transcendence. The Spanish Stairs is a famous hang-out for hip, dropped-out types; ostensibly people who transcend the pageant. So: is it ancient Rome, or modern Rome you see when you watch these hipsters smoking dope and making out on the Spanish Stairs? Can't tell; perhaps you're seeing double, eh?
He moves on to Brussels; this is the post-religious era. There is a strong sense of the practical secularism sweeping Europe. The Enlightenment coming to a kind of sturdy (and not uncomical) fruition.
And though it all is the powerful thread; the time will come when the hero paints his masterpiece. Is this the culmination of consciousness? God finally realizing the culmination of the dream he started when he chose to put this chain of events into motion?
It's always been the closing lines that have made me think this: "... had to be held down by big police. But, someday everythings gonna be different....". As if everything else described was some crazy early 20's romp thru Europe, taking acid, causing some major commotion, and getting arrested for it.
I dunno... but that's what it's always meant to me.
*shrug*
maybe not so much about specifically doing drugs through europe (although it certainly fits no doubt in bob's biography at that point in his life as well as in the lyrics themselves) but in a general sense as well. you are very right i think that it is almost like a has been or a a never was preaching to no one in particular about how it will all be good in a bit...
cheers
The streets of Rome are the paths taken by all people on their quest for their soul mate. The colesium is the act itself of finding someone. Sometimes you dodge lions (deal with the pain of a relationship), other times it seems that your just wasting time with someone you really don't care for. The mighty kings of the jungle are the one's that make it seem so easy, that they can just walk up to another and start up with the sweet talk, or the couples that just seem so perfect. Rome, Brussels, the plane ride, they all symbolize the long journey you must take along the way. His masterpiece, then, would be the love that he's been looking for all this time.
"everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody..." might be my favorite line ever.