It’s the high that you feel when you’re tired from doing a lot of things and have done them well. You’re tired (“my weariness amazes me”), but feel energetic and good. So you don’t want to sleep. He’s walking in NYC at maybe 6:00 in the morning feeling good in this way. The streets are empty and dead. “The ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming”. Yet he seeks sensory stimulation of some sort because he’s not “dead” — though weary, he’s feeling so alive. Then he gets behind a tambourine man who’s walking along, playing the instrument. Mental stimulation he so needs, amid the otherwise deadness. That’s all it takes, in that state of mind. He’s elated by and for that moment reveres the tambourine man. It’s a momentary kind of unique feeling which Dylan perfectly lyricizes for this song. Tomorrow he may see the tambourine man and not even notice.
It’s the high that you feel when you’re tired from doing a lot of things and have done them well. You’re tired (“my weariness amazes me”), but feel energetic and good. So you don’t want to sleep. He’s walking in NYC at maybe 6:00 in the morning feeling good in this way. The streets are empty and dead. “The ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming”. Yet he seeks sensory stimulation of some sort because he’s not “dead” — though weary, he’s feeling so alive. Then he gets behind a tambourine man who’s walking along, playing the instrument. Mental stimulation he so needs, amid the otherwise deadness. That’s all it takes, in that state of mind. He’s elated by and for that moment reveres the tambourine man. It’s a momentary kind of unique feeling which Dylan perfectly lyricizes for this song. Tomorrow he may see the tambourine man and not even notice.