Bob Dylain's "Sea of the Drowned:"
Oh, the laughter of the drowned
It’s being lost in the storm
And the piercing prayers of the found
Where the judgment is still unknown
In the sea of the drowned
In the echo of whale games
In the cities of the cheated
In the midnight haze
In the narrow lanes of traffic
And the sounds of distant bells
And the chimes of sunset
It’s being lost in the storm
And the bells of dawn are ringing in the night
Like a tune that was played before
I saw you in the wild wind
I wasn’t sure if I loved you or not
It was so easy to love you, babe
You were so close and apart of me
I’m still hurting from the visions of dreams
And the smell of rotten meat
I was lyin’ down in the reeds
In the shade behind the wall
Oh, the pleasures of solitude are gone
And the stars are becalmed
In the sea of the drowned
In the echo of whale games
In the cities of the cheated
In the midnight haze
In the narrow lanes of traffic
And the sounds of distant bells
And the chimes of sunset
It’s being lost in the storm
What do we make of this one? Another tune with lots of loss, death, natural phenomena pushed up against city life. "Drowned," "lost in the storm," "whale games," give this one kind of a Melleville-like tone. "Midnight haze" and "cities of the cheated" give a sense of unknown and uncontrollable outcomes for the folks unlucky enough to be "lost in the storm." Again feels like we're in the Dylan neighborhood, but lacking something that really feels unique.
Concerning the process, this is one case in which I performed more editing than I have in the past. I wanted to see if I could adhere to some kind of rhyme structure, and see if that made the overall composition feel more like a Dylan original. I didn't add any words to the raw output, but I used the raw material more like a lyrical sketchbook--like raw source material that could be moved around and combined with a line further down the page, for example, or a line that was too wordy might need some excising done to make it work. I don't know how Dylan writes his songs, but it's possible to imagine that he might work this way, by editing or re-arranging words he's come up with to fit into the structure of a finished piece. I also combined a few stanzas to form a chorus that could be repeated a few times throughout. Here's a link to the raw output if you're curious to see what was changed.
I'm also doing my best to check these generated lyrics against Dylan's existing catalog. As far as I can tell, there is nothing significant in these new lyrics that has been repeated from his catalog.
If you're enjoying this exploration, please drop me a line and let me know what you think.
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