“Going, Going, Gone” by Bob Dylan

An accumulation of life’s challenges has worn down the speaker in Bob Dylan’s “Going, Going, Gone,” and, at first, it sounds as if he’s about to snap.

I’ve just reached a place
Where the willow don’t bend
There’s not much more to be said
It’s the top of the end
I’m going
I’m going
I’m gone

How many of us have felt that same precarious willow bough was about to give way from under us at one time or another? Life had thrown us not one, but a series of misfortunes, each one weighing us down that much more. Most likely, these involved a variety of losses — the death of a loved one, perhaps, being one of them.

Though Dylan shuns autobiographical ties to his songs, he wrote “Going, Going, Gone” during the eight-year-long recovery from his motorcycle accident in 1966 (during which he could not tour). Most likely this was also around the time his marriage to his first wife was beginning to unravel (they divorced in 1977). As Kristi Hustag explains in her book “What I Wish I’d Known: Finding Your Way Through the Tunnel of Grief,” loss comes in other forms than death: the loss of a marriage, the loss of a career, loss of stability, loss of health, or even the loss of innocence that comes from abuse or neglect. Regardless of the loss, the grief is as real for any of these circumstances as it is for the despairing voice in “Going, Going, Gone.”

I’m closin’ the book
On the pages and the text
And I don’t really care
What happens next
I’m just going
I’m going
I’m gone

Still, it’s important to realize as lonely, isolated and indifferent as this poor fellow feels, he’s experiencing a normal reaction to loss. There is no quick fix for grief. And the only other person mentioned in the song seems to know that.

Grandma said, “Boy, go and follow your heart
And you’ll be fine at the end of the line
All that’s gold isn’t meant to shine
Don’t you and your one true love ever part”

Chances are Grandma learned the lesson she advocates through a lifetime of disappointments and losses. Her grandson doesn’t immediately take her word for the power of love of which she speaks. It takes time to come to understand truths our grandmothers are privy to, such as the truth that the living who have truly loved the dead are never entirely separated from them; and that unless we first truly love ourselves, authentic love with someone else may not be attainable.

I been walkin’ the road
I been livin’ on the edge
Now, I’ve just got to go
Before I get to the ledge
So I’m going
I’m just going
I’m gone

It’s possible that, by the end of the song, the speaker is closer to that self-love than he was at the beginning. Could it be that, by allowing himself to express his grief through the song (arguably an act of self-love), he has begun to let go of the pain? He has, after all, decided to take an alternate direction before he gets to “the ledge.” That sounds like a step toward survival to me.

Listen to Dylan perform “Going, Going, Gone” below.