• Home
  • Memo
    • Past Memo Archives
    • Podcast (iTunes)
    • RSS Feed
  • Roy H. Williams
    • Private Consulting
    • Public Speaking
    • Pendulum_Free_PDF
    • Sundown in Muskogee
    • Destinae, the Free the Beagle trilogy
    • People Stories
    • Stuff Roy Said
      • The Other Kind of Advertising
        • Business Personality Disorder PDF Download
        • The 10 Most Common Mistakes in Marketing
          • How to Build a Bridge to Millennials_PDF
          • The Secret of Customer Loyalty and Not Having to Discount
          • Roy’s Politics
    • Steinbeck’s Unfinished Quixote
  • Wizard of Ads Partners
  • Archives
  • More…
    • Steinbeck, Quixote and Me_Cervantes Society
    • Rabbit Hole
    • American Small Business Institute
    • How to Get and Hold Attention downloadable PDF
    • Wizard Academy
    • What’s the deal with
      Don Quixote?
    • Quixote Wasn’t Crazy
      • Privacy Policy
      • Will You Donate A Penny A Wedding to Bring Joy to People in Love?

The Monday Morning Memo


Bob Dylan’s song “Shelter from the Storm” contains several references to Christ:

The narrator as Christ

The narrator is both God and man, and some say the lyrics imply that he is Christ himself. For example, the narrator says, “I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form,” which alludes to Christ’s 40 days in the desert. The narrator also uses the phrase “I got my signals crossed,” which hints at his death by crucifixion. 

The fifth verse

The fifth verse includes the line, “Suddenly I turned around/And she was standing there/With silver bracelets on her wrist/And flowers in her hair/She walked up to me so gracefully/And took my crown of thorns”. 

The contrast between the realm of the soul and the visible world

The song includes the line, “Well, the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount”. The deputy is likely to be Christ, and the preacher could also be Christ. 

Following Jesus

The song includes the line, “In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes. I bargained for salvation and she gave me a lethal dose”. 

“Shelter from the Storm” was recorded in 1974 and released on Dylan’s 15th studio album, Blood on the Tracks, in 1975. 
 

Email Newsletter

Sign up to receive the Monday Morning Memo in your inbox!

Download the PDF "Dictionary of the Cognoscenti of Wizard Academy"

Random Quote:

“On this earnest August morning Donald moved restlessly about the place. Joe Rabbit didn’t want him and said so. Joe had no manners. Aunt Theresa had put the house out of bounds for the near future. He watched the school bus stop for Willard, and then there was nothing to do but help around the place. He helped a tawny hen proclaim the miracle and the misery of an egg. He refereed a quick and vicious battle between young roosters who had neither heart nor skill. With a broken rake handle, he helped a pig scratch the hard-to-reach place between shoulder blades. He joined Rupert One Ear, the cat, near an open gopher hole under a mallow weed until Rupert sneered at him and left. He encouraged a small silly white cloud over the Santa Lucia mountains to the west and squatted where an impatient spider rigged and clewed up a mizzen web in the fork of a rose bush. A man can keep busy if he sets his mind to it. But Donald’s heart wasn’t in his work. Something was calling to him, sweetly and insistently and he didn’t know what it was. The quiet August morning call of fate perhaps – delicate as steel, wise and strong as an unhurt girl. But the call came from everywhere – from sky and earth and mountains and from his own skin. He couldn’t put a fix on it.

He wandered into the open carriage shed where vehicles like strange artillery were lined up hub to hub – a surrey, and a hayrake, disk plows, a high-seated cultivator, a 1951 Plymouth 4-door sedan, and a war surplus Willys jeep, as scarred and brown and dangerous as an aged lion.”

- – John Steinbeck, from his unpublished manuscript of Don Keehan, the Marshal of Manchon, p 24. This is where the middle aged Quixote discovers his Rocinante

The Wizard Trilogy

The Wizard Trilogy

More Information

  • Privacy Policy
  • Wizard Academy
  • Wizard Academy Press

Contact Us

512.295.5700
corrine@wizardofads.com

Address

16221 Crystal Hills Drive
Austin, TX 78737
512.295.5700

The MondayMorningMemo© of Roy H. Williams, The Wizard of Ads®