False Prophet - Intellectual

Mary Lou-> I’m going to imagine is the lover that Dylan sings about from under the red sky through to rough and rowdy ways.
Miss Pearl- Johanna from Visions of Johanna, “just like a woman” from just like a woman “with her fog, her amphetamines and her pearls”, the victim in 4th time around, one of the subjects of Temporary like Achilles (because I think that song depicts two different romantic relationships). I think this person was a trans woman, based off these songs, which will become relevant later.

We’re back to Mary Lou, who is telling Dylan off for giving a false impression of her in his music.

The city of god is there on the hill relates to jesus’s sermon on the mount “you are the light of the world. A city of god cannot be hidden”.

It also answers “climb a mountain of swords with my bare feet”.
The implication is, as with the fountain/holy grail, Dylan’s understand is limited and material, and he needs these ethereal beings to give him greater truth from the afterlife.

This is a New Testament reference to The temptation of Christ by satan, who tries to persuade Christ to prove his miracles and join satan in ruling the physical world. Only here, instead of Christ, we find a recapitulating “satan” who is now addressing the current state of affairs of the people and characters he references throughout the song.

This line invokes fellow Travelling Wilbury Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely”. The conceit of Orbison’s song is that “only the lonely (dum-dumb-dummy doo-wah)/ Know the heartaches I’ve been through”. So Orbison croons only for the sad, lonely, and brokenhearted among us.

Given the earlier reference to the protestant revolutionary Martin Luther’s “I am the enemy of Strife. I do not wish to excite or stir up anything”, Dylan, in typical Dylanesque fashion, seems to be justifying his prophetic status, while at the same disowning it: he just sings for the lonely and downtrodden, chips fall where they may.

Dylan had this to say about Orbison in his autobiography:

With Roy, you didn’t know if you were listening to mariachi or opera. He kept you on your toes. With him, it was all about fat and blood. He sounded like he was singing from an Olympian mountaintop and he meant business. One of his previous songs, “Ooby Dooby” was deceptively simple, but Roy had progressed. He was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff. He sang like a professional criminal. Typically, he’d start out in some low, barely audible range, stay there a while and then astonishingly slip into histrionics. His voice could jar a corpse, always leave you muttring to yourself something like, ‘Man, I don’t believe it.’"

In a 2004 interview with Ed Bradley for 60 Minutes, Dylan said:

I never wanted to be a prophet or savior. Elvis maybe. I could easily see myself becoming him. But prophet? No.

Something’s Got to Give is the title of an unfinished 1962 American screwball comedy starring Marilyn Monroe, which was never completed due to her death of a drug overdose.

Marilyn Monroe was an American icon whose image is very famous, yet her tragic death proved that, just like the rest of us, she was only human.

This is Dylan talking to Mary Lou again. “Hello Stranger” answers “You don’t know me, darlin’”

“Hello and goodbye” links to the song “hello Mary Lou, goodbye heart”.

“Rule the land” in the sense that… we get a similar idea in Early Roman Kings, that Dylan and the lover are both great musicians whose legacy will survive them. Dylan is still alive so is still ruling, hence the change in tense.

Rule the land also implies he will rule over her.

This is Mary Lou speaking.
You don’t know me darlin’-> “you know darlin’”. They have softened.

“When your smile meets my smile, something’s got to give.” Mary Lou is giving somewhat. They don’t threaten vengeance in this verse, and they seem to accept some of what Dylan has said. He calls them a “lusty old mule” they accept “the kind of life I live”. He says “you got a poison brain” they agree “can’t remember when I was born and forgot when I died”. They can’t remember when they were born or when they died because they’re a mixture of Christ and lover and muse, and because the three of them all sitting by a fountain of youth. It’s also a suggestion of letting bygones be bygones.

However they also challenge the idea of being “married to a ball and chain”: “I’m nobody’s bride”. Though I don’t know that that necessarily equates to no marriage- it could imply availability (later “I’m falling in love with Calliope. She don’t belong to anyone, why not give her to me?”) or not wanting a marriage that’s oppressive as the one Dylan is offering “ball and chain”, or rejecting a female label. Later we get “I knew you’d say yes, I’m saying it too”.

“I ain’t no false prophet” links to the song pay in blood, where Dylan constructs theological arguments to imply that the lover (as Jesus) needs to surrender to him as God the Father, or else be proven a false prophet, for instance “you’ve got the same eyes that your mother does, if only you could prove who your father was” in a song that depicts sadomasochistic sex (‘who’s your daddy?’).

“I ain’t no false prophet (no)” is also a double or a triple negative, depending on if you include the extra “no”, at the end, and depending on whether have an understanding of “ain’t no” where the negatives reinforce each other rather than cancel each other out. It’s ambiguous, essentially.

One way in which Bob could be – as he sings on I Contain Multitudes – “like Indiana Jones”, whose quest for the Grail is depicted in Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade (1989).

This is “Mary Lou”. The lover who is so often depicted as Jesus, and sometimes as Mary. “Unlived meaningless life” refers to their role as divinity and as a muse for Dylan.
They are more vengeful than Jesus usually is, perhaps a sign that Dylan got them all wrong, and they’re trying to correct the story.
The “false prophet” thing I think answers Dylan’s song “Pay in Blood” which implies that the lover is a false prophet unless they submit to Dylan as God the father.

Mary Lou is promising that she has the capacity to bring vengeance on Dylan for wrongs he has done her in his life.
This is again, a departure from the Christ like way they are usually depicted.
“Vengeance will be mine!”

Reference of Janis Joplin and her 1971 album “Pearl”

If reference, then to Peggy Sue. Peggy is a diminutive from Margaret, a name that traces a long history via hops in French, Latin, Greek (margarites) and Old Persian (even then to Sanskrit). It means pearl. A similar explanation can be heard by Bob Dylan in his radio show, in the episode titled Women’s Names. I guess I don’t have to go into detail of how much influence Buddy H had on Bobby D. And I also agree, the song wouldn’t have sounded half as good if it was called Pearl Sue.

PROPOSED SUGGESTION: There is also a more recent Miss Pearl from 1990s.

Dylan quotes Awakening Osiris: A New Translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead by Normandi Ellis several times in the song.

I shall not fall under flashing knives. I shall not burn up in the cauldron. I know the names of the scorpions and they are these: anger, bitterness and doubt.

This is not the first time Dylan has used Egyptian mythology to craft metaphors see: Isis.

“Hello, Stranger” is the name of a 1937 song by foundational American folk/country group The Carter Family and a 1963 hit by R&B singer Barbara Lewis. The Carter Family song was famously covered by Emmylou Harris on her album Luxury Liner in 1976, the same year she sang on Dylan’s album Desire.

Dylan’s monologue comes to a stop because he’s distracted by the sight of Miss Pearl. “Bury them naked with their silver and gold”.

Possible reference to “Gotta Serve Somebody”: “Don’t wanna marry nobody/I already been married”.

Links to fountain, holy grail, but also “What I drink” and “what I eat” are suggestive. Later we will have “open your mouth, I’ll stuff it with gold.”

Reference to the protestant revolutionary Martin Luther’s “I am the enemy of Strife. I do not wish to excite or stir up anything”.

Again, we’re back with Miss Pearl. Links to “nothing to see”. “Open your mouth I’ll stuff it with gold” is metaliterary, because Dylan is voicing her words. Implies she’s a Muse.

It’s also sexually suggestive, links to “don’t care what I drink, don’t care what I eat.” It’s oral sex. I think what her genitals are in the afterlife is unclear, I’d like to imagine a post death reforming, but I think “gold” and “stuff” suggest something phallic. I think alongside Mary Lou saying “I’m here to bring vengeance on someone’s head”, there’s a suggestion of the two of them fucking him.

There is something queer about Mary Lou and Miss Pearl, their ambiguity in terms of sex and gender is linked to their ability to cross back and forth through the threshold of life and death.

Silver and gold always refers to sexual parts of the lover’s body. Dylan is speaking in this verse, arrogantly. We know because the speaker is implied to be alive “last of the best you can bury the rest”.

This is Dylan again, justifying his slanderous lyrics to Mary Lou and Miss Pearl.

He doesn’t seem to notice Miss Pearl offering him the holy grail in the line before, with the fountain of youth “fountain side”.

Whomever Mary Lou and Pearl are, Dylan compares them slyly to Hermes/Mercury, the swift-footed Greek god who sometimes escorts people to or from Hades, the underworld. See Iliad, Book 24.

I see a reference to several bits of the Tanakh where a prophet is commissioned by God putting something to their lips or mouth.

Isaiah’s mouth is touched by a coal from the altar held by one of the seraphim. Isaiah 6:6

Ezekiel eats a scroll, which tastes like honey. Ezekiel 3:3

This is Miss Pearl. I think this is a trans woman- either she’s denying what she has, or she has been given the genitalia she was always meant to have in the afterlife.
She’s also spectral, an imagining by Dylan, and she’s nude.

This I think might answer “fourth time around”. “Your scorpion crawls” in temporary like Achilles.

The Bible consistently warns against false prophets.

Matthew 7:15

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

Matthew 24:11

And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.

Dylan may be referencing the claims that arose in the late 60s (and onward) that he was a prophet. In Chronicles Volume 1 Dylan asserts he had to move away from these claims to gain peace of mind. On the “anachronisms [which] were thrust upon” Dylan, he writes:

Legend, Icon, Enigma (Buddha in European clothes was my favorite)– stuff like that, but that was all right. These titles were placid and harmless, threadbare, easy to get around them. Prophet, Messiah, Savior– those are tough ones (Chronicles pp. 124).

Sounds like the Russian proverb: “When was I born? I don’t remember.
When will I die? I don’t know.”

British politician Aneurin Bevan founded the National Health Service in 1948. When asked how he persuaded senior doctors and consultants to come round to his way of thinking, he replied ‘I stuffed their mouths with gold.’

This is a reference to the 1961 Ricky Nelson song “Hello Mary Lou.”

This is a coy line referencing the old saying that being married is like having a “ball and chain” attached to you. Your fidelity and responsibility to your spouse now ties you down, limiting your movement and freedom.

“You ain’t got no brains no how”/“brains in the pot they’re beginning to boil”

This is Dylan singing to Mary Lou.

“I’ll marry you to a ball and chain” links to “I’ll put you in a chain that you never will break” from Pay in Blood, and the events of Summer Days.

Perhaps, like the last line, Dylan is referring to The Beatles song, Hello, Goodbye.

This is possibly an allusion to St. Augustine of Hippo, a church father who wrote The City of God

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_of_God.

On his 1967 album, John Wesley Harding, St. Augustine is referenced as well.

PROPOSED SUGGESTION: This line also references John Winthrop’s famous sermon to the Pilgrims as the embarked to found Boston. He imagine that the new colony in the Americas could become a model of Christian living throughout the world. This speech has been referenced throughout US history (including by JFK – see Murder Most Foul). It has long been associated with American exceptionalism, or as a metaphor for the high moral aspirations on which the country was founded but has often failed to meet.

Reference to Dylan’s 1964 song, “When The Ship Comes In.”

This is a well-known koan from the 13th century book Mumonkon, The Gate of No Barrier, Case 17, “Chu the National Teacher Gives Three Calls.”

He carried an iron yoke with no hole
And left a curse to trouble his descendants.
If you want to hold up the gate and the doors,
You must climb a mountain of swords with bare feet.

Koans are formative to a Zen practice. They are usually short story-like passages or phrases designed to test a student’s progress on the Zen path.

A line in “False Prophet” — “I’m the last of the best — you can bury the rest” — reminded me of the recent deaths of John Prine and Little Richard. Did you listen to their music after they passed as a kind of tribute?

Dylan: “Both of those guys were triumphant in their work. They don’t need anybody doing tributes. Everybody knows what they did and who they were. And they deserve all the respect and acclaim that they received. No doubt about it. But Little Richard I grew up with. And he was there before me. Lit a match under me. Tuned me into things I never would have known on my own. So I think of him differently. John came after me. So it’s not the same thing. I acknowledge them differently.”

This entire song is a coded takedown of Donald Trump (See the YouTube video ‘Bob Dylan, Song by Song: False Prophet’) who is the false profit in question. specifically in terms of the COVID pandemic and his disastrous leadership during it. The artwork released by Dylan has obvious pandemic themes with a skeleton wielding a syringe, etc. (Dylan is not a vaccine conspiracy theorist, during the post-pandemic you had to show evidence of vaccination to see his shows).
The skeleton is very well dressed, symbolizing wealth (e.g Trump). Most importantly, his shadow does not resemble his form at all. Why? Because it is clearly (once you know to look for it) Donald Trump hanging as if from a gallows, his signature tuft of hair included.

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