Genuine Bootleg Series Volume 2
Title: Freeze Out
Artist: Bob Dylan
Album: Genuine Bootleg Series Volume 2 (Track #114)
Duration: 08:27
Label: Sony Music Entertainment
(aka Visions of Johanna) Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be quiet? We sit here stranded, we're all doin' our best to deny it And Louise holds her handful of rain temptin' you to defy it. Lights flicker from the opposite loft In this room the heat pipes they just cough The country music station plays soft But there's nothing really nothing to turn off. Just Louise and her lover so entwined An' these visions of Johanna they conquer my mind. In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman's bluff with the key chain An' the all-night girls whisper of escapades out on the D-train We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight Askin' himself if he's really insane. Louise she's alright, she's just too near Like silk she seems like the mirror She just makes it all too concise and too clear that Johanna's not here. Oh, this ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place. Little boy lost he takes himself so seriously He likes to boast of his misery while living so dangerously An' while bringin' her name up He speaks of a farewell kiss to me. He's got a lot of gall to be so useless and so small He mutters this small talk at the wall while i'm in the hall. How can i explain, oh it's so hard to get on An' those visions of Johanna they kept me up past the dawn. Inside the museums infinity goes up on trial Voices echo this is what salvation's like after a while Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues You can tell that by the way she smiles. See the primitive wallflower freeze When the jelly-faced women all sneeze Hear the one with the mustache say "Jeeze! I can't find my knees.'' Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule And these visions of Johanna make it all seem so cruel. Ah, oh, oh, oh. The fiddler now speaks to the countess who's pretendin' to care for him He says "Name me someone that's not a parasite an' i'll say a prayer for him.'' But like Louise always says "You can't look at much? Can you, man'' as she herself prepares for him. Madonna she still has not showed An' we see the empty cage now corrode Where her cape of the stage once had flowed The peddler he now steps to the road Everything's gone which was owed He examines the nightingale's code Still written on the fish truck that loads My conscience explodes. The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain And these visions of Johanna are all that remain.