My Own Version of You

Bob Dylan has a way of writing songs that teeter on the razor's edge of interpretability while remaining bafflingly inscrutable. "My Own Version of You" is one such song. Dylan sings about some unspecified person constructing a new human being out of strange parts and ideas. We're never told who Dylan is inhabiting, as he sings from a first-person perspective. We only know it's someone determined to construct a new lifeform. Tony Attwood at Untold Dylan thinks that Dylan is inhabiting fans and critics and talking about building a new Dylan as they want to see him. It's an interesting idea worth referencing and checking out, but it's pretty subjective. What we do know for certain is that some of the allusions and references in the song can be pinned down definitively.

An explanation of some of the references in the lyrics: I've been visiting mosques and monasteries A mosque is a Muslim house of worship. "Monastery" is a more general term for places where monks of various religious traditions live. Looking for the necessary body parts Limbs and livers and brains and hearts This is a reference to the Frankenstein's monster. For a couple hundred years, the fictional character has been a mainstay in American culture. It first appeared in the 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by English author Mary Shelley. Since then it's appeared in countless films, stories, and songs. It's become a metaphor for the dangers of both science and the ego. The original story is about a scientist (Dr. Frankenstein) who builds a creature out of various body parts in a quest to understand life. The creature ends up being a dangerous monster beyond Dr. Frankenstein's control. To build a Frankenstein's monster, then, is to be dangerously ambitious and to encroach on things we aren't equipped to understand or control. Well, it must be the winter of my discontent American author John Steinbeck (best known for The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men) published his last book, The Winter of Our Discontent, in 1961. He borrowed the title from Richard III by William Shakespeare, which has the lines: Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun [or son] of York The primary theme of Steinbeck's novel is how social pressures force people into decisions that make them unhappy.

I'll take the scar-faced Pacino and the Godfather vandal This refers to the actor Al Pacino and the film 1972 American film The Godfather. The movie is about organized crime, family, and power. It's one of the most recognizable and referenced films in the United States. I study Sanskrit and Arabic to improve my mind Sanskrit is an ancient Indian language. Arabic is spoken around North Africa and the Middle East. And I ask myself, "What would Julius Caesar do?" Julius Caesar (100 BC to 44 BC) was leader of ancient Rome. The mention of his name here is a reference to a 2000s trend among American Christians, particularly Evangelical Christians. Those devotees frequently use the question "What would Jesus Do?" as a way to make good, moral decisions in life. In the Bible's Matthew 22:21, Jesus says, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God the things that are God's." The Christian world has a wide range of interpretations concerning the depth of meaning to that passage, but here Dylan's using it for some clever wordplay. Dylan references Caesar another time in Rough and Rowdy Ways, in the song "Crossing the Rubicon."