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# oh where have you been my darling young one?
- URL: https://www.arrieta.io/a-hard-rain/
- Published: 2021-02-22T00:09:00.000Z
- Updated: 2025-07-10T23:21:54.000Z
- Author: luis arrieta
- Tags: random

(“I’ve been ten thousand miles in the neighbor’s backyard” -Luna)

sometimes I wonder if Bob Dylan is one of those poets whose songs are meant to be interpreted by others. Think of Joan Baez and Blowin’ In The Wind, or A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall and the same Joan Baez.

Or take this version from Patti Smith. It’s beautiful and moving. I think Patti’s struggles make it more emotional, more alive.

She later wrote about this performance in The New Yorker (link [here](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/patti-smith-on-singing-at-bob-dylans-nobel-prize-ceremony?ref=arrieta.io)). I pause and admire some of the things she says:

> “I thought of my mother, who bought me my first Dylan album when I was barely sixteen. She found it in the bargain bin at the five-and-dime and bought it with her tip money. “He looked like someone you’d like,” she told me. I played the record over and over, my favorite being “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” **It occurred to me then that, although I did not live in the time of Arthur Rimbaud, I existed in the time of Bob Dylan.**“

> “When my husband, Fred, died, my father told me that time does not heal all wounds but gives us the tools to endure them. I have found this to be true in the greatest and smallest of matters.”
> 
> “And all the things I have seen and experienced and remember will be within me, and the remorse I had felt so heavily will joyfully meld with all other moments. Seventy years of moments, seventy years of being human.”

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### P.S.

It’s somewhat ironic that, towards the end of the song, one of the verses say:

> But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’