The song God Knows is from Dylan’s almost universally maligned 1990 album Under the Red Sky (for a completely different and intense take on this album see here).

Dylan himself has consistently played songs from the album in concert. In recent years, God Knows has been played often, as well as Cat’s in the Well and the title track.

I’m not going to try to write anything extended about God Knows, but here for a little while is an mp3 sample of Dylan and band performing it in London a few weeks ago.

The final verse goes like this:

God knows there’s a heaven,
God knows it’s out of sight,
God knows we can get all the way from here to there
Even if we’ve got to walk a million miles by candlelight.

This reminds me of another song:

I need your love so bad, turn your lamp down low
I need every bit of it for the places that I go
Sometimes I wonder just what it’s all coming to
Well I’m tryin’ to get closer, but I’m still a million miles from you

A million miles away, but God knows those are miles that we can cover.

(On a lighter note, is “a million” Dylan’s favorite number? There’s Million Dollar Bash, the million bucks that she inherited, a million friends, Catfish, the million dollar man, a million faces at my feet, a million dreams gone, and the million years that “I could hold you for.” And about a million other references! Well … alright, at least 9 others.)

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