You live long enough and you no longer worry about perception.\u00c2\u00a0 You know life is brief, that yours will soon be over and that the world is a game, where the winners lose and the losers frequently win.\u00c2\u00a0 Money can’t buy you love and fame doesn’t make you happy.\u00c2\u00a0 But a trusted companion and a good conversation will make you feel like the king of the world.\u00c2\u00a0 The key is to get enough distance from the tilt-a-whirl, the fire and brimstone, to see that the planet, as George Carlin so famously said, will save itself.\u00c2\u00a0 But people?<\/p>\n
The artist is beholden to nobody.\u00c2\u00a0 He follows his muse.\u00c2\u00a0 He has to.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve been lacking artists for far too long.\u00c2\u00a0 In a commercial world where private jet travel is an achievement more worthy than a perfect rhyme.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re all about the material, that which feeds our souls has been pushed aside.\u00c2\u00a0 Except by the chest beaters, often religious wingnuts, who tell us they have the answers, and insist we follow their rules.\u00c2\u00a0 You get old enough and you realize there’s no manual, there are no rules, we’re all here alone, and you try to make sense of it all.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, it’s difficult, with everybody telling you what to do and how to feel.\u00c2\u00a0 The role of the artist is to open the door just a little, so we can experiment, so we can take the unpopular route, so we can become enlightened.<\/p>\n
I don’t expect Bob Dylan’s new album to be good.\u00c2\u00a0 I thought "Love and Theft" was unlistenable and "Modern Times" not much better.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’ll give it a chance, all because of "Things Have Changed", from the movie of the Michael Chabon book, "Wonder Boys".\u00c2\u00a0 Bob got it right.\u00c2\u00a0 He seems to get it right at least once a decade, sometimes two or three times.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s like Picasso, his flame never extinguishes, he keeps on surprising us.\u00c2\u00a0 While other acts were left in the folk world, Dylan went electric, Christian, took so many left turns that he ended up on his own path.<\/p>\n
Have you been reading the Bill Flanagan interview posted to bobdylan.com?\u00c2\u00a0 I checked it out, seemed a bit mannered to me at first.\u00c2\u00a0 Did Flanagan truly come up with these questions?\u00c2\u00a0 How much was edited, how much was scripted?\u00c2\u00a0 It didn’t seem as artificial as Bob’s satellite radio show, but it seemed a put-on.\u00c2\u00a0 Bob gives us the Bob he wants to.\u00c2\u00a0 But now he’s adopting a persona no other major artist will.\u00c2\u00a0 Being a regular person.\u00c2\u00a0 Unlike Eminem, he’s not trotting out his drug problem, he’s not Steely Dan, revealing who Rikki was all in an effort to sell a new record few really want, rather he’s sitting in your living room and you’re asking him all kinds of questions, which he’s answering, in a way that you feel is so intimate that you wouldn’t dare take notes and breach the trust.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like your long lost pal has come back to your house in Minnesota, and you’re drinking a beer in the basement and catching up on a few decades of history.<\/p>\n
It’s so strange this latter Dylan period.\u00c2\u00a0 Reminds me of my dad.\u00c2\u00a0 Who had a very hard life.\u00c2\u00a0 But suddenly, not long before he died, but before he was stricken with cancer, my father would start revealing intimacies.\u00c2\u00a0 About relatives I’d never heard of, experiences in high school, my dad became more three-dimensional, just like Dylan.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather than pull a Salinger, the older Dylan gets, the more he lets out, and us in.<\/p>\n
You’d think that Dylan is not a member of society.\u00c2\u00a0 But reading the transcript of this interview, you find out he’s got an interest in politics, and history, and is not afraid to utter an opinion.<\/p>\n
He’s the anti-Bon Jovi.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no fear of shattering his image, after all, that’s all it is, an image!\u00c2\u00a0 You know this if you’ve ever met any of these stars.\u00c2\u00a0 Personally, they’re radically different.<\/p>\n
Bob Dylan’s opinionated.\u00c2\u00a0 He shits on the Stones.\u00c2\u00a0 Stating "They’re pretty much finished…"\u00c2\u00a0 Yet lauds Jimmy Buffett.\u00c2\u00a0 And Gordon Lightfoot.<\/p>\n
Lightfoot’s most famous now for that old girlfriend who supplied John Belushi with his lethal dose.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe his almost fatal illness.\u00c2\u00a0 But no one speaks of Lightfoot’s music anymore.\u00c2\u00a0 But Dylan does.\u00c2\u00a0 He says he can’t think of any of Gordon’s songs he doesn’t like, singling out "Shadows", "Sundown" and "If You Could Read My Mind".\u00c2\u00a0 Was Bob driving around in his car in the summer of ’74 listening to "Sundown" being banged on the radio incessantly, just like me?\u00c2\u00a0 Are we both two wanderers on the planet, more alike than dissimilar?<\/p>\n
As for Buffett, he’s considered a joke.\u00c2\u00a0 Known as a concert blue chip and a one man conglomerate, his musical talent has been forgotten.\u00c2\u00a0 But did you ever listen to those early records, like "Life Is Just A Tire Swing"?\u00c2\u00a0 Or "Trying To Reason With Hurricane Season"?\u00c2\u00a0 Or "A Pirate Looks At Forty"?<\/p>\n
Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call <\/span> We start out with dreams, we take a few chances and then we end up with the life we’ve got.\u00c2\u00a0 How we got from there to here is a line we can see but cannot fathom.\u00c2\u00a0 Chance encounters, impulsive decisions, failures to act and suddenly our skin sags, the equipment doesn’t work too well and we find ourselves closer to the end than the beginning.<\/p>\n But, as I stated earlier, realizing there’s only a reel or two left in the movie is liberating, if you’re willing to jump off the cliff, stop worrying about preconceptions, others’ opinions, and know that your accumulated years of living give you as much insight as anyone, that you’re just as big an expert as the talking heads on TV trying to sell you shit and infect your brain with their power games.\u00c2\u00a0 And being liberated, you become suddenly alive, more so than so many of your contemporaries, dying their hair and tightening their faces, and the kids who are too young to know that age brings wisdom.<\/p>\n Jessica Simpson got dumped by Sony Nashville.\u00c2\u00a0 Britney may not be able to tour Australia.\u00c2\u00a0 They saved a contestant on "American Idol" last night.\u00c2\u00a0 A couple of years from now, no one will remember these minor blips on the radar screen.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s cotton candy for a public those in power want to keep high on carbohydrates.<\/p>\n Mother, mother ocean, after all the years I’ve found <\/span> Realize this is where you’re at.\u00c2\u00a0 Stop trying to prove yourself.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t worry about what others think.\u00c2\u00a0 Investigate the works of the poets and pirates, those who’ve rejected the game in search of answers.\u00c2\u00a0 If you haven’t got more questions than answers then you’re an uptight master of the universe headed for a fall.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re all lost, looking for a bit of direction.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what artists do, nudge us.\u00c2\u00a0 Insist we challenge convention and think for ourselves.\u00c2\u00a0 How can you follow performers who do neither?<\/p>\n
Wanted to sail upon your waters since I was three feet tall <\/span>
You’ve seen it all, you’ve seen it all<\/span><\/p>\n
My occupational hazard is my occupation’s just not around <\/span>
I feel like I’ve drowned, gonna head uptown<\/span><\/p>\n\n