I am 47 years old and I just discovered Bob Dylan. Over the years, I have listened to and enjoyed many different musical artists, genres, and performances- some I would even say I have loved. But I have never experienced anything like this. I don’t even know what this is.
The word that keeps coming to mind is ‘transfixed’, which is odd, because I’m almost certain I have never used that word before. Every once in a while, I find myself using the word ‘mesmerized’, but I’m pretty sure that is someone else’s word that I am trying to make my own. I think Bob would be okay with that.
It’s hard to write about something personal in a way that resonates with other people. For me anyway. Others claim to do it in 15 minutes. I fumble through the words trying to capture how I’m feeling about a man whose music has been felt, discussed, and written about for the past 60 years, a man who has conquered words in almost every imaginable way. Someone who would probably have a thing or two to say about my spending any amount of time trying to make sense of this. But at the very least, I think he would be pleased to know that he got me writing. Or maybe he wouldn’t care.
I am not a musician. I don’t consider myself artistic in any way. I appreciate art in the way that people who don’t know anything about it do. “I really like that painting” is all I can offer when going through a museum. If pressed, I might be able to dig all the way down to, “The colors are just so vibrant.” I have no real sense of the medium, the mastery, or the complexity. I don’t have a natural curiosity for it or any sort of predilection toward it. And frankly, I have never much cared to try and learn.
I want to learn everything about Bob Dylan and his music.
Having been warned that I won’t ever be able to truly understand any of it makes it all the more intriguing and inviting, even while being told that I am not invited.
Right now, I am listening to a Rolling Thunder Revue performance of Just Like a Woman. It was preceded by Sara and will be followed by Knocking on Heaven’s Door. I have been replaying these three more times than I would care to know. I just turned down the volume so my neighbor doesn’t come to check on me, fearful of finding Daisy Randone.
I will listen to it more softly, but I can’t seem to turn it off, to stop listening, watching, and reading what online strangers- including the man himself- are saying, not knowing which is true, including and maybe most especially from the man himself. I would text my sister again, but I think her initial excitement at our newly shared interest has turned to concern.
Today is Epiphany, which is why I chose to write this when I did, because discovering Bob Dylan and his music has felt like an epiphany to me. Not in the religious sense (though others refer to Dylan as god, I do not believe him to be, even with a lower case g), but in the meaning of a moment when you suddenly become conscious of something that is very important to you.
It is hard to make sense of something feeling so deeply important that only recently was not even a part of my life. But I don’t know that I need to spend any more energy trying to make sense of it. Gratitude seems like a much more appropriate response for something so rare and so special.
And with this gratitude, an opportunity to do something positive with it- maybe even an obligation.
On this day of Epiphany, we read words that I have read nearly every year of my 47 years, words of blessing, hope, and action:
May God take your minds and think through them.
May God take your lips and speak through them.
May God take your hands and work through them.
May God take your hearts and set them on fire.
I am on fire.
(Just like Bob’s hands when he declined that invitation to dance.)
I believe God has used Bob’s mind, lips, and hands to set my heart on fire. I’m guessing if you’re reading this, he has set yours on fire too (though you might choose to take the God part out of it, or at least the God I have inserted). But I’m certain that this experience was not intended to be reserved for people of Bob’s unfathomable stature. I’m certain we are meant to use our own minds, lips, and hands to set our own hearts on fire and whenever possible, other people’s too.
At the end of the Rolling Thunder Revue “documentary”, Allen Ginsberg charges us to clean up our acts, find our communities, and become more mindful of our friends, work, meditation, art, and beauty, and make them for our own eternity.
If Bob had written these words, he would probably tell us that there isn’t any meaning behind them. Or that it is up to us to make our own meaning. Or that we shouldn’t even bother trying. But since he didn’t, I’m going to try to try.
However Robert Zimmerman became Bob Dylan- in theory, in practice, or in a mysterious deal with the commander- he has influenced people individually and collectively in a way that few do or can, or even would want to if given the chance. But that is his eternity. It isn’t mine. And it probably isn’t yours either. Ginsberg doesn’t tell us to create his eternity or Bob’s. Just ours. The epiphany prayer doesn’t tell us how to go about fulfilling the call to action. It leaves it up to us.
In his song, Up to Me, Bob tells us, “If I’d lived my life by what others were thinkin’, the heart inside me would’ve died.” It is a both a confession and an invitation to do the same. A warning, even, to ignore the loud voices of those around us and listen to what sets our own hearts on fire.
For a few of us, this will happen in a big way, reaching people we will never know. For most of us, it will be something small, touching only those we are closest to. It’s hard to imagine their significance being the same, but I think Bob would challenge us to at least consider it.
