Bob Dylan #1
Let me just say that back in the ‘60s, he flat desolated me. I was suddenly in the Navy and I was headed for West Pac and I was nineteen and “...a complete unknown, with no direction home” and, over and over, Bob Dylan kept asking me “How does it feel?” and I didn’t even want to answer him.
I can say twenty years later, Bob was still dogging me. For myself, I decided back then, that Bob is the greatest American poet.
And when Bob didn’t show up to collect his Nobel Prize in Literature, I just smiled and thought, “Yep. That’s Bob,” and “That’s very reckless and...also very American.”
I could assert that I was able to put Bob in his place for a while, but I can’t – for years, I’ve been listening to The Essential Bob Dylan every single time I work-out.
Masked-up, in an antique store over in Wheeler, I picked up an uncirculated copy of Bob’s 2004 “Chronicles Volume One”. I hefted it. I could tell nobody had ever read the copy I was considering buying.
Bob Dylan’s Chronicles is a sideways memoir. The guy never dates his entries. He misspells. He compliments several hundred other people thousands of times in just as many different ways.
There are no photos, but with his personal personal personal narration, he draws plenty of pictures I keep staring at.
I haven’t finished the B.D. Chronicles.
But he aimed a line right for my heart: “A song is like a dream”, Bob says, “and you try to make it come true.”
“Song or a story”, I thought, “same problem.”