Thanks to Bob Dylan, on his 80th birthday for all the gifts he gave to us. Personally, I always feel like it’s Christmas on Earth (as Rimbaud coined it) when I experience Bob singing, speaking, writing, acting, painting and drawing, most whatever he does has been illuminating. I learned about American music and America itself. For me, time stopped when I heard Mr. Tambourine Man for the first time, and shortly after read “Folk-Rock: the Bob Dylan Story” in paperback, (which was very misleading in, but also enlightening in some ways.) By the time I was 14 I’d heard his first several albums, read the poems enclosed with the third album, 11 Outlined Epitaphs, started learning the songs in the Bob Dylan Songbook I received as a gift in 1966, listened over and over to HWY 61 through John Wesley Harding, then read Tarantula from a mimeograph while high on mescaline, and weeping, in 1971, in my first room away from home, with the Dont Look Back poster on the wall, hidden when the door opened, that movie, then companionship on the bank of sand Watching The River Flow, later the generational tale of Tangled Up In Blue, and all the others—Dignity–I pulled the car over when I first heard it on the radio—Jokerman–I brought home and alone listening was transfixed—it was riveting—so alive—earlier he taught us that all the American folk music belongs together—that the sound of the words is as important as anything—somehow it led me to Shakespeare—Kerouac also a part of this—the WORD—to Eliot when I was a kid—Stevens–Ginsberg–Kaufman—now Notley–Tongo Eiesen-Martin-—that life is an adventure, an opportunity, is important.    Life—is holy—Death so powerful—the mystery—anima—the invisible world—the champions of civil rights—the dignity and value and stature he brought to rock n’roll and folk—music, etc—is no small thing—he made me want to live, to strive, to contend—wisdom of the street—the vision, the powerful sweep and scope—Chimes of Freedom—It’s All Right, Ma—Baby Blue—he sang for freedom of the spirit and the soul—”the guardians and protectors of the mind”–“it is not he or she or them or it that you belong to”– ““an’ mine shall be a strong loneliness dissolvin’ deep/t’ the depths of my freedom/an’ that, then, shall/
remain my song.”

–“don’t put on any airs when you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue”—“when you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose” —“she’s got everything she needs she’s an artist, she don’t look back” —“she never stumbles, she’s got no place to fall”–  like Bob in ’64-’65—(“he never stumbled” said Penny)– when I was a teen—“somebody got lucky but it was an accident”–  “goin’ back to New York City I do believe I’ve had enough”– (marvelling at the chaos of life and New York.) The beauty of Girl From The North Country—Went To See The Gypsy hit me in my 1971 isolation—at my biker friend Rose’s Cadillac dealership, waiting in the parking lot for her to get off work– in the days before I left town for good—the last song that moved me like that for a while—’til Billy—which also I loved and identified with–Billy’s trouble as I was on the lam 70’s style—so vivid and finally got that great inscription in the pink lyrics book perused at the SF bookstore two thousand miles from my home—“to all those high on life—from all corners of the wild blue yonder.”

–PC 2016

*  Long Time Gone, an early Dylan song, from my cd “HWY 62” on Omnivore Recordings, 2016.