Bob at 70

This past Tuesday Bob Dylan (Robert Zimmerman) turned 70.  There are three “Bs” that I consider life directing:  the Bible, baseball and Bob Dylan songs.

That he turned 70, that through almost my entire life I’ve found meaning in his words, is not surprising. Almost every day some lyric of his springs to mind as I live through this experience.

As I’ve written before, mere moments after both my sons were born I held them and gently whispered in their ears the words to “Forever Young”: 

“May you always be courageous

Stand upright and be strong
And may you stay forever young.”

I sing those words to myself almost every day during my run as part of my daily prayers for my sons, so far removed from me.

“May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of change shift.”

It was a Dylan song that inspired me in 1980 when I realized I was hopelessly in love with a beautiful young college freshman.

“I came in from the wilderness
A creative void of form
Come in she said I’ll give you
Shelter from the storm.”

After hearing she had begun dating last January, I listened over and over to “If you see her, say hello”.  Every emotion I deal with finds meaning, finds substance in those song lyrics.

“I once loved a woman
A child I’m told
I gave her my heart
But she wanted my soul
Don’t think twice it’s alright…
I ain’t sayin you treated me unkind
You could of done better
But I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
Don’t think twice it’s alright.”

That song carried me through the misery of my divorce.  It would be our thirtieth anniversary this year.  Before my arrest I was attempting to get an original recording of “Emotionally Yours”, one of the most beautiful love songs Dylan ever wrote as an anniversary gift.  I sang that song often as I struggled in jail before the divorce was final.

Dylan understands my alienation and loneliness.  Listen to “Like a Rolling Stone”, perhaps the greatest rock song every written. 

“How does it feel

To be on your own
With no direction home
A complete unknown
Like a rolling stone.”

It was Dylan who wrote about friends abandoning you:

“You’ve got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
When I was down
You just stood there and grinnin.”

 It was Dylan who caught the nation’s conscience when he asked:

 “How many years must a mountain exist

Before it is washed to the sea
How many years must a people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free
How many times can a man turn his head
Pretend that he just doesn’t see.”

He sang about a post-apocalyptic world after nuclear war in “A Hard Rains Gonna Fall”, using references from the book of Revelation.  He spoke of the dangers of the military industrial complex in “Masters of War”.  There was a Dylan song for every issue.  It was Dylan’s Chimes of Freedom that many dissidents in Eastern Europe claimed gave them hope to overcome their totalitarian regime.  He told us “you don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows”, a reference to public opinion.

Dylan conjured up images in his songs.  He drew pictures with his words.  In one of my favorite songs he sang the following:

“Man thinks cause he rules the earth

He can do with it as he please
And if things don’t change soon
He will
Man is inventing his doom
First step was touching the moon
And there’s a woman on my block
She sits there as the night grows still
She says
Who’s gonna take away his license to kill.”

I don’t know what it was about his songs, but I am drawn to the words just as I am drawn by David to his Psalms.  His songs spoke to me like they did for millions of others.  And I gained more respect for him after he said there was nothing special about what he did.  People tried to make him out to be a prophet.  “I’m just a troubadour”, he responded.

And his lyrics messed with people’s minds.  They tried to find deep philosophical meaning in everything.   “Experts” dissected “When the Ship Comes In” for theological messages.  But Joan Baez told us Bob wrote the song on a napkin after he was turned down for a room at a Holiday Inn while on tour for looking too scruffy.  When his ship comes in, he’ll be able to get his room.

Philosopher/writer Isak Dinesen said:  “All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story.”  I believe that that explains in large part why I write.  But I also think all my stories can find rhythms and melodies in Dylan’s songs.

My life is so much different than it was when I first heard Bob sing “Blowin in the Wind” and “Baby let me follow you down” when I was ten.  So much different from where I was as a 22 year old married law student thirty years ago.  Yet the songs remain the same.  He’s 70, but the words hit me just like when I was ten and he was in his late twenties.

As he said in “My Back Pages”,

“I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now.”