Well, there was this movie I seen one time ... and it starred Gregory Peck...
If there’s an original thought out there, I could use it right now ...
- Bob Dylan / Sam Shepard, "Brownsville Girl"
As much as I love Bob Dylan, I am not really a systematic student of his life or work. That would be a whole major life assignment all on its own.
If there are those out there who might like to take on that assignment, here are a couple of suggestions. I have recently read, and enjoyed, a slim little volume on Bob Dylan's life, which appears to be a reprinting of an issue of Life Magazine that was entirely devoted to Dylan. You can click this link to see what I am talking about.
With respect to a focus on Dylan's music and poetry - his "work" - I have another suggestion, a recently-discovered resource called "Untold Dylan." This is a blog that promises to provide an analysis of every Dylan song. I have definitely not plumbed the depths of all of its offered commentaries, but I sure liked the one I read (connected, in fact, with my blog posting today). Click the link if you'd like to explore that one!
Not being systematic in my approach to Bob Dylan, I tend to pull scraps of the songs into my thinking, as those individual lines have impacted my memory and understanding. I really love "Brownsville Girl," including each and every line, but the line that I come back to, always, is this one: "If there's an original thought out there, I could use it right now."
This coronavirus thing has ended the world as we knew it. I am hoping that we are not going to be so desperate to "Get Back," as the Beatles put it in their own song, that we won't try, instead, to dredge up an "original thought," a way to make the new world better.
If there's an original thought out there
We could use it right now!
Image Credit:
https://www.biography.com/actor/gregory-peck
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