Today is Bob Dylan's birthday (he was born on May 24th, in 1941, and so he is now eighty-three years old). This being the case, I thought that today would be a good day to salute and acknowledge him.
Of course, anyone who reads my blog postings with any regularity knows that I frequently - in fact, almost routinely - salute and acknowledge Bob Dylan, and refer to his insights, as I provide my own commentaries on this "political world" that we most immediately inhabit.
My reference to Bob Dylan, today, is just to make my admiration both explicit and "official." I consider it to have been one of the privileges of my life to have lived in most of the same years that Bob Dylan has been alive, so I have been able to enjoy, and be inspired by, his words and music in "real time." Those who come later will have to play "catch up." They will do that, too, I am quite confident, just as we are still playing "catch up" with the late Mr. Shakespeare.
One comment and observtion about Bob Dylan, not ordinarily made, is what might be called the God-besotted" nature of his music and poetry. Pick an album, any album, and you will almost certainly find at least one song on tghe album that provides evidence of this preoccupation. If you examine Dylan's first album, for instance, Bob Dylan, released long before his so-called "Christian period," you will note that Dylan is already urging his friends, in the final track on the record, to "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean."
Those who have followed my postings to this blog - and I have been putting it out for quite a long time - might think that I am a little "God-besotted" myself, and if there is any truth to that, my "Last Day Songs," virtually all from Bob Dylan, provide some evidence. Click right here for the lyrics; you'll find a link to the actual music on the page that provides the lyrics to each song in my playlist. These are the Bob Dylan songs I listen to almost every day, as I walk around town in a memento mori modality, and I would have to admit that they are, indeed, largely "God-besotted," though mostly presented in a modern idiom.
My favorite song in this list, which I have mentioned before, may well be "Mississippi," with the following verse summing up what I think about the life I've lived. These are Bob Dylan's words - and they are apropos on his birthday, and on any other day, too:
Well, my ship's been split to splinters and it's sinking fast
I'm drowning in the poison, got no future, got no past
But my heart is not weary, it's light and it's free
I've got nothing but affection for all those who've sailed with me
Happy Birthday, Bob!
Keep On Sailing. I'm Sailing, Too
yesterday morning, I begin sitting in the sunshine, one of those rare mornings when it is sunny on my back porch close after Dawn, I Opened up the essential rumi, And this popped out…do n't worry about saving these songs!
ReplyDeleteAnd if one of our instruments breaks, it doesn't matter.
We have fallen into the place where everything is music… I took a picture of my view of the sunrise and sent it all to my dear brother Bob, who lives in Asheville, NC and is a musician. After I read your blog today of yesterday, I realized it was Bob Dylan‘s birthday auspicious. I didn’t know it, but I must’ve felt his energy in the air.