From The Mind Of Bob Dylan

I just read an amazing interview with Bob Dylan in Rolling Stone. It blew my mind because he was quite direct.
You know from his lyrics that he draws from a wealth of knowledge and experience, that he is a poet and a pragmatist, that his references can be obscure and still go directly to your heart.
In interviews he is famously evasive. Does not want to be pinned down.
I think all artists are like this. Journalism takes illusive magic like art and tries to explain it as if were black and white. Artists try like hell not to be pinned down in interviews, to avoid explaining what something means.
A lot of that comes from the fact that there is no true meaning to an artistic statement. It was inspired by an emotion or an observation or an experience in the artist's life and he expresses it through art, which changes it.
If it connects with others that is all that matters; not why or how.
But Dylan has raised evasiveness to an art form. I love the man and I have found most of his interviews frustrating.

Not this time.

Selective and edited quotes:

"But let's not forget human nature isn't bound to any specific time in history. ..........My songs are personal music; they're not communal. I wouldn't want people singing along with me. It would sound funny. I'm not playing campfire meetings." Boom.

"You don't write the kind of songs I write just being a conventional type of songwriter. And I don't think anybody will write them like this again, anymore than anybody will ever write a Hank Williams or Irving Berlin song. That's pretty much for sure. I just think I have taken things to a new level because I've had to. Because I've been forced to. You have to constantly reshape things because everything keeps expanding on you. Life has a way of spreading out." Boom.

"Some people are called to be a good sailor. Some people have a calling to be a good tiller of the land. Some people are called to be a good friend. You have to be the best at whatever you are called at. ............ It's about confidence, not arrogance. You have to know that you're the best whether anybody tells you that or not." Boom.

"Maybe people have to have a simplistic way of identifying something, if they can't grasp it properly - use some term that they think they can understand, like mortality. Oh, like, these songs must be about mortality. "I mean Dylan, isn't he an old guy? He must be thinking about that." You know what I say to that horseshit? I say these idiots don't know what they're talking about. Go find somebody else to pick on." Boom.

"I have enough faith for me to be faithful to myself. Faith is good - it could move mountains. Not that bloody-mary faith that you have, but the kind of faith that people like me have. You can tell whether other people have faith or no faith by the way they behave, by the shit that comes out of their mouths." Boom.

A quick aside - a great lyric from Sugar Baby on Love and Theft - "Every moment of existence seems like some dirty trick."

"Some people never really develop into who they are supposed to be. They get cut off. They go off another way. It happens a lot. We all see people that that's happened to. We see them on the street. It's like they have a sign hanging on them." Boom.

"Oh, of course (receiving the Medal of Freedom) it's a thrill. .......... And the kind of people they were putting me in the category with was just amazing. People like John Glenn and Madelaine Albright, Toni Morrison and Pat Summitt, John Doer, William Foege and some others too. These people who have done incredible things and have outstanding achievements.  ............I loved spending time with them. What's the alternative? Hanging around with hedge fund hucksters or Hollywood gigolos?" Boom.

"People like to betray people. .........They want to deliver you up. Like they delivered Jesus. They want to be the one to do it." Boom.

"Wussies and pussies complain about that stuff. ..........These are the same people who tried to pin the name Judas on me. Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you've been called a bad name try to work your way out from under that. Yeah, and for what? Playing an electric guitar? As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our lord and delivering him up to be crucified. All those evil motherf***ers can rot in hell." BOOM.

In addition to expressing raw truths,  Dylan throws off meaningful philosophical opinions or statements effortlessly:

"If you're not fulfilled in other ways, performing can never make you happy.......................Is it a fulfilling way of life? Well what kind of way of life is fulfilling? No kind of life is fulfilling if your soul hasn't been redeemed."

"If slavery had been given up in a more peaceful way, America would be far ahead today."

"The thing about it is that there is the old and the new, and you have to connect with them both. The old goes out and the new comes in, but there is no sharp borderline. The old is still happening while the new enters the scene, sometimes unnoticed. The new is overlapping at the same time the old is weakening its hold."

"If we're responsible to ourselves, then we can be responsible for other people, too. But we have to know ourselves first. People listen to my songs and they must think I'm a certain type of way, and maybe I am. But there's more to it than that. I think they can listen to my songs and figure out who they are too."

On top of all that tasty stuff, Dylan introduces the concept of transfiguration into the interview. I didn't know what the hell that was so I checked it out. It is defined as a marked change in form or appearance; a metamorphosis, a change that glorifies or exalts. It is originally attributed to Jesus taking Peter and James and John up on a mountain where Christ became transfigured. "his face did shine as the sun: and his garments became white as snow."
In 1966 Dylan had a devastating motorcycle accident and disappeared from the scene for a long while to heal. When he returned he was writing radically different music. He somehow connects this occurrence, through the concept of transfiguration, to the death of a Hell's Angel a few years earlier in a motorcycle accident. The bikers name was......................Robert Zimmerman.

Dylan is one interesting cat.

Most people won't make the commitment to read through all the above quotes. They are lazy and easily distracted. If you have made it this far, I hope it all meant something to you.

In closing I can honestly tell you that Bob Dylan's name projects the same power and mystery with me as the name Jesus Christ.

Maybe more.