This was written by a neighbor of mine. She sent it into the Brooklyn Paper and I just found it a couple of days ago.
Just got around to checking out your Dylan story. Since I was raised on Dylan and spent many years on the road, mostly through Western Europe—my parents being the ex-pats and all…my mom had like 3 cassettes she played in the car-Blonde On Blonde, Blood On The Tracks and a homemade compilation (of scratchy, static ,off the radio from b4 we left America) songs by Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Joan Baez, The Kinks, Janis Joplin, Boz Scaggs and of course MORE Dylan!
They were warped and scratched and she knew every syllable and intonation and like a mantra holding on for dear life murmured his phrases to a T for several of my formative years–I hardly knew where Dylan ended and my Mom began.
Years later when I was in HS, someone popped these tunes on the box and I began singing along with it and people were amazed at my Dylan impersonation and the fact I knew by heart Sad Eyed Lady, in its entirety–there have been times I am torn up about Dylan, not knowing if it’s a brainwash of state of mind impacted by my mom’s obsession like a genetic predisposition for wailing out his electric poetry or my own exploration and discovery of his profound effect on my life’s struggle and euphoria (which I find to be the case–for me it runs the gamut on how intensely Dylan has grounded me, instilled insight, intelligence, help to form my values, my art, my psyche is etched indelibly with Dylan’s meth-amphetamine Ginsbergian, messianic cult-loving germs)…
I have already begun to cultivate this process with my own children but not to the extent that my mother’s obsession did — my children are obviously not trapped in a car going across desolate roads through Morocco without any other choices of listening tunes.
I have a deeply singular, private experience of Bob Dylan wrapped in childhood memories and later on as I gained ground throughout my adolescence to register the effect on how I saw the world at large, it made me strong and guided me through the whirlwind back roads of my mind– when I see him in a public venue it fractions out the prism of his profound effect on my life and since i already am deeply satisfied not to have to share him with a throng/mass of other folks that may baulk or wonder at him, as if he is hard to nail down and they can’t relate–I enjoy Dylan as illusive as he is and his public appearances shatter the myth and the legend into fragments that dilute my inner soul’s pang.
Maybe I just feel lost in the crowd and uncomfortable coming to terms with what might be the destruction of my ideal–as if i might be misunderstood by the celebrity of Dylan’s persona–this whole time, practically my whole life has to answer to the man up on stage as a patriarchal figure, as if being my mother’s lover-in a strange Oedipal effect, I must evaluate that dynamic..It does become a complex and woeful tale for me to ‘go there’. I can hardly enjoy one of his concerts , albeit i am unhinged and forever at his mercy when I hear his voice and lulled by his songs as if from an ancestral calling –fills me up , makes me whole again. I realize who I am and where I come from when I hear Dylan sing.
I might be a kindred spirit to your mother and your way with words is
absolutely mind boggling. Very good analysis and writing. Dylan is cosmic.
Thanks.
I can’t remember how old I was when I first heard a Dylan song, but I remember the time. I was in elementary school, so it was the very early ’60s. A family friend was home on leave from the Navy, where he’d begun to learn guitar and banjo. He played “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” I recall him saying the song was written by a guy who was a “prophet” and that the line, “… guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children” was illustrative of what was going on in Vietnam. I don’t think Vietnam was on my family’s radar then.
My next encounter with Dylan came when I was in 7th or 8th grade. My best friend and I were joining the Columbia record club and needed a 9th free choice record. “Highway 61” looked interesting and cool and certainly not what the rest of the kids in parochial school would choose, so it joined the list. (I still think Triumph motorcycles are sexy because of that album.) And so began my love affair with Dylan’s music.
I don’t know as Dylan influenced my politics back then, but the songs were definitely a soundtrack to my anti-war activities and to my nascent social conscience. The songs were a jumping off point for so many ideas and explorations in music and literature and life. Unlike many, I had only a mild interest in why and how and for whom he wrote the songs; for me, strangely, the songs could seem very personal in that they gave me a perspective with which to look at things that were going on in my life and attempt to sort them out.
Dylan once referred to himself as a “walking, talking Woody Guthrie jukebox” or words to that effect. For awhile, I was a Dylan jukebox, with all the lyrics and inflections and rhythms (to multiple versions) down pat. I saw every show I possibly could, starting with his 1973; the last show I saw was with my son in the early 2000’s when Dylan played at his campus.
The first song my daughter ever spontaneously sang, at under age 3, was a Dylan: sitting in a highchair in McDonald’s, waving a french fry, she suddenly let loose with a loud, “Oh oh oh ohhhhh, Jokerman!” But I think my kids kind of avoided Dylan’s music during their teens, because they’d heard so much of it when they were little. And because you just don’t listen to what your mom listens to, as my son pointed out to me (ungratefully, I thought, after I turned him on to Pearl Jam). I do note a huge amount of Dylan in my son’s iTunes library though, so maybe he’s over it now that he’s 28.
These days I’m kind of off music, and I haven’t kept up with Dylan. But I do know that when I don’t know what I want to hear, I always want to hear Dylan.