As I read my newspaper over the breakfast table this morning, one news item more than any other today brought instant stirrings of nostalgia, faith , and mortality: Bob Dylan is 70.
Thanks to Bob, I invested in my first guitar, wrote my first poem, busked as a student, turned socialist in my Christianity, romanced my first girl-friend and now wife, and kept believing in the benevolent artistic creativity of mankind, under God.
His music drew from primitive roots, his words from the dramatic landscape of history and its mystical dimension. He drew around him gifted men and women, stirred sleeping youth, and reached out over the walls of racism and bigotry. Only in the North of England was he ever insulted, and that was because he had moved on, and the beer-bellies were dead in their tracks.
Even now my happiest moments are when I am with good friends, my family, my guitar, and a Dylan song that speaks me to me of love, betrayal, protest, and the challenge of being true to oneself. Happy Birthday Bob- you are my true rolling stone. My love she speaks of silence, without ideals of violence.
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