Bob Dylan - Chronicles & No Direction Home

Just got done watching the Bob Dylan 'No Direction Home' documentary on PBS. Wow.

Combined with reading the Bob Dylan Chronicles Vol 1 book last week I feel like I've gotten a heavy dose of clarity into what made this man so legendary and how his songs became so timeless.

Probably the most remarkable thing about his story is how he became the story, and denied it. Throughout his life Dylan has been constantly confronted with questions about the meaning of his songs and his place in modern culture. All the while he diverts the inquiries and skirts the issue, adding more fuel to the mythical fire.

It's easy to sympathize with him while reading and watching his saga. To answer these questions in any other way would have been proposterous for him. Never really understanding where his songs would come from and why he was so popular, he just knew that it was what it was, and to him, it was simply his life - he just wanted to play his songs. To admit his fame and try to psycho-analyze his own prose would be to commit the ultimate music business sin - believing your own promo.

That's probably what's kept him around for so long innovating and exploring new directions.

Always searching for answers and guidance, especially in a time of war protest, the crowd and media intrudes and demands answers, building Dylan up to the superstar idol that they want him to be. Then they freak when he goes electric.

As a performer, you put yourself out there to be watched and judged and entertain, and once devout, fans can quickly turn when you make a decision which doesn't match with their view of how you should be. Even when your choice to change is based upon your own experience and grounded in everything you know to be good and right and true to where you need to go with your life and what you believe will give you the most freedom to grow and expand and succeed and achieve what you want out of your own art potential, people still complain. Either it isn't as good or it isn't the same or it's just something different which is harder to understand. Yet if you kept doing the same thing and never evolved, we'd toss you to the streets as old news and played out.

Not living up to your former great self is almost as difficult as not ever reaching your potential.

We fall in love with the idea of something so quickly, and we own it as our own and demand it to perform, all the while forgetting that the performer themselves are experiencing a personal evolution which we couldn't possibly understand because we haven't been walking in their shoes - we just get to see the nightgown. We forget the human, the artist, the seeker behind the songs and invest ourselves in the memory of perfect feelings we've had time and again.

I think part of us just doesn't want to grow up...

If you missed the movie you can still buy the DVD here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/B000A0GP4K/jambase/
Which should (hopefully) include a wonderful interview with director Martin Scorsese (it was on PBS)

and definately pick up the book (I read it in 3 days):
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0743244583/jambase

and listen to the soundtrack from the album on Rhapsody:
http://jbrhapsody.blogspot.com/2005/08/bob-dylan-no-direction-home-soundtrack.html

"Well, I try my best To be just like I am, But everybody wants you To be just like them."
Maggie's Farm