How Dylan Saved My Life

Mar 16, 2008 - 09:18 AM PST

I was lost.
I listened to the All-American Rejects and Bowling For Soup and American Hi-Fi and The Weekend and I thought I was really punk rock.
I was bored one day and I found Blonde on Blonde that my dad had given to me for my birthday one year. I put it on. When it got to Just Like A Woman, all of these memories came flooding back. Driving in the car. Loving that I knew the words to a song my parents loved and listened to when they were younger. I remember I was cleaning my room. I remember a warm feeling surging through my guts.
A few weeks later, my dad was watching No Direction Home on PBS. I heard the twangy sound of Hank Williams and Dave Van Ronk from the living room. I wandered towards the sound and watched the documentary with my father.
I was hooked.
I couldn't get enough.
All I listened to was Bob.
I tried to get my friends hooked, too. I was successful with some of them.
I couldn't get enough of his words and his voice and how he didn't care what anyone thought of him and how he loves confusing people and making them feel uncomfortable and how he was married to a playboy bunny and then wrote a song about her and then wrote a song about how he wrote a song about her.
Then I went to a few of his concerts and I couldn't get over the way he made his old songs into completely new ones. So much so that the only way I recognized Positively 4th Street was by the lyrics.
And those lyrics. What did they teach me? What do they continue to teach me?
In essence, I became enveloped in writing poetry because of Dylan's influence on me.
I used to want everyone to like me. I used to vie for people's attention. I was a compliment fisher in middle school. I know because someone told me. I was embarrassing. I was embarrassed.
Dylan taught me not to care what anyone thinks about me. He taught me that everything I do I should do for my own reasons, and not because I want to please an audience.
I sound like a crazed fan, but really I have merely been blessed by finding his music and insights at the right time.