Not that the world needs any more writing about Bob Dylan, ever, but. I just saw him play live for the second time on Sunday night, and I realized that, from a psychic perspective, no one loves music more than Bob Dylan. It’s as simple, and as complicated, as that. He loves music.
Completely setting aside for the moment the not inconsiderable matter of his erudition and the genius ways he works with language, the utter purity of his love for music is what has gifted him his entire career, his entire LIFE. The all-consuming enormity of how much he loves music, as it centers itself in and through his heart chakra, is what allows him to do everything he does.
It’s what allows him to “get away with” having what many people, on the surface, have called a “bad” singing voice. It’s what allows him to take such wild risks and gambles with styles, personas, working methods. It’s what makes him funnier than so many people give him credit for being; it’s what makes his difficulties and eccentricities forgivable. It’s what makes him timeless, what draws generation upon generation of new fans to him. It’s also what disappoints, alienates, and drives away listeners and collaborators.
The audience at the show I was at on Sunday night was incredibly squirrely. Maybe it was because of the weirdness of the venue; maybe it’s that it was late on a work night; maybe it was just that part of Connecticut. But I think it was also, at least partly, how intolerable it can be to have to face the reality of anyone or anything that’s that on fire with pure, radiant love. It’s supremely uncomfortable. No wonder mythologies and religions are replete with stories of people freaking out when they encounter angels. That much spiritual light can be profoundly disorienting. It’s human nature to want to squirm, to look away, to get away.
And that’s exactly what was happening at the show the other night—the audience was shifting in their seats, repeatedly walking up and down the aisles in search of beer and snacks, texting, covertly filming and audio recording, and talking to each other, all without quite knowing why. But, the way I was seeing it, it was because his heart was so wide open.
He’s made such an unflagging commitment to his love of music that Music, in turn, has said, “all right,” and just POURS through him. And no, it’s not possession, it’s not channeling—he is very much part of the thing as it’s coming through; his role in the matter is in fact central, his personhood is precisely the thing that makes all this love workable and tangible in the world. Something in his essential makeup as a human has allowed him to continue leaning into openness rather than shutting down and/or strong-arming his own agenda onto the music. His love has kept him fluid. For how many decades now? It boggles the mind. But that’s what love can do, and has done.
As someone who didn’t grow up listening to his music and didn’t really even know anyone who was a particularly big fan for a long, long time, I’ve often wondered, genuinely, if abstractly, “why Dylan?” Meaning, why has he endured, why do people obsess over him so intently? His love is why. It seems reductive to say, but the true embodiment of it is anything but.
Queen of Peaches 