Fairfax, VA, USA.That Bobby Dylan is turning 70 this month astonishes me. Depresses me. Reminds me I wrote my first column about him over the summer in 1965 when I was just 17 and Dylan was barely electric.

The teacher who nominally moderated the high school newspaper asked me why he was important. Why was I writing about a scruffy folk singer who dabbled in rock and roll?


I gave my various reasons, hoping the speed of my words would be sufficient. The teacher nodded, shrugged, only partially convinced, and my column went to the printers.

This is all happened in a world so long ago that our newspaper was set in lead and assembled on a linotype machine. The editor and I would be in the print shop late at night proofing the lead-set articles and laying out the pages before putting the paper to bed.

We ran on deadline. Life was good.

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?
People’d call, say, “Beware doll, you’re bound to fall”
You thought they were all kiddin’ you

Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone, July 25, 1965

I admit he has been on his Until Death Do Us Part Perpetual Tour for well over a decade now. But 70? How old am I then? Next thing you will tell me is that Woody Allen is Eighty something.

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast.

Bob Dylan, It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue, February 17, 1965

If you were to ask my honest opinion, I would tell you I am a continuum, a perpetual now. That once I was 17 and now am something other than 17 is statistical witchcraft. A meaningless calculation of orbit, spin, and cell division.

I exist in Space-time. I always have. I always will. It’s the damnéd human tendency of perceiving the universe as moving from order to disorder that’s screwing things up. It’s a underlying math problem in search of resolution, a question of perception. I know it looks like I’m moving but, really, I’m standing still.

But why does Bob Dylan think he is 70? The Man Without A Name is almost 81. Dirty Harry has been on Social Security for coming on thirty years. All my science fiction grand masters have died at this point: Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Bester, Simak, Anderson, Farmer, Norton, and van Vogt. Some have been dead for over two decades. I alone remain.

There is a great aching chasm inside me that cannot be filled by Cyberpunk or the Syfy cable channel. The Golden Age of Science Fiction is 12. [cf. Note] I am not 12 and Bob Dylan is 70.

Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose
Any minute now I’m expecting all hell to break loose

Bob Dylan, Things have Changed, March 10, 2000

We all have our heads in noose waiting for an unknown hangman. All men are equal on the gallows. Tell your friends, tell all your old ladies and men. They be selling pictures of your hanging on YouTube. The whole world’s doing carnival, yesterday is a memory in some forgotten attic trunk.

When we were seventeen, Bob had already run way from home, holed up in New York City with some virgin holy woman. Rock and Roll was just a shot away riding down Highway 61 with a leather jacket borrowed from Elvis.

The world was our bivalve mollusk. The morning rose with the smell of Aquarius. It was fucking safe to surf the beach then party back at Altamont, bombed out of our minds for twelve hours. We were the children of the best and brightest, raised to be the saviors of the world. And then we were 30. Or so they said. No longer trust worthy L’enfants terrible.

Suddenly we were yesterday’s news.

Too old for rock and roll, too young to die. We changed that shit.

Fuck you! I’lll rock if I want to.

But there isn’t much else to do with three or four chords after you add four or five voices singing syncopated counterpoint harmony and a soulful lead guitar or two? There’s never enough genius to go around and most of ours tripped out on a one way journey to the far side of the money. Or moved to Country. Found God. Lost God. Thought they were God then found something else farther down the timeline.

I was thinking of a series of dreams
Where nothing comes up to the top
Everything stays down where it’s wounded
And comes to a permanent stop

Bob Dylan, Series of Dreams, September 8, 1993.

At 17 I was a poet of great promise and a talent for meter and invention. I’m a much better poet now. Dylan is a much better songwriting singer. Not so much the voice now, but the phrasing is still great.

His path, my path, lies tumbledown up the disordered timestream. We are what we say we are, nothing more, nothing less, no matter how many different words we might throw upon the world. We are apart from the moment and intrinsic to it.

At one point in my life, when I had I trouble contacting the muse, I would use John Stewart or Bob Dylan to kick start myself. I no longer need to do that – I write to deadline. Write constantly except when I have a migraine.

It’s a fair trade.

Even if Bobby seems to be 70 now.

This wheel’s on fire
Rolling down the road
Best notify my next of kin
This wheel shall explode!

Bob Dylan, This Wheel’s on Fire, The Basement Tapes c. 1967 C. E.

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