you stare into the vacuum of his eyes and you say "do you want to make a deal?"
one of my college application essays asks me to write about a person who has had significant influence on culture and thought. after going through many options (john locke, aristotle, lech walesa, matt groening), i decided to write on bob dylan. i'm giving it to you to scrutinize, so please comment.
Once every great while a poet comes along and is proclaimed the voice of his generation, picking up the intricate nuances of his times and yet writing about them with the detached observation of a spectator. Never having achieved the idolizing, hormone-fueled adoration and fanatic devotion that was bestowed upon some of his contemporaries and never having quite fit the mold of an international superstar, Bob Dylan nevertheless was the spokesman for an entire culture whose essence can be summed up in his very words: “The times they are a-changing.”
For a decade that prided itself on the avant-garde and deviation from tradition, it may seem unusual that a folk singer would become its icon. However, it is this juxtaposition of revolutionary ideas presented in a vehicle that is usually associated with tradition, with “old fashioned” American homogeneity of picket fences, poodle skirts and neighborhood Fourth of July potlucks, that made Dylan’s message so powerful.
Likewise, for a decade that found power in shocking its opponents into submission through an unabashed rejection of conformity that often channeled into the obscene, the manner in which Dylan delivered his message was surprisingly subdued. It lacked the outlandishness of Abby Hoffman or the caustic quips of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and yet advocated a similar message with an eloquence and earnestness that is characteristically his. His messages conveyed everything from anti-war cries to cautious expressions of nostalgia, or a synthesis of the two, and always appealed to his audience - whether it be the youth or their parents: “Come mothers and fathers throughout the land, and don’t criticize what you can’t understand/ Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command.” On a microcosmic level, statements like these can be interpreted as detailing adolescent rebellion; in a broader sense they represent a drastic realignment of values, the coming-of-age of an entire nation. However, Dylan did not merely express the angst of the so-called counter-culture. From alluding to the amphetamine abuse epidemic among housewives in the ballad “Just Like a Woman” to criticizing political corruption on Capitol Hill, he poignantly picked out the taboos and secret scandals of the fifties.
Eclectic though his lyrics are, a tangle of anecdotes and biting one-liners whose subject matter ranges from being “stuck inside a mobile with the Memphis blues” to “break[ing] just like a little girl,” they offer nuggets of wisdom - sometimes unusual, sometimes common sense - which have over time become aphorisms: we now know “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” and that “when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.” Dylan’s lyrics were conveyed with little more than a hoarse voice, an acoustic guitar and a harmonica, but his words are mouthed, lip-synced, echoed by the millions of listeners worldwide, the fans who have found the answers to their questions not just “blowing in the wind,” but in his very songs.
Once every great while a poet comes along and is proclaimed the voice of his generation, picking up the intricate nuances of his times and yet writing about them with the detached observation of a spectator. Never having achieved the idolizing, hormone-fueled adoration and fanatic devotion that was bestowed upon some of his contemporaries and never having quite fit the mold of an international superstar, Bob Dylan nevertheless was the spokesman for an entire culture whose essence can be summed up in his very words: “The times they are a-changing.”
For a decade that prided itself on the avant-garde and deviation from tradition, it may seem unusual that a folk singer would become its icon. However, it is this juxtaposition of revolutionary ideas presented in a vehicle that is usually associated with tradition, with “old fashioned” American homogeneity of picket fences, poodle skirts and neighborhood Fourth of July potlucks, that made Dylan’s message so powerful.
Likewise, for a decade that found power in shocking its opponents into submission through an unabashed rejection of conformity that often channeled into the obscene, the manner in which Dylan delivered his message was surprisingly subdued. It lacked the outlandishness of Abby Hoffman or the caustic quips of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and yet advocated a similar message with an eloquence and earnestness that is characteristically his. His messages conveyed everything from anti-war cries to cautious expressions of nostalgia, or a synthesis of the two, and always appealed to his audience - whether it be the youth or their parents: “Come mothers and fathers throughout the land, and don’t criticize what you can’t understand/ Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command.” On a microcosmic level, statements like these can be interpreted as detailing adolescent rebellion; in a broader sense they represent a drastic realignment of values, the coming-of-age of an entire nation. However, Dylan did not merely express the angst of the so-called counter-culture. From alluding to the amphetamine abuse epidemic among housewives in the ballad “Just Like a Woman” to criticizing political corruption on Capitol Hill, he poignantly picked out the taboos and secret scandals of the fifties.
Eclectic though his lyrics are, a tangle of anecdotes and biting one-liners whose subject matter ranges from being “stuck inside a mobile with the Memphis blues” to “break[ing] just like a little girl,” they offer nuggets of wisdom - sometimes unusual, sometimes common sense - which have over time become aphorisms: we now know “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” and that “when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.” Dylan’s lyrics were conveyed with little more than a hoarse voice, an acoustic guitar and a harmonica, but his words are mouthed, lip-synced, echoed by the millions of listeners worldwide, the fans who have found the answers to their questions not just “blowing in the wind,” but in his very songs.