Thump on the Bible, and proclaim a creed!

I live on a street named after a Saint
Women in the churches wear powder and paint
Where the Jews and the Catholics and the Muslims all pray
I can tell a Proddie from a mile away
Goodbye Jimmy Reed - Jimmy Reed indeed
Give me that old time religion, it’s just what I need

For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory
Go tell it on the mountain, go tell the real story
Tell it in that straightforward puritanical tone
In the mystic hours when a person’s alone
Goodbye Jimmy Reed - Godspeed
Thump on the Bible and proclaim a creed

You won’t amount to much, the people all said
‘Cause I didn’t play guitar behind my head
Never pandered, never acted proud
Never took off my shoes and threw them into the crowd
Goodbye Jimmy Reed - goodbye and goodnight
Put a jewel in your crown and I’ll put out the light

They threw everything at me, everything in the book
Had nothing to fight with but a butcher’s hook
They have no pity - they don’t lend a hand
I can’t sing a song that I don’t understand
Goodbye Jimmy Reed - goodbye and good luck
I can’t play the record ‘cause my needle got stuck

Transparent woman in a transparent dress
Suits you well - I must confess
I’ll break open your grapes, I’ll suck out the juice
I need you like my head needs a noose
Goodbye Jimmy Reed, goodbye and so long
I thought I could resist her but I was so wrong

God be with you, brother dear
If you don’t mind me asking, what brings you here?
Oh, nothing much, I’m just looking for the man
I came to see where he’s lying in this lost land
Goodbye Jimmy Reed and everything within ya
Can’t you hear me calling from down in Virginia

I keep seeing bits and pieces of Dylan's Never-Ending Tour 2024, which just wound up LAST MONTH. This is why no  one can keep up with Dylan - no music critic, no biographer,  no song-ographer or whatever it's called. The "complete Dylan lyrics" book ended in 2012,  which is simply  laughable since all his best work was still ahead of him.

I have this germ of an idea which I may not have the energy to pursue - something that allows  me to put my feelings about  Dylan on paper where I can see them, but I don't want some hackneyed form. I've even thought of an imaginary conversation or a Q & A (though NOT an interview), and God knows I've  been talking to Dylan since I hit puberty at least. Though I was aware of him long before that. Hard Rain did it, and I was never the same after that. 

So, breaking it wide open, what form might it take? If I do pursue it, if I have the energy, it will have to take shape or form on its own and not  be burdensome or something I HAVE to work on. And imaginary conversations  have gotten me into deep waters before, particularly if someone else sees them. Anyway, in those YouTube snippets. Dylan is sitting down behind the piano for the whole thing, unable to stand no doubt, and it's even hard to see him. But he has always been that way. You have to come to him, and the weird thing is, people do. They still do. He looks incredibly old and grizzled, and one wonders what it would be like to actually talk to him, whether he'd magically "get" me as so  few people have (and most of those people  are dead by now). Probably not, would not even want to talk to someone outside his tight little circle. He's not friendly particularly, but why should he be? 

One does wonder why he can't seem to retire or even to slow down, but so long as the songs keep coming, he likely won't. "The songs know me, and they know that I can sing them" is the most enigmatic statement I have ever seen on songwriting, or anything else. They do just come to him, like Mozart taking dictation, like Gershwin spewing out bright balloons while playing piano at a party, and only capturing one or two of them and writing them down. But those geniuses didn't live past their 30s, so they had to write fast. It was always assumed Dylan would flame out early, and had he not had that bogus "motorcycle accident", he likely WOULD have died at 27, like most of them did. 

So for the curious, here is how he looks and sounds more-or-less now (2022).