So what can I say about Bob Dylan? Flat-out nothing, because there is no one and nothing like him. As if he's the Taj Mahal, or Abraham-fuckin'-Lincoln or something.
No hip has ever been hipster. Who knew what went on in his head. A flying spin of songs, a spin-dry of flying relationships. Sometimes we knew all about him, somehow we knew nothing. Not much of a core except a glowing fire-winged sycamore tree that burned but was not consumed.
You could touch him but you couldn't. He could smile but he wouldn't. Nobody had such cool hair, such hands. He was an e. e. cummings poem except supremer. He was the joujou doll of the universe.
Some say Bob Dylan still arises, still sails. I see a picture now and again as he gets older, and more and more things are hung around his neck. Might as well take them, as his effort has been Olympian, while - all the while - he made it look easy. Some say all them medals is going to get too heavy one o these days and he will tip over, hopefully on stage where I think he will breathe his last breath. I mean this in the most respectest and possiblist way.
'Skinda-a weird, the attitude-ta fame, cuzzadafact that he sought it and bought it, still tours and tours and tours, but never seemed to care two pygmyburgers about it, as if he could take it or leave it alone, as if he'd still write his songs if nobody listened to them, but I don't know whether to believe him. Would Charles Dickens be Charles Dickens if nobody flippin' heard of him? Didn't think so.
I won't get into his lifelong relationship with La Baez, folktresse supersupreme. She's like a peace pizza with everything. Whenever I see an interview with him he talks about her, and whenever I see an interview with her she talks about him. They are beginning to look like each other now with those never-say-die eyes and the peachfuzz skin of youth stretched and seamed like very fine kidskin leather. They were kids together, and wasn't it awfully hard on Suze? Did he really have any morals at all? Did she? They just took. They did. The entitlement of being extraordinary? Or a drug to make it all bearable?
I can say no benediction more than a man, amen, amayhn, amayhhhn, ahmehhhhhhnnnnnn.
