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“He not busy being born is busy dying”
(Dylan, “It's Alright, Ma [I'm Only Bleeding],” 1965)
THE SOUNDTRACK OF MY LIFE HAS BEEN COMPOSED BY BOB Dylan—his “words rang true and glowed like burnin' coal” (Dylan, “Tangled Up in Blue,” 1974) for me. When I was a young teenager, his music was a significant influence on my nascent political and empathic self; it served to raise my consciousness about the world around me. I protested to the strains of his harmonica and marched with his words in my mind. His seminal album trilogy, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Highway 61 Revisited (1965), and Blonde on Blonde , with its searing, beautiful language, resonated with my adolescent search for big answers and big love. The sadness and longing in his '70s material echoed my experience of real relationships and their complexities. His born-again phase didn't faze me; I looked the other way. But in 1997, I again was startled by the first album of his next trilogy: Time Out of Mind (1997), Love and Theft (2001), and Modern Times . Their rough-edged craggy sound, imbued with the wisdom only years can bring, again rang true for me as he sang about regret and death, haloed with a desire for fully living life. I wonder how it is that Dylan can speak to me over all these years and how it is that he has informed my life so vividly and so presciently. He can reach in and grab me deeply in my heart and mind, and because of that there seems to be some kind of understanding between us, something we