When I was eleven in 1969, two special artists entered my growing sphere of awareness and spoke directly to my soul: Vincent Van Gogh and Bob Dylan. At that time my parents were going through an emotionally violent divorce. My parents were overwhelmed with their own pain and guilt and were not there for me. My older brothers swirled in their angry grief over our dying family. I was very much alone.

But looking at Van Gogh's paintings and drawings in my mother's art books soothed me. And the Voice that floated out of my girl friend's older brother's bedroom like smoke with fingers grabbed me and gave me the courage to stand in his bedroom doorway speechless to find out Who is that Voice?

I had an intense crush on my friend's older brother, and greatly feared his rejection. But he invited me in, understood without words what I needed, and I sat in his overstuffed chair next to his bed and studied every one of his Bob Dylan album covers while the music played. After that, I bought every Bob Dylan album my allowance could afford, going back to the early ones, and obtained as many more as I could. My lifelong relationship with Bob Dylan's music had begun.

"Mr. Tambourine Man" has always reminded me of a Van Gogh painting. The lyrics paint a Van Gogh street opening to a Van Gogh landscape with Van Gogh trees, a Van Gogh sky, and they speed up as the song progresses, more words in the same space, creating an intensity of feeling, like the paint strokes you can feel when you see an original Van Gogh painting. Both of these send shivers up my spine and joy into my being.

"Desolation Row" echoes for me images in the style of Van Gogh's early drawings and paintings.

Bob Dylan's songs and Vincent Van Gogh's paintings have gotten me through my darkest days all of my life. They never let me down. To keep this pure, I avoided reading books about Bob Dylan, and ignored the media rubbish.

About ten years ago, I broke my self-imposed restriction and decided that I had reached an age when someone else's writings about Bob Dylan would not disrupt the purity with which I listen. And so I chose carefully the very first biography ever written about Bob Dylan, which only took the reader up to around 1970. But Bob Dylan had supposedly approved of it at the time it was published, so that was enough for me.

Then Bob Dylan finally wrote about himself, and so I read that without hesitation.

Vincent wrote letters to Theo, and this is how to best know him.

Other than some art on album covers, I had never seen Bob Dylan's drawings and paintings until recently. I am dumbstruck by his style, by his choice of vibrant colors. I cannot help but notice how Bob Dylan's and Vincent Van Gogh's fine art seem inarguably linked, at least for me. I cannot help but feel that I understand so clearly now why Bob Dylan's lyrics, in so many of his songs, have always conjured at least for me, Van Gogh images of people and places that exist outside of time.

If some scholar in an ivy tower is out there somewhere making this comparison, I don't want to know about it. I haven't read any reviews of Bob Dylan's fine art, and I don't want to until I've really spent more time with it myself. I still have to keep my experience pure. All I know is that for me now there is a validation of what my eleven-year-old heart saw, heard, and felt, many years ago, and wonder at this early instinctive choice to find solace and comfort in these two artists that has endured over a lifetime.

I have never considered myself a "fan" as the word "fan" comes from "fanatic," and I am not a fanatic. I'd rather call myself a loyalist, or just a person who deeply appreciates and respects the sacrifice of great artists. That is how I am with Bob Dylan. That is how I am with Vincent Van Gogh.

When I backpacked alone with a rail pass in Europe in October 1994, my travel included several days in Arles, walking the same streets Van Gogh had walked.

I also went to Vincent Van Gogh's grave in Auvers-sur-Oise. I was alone in the cemetery. I stared at the two graves of Vincent and Theo, buried closely side by side, and as you read their headstones you face the stone wall which is right behind the headstones. The wall seems to protect them. If you didn't already know, the dates on the stones clearly indicate Theo died soon after Vincent died. The headstones said it all. It seems so clear that Theo could not endure the grief.

I felt a sudden wave deep into my body of what I already knew, that without Theo, Vincent would not have been able to paint, the world would not have Vincent's gift, he would not have been able to do the thing he had to do no matter how poor he was. I wept unexpectedly and uncontrollably. I walked to an open gate along the wall and stepped out to an open sky over a golden field with dirt roads coming to a crossroads and a startled flock of crows flying up to create the painting come to life. I was wide awake.

When I sometimes weep at Bob Dylan concerts, it is still partly because his song is reaching something inside me that needs to be validated and released, but more and more I think my tears are also coming from deep gratitude and joy, because Bob Dylan is doing the thing he has to do, no matter how wealthy he is, and no matter how much he has sacrificed to keep doing it.