Someone asked if I knew the significance of Dylan’s eye logo/banner that drops down in concert and has for sometime now and that is likewise widely branded on a lot of Dylan merchandise at shows and the like.

My site has a backend search engine query, so it’s easy for me to see how people find Tant Mieux, what they searched for, and what they found. It’s interesting to see what people are searching for when it comes to Dylan. Today, I came upon, horror of horrors, “When did Bob Dylan die in a motorcycle accident?” Obviously, not a query by someone who knows a whole lot (of recent news anyway) about Dylan, but a question that begs to be addressed. I’ll tell you now, Bob Dylan did not die in a motorcycle accident. Not that I know of anyway. Did his heart stop?

I’m trying to read Bob Dylan Approximately: A Portrait of the Jewish Poet in Search of God by A Midrash. I say “trying” because so far anyway, it’s not making much sense, no matter how much I want it to at the moment, because I practice Kabbalah and am heavy into the Zohar right now, I’m still not seeing all of this heavy Jewish symbolism in Bob’s work. I see a lot of Biblical references to be sure – some early on, some later when Bob went through Christian re-dux.

With Bill (Clinton) it was Fleetwood Mac (“Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow”) that he used as his campaign theme song. I remember seeing him in one of the major city parks, he and Al Gore, both of them in their workingman’s blue shirts (such an obvious put-on that if it ever had any subtle message, it’s long gone). I can’t think of one politician on the trail – Democrat or Republican – who doesn’t do the blue-oxford with the sleeves rolled-up to the elbow, as if to say, “I’m ready to work.” It’s become par for the course.

It’s 4:02 p.m. on a warm Friday and the traffic is, as expected, bad. I’m making the longish journey from the North Shore of Boston to the MGM Grand in Connecticut where tonight, Bob Dylan is playing. Not a gamble, because every bone in this somewhat slight body tells me this will be good.

*Eds. Note: This piece was contributed to Tant Mieux, so I run it here. Thanks to Avner for covering the Brooklyn show for us. - s.r.p.

***

So he played “Lay, Lady, Lay” in Brooklyn. If you read “Set-List This: Bob Are You There?” Then you know this was the starred song on my list of songs I wanted him to play. Not that I, for a second, am overestimating my self-importance here, because it was perhaps likely happenstance that he chose to play that song – or perhaps not. Perhaps he even read the list and thought, Why not.

I want to be like so many people who have this knack for picking one Dylan song as a favorite, but it is not something I am able to do. When asked this question while filling out my Profile a while ago, I could not answer it and instead wrote that this changes with age and stage, which is true. It is as close as I could come to saying something of note, yet it says nothing. It says I am changeable, mercurial, perhaps unsteady on my feet.