On one level I think he’s probably grateful to them because without fans, he wouldn’t have lived such a good life.
I assume he’s lived a good life, I imagine he has.
He’s rich and famous, it’s probably cushy.
On the other hand, part of me feels like he probably thinks his fans are idiots. And I get it, I’m definitely an idiot sometimes.
But I think there’s something empty in it. It must be weird to have pretty much everybody have heard of you, heard your name, heard your music, but nobody actually knows you.
We don’t know Bob from Adam. We have no idea who the guy is. At all.
And I would hazard a guess that probably nobody really knows Bob.
There might be one or two people in the world who actually know Bob Dylan, like the REAL man.
You could really say that about anybody.
I think everybody is too far up their own ass to REALLY KNOW others.
That’s not always true, but if you ask me… do I feel like anybody really knows me? I would say like a couple people. Maybe.
So I imagine it’s probably the same for him.
It must be strange to have all these people know about you, but not know you at all.
There is his entire body of work that you could psychoanalyze…
But so much of creative art is funneled in from the aether.
It’s not something you make up yourself usually. True, inspired art is… from elsewhere.
Because of that, I struggle to say that we really could know Bob from his music/lyrics.
You’d be closer to knowing him from his books, and there aren’t that many of them.
When Bob lays his head on his pillow at night, I don’t think we could ever guess what he’s thinking about.
He’s not thinking, “Oh my God, I’m Bob fkn Dylan.”
He’s probably thinking about what everybody else thinks about…
What happened that day, or what emotional real estate is being taken up in his life.
He’s probably thinking about family or himself, but not in the context of being famous.
Back to what he thinks of his fans…
He probably feels like it’s another person that everybody’s thinking of when they think of Bob.
He probably feels detached from it, as well he should be. We don’t know him at all.
I also wonder how impeded his experience of knowing other people has been. That’s an even bigger issue than what he thinks of his fans.
I don’t consider myself a “fanatic” of anything. I’m an appreciator.
Think about it…
Bob has been famous for 60 years, some people don’t even live that long.
He’s been famous for a lifetime.
He was really young when he became so famous.
Immediately in this world when you get any type of notoriety…
Even if you’re just wealthy and you’re not particularly famous, you can’t trust anyone.
To think he’s been having that experience since he was so young…
What has that done to his ability to know people?
Cuz it was so long ago when he wasn’t famous, didn’t have anything that everybody wanted…
Does he even remember what it was like to deal with people from the standpoint of NOT being Bob Dylan?
If he does, it probably sucked anyway.
Not to be pessimistic about the human condition, but it pretty much sucks.
Life is great, but it’s also a joke.
Other people are so full of crap.
There are some certain ways in which I feel bad for Bob and anybody in that position…
Like Michael Jackson… he was lonely.
I remember a scene of MJ in a Las Vegas hotel and there were crowds below…
And they were just going crazy trying to catch a glimpse of him.
You could just see that even in the midst of all of those people supposedly being so into you…
You’re still alone and perhaps even more alone than you would be as a regular person.
Has Bob been deficient in actually knowing people?
Just because of the celebrity and the legend of who he is?
I would imagine that not everybody is starstruck.
I’m sure there are lots of people who could talk to Bob Dylan and not be fixated on who he is.
I’m sure there are people who could genuinely conversate or chill with him and not be weird.
I’d imagine it would be very rare to have a pure, unbiased experience with other people.
Not everybody’s a fan of Bob Dylan, I get that.
Who doesn’t like Bob Dylan though? Aside from the riff-raff…
Pretty much everybody has heard a Bob Dylan song and thought it was pretty chill.
There’s just like nobody who hasn’t been touched by that.
You’d have to go to some remote tribe on an island somewhere to find somebody who’s never heard about Bob Dylan.
How often does he have an unbiased experience with people?
Even when you’re just wealthy and not famous, people still want to kiss your ass…
Everybody wants something.
No matter what, you’re probably almost never gonna find anybody who’s gonna be real with you.
Fame and wealth aren’t the only things that make people treat you differently.
Any kind of status, beauty, it all conditions the way that people treat you.
Imagine the hassle of being Bob Dylan.
You couldn’t go anywhere without being disguised because people would recognize you.
It would be a security risk.
It would be scary, you would think.
You couldn’t go anywhere because people would be potentially crazy and stuff.
It’s not just his interpersonal dealings with people, it’s also normal experiences…
Again, Michael Jackson wore disguises so he could go out places.
You’d have to do something like that to observe the world from an unbiased standpoint.
But maybe Bob doesn’t really care about having a normal experience.
Especially at his age, he’s probably crossed that bridge a long time ago.
I wonder if part of him resents his fans?
I wonder if it’s a love/hate type thing.
In one way, they’ve given him so much. And these people do love Bob, the idea of Bob.
Cuz again, we don’t actually know him. He might suck as a person.
I don’t think he does, I think he’s probably pretty cool, but we don’t know.
The fans have given him a good life because of the support they’ve given him.
I’m sure he’s grateful for that, but…
Maybe he could be resentful in some ways because it’s also potentially taken a lot from his life experience.
Having to deal with not being able to go out in public like a normal person. Not being able to have an honest interaction with other people.
He’s certainly not had a normal life. And if he ever did, it was so long ago, God only knows if he even remembers it.
God only knows if it sucked or not.
I just wonder how he feels about it. Does he feel like he missed out on certain things because of the fame?
There are certain experiences that I have been curious about…
I wonder what would it have been like if I could have done this or that?
It’s a normal human thing to have those kinds of feelings.
I wonder if he just doesn’t care about this aspect of things?
Every single person has a lot on their plate in the first place.
Not everybody cares about certain stuff.
I appreciate Bob’s fans, cuz dude…
They’re some dedicated people.
Bob shouldn’t be salty about how obsessed people can be with him.
It’s kind of a compliment, you must be pretty interesting if people feel that way about you.
Let people have their fun.
It just makes me smile because…
As much as I have a problem with humanity, I also love some things about it.
I love how human it is to just be obsessed…
It’s so human to do those things, and I don’t hold it against ’em.
So this is piggy backing off of my other recording about how I want Bob to basically write smut.
But like, Bob style smut. Because it’s hot and I want more.
But here’s my thing.
If you know about that super mega freaking creepy (in my opinion) letter that Bob apparently wrote to Joan Baez’s mother…
I think it was really just to Joan Baez under the guise of being to her mother…
Because that’s even more warped and sick and twisted in that context because of what it said.
And I’m sure you can find this letter online, it was in Joan Baez’s book, “And a Voice to Sing With.”
It was just like… sooo creepy though. Like, not hot. Just creepy.
And one of the reasons I wanna talk about this is, first of all…
When Bob gives us smut? Please, Bob, don’t do it like that. Cuz that’s not cool.
What perplexes me about Bob is the writing style.
I get that Bob came up in the days of typewriters, it wasn’t computers, it wasn’t on the internet.
The typewriter is kind of like an instrument in and of itself.
And in that way I can see how somebody might develop multiple writing styles, almost like different characters.
But I noticed the Joan Baez letter was all lowercase, terrible punctuation and grammar, almost like Bob was writing in a certain voice. Like a character.
It was also kind of like the same way that “Tarantula” was written.
And my mind is just flooding, rivulets of thought up in here.
Fuckin’ Tarantula, I’ve gotta make an entire recording about Tarantula because…
Well do I even need to explain why Tarantula deserves its own recording?
So that was like a massive troll, Bob was clearly trolling with that, but here’s what bothers me…
Again with the ghostwriting theory…
What if Tarantula and the Joan Baez letter…
The lowercase clusterfuck writings, what if those are the REAL Bob Dylan?
And all of the lyrics and books, what if those really were ghostwritten and the real Bob Dylan is Tarantula?
Is that not a terrifying thought?
Cuz I mean, think about it…
Back in the ’60s at the beginning of his career, there were pictures of him with typewriters.
He was on typewriters in various scenes in the documentaries, so we know he was writing something, but…
What if he was just tormentedly pounding out Tarantula in those pictures?
What if that’s what he was writing? Where are the pictures of Bob Dylan writing throughout the years?
If you’re that prolific, you’d think you’d have a typewriter connected at the hip or something.
Somebody who is supposedly as prolific as Bob Dylan has been…
You would think there would be a bunch of pictures throughout the decades of Bob writing stuff.
Like writing on napkins and stationery, writing with typewriters…
Like what the hell does Bob write on? Is Bob writing?
And this man. The freaking enigma of Bob Dylan is endless.
There’s Chronicles Vol. 1, Philosophy of Modern Song…
It just seems like Bob has all of these different voices and it’s unusual.
I theorize it has to do with typewriters basically being an instrument…
There wasn’t a screen, your device wasn’t connected to the internet to open up a world of distractions.
You were alone with a blank page and mechanical keys, and you had to reach into your imagination and come up with things.
Maybe he exhibits all of these different writing styles because of the era he came up in.
Typically people only have one writing style. Especially in the era of the internet.
You can recognize people by their writing styles even if they try to change it up…
If you’re observant and skilled enough, you can recognize people through the written word.
You can still sense the person behind the writings, or at least I can.
That’s one thing I find really interesting about Bob.
He seems capable of writing in all these different voices…
But then again, books are typically proofread and edited, maybe the rough drafts look a lot different than when they’re published.
Maybe it all starts out looking like Tarantula before the editors get at it.
Like I was talking about with the liner notes of “World Gone Wrong”…
Those are not completely perfect on a punctuation/grammatical level.
I think that’s a little closer to what Bob Dylan’s writing is actually like.
In PhMoSo, the punctuation is very interesting, sometimes there are almost run-on sentences.
I can relate to some of those oddities because I write in the same way.
Whoever edits Bob’s books seems to keep some of these elements intact…
Which I really appreciate, I really like that a lot. It’s a quirk.
I write a lot and I have certain ways of doing things. My usage of punctuation is not by the books.
I’m aware of that and I know how to do it the right way, I just don’t care.
To me, it’s stylistic… it’s art, it’s a mode of self expression.
This is the way it looks good to me.
And that’s why I write that way.
I’m just curious about what Bob’s rough-drafts look like…
I found out about it in Dec. 2022 when I got back into Bob Dylan again. I’ll talk about my history with Bob Dylan in another recording.
It was just after Christmas 2022 and for a couple weeks I had been super back into Bob Dylan, just going hard.
I came down with the flu after Christmas.
For the first time in my life, I had fever dreams.
These fever dreams were about Bob Dylan.
It was an entire afternoon/early evening where I was so sick and feverish that I dreamed these hyper-realistic dreams about Bob Dylan for what felt like hours.
There was this one dream that I can see crystal clear in my mind.
It was a museum exhibit.
There were books. Black and white. A series of books with black and white covers.
They were inside of a glass display case.
It was futuristic. It was shuffling the books. It was like a motorized book shuffling machine.
It would keep shuffling these books into different formations.
I don’t know what any of the books were called or what specifically was on the cover of any of these books.
I just knew in my mind that these books were by Bob Dylan, and they were not lyrics or autobiographies. They were something else.
I don’t know if they were fiction or what they were. There were probably 10 books. And they were all by Bob Dylan.
And they weren’t anything that we know about right now.
As time has gone on and I’ve remembered this dream specifically for almost a year now…
I’ve just been wondering, has Bob written a ton of stuff that we don’t know about yet?
I know that he said he doesn’t like to write books because he doesn’t want to proofread back over them.
That’s what editors are for.
I just have this feeling that there are literary works by Bob Dylan that we don’t know about yet but may know about in the future.
Maybe even posthumous releases or something.
I just feel like there’s something up Bob’s sleeve.
There are things we don’t know, but we’re gonna know someday.
It also occurred to me that maybe Eddie G, who was involved in Theme Time Radio Hour and Philosophy of Modern song…
Maybe rather than ghostwriting for Bob, he edits what Bob writes.
If it’s true that Bob has a bunch of literary works that we don’t know about yet, could you imagine?
It’s just an interest that you have, kinda like any other interest.
I love “Gunsmoke” too, it’s like the greatest show of all time. I realize the gravity of what I’m saying there.
I love The Twilight Zone, Barney Miller, I Love Lucy. There are several shows I love, but Gunsmoke is the greatest fuckin’ show of all time, it is what it is.
I feel the same way about Bob Dylan. He’s a subject, he’s like a genre.
But he’s also a person. Which is exciting. And that’s hot.
Cuz even though he’s 82 right now…
Dude, I’m just stoked on Bob Dylan.
I’ll tell you what I wish… I wish Bob Dylan was 40 again.
I wish there was so much more time to play.
To just have Bob here.
It’s greedy, it’s selfish, but that’s just the way I feel about it.
I just wish that he could be here for longer.
But in a way that is awesome for him, you know?
Because being mega old does not look fun.
My grandma is 92…
When you’re THAT OLD, and let me tell you there’s a world of difference between 82 and 92…
It’s a lot.
I just hope that someday, in the future, they create some way to extend life.
But not in a weird, soul compromising ultimatum for eternal youth…
But scientific, real ways of extending life to where…
Yeah you may be 90, but your physical quality of life is good.
It just looks like it sucks to be old.
And I don’t want that.
To think about Bob Dylan and what an amazing life he’s had…
You couldn’t ask for a more interesting experience as a human here on this planet.
That pretty much takes the cake.
I’m sure that he doesn’t give a crap, but…
For those of us who are so intrigued by him and what he represents…
History, culture, embodied and pioneered…
I just wish that he could just stay forever.
But nobody stays forever, nothing lasts forever.
And in past eras of the Earth’s history…
Atlantis, Lemuria, all the lost continents throughout the Earth Ages…
They’ve all had their own Bob Dylan. Every civilization in Earth’s history has had their own Bob Dylan.
It’s like that song by Donovan, “On board were the 12.” They’ve always been here.
But history gets wiped out and they’re forgotten.
They always come back.
But that one song that Bob Dylan’s archetype had in Atlantis…
Nobody will ever hear that again.
That one poem that Atlantis’s Edgar Allan Poe wrote. No one will ever read that again.
And I know it’s all recorded in the Akashic records, the universal conscious. It’s all saved.
It just fascinates me to think that things that are such a big deal right now…
Things that are held in high esteem and obsessed over, someday it’ll all be washed asunder.
And no one will ever lays eyes on it again or hear it again.
Not that version of it, not that vibration. It’ll be gone.
I find it fascinating to live in this era where we’re here, in the now.
And it’s never gonna be again. Not in exactly the same way.
It’ll be different next time.
And I really like this version of it. I don’t want things to change.
Even though we’re totally not in a Golden Age right now.
We’re kind of like… before the Golden Age.
So I’m sure whatever happens next time will be even better…
I’m just nostalgic. I just have a special place in my heart for this time we’re in.
I went to a Bob Dylan concert in Richmond, KY on December 2, 2023 and it was magical.
I did not go expecting it to be magical. I didn’t want to have high expectations and get disappointed for whatever reason.
I read a lot of reviews about the concerts and about how people act in the crowds sometimes.
Also, sometimes Bob’s obstructed by a hat on top of his piano or a water bottle or whatever.
I just didn’t want to set myself up for disappointment, but…
It was unbelievable.
And it was a journey for me too.
First of all, when I bought the ticket in October, I couldn’t believe it.
Bob Dylan came to Richmond, KY. He didn’t come to Lexington, he didn’t come to Louisville, he didn’t come to Nashville.
Those are places I don’t approve of as far as going there to see a show. It’s just not gonna happen.
I’ve been to Nashville to see shows, but I’m not going to Louisville and I’m not going to Lexington because the Man O War is crazy to drive, I’m staying away.
I had restrictions on where I would be willing to go to see Bob Dylan, and I said to myself like a year ago…
If Bob Dylan comes to Kentucky somewhere that isn’t scary as fuck to get to, I gotta go. It’s just like a sign from God. And it happened.
I got my ticket in October and I was like, “This is a couple months away, that’s a long time.” And of course it went by really fast.
I couldn’t even believe that I’d actually gotten a ticket for that entire time. I planned for it, but I was just like, “Come on, this isn’t real.”
So when the day came, I made the trek over the mountains and through the woods. The way there wasn’t bad because it was daylight…
But on the way back it took every ounce of concentration I had. It was pouring rain, it was foggy.
I listened to the same song on repeat for almost the entire way, which was “Hysteria” by Def Leppard.
I was just feeling the vibes and that’s what I do when I drive if I need to be in the zone because of challenging conditions, or if I’m obsessed with a song I’ll just put it on repeat forever.
I’m still processing my thoughts and feelings. The fact that I actually saw Bob Dylan in concert…
And I saw him good too.
Bob Dylan was pretty damn close.
I could see him clearly the entire time, I can’t even believe it.
It was so…
Honestly, it was weird.
Because my seat was on the aisle behind the handicapped section and there wasn’t another row of seats directly in front of me, nobody was obstructing my view.
I was so lucky to get that seat, I didn’t realize it was so great. When I bought the ticket, it was just the closest seat that was on the aisle, which I have to have.
I’d hoped it was a good view, and it was just insanely good.
You can tell Bob does this a lot.
He does this A LOT dude.
That kind of perspective, traveling around just doing show after show, for decades?
What must that be like?
To have that experience, I can’t even imagine.
Bob has seen every single kind of person. At least 100 times, and probably way more than that.
What is that like? What would you even see anymore when you look at people, when you see a crowd? What would you even see? How would you feel about it?
And who can relate to that? Nobody can relate to that.
So Bob stands alone, and I really don’t envy that at all.
I don’t envy Bob Dylan for being as famous and beloved as he is, and people also hate on him. It’s crazy.
I think you gotta be a special type of person to take that, it’s gotta be your destiny. Cuz otherwise, how would you function?
After seeing him, it was incredible, and he was amazing but…
What is it like for him?
You’ve done it so much… can it ever be special anymore?
I can’t imagine.
Somehow Bob makes you feel like it IS special. Which is…
True showmanship, pure mastery.
He can make you feel like you’re the only person in the room.
The way he delivers the lyrics is just powerful.
He IS music, he IS lyrics, that’s just what he is.
Also, 60 years of constant practice probably doesn’t hurt either.
But not just anybody would be able to do that.
I didn’t know that he was pretty much psychic. Because when he’s up there on that stage, he’s just pounding it out but…
He’s also just so huge and expanded in his awareness that he takes up a huge area with his presence and his essence.
So when he’s singing the words, it’s not just words coming out of his mouth, it’s like…
Tentacles of magnetism that reach you and move you around.
I was literally swayed around by the words Bob Dylan was saying.
I didn’t need to understand every single word he was saying, because it’s beyond words.
It’s just imbued with this essence.
It’s like…
No wonder he’s Bob Dylan.
It’s beyond magical.
I didn’t expect that. I didn’t go expecting that.
But from the second I got there, it was in the air. There was magic in the air.
It was gentle magic. Soft magic. I didn’t expect it to feel like that.
It was like a lover, not a fighter kind of magic.
It was like a gentle, soft, purple magic.
I swear I’m not trolling, I’m so serious right now.
It was like a misty, foggy, hazy magic. It was mystical.
And where I parked…
I ended up pretty much right by where they park the tour buses.
I didn’t even see them for a while, but when I did I was like whoa.
I just didn’t expect to see that. I expected to see the front of the building or something.
I didn’t expect for it to be so personal. It felt as personal as a concert with thousands of other people can feel.
But it was special…
I think I saw Bob Dylan walking around outside of the tour bus.
It could have been anyone, but…
It was this mysterious hooded figure.
I kinda think it was Bob Dylan.
And Bob Dylan on stage?
Say maybe that WAS Bob Dylan in front of the tour bus like an hour before the show…
Imagine if that was him. That was just like a regular person walking around out there.
And then he gets on stage and he’s wearing these sparkly pants and he’s dressed to the nines.
He carries this absolute legend with him onto the stage.
Like I said, I don’t understand the perspective of somebody who’s had that kind of life experience.
To play that many shows and be that renown is something that even other famous people…
Have they really had that experience? Cuz I’m pretty sure Bob’s had that experience harder than anybody.
Elvis died pretty young though to be fair, I don’t think he’s a good example.
But I’m just trying to think of other people who are ridiculously famous.
I love Bob and I appreciate the fact that he’s been doing this for so long…
He’s truly incredible.
There’s so much muscle memory involved with what he does too. It’s almost like you could autopilot through it.
But I imagine it probably requires an intense amount of concentration to play the music and be amazing.
It seems kind of like a hard job.
Being in front of all the crowds? I’ve never gotten the impression that Bob is ever nervous. Like in his entire career.
Maybe I’m just oblivious to the way Bob feels, but I just never got the vibe that he ever had stagefright.
Maybe he did at one time, but it sure doesn’t seem like it anymore.
Seems like any type of nervousness he had getting in front of a ton of people is like, way long gone.
And now it’s just as common to him as getting up in the morning…
Eating a piece of toast, brushing your teeth, checking the mail. It’s like it’s as routine to him as something like that.
I just wonder…
I wonder so much.
I still have so many questions.
Ironically, the answer doesn’t come in words. It comes in feelings and emotions.
That magnetic, psychic force that sways you. That’s where the answers are.
And since then I’ve been down the rabbit hole on various aspects of Bob Dylan in general.
Specifically though, Bob Dylan’s relationship with Eddie Gorodetsky who he gives credit to for helping him with PhMoSo. But there’s no indication of what exactly Eddie contributed.
When I made that original review I had not read all that much of the book. I had skipped around and read whatever stuck out to me. The things I came across were gems. I guess the book is probably just full of gems.
There were some semi-perverted things in it that really just rocked my socks and I was like “Oh, fuck yeah, I’m all about this.” I’ll talk about that in another recording.
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this whole Eddie G thing because Eddie G was responsible for Theme Time Radio Hour as well, right? And TTRH was what, like 2004, 2005?
How long have Bob and Eddie known each other?
We know that they’ve known each other for at least 20 years, but how long did they know each other before that?
The liner notes bear a very strong resemblance to what is written in PhMoSo.
The only difference is that the liner notes are a little rough around the edges when it comes to things like capitalization, punctuation, etc.
So my question is this…
Because they are so similar, there are a couple of possibilities.
(1) Either Bob Dylan actually is responsible for PhMoSo, and that possibility opens up a whole can of delicious worms for me, which I’ll explain in another recording.
Possibility (2) is that back in 1992, Bob and Eddie G knew each other, and Eddie was writing things for Bob.
That’s like 31 years ago at the time of recording this. What are the odds that they knew each other back then? Did they know each other back then?
So the ghostwriting thing…
Say Eddie G is responsible for the bulk of PhMoSo, well then it’s the same style as the 1992 WGW liner notes, meaning he must have written those too.
Because what is Eddie contributing exactly to PhMoSo? What did Eddie contribute to TTRH?
I was under the impression that Eddie wrote TTRH and Bob Dylan just read it. And he did a great job reading it, cuz it was awesome.
But did Eddie write PhMoSo, TTRH style, and Bob Dylan just read it?
Or did Bob really write it?
How long have they known each other, and is Eddie G just basically Bob Dylan’s ghostwriter?
If he was around in 1992 and wrote the WGW liner notes…
Then did he also write ~Chronicles Vol. 1? Because I felt like it was the same voice as PhMoSo, and I still kind of agree with that.
This is a whole other recording, but Chronicles is a lot more book-like, autobiographical, it’s not the same as PhMoSo.
To me, if Eddie G has really been around in Bob’s life since 1992…
Then I feel like Chronicles was way more written by Bob than by Eddie. I feel like Bob probably really did write that book more than he wrote PhMoSo.
And what really drives me up the wall is that we’ll never know the answer to these things.
If Eddie G really is ghostwriting these books, I appreciate that Bob has been using the same ghostwriter for all these years.
It lends familiarity and consistency to the writings at least.
If Eddie has ghostwritten these works for Bob…
Any appreciator of Bob Dylan who knows their sh*t has heard the theories that Bob’s always used ghostwriters, like since the beginning.
If it’s not true and if Bob really has written these books, then it’s so weird that people think he’s been using a ghostwriter forever.
Imagine having written all that stuff, and people are like “Bob Dylan didn’t write that, somebody else wrote that! Ghostwriter!” That would suck.
I have more thoughts about PhMoSo that I’d like to share in later recordings.
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