This is not a review of a Dylan record

Of all of my favorite records, exactly one ever suggested itself as a favorite to me on a first listen: The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips. This post is not about that record. This post is about Bob Dylan's Modern Times, which I first snagged from the public library about a year ago, and which I've listened to maybe fifteen times since then. It finally got through to me Thursday while I was sitting on Memorial Union Terrace reading about the life of the historical Jesus. I was watching college students hanging out in the foreground and boats drifting on the lake in the background. Then "Spirit on the Water" came on, and it brought the whole scene into focus--I felt momentarily at peace, which is not always what happens when the world suddenly comes into focus.

So anyway I listened to the whole record, and here's what I found out: it's a record about being old.

This is becoming gradually more relevant to me. The older I get, the more conscious I become of the fact that aging is a delicate art form. Ignore contemporary culture and people will ignore you. Try too hard to belie your age and people lose their respect for you. There is, of course, the reliable third route of not giving a shit what anybody thinks, but I don't have that in me. I will either artfully split the difference or fail spectacularly.

As for Bob Dylan: who've thought he'd grow old graciously with his genius intact? Nothing he recorded between 1980 and 1997 even hinted at it. He waffled between religious wackiness and bizarre self-indulgence. Then he cut Time Out of Mind, a dark, challenging record full of angry love songs, which might have fully restored his image as an elder statesman of American culture except for those creepy Victoria's Secret ads he cut along with it:



Can I just say: I have no fucking idea whatsoever what is going on here? There is no way this ad will sell lingerie. It also doesn't sell Dylan: he looks tired, out-of-place, sexless.

Compare that to "Spirit on the Water," where Dylan sings to his lover in a hoarse whisper, alternating between cosmic imagery ("Spirit on the water / Darkness on the face of the deep") and classic blues double-entendre--it becomes clear only on a close listen that "Spirit on the Water" is a classic cuckold song. What is so remarkable is the tone: tender, maybe a bit ironic, never angry or bitter. Why? Dylan sings about pain. Is he too old to get worked up over something like this anymore?

But the closing two stanzas are sublime:

I wanna be with you in paradise
And it seems so unfair
I can't go to paradise no more
I killed a man back there

You think I'm over the hill
You think I'm past my prime
Let me see what you got
We can have a whoppin' good time

This is not an old man waiting for the comforts of heaven. This is an old man who's so convinced he's still got it, he's willing to bank all his hope on it. I'm not sure that's where I want to be in forty years, but I could sure do a hell of a lot worse.