Speaking of Free Republic reminds me that there was this argument there some weeks back, around the time that the news came out about Dylan’s Starbucks deal. Whenever the subject of Dylan comes up on that conservative forum, it becomes a clash between those that dig him and those that don’t, and those who buy into the caricature that the media have constructed around him, and those who understand that that is far from the truth.

On this particular thread, one of the contributors kept coming back with the argument that Dylan is a hopelessly inconsistent individual who has blown with the wind and backtracked time and again. I must say that I appreciated this response from a perceptive fan:

The idea that Dylan has been this constantly-changing chameleon is also way over promoted by mainstream media types who need a tag to hang on him. Since they always perceived him as wiggling out of whatever label they originally tried to put on him, they’ve settled on this “man of many faces” thing. While it’s understandable if someone unfamiliar with his work would be taken in by this, I think that people who’ve lived with his art for many years (and especially conservative types) are likely to hear a consistent thread throughout.

It’s too much to get into in a Free Republic post but consider, just as one example, a lyric he sang on his very first album:

Well, in my time of dying don’t want nobody to mourn
All I want for you to do is take my body home
Well, well, well, so I can die easy Jesus gonna make up,
Jesus gonna make up Jesus gonna make up my dying bed.

… and the final lines of the last song on his most recent album:

Just as sure as we’re living, just as sure as you’re born
Look up, look up - seek your Maker - ‘fore Gabriel blows his horn

Those lines bookend a career of songs that constantly draw from scripture, sometimes at the most unlikely moments. Yes, he’s changed musical styles, which has kept his music interesting, but he’s rarely gotten far away from an unflinching insight into human nature, an ever-present sense of mortality, and a respect for Biblical truth.

Often people are originally drawn to Dylan’s music for reasons that have more to do with his caricature (leftist politics, anti-war, whatever) but sooner or later, if they stick with it, and as they get older, they have to come to terms with the real essence of his body of work, which I think is those elements I mentioned above. In this way, Dylan’s work is ultimately not so much a part of the “counterculture,” as it is subversive to it. You might arrive to his songs as a 16 year old looking for protest anthems or music to smoke pot to - but if it really gets under your skin, it will one day lead you nowhere so much as right back to the Bible, and to values that outlast the latest fads and styles.

On one level he’s just a rock’n'roll singer - and on another his work has been an anchor in a deadly sea and has helped save more than one or two souls. I should have shut up long ago, but I just couldn’t let the canard of the “no consistent philosophy” lie. It’s been lying long enough.

Could’na said it better.

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