The picture above, which I took today in my neighborhood, kind of sums up my feelings on this Tuesday in August, 2006. Who would have predicted, twenty years ago, that this would be (in the words of an e-mailer — Fred — last week) the “summer of Bob?” Forget about thirty or forty years ago. How about ten years ago, in 1996? Who would have predicted that ten years later a new Bob Dylan album would be greeted with this kind of attention — magazine covers, rave reviews, a big promotional campaign, iTunes, the whole shebang? Certainly not me — and, I think, no one.

It fills my heart up in ways that surprise me, frankly, that this 65 year-old guy has defied all the odds, all the meanness and contempt directed his way these many years, all the constricting labels and the laughter, all the cynicism, all the put-downs, all the garbage, and, in his words, fought his way “out of the corner.” He’s gone from being regarded as a washed-up crank to being acknowledged — even by many people who don’t get what he’s doing — as a master.

Instead of being filed away in some easy-to-dismiss category, his work is out there in the marketplace, competing in its way with Jessica Simpson and, yes, Beenie Man (who the dickens is that?). Through slyness, genius, and not a little hard work, Bob Dylan is managing to put out in front of the music world songs that go like this (this is what my ears hear in the lyric to When The Deal Goes Down):

In the still of the night
In the world’s ancient night
Where wisdom rose up in strife
My bewildered brain
Toils in vain
Through the darkness on the pathways of life

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