Statisticians and demographers
often use the term “cohort,” to mean a group of individuals who share a common
characteristic. It can be economic level, years of education or just about
anything else that can be measured. By the measurement of age, Bob Dylan and I
are in the same cohort. I’m a couple of
years younger but the Age of Dylan is my age as well.
When I heard that
he’s won the Nobel Prize, I realized that for a while now, what I mean by “Dylan”
has undergone a change. For years, I meant the Dylan of the beginning, when we
were young, and he caught the perfect wave of those early Sixties changing
times. Music burrows into us, sets up its banners and tents, a permanent
encampment, and stirs us in a way no other art form can. For someone like me, a fan who never became a
fanatic, those songs mean something more than “Dylan.” They’re my own personal
worm hole – just a few opening chords
and I’m back in the time of my time, all youth and optimism, when, Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive but to
be young was very heaven! Time has shown we were naïve about how easy it
would be to change the world, but it’s also shown that we were right – about
civil rights, being against the war, all war, and the values of what came to be
called the counter-culture. The authenticity of our ideals is still there in
the authenticity of the songs.
But beginning about
ten years ago, around the time our cohort was more or less on the line of
sixty-five, another “Dylan” began to take shape. That year, I found myself
buying Modern Times, the first album
of his in years that I actually paid money for. I wanted it because it was evidence
that after all these years, with a lifetime of all kinds of experience, Dylan is
still the real deal. He’s still at it, fifty years later committed to doing the
work he was meant to do with the energy to keep turning out some of his best
songs. I’m continually surprised by how much that means to me. But that’s the
Dylan I’ve come to love, the one who has stayed righteous and true, the one who
is still going strong.
Dylan has always hated strangers assuming they
know who he is; he hates being a symbol for anything or anyone. But he must
know it’s unavoidable. I’ll use another word. Representative. Dylan is a representative
of our cohort, our generation. He represents our tribe, and more than
represents; he’s completely embedded in our own thinking about ourselves. That
must be why, when I heard about the Prize, I felt as if we’d all won it, felt
it as an acknowledgement and validation of our own particular Age, of who we
were at the beginning, what we’ve been through, and who we are now.
For years, Dylan has been
on the Never Ending Tour, playing for thousands of people, hiding in plain
sight. He’s the Lone Ranger, drifting into town to do some good and gone before
you know it and you’ve never even seen his face. Of course, the Tour eventually
will end, as will all our own private tours. That fact is always there, a slow
train moving closer as it ambles down the track. Well, even though it’s getting
there, it isn’t dark yet. There’s still energy to do work, make connections and
find our own meaningful metaphors. There’s time to give and feel love. Time to
keep going strong. Of course, there’s only one wish for us in that time. May we
stay forever young.
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