Just saw a documentary “on Dylan that gave me some insight into the creative process. When you hear how he got from zero to ten, it gives you hope that it can happen to you. Here are a couple of points that stuck with me.
1. He had a ‘king/s’ someone/s who gave him his big break at Columbia Records.
2. He was unique, yet he first started by learning and performing the songs he loved. He then eventually found his unique ‘voice’. He didn’t try to be unique, it came naturally.
3. He wasn’t afraid to take chances and try new things. He went a lot by his ‘intuition’ what felt right. He was a real ‘seeker’.
4. He knew when to go through an open door. When the door opened he was ready to go through. He was ‘in tune with his time’.
5. He visited Woody Guthrie (who passed away in 1967) and he felt he got his ‘anointing’ or was channeling his spirit. Interesting possibility, some say the departed are like a lending library to assist the living. Some said it was like he was ‘possessed’. In any case, it seems that one generation has to pass the torch of vision on to the next generation – one candle lights the new one when it melts down to just the wick.
“Are they (angels) not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation? ” – Hebrews 1:14
I came across a good quote from Woody: 
“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling.
I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built.
I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.”[72]
Here is the preview from Martin Scorsese’s documentary No Direction Home:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTwdTcxjsmY
Dylan is 72 and is making his 43rd album when he could be retiring. Who could say or sing it better than Dylan, “”I’m rollin’ slow, I’m doin’ all I know. Old, young, age don’t carry weight – it don’t matter in the end.”
In his story I am looking for connections – the whys and wherefores, hoping I can glean some tips to apply to my own struggle. One common thread from his and other stories I have heard was that they had a brilliant idea that they seized upon and passionately developed. What made them great was they appreciated what they had stumbled across. They knew the butterfly had landed and they caught it in their net. These ideas often came when they had put it aside and were just ‘chilling’ or when they had given up trying to find the solution. But the ideas and concepts didn’t come at random or without coaxing them. The great innovators knew what they wanted and could clearly state the problem. Often they hit a brick wall and nothing worked until the lights came on, often when they least expected it.
Bob Dylan, has had a tremendous influence on modern music from The Beatles till today. For those of you young’uns who don’t know Dylan, let Howard Sounes, one of his biographers, fill you in.
“There are giant figures in art who are sublimely good – Mozart, Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright, Shakespeare, Dickens. Dylan ranks alongside these artists as simply awesome.”
Perhaps you, like me, are wondering why he is considered with a raspy voice and ungainly appearance?
“He sings with such passion, feeling and conviction that you think this is my life, this is everyone’s life, this is what it is to be a human being.”
“The way he turns a lyric, it’s as if, to paraphrase Dylan himself, every word rings true and glows like burning coal, pouring off of every page as if it was written in his soul.”
I was driving in the car today and some of the lyrics came to me from one of his songs. It confirmed to me the importance of looking forward.
I put below the whole song, but some parts were more applicable to me than others. I read a bit about the background of this and other songs from this period and it was a major turning point in his life (he had several) where he had to start all over again so to speak. The application I got was we can be confident that we have the gifts we need to turn troubles or challenges into something good. We can’t fall or fail because we are in His hands and the law can’t touch us when we live the law of love which fulfills all the law and the prophets. The Egyptian ring is like our spiritual gifts – it makes room for us and sparkles before we speak – our ‘anointing’. The rest I have no idea, but it sounds cool. Maybe you can get something from that – or maybe its just for fun ’cause it sounds good, which poetry often does. It gives a feeling.
She Belongs to Me (Bob Dylan)
Hear Dylan sing it on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOUtzHizr9A
She’s got everything she needs
She’s an artist, she don’t look back
She’s got everything she needs
She’s an artist, she don’t look back
She can take the dark out of nighttime
And paint the daytime black.
You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees
You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees
But you will wind up peeking through her keyhole
Down upon your knees.
She never stumbles
She’s got no place to fall
She never stumbles
She’s got no place to fall
She’s nobody’s child
The Law can’t touch her at all.
She wears an Egyptian ring
That sparkles before she speaks
She wears an Egyptian ring
That sparkles before she speaks
She’s a hypnotist collector
You are a walking antique.
Bow down to her on Sunday
Salute her when her birthday comes
Bow down to her on Sunday
Salute her when her birthday comes
For Halloween buy her a trumpet
And for Christmas, give her a drum.
I passed this on to a friend of mine who was going through a difficult crisis in his life. Here are excerpts of his reply:
Dear Peter,
Thanks. I love Dylan. My IPod is full of his music, one of my great joys has been to rediscover this wonderful artist’s music and words. That is the wonderful thing about art, that it ultimately is not backward-looking and one of the reasons it has been such a comfort to me when my world fell apart.
The third verse is where I came to yesterday, not stumbling because I’m already down. We can’t fall when we’re down and crying out to God. I did that yesterday, feeling very guilty about all the ways I had failed my kids, myself, others, and most of all God. And the Lord pulled me through once more since the enemy can’t touch us when we are on our knees before God. The Law has been nullified.
I won’t go so far as to say I live the Law of Love and fulfill all the law and the prophets. I don’t think anyone but Jesus has ever done that. That’s only the ideal, and this is one of the things I came to realize, ‘Right, if we live totally in love, there is no law against what we do,’ but we are weak human beings who fail, without exception, and we will make decisions that are not in love, but when we rely completely on God’s love and His mercy and we keep coming back to Him for His forgiveness, He will make things right.
The ring, the anointing, very true. I have learned, also with some degree of pain, that the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. Some of the reference letters that people have written me lately brought me to tears and were very encouraging but also humbling, knowing that they were talking about someone who has done some awful, unloving things, things that make me physically cringe when I think of them, and yet they said they had learned lessons from their contact with me.
This is encouraging and I appreciate it, Peter.
Thanks a lot.
A friend.
Hi Friend,
Glad it was a blessing in some small way. Like I say, it just came, so I thought it might be useful. Whether we have lived the law of love or not, we can always start right now, or do it more. In any case, I think the message is the Lord loves you a lot.
To get back to my premise and the reason I am talking about Dylan is this:
When Dylan became famous it took its toll on him. He was taking too many drugs and was surrounded by ‘lunatics’ who were also taking too many drugs. He was skinny from insomnia and pills, his nails were yellow from incessant smoking. His skin was a ghostly gray. He was sick of fame and the media and the hype the expectations of his fans and his own phoniness. It all came tumbling down when he got food poisoning while on a brief vacation in Portugal. This put him up in the hospital for a week, giving him a rare chance to reflect. He described his life leading up to that time:
“I realized I was very drained. I was playing a lot of songs I didn’t want to play. I was singing words I didn’t really want to sing. It’s very tiring having other people tell you how much the dig you if you don’t dig yourself.”
He had no plan for the future and was trapped in the image people had made of his past. When Dylan read about himself in the paper he remarked, “God, I’m glad I’m not me. I’m not that.”
It was then that he told his music manager he was quitting the music business. He was finished with singing and songwriting and going to retire to a tiny cabin in upstate New York in the town of Woodstock.
True to his word when he got home. He hopped on his Triumph motorcycle and drove off to his reclusive cabin in the hopes of finding some peace of mind. He was finished with the whole music scene and didn’t even bring his guitar.
In his cabin he was alone and with no obligations. He had told his manager that he was going to write a novel but there were no expectations – only an empty notebook. After a few days of being fed by the serenity and quiet, a strange and significant event happened – something ‘serendipitous’. He described it with some difficulty in this way: “It was just this sense that I had something to say. For several hours I wrote non-stop what came to me. I found myself writing this song, this story, this long piece of vomit, twenty pages long. I’d never written anything like that before and it suddenly came to me that this is what I should do.
It was (and is) like a ghost was writing that song. It gives and it goes away. You don’t know what it means but you just have to trust the ghost.”
When Dylan says vomit I think he means that his soul was sick and all that poison had to come out – he had to get empty – just like he had to get rid of that bad food that poisoned him in Portugal that started him on his quest.
Dylan was excited and became passionate once more that he had something to say. It saved his career and he is still in the flow of composing and performing today. He felt the excitement of a divine insight the new thrill that: “something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is.” The following week, he cut an acetate at Columbia records after just 4 takes. Those 6 minutes of raw music revolutionized rock ‘n’ roll. Bruce Springsteen describes the effect it had on him when he first heard it: “It was one of the most important moments of my life.” John Lennon was in awe of the achievement.
The song he wrote was Like a Rolling Stone:
You hear the original on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk3mAX5xdxo
Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you ?
People’d call, say, “Beware doll, you’re bound to fall”
You thought they were all kiddin’ you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin’ out
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
You’ve gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you’re gonna have to get used to it
You said you’d never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but know you realize
He’s not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And say do you want to make a deal?
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone ?
You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain’t no good
You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you
You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain’t it hard when you discover that
He really wasn’t where it’s at
After he took from you everything he could steal.
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone ?
Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They’re drinkin’, thinkin’ that they got it made
Exchanging all precious gifts
But you’d better take your diamond ring, you’d better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone ?
So what does Dylan have to do with serendipity and us?
Sure, we have problems a plenty – every creative journey does. We get mighty frustrated because the solution looks nowhere in sight. We’ve done all we could to remedy the problem or find a solution but – no go no show. Game over begins to flash in our minds. Or is it?
Could it be that being stumped is part of the creative process? We have to realize that we just can’t do it and we need the help of a ‘ghost’ pronto. Could it be that we need to wrestle with the angel until dawn (Gen.32) sometimes and realize that the solution is beyond our reach?
Often, it is only after we have packed our bags and moved out to our ‘cabin in Woodstock’ – when we have given up, after we stopped searching frantically for the answer that the answer comes. It has happened to me so many times that this space cannot contain it.
The cool thing is that when the answer comes, it often comes in a shocking completeness. Suddenly, the problem that was once insurmountable has become incredibly obvious if not still somewhat mysterious. The answer is so simple we wonder why we didn’t think of it before.
Simplicity is another subject in itself that I would love to study, but in these studies of innovative insight there is a common thread: The first stage is the ‘impasse’. Before there is a breakthrough there has to be a blockage – and often a big one. Perhaps, that is why Jesus said, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed you will say to this mountain remove and it will remove hence.
(Mt. 17:20 If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.)
Before Dylan could write a song which some would call a work of ‘genius’ he had to truly believe he had nothing left to say.
The next stage is the one we like most to talk about – when the lights go on. When it comes there is a certainty that this is significant. We know will rock our world. I call it ‘feeling the tingle’.
This is the wonderful mystery of serendipity and our search for meaning and purpose. The struggle is not something to hate but something to look forward to for we know the insight is soon to be delivered by ‘the ghost’.
May your message bearer be a Holy ‘Ghost’ for you- Welcome it when it arrives and like Abraham of old (Genesis 18) – offer it some bread, a comfy seat, and a drink. “Would you like your coffee with or without milk? One lump or two?”
And even if you don’t find that ‘needle in the haystack’ may you find the ‘farmer’s daughter’ and fall in love with serendipity.
Bringing Home the Elixir 