What Does a Nobody Have To Do With it?

So, what is the contribution of Bob Dylan? In 500 words. A man changes his name as part of a performance for the stage.

He discovers New York City at a crucial moment in time, 1961-ish, when he is very young, 19, and unknown...where music is happening as a part of a whole wide spectrum of an art explosion in a local scene in the “Village”. It was a freak show. But, a really interesting one. There were lots of chances to perform and not so many restrictions on a nobody to take part in it however irritating. This explosion of free expression was not happening in many places, some say there were none like it in the United States or anywhere else at the time. These things happen from time to time and nobody knows why they happen…it takes a nobody who knows nothing really to know something important at such a time and place. I know this to be true. Perhaps so do you.

I want intentionally to make this short, compact or it will miss the point. I aim to point. To point to what you most want to know. It is about you.

What the actor did for us is this- he in a hurry proved what one of us can do. Not somebody else. Anyone. Acting alone. By 1965 Dylan was famous in the U.S. and abroad. By doing the opposite of what the world told him to do he became overnight a force it (the world) was powerless to halt changing all the rules along the way as if he were in charge! But there was a reason that cannot be stopped.

Now, for the heart of it. Dylan's action reworks by direct demonstration the very essence of man's understanding of what is a genius. World-wide.

We know by his life a genius is not a special human being who stands above most or all of the rest, he is you. And he is giving that demonstration very often more than 50 years later! That is generosity. Love.

This has come to me slowly, sometimes haltingly. At several points I have felt I have lost the strain of thought altogether. I am so glad to arrive at the point finally. I am not wasting time explaining his songs. I am accepting them humbly for what they are.

Nobody is not a genius!

Before the flood, Bob Dylan did not think of himself as a songwriter at all. What drove him was an urge he had to fulfill that has no name. That is where genius resides. In that seed of an idea. It is expressed poetically as I am going home.

See the difference? We, civilized man as he thinks of himself, we have been wasting enormous resources of creative energy in a game that makes most, nearly all, of us dullards who await instruction from a so-called hand full of geniuses. These are fakes, entirely, and it is obvious. These are merely those few of us who show great skill at a game that is going nowhere. They drive a train that will derail and we all know it. Bob Dylan was and is going somewhere.

The funniest part is that all we do today is ask for an angel to come among us and fix us.

All that has blocked humans from the dream ever since we betrayed ourselves...before the Great Pyramids...has been a simple misunderstanding of our nature. The true genius is anyone who dares step forward as a true man. You say, I don't know how to do that.

Truth is, it is the only thing you do know how to do to perfection.

Thanks, Bob.