i had a dream that bob dylan was a friend of mine

(this post is heavily inspired by the song, 'bob dylan dream,' by against me!)

i had a dream that me and bob dylan were friends. it wasn't bob dylan now though... it was a younger bob dylan... somewhere in the early 70's when he had already gone electric but still before the born again jesus freak stage.

he was giving me advice about life. he told me to go out and do what i wanna do but that most importantly to enjoy life. he said there's gonna be a lot of people that want me to be a lot of things to them and that it'll be impossible to be all things to all people. he said i'd have a hard enough time being everything i ever wanted to be to myself... that the idea of what other people demanded of me was irrelevant. he said that if i go out and do as i like and follow my own guidelines for what is good in this world, that i'd have no worries finding loved ones to surround myself with. and if i was honest to myself, i'd find myself amongst honest company at most times.

he went on to warn that it's hard to dodge certain archetypes and classifications. the hippies wanted a piece of bob dylan. but dylan never said he was a hippie. he had protested against segregation and war before it was the cool thing that all the kids were into. he didn't need to consider himself a hippie just because he sorta in some way helped influence a good amount of them. he was only gonna be bob dylan through and through and that if some hippies liked it and some didn't, that was alright by him. he figured the hippies that understood were the cool ones. hippies that didn't demand bob dylan to be one of them were the only hippies dylan would enjoy the company of.

he went electric at a folk music festival. if you were there that night, you would've thought satan took the stage when dylan plugged in and gave his electric guitar a whirl. sure, a good amount of the audience enjoyed it but it was the folk music elitists that flipped out. to them dylan turned his back on the folk music movement. but if bob dylan didn't go electric that night, bob dylan would've turned his back on himself, and that was more important than anything.

he said he was a big believer in the whole, 'to thine own self be true,' school of thought and that not enough people were into that. a lot of people talk about it and will tell you that's how they live... but that's not how most people live their lives. he told me to watch out about how i talk about the way i live life. it'd be better to just live my life the way i wanted to without much talk about it at all. the actions explain themselves and words are useless when it comes to a concept as big and mysterious as living.

he told me we all had songs. not that everyone's a songwriter... but deep inside we all got something to share or say or do.. something we think other people need to hear a bit of. and much like everything else about bob dylan in my dream, people were free to like or dislike whatever it is that's in the songs in our heads. but it was important that we got it out there. if everyone let their songs flow out of them, it would do the world much good. the world needed more music, more songs, more art, more creativity and energy directed towards acts of self expression. he said that as people, we keep too much caged inside of us. it's good if we almost try to force it out if we don't feel it flowing. after enough forcing, the flow will come naturally. these songs sit in our bellies as poison but when they hit the oxygen they transform into something more powerful and beautiful.

and then he picked up his guitar and said it was time to go. bob dylan had somewhere to be. he wasn't sure where, but he knew it was somewhere and he knew he'd get there right at the time his presence was needed the most.