Dylan

I'm watching this Dylan documentary. It's educational to say the least. But there's one thing I detect that I have always known. Dylan would get into a snit. The kind of snit arising from this belief that people are really getting too damn serious about Dylan, and exactly what Dylan means in the greater scheme of things. So, in order to throw off his "disciples", Dylan would deliberately perform his live shows about as raw and and irritating as he could get. This would spawn confusion amongst those who would attend his concerts with the same dedication as a religious pilgrimage, as they thought that the prophet himself could only deliver the "word" in it's purest form. It was probably a sick thrill, but I can understand his motivation. Chill, people, I'm not Jesus, I'm a folk singer, for Christ's sake. Don't be looking for answers from someone who's only trying to find the answers himself.
Dylan is reaching the end of the road now, like most of us who grew up with him. He has finally reached that safe place where he can discuss what was going thru his mind during any one period in his life with no serious repercussions, at least to his career as a Musician. I'm sure Clapton is feeling the same freedom to shoot down this odd idea that he was ever the God of anything. The problem that artists have always faced, at least in the 60's and 70's, is that what they came up with was some direct connection with the mysteries of the universe. We were all so needy in that area that any artist with any sense of eloquence became instant prophets that we needed to hoist upon some pedestal and worship like crazy, sometimes in a drug induced state of emptiness that had to be filled with something, anything but what our parents were feeding us. Such was the state of culture we in white America found so lacking that we sucked up the essence of negro culture, ours was so bankrupt.
In essence, what Dylan and those of that period fed us we needed badly, and overall, despite the fact we totally wasted it in the end, it was a good thing. Their motivations for the music and poetry they produced might not have been what we thought they were, but it fed our need nonetheless. Today, we have a generation of kids with no true oppression to overcome, thus they rebel against the ease of their lives without even knowing why. What a waste. There is plenty of wrong in this world to protest against, but since it doesn't always directly impact them, our youth find more value and solace in despair and anger, rather than the injustice that happens to people all around them. We decided to give our kids everything, and having been given it, they found it empty.
The very fact that the Bush Administration ever occurred at all says alot about what we learned from the 60's. As a species, we do not collectively learn anything.
We still have war, we still have inequality, we still have rich, we still have poor, and happiness still exists totally independent of wealth or power. Misery exists in mansions with 15 bedrooms and 8 baths. Dylan has come forth to admit that songs do not cure us of our ills. Only ideas can do that.