Maggie's Farm

--dang, BD --that's one cracklin' good intro. Esp the last sentence --lifts up and floats away, like the song --

That boy hits that harp HARD --not fooling around with fancy (when i first his harp playing, and compared it to the only other style in the air at the time, the blues harp virtuosos playing Delta and Chicago style, i was almost embarrassed for this Bob Dylan guy, whose effort seemed WAY amateur --of course, it never was meant to be bluesy at all, duh) and sings just a hair in front of the guitar --a sort of overdrive which changes --as BD notes --the old man in the ballad to a young man who somehow already has been around a long long time.

But you can really see it here --the essential Dylan talent --the song is always a question mark, but the performance of these 'where do i turn?' songs is always an exclamation point.

He leans back here and holds that high front end of the refrain, two bars, three, four --whew the confidence becomes an aura. And it makes a person feel good to see it, feel like if he --a non descript sort of fish out of show-biz water with a little of his singing kinda on the nasal side --can do it then i probably could too. And this feeling is 'approval' and an antenna like Dylan just receives it and rolls it right back out as the confidence that charms us so.

A life somehow leaked into a billion virtuous circles, scattered on all sides of the seven seas.