Maggie's Farm

"Like a Rolling Stone" was his first hit. I remember everyone talking about how long it was. It wasn't long before people got over a six-minute song played on radio and started listening to the words that 'everyone' realized this was something different, unique and out of what was then mainstream Beatles and Rolling Stones rock 'n roll.

I remember years later talking with a Dylan-fan friend of mine and we, who used to write notes using nothing but Dylan lines, realized he gave us permission to think. That is, anyone who listened. It was as if he demanded we think, that that was the only way to live - to think for yourself.

(That is too esoteric, but I don't know how to bring it on down to soulsville.)(I do believe it, still. Dylan let us know we had to think for ourselves.)
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Don't forget The Ballad of Davy Crocket.

I was thinking after I tried to express myself up yonder that Dylan just got into our heads. The hippies were in full glory but they were overwhelming, and then Dylan stole quietly onto the scene with a different kind of rebellion for those who were products of the fifties and doing what our parents told us to do and doing it without thought of straying off-course. Dylan was as rebellious as the whole revolution, but he used poetry to music to change the way we thought. He was liberating without making those of us who were too young to be hippies and those who couldn't be hippies but believed in them, and those who didn't like the hippies but knew something had to change free to grasp the rebellion privately and ...odd enough to say, with amazement that some guy was changing mindsets through music and all you had to do was listen.

"When your mother sends back all of your invitations"

You don't not think about that. (Or hundreds of other lines...)
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"Miss Lonely"

You never understood that it ain't no good
You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you

jeez, Buddy. That one is killer.

"and our choices, they were few, so the thought never hit
that the one road we traveled would ever shatter or split

I wish
I wish
I wish.........

You nailed it.
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Good essay. Did you read the comments?

I loved this from a commenter:

"And what I think is that, while activism and accomplishments are an aspect of our identity, what we really need, what we want to know in the end, what will be our legacy, is that we had PASSION, and that we found a way to be true to it." [K.Crone]
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Oh, my darling Buddy - Have you read "Killer Angels" yet? Your quip at the end there reminds of the soldiers marching past their tents into Gettysburg's certain future.

(I know you haven't read it, you lizard. You're afraid. And I don't blame you.)
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