The brilliance of Bob

After 2 years of negotiations, XM radio had its first show hosted by Bob Dylan. For those of you just tuning in, or are completely clueless, Bob is one of my most significant influences--it was Bob's writing that made me realize the complete and utter uselessness of words; which I find is the one of the most important lessons a writer can exerience. Words, on their own, are nothingness. Some of you are scratching your heads wondering what the fuck I'm talking about and still others are nodding in agreement, or disagreement. This may seem a little like a digression, but it isn't.

Bob closed his first show out with the following:

Until next week, you are all my sunshine. If you think the summer sun is too hot, just remember at least you don't have to shovel it.

Again, some of you are probably wondering: What the fuck?? And that is perfectly okay, I will return at some point to my tirades on Britney and Jessica, and we all know Angelina is due to bust out the genetic equivalent of a mythic god soon--we will get back to that all, I promise.

It is statements like the one he closed with that are absolute genius and complete rubbish all at the same time. If you look at what it means, deconstruct the language, you end up with a jumble of jibberish... BUT, the brilliance of Bob is that he knows this, relies on it and lets people think about it for themselves. He says it and it makes the AP... this quote, this particular line of random words strung together more than any other, caused someone to turn his head and think, "This is good. I have to find a way to work this into the story."

And, unless you are a journalist on the Hunter Thompson caliber, you don't get a lot of gems writing for the AP. Hell, if you are a journalist on the Thompson tract, the AP won't keep you for long... but that is a digression. I'm guessing this little stroke of metaphor was the highlight of the day for guy who wrote the AP article. Because, let's face it, it's a bullshit story to cover Dylan on XM. Yeah, it's cool he's on XM and yeah, he's still prolific, but most people don't care; most people have far bigger issues to be apathetic about...

Which leads me to wonder; Dylan is still prolific, but is he still relevant? And should he be? Should he ever have been? He shunned the "voice of his generation" label so many times that now he embraces it as a joke at the opening of his shows. Don't ponder it too long... the summer suns a'comin'.