Okay so no one can dispute that Bob Dylan is a legend or that this song is legendary. To this end enough has been said and written about both to fill up entire internets. But please indulge us as we toss another one into the tube.
Not a month goes by without us giving this song a listen. It always speaks to us. It manages to move us and comfort us, to make us feel happy or sad, but mostly it reminds us that it's necessary and proper to set aside four minutes out of this hectic life to be contemplative.
And it's worth nothing that this song has been around for literally our entire lives.
Which means:
- We've known it longer than we've known family members, friends, loved ones
- We've known it longer than we've known the Bible, been allowed in a voting booth, held a job.
- We've known it longer than we've known some of humankind's most vexing elements: love, intoxication, indifference. etc.
We sought refuge in it's words when we were confused 12-year olds [a child I am told]. We seek guidance from it now, standing -- confused again, we must admit -- at the dawn of 30 [a child I am told].
The song has literally become part of us. It's seen our past and knows our present and will be part of the toolkit that we bring to bear on the issues that we will face in the future. We find strength in it's longevity and we're hard pressed to come up with many other things in our lives that can make such a claim.
We love this timeless quality of music. And we think it's important to reflect on this quality when we get too caught up in thinking about how digital technology will affect music, and how the law will deal with digital technology, and how a generation of post-Napster people will view the law.
In the end, we turn to music because it's been there for us before, it's what we've always known. We've had rough patches in the past and the music is proof both of those old wounds and of the fact that we soldiered on, and things turned out okay.
Oh, things turned out way better than okay.
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