Unlike many Sixties rockers,[Bob] Dylan sang about getting old, about broken dreams. His return to roots music pointed the way for many of his contemporaries to forsake trying to sound 'current' and to instead make music that would stand the test of time.

There’s no path to liberation that doesn’t pass through the shadow.

Sometimes, sitting there on the cushion failing to watch your breath, it can feel like you’re the only weirdo weird enough to be wasting your time in this way. But you’re not! There are generations of weirdos, monasteries full of them, and we have the benefit of their accumulated wisdom.

[Bob] Dylan, like Johnny Cash and only a handful of others, simultaneously embodies the American dream and the harsh wake-up call that comes after it.

In the meantime [1963-65], [Bob] Dylan was writing some of the best love songs in the genre, like "Girl From the North Country," "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," and "It Ain't Me, Babe."

More of the symbols are stock (does [Bob] Dylan really have hogs lying out in the mud somewhere? I doubt it), but that's the point.

[Bob] Dylan is a contemporary Don Quixote, at once besotted by the promise of America and yet also undermining it.