Sometimes, sitting there on the cushion failing to watch your breath, it can feel like youโre the only weirdo weird enough to be wasting your time in this way. But youโre not! There are generations of weirdos, monasteries full of them, and we have the benefit of their accumulated wisdom.
Jay MichaelsonThe most recent incarnation of [Bob] Dylan has been the traveling journeyman/ charlatan who sings roots music, snarls dark lyrics that make "All Along the Watchtower" sound like a Disney tune, hosts an old-school radio show, and turns up in some unusual places, like ads for Chrysler and Victoria's Secret.
Jay MichaelsonIn 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."
Jay MichaelsonMore 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.
Jay Michaelson[Bob] Dylan thus deserves the Nobel Prize, not just for "new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition," as the Nobel committee aptly described his work, but also for embodying the contradictions within it.
Jay MichaelsonI was raised a nice Jewish boy in a Conservative household. Went to Camp Ramah. It's funny actually. I think I enacted my queerness there unconsciously. I was kind of one of the weirdos. I was on staff and definitely interested in alternatives to what that social structure was supposed to be.
Jay Michaelson