In late [Bob] Dylan, music is the key to immortality, even though the summer days are long gone.

[Bob] Dylan would cut out phrases from magazines and then paste them together.

The 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.

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.

At the last stages of the journey, there’s no journey at all.

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.

Except in these latter-day songs, [Bob] Dylan is a grizzled old prophet who's already been to hell and back.