Happy Birthday Bob
(Here’s something from our friend Ron Wells…)
Robert Allen Zimmerman, born May 24, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota
He was born an enigma wrapped in a cloak of mystery outside the Gates of Eden, outside of time and space, walking in the footsteps of Woody Guthrie, sitting amidst the blues of Blind Willie McTell, kin to Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac who taught him the Beat, and soulmate to Rimbaud who painted words in lavish strokes of color that defied meaning and spoke volumes. He writes songs that touch eternity and come back to visit earth, only to soar away like shooting stars as he strums his guitar and his soul roams the world looking for stories of sacred love, political lust and enduring life, a song and dance man playing electrified magical musical notes for the gods. And if you want to find him look inside the holy halls of the Chelsea Hotel, but it’s probably too late because he’s already hit the road on his way to some other joint down Highway 61, and if you hear some woman with her hands in her back pockets, Betty Davis style, whispering on the wind, “Happy Birthday, Bob”, well, he probably doesn’t hear her anyways because he’s an artist and he don’t look back as he heads for the Highlands where his spirit is on the water and his heart is traveling slow, onward, forever onward, passing mere mortals on the way to the next show.
“Thinking of a series of dreams
Where the time and the tempo fly
And there’s no exit in any direction
‘Cept the one that you can’t see with your eyes”
——-Bob Dylan