I’m in love with a 66 year old man. This is the reality that sinks in hard and painfully with Bob Dylan’s most recent album: Modern Times (2006). I’ve been lusting after Dylan for some time now, but the Dylan of my heart’s desire is the impassioned 24 year old of “The Times they are A-Changin’” and “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.” I love him, first, for his lyrical genius. The words! The pretty words! Consider the dreamy, poetic Mr. Tambourine Man: “Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free/ Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands/ With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves/ Let me forget about today until tomorrow.” All those silken s’s! All the forgetting! I love him too for his social conscience, and the honest, harsh clarity of his thoughts. As in With God on Our Side: “Oh the First World War, boys/ It closed out its fate/ The reason for fighting/ I never got straight/ But I learned to accept it/ Accept it with pride/ For you don't count the dead/ When God's on your side.” And I also love him because I find the folk style of these early records validating. Here is a boy from the Midwest. He’s very in touch with that, very close to his rural roots. He doesn’t try to sound high class or well bred – in fact he utterly rejects false superiority and pretentiousness: “This song was written somewhere down in the United States!” (Please, democrats – take a lesson!)

Now, as a Christmas gift, Cedric has given me the newest album – produced forty years after my steadfast favorites. Dylan’s voice has suffered – he sounds scratchy, we hear his age. The aging artist has been hard for me to face, for whatever reason. I couldn’t bear to listen to the album last week. This week, I’m coming to terms with it, and appreciating it for what it is. That is – Dylan is an artist near the end of the road. The style of the music is not precisely folk – more balladry. It’s nice though, pleasant enough. The lyrics are powerful – I think it is the poetry of a man who has reached that late life epiphany. I don’t wish to portray him as so old he’s irrelevant, but he seems half out of this world: “Well, I picked up a rose and it poked through my clothes/ I followed the winding stream/ I heard the deafening noise, I felt transient joys / I know they're not what they seem / In this earthly domain, full of disappointment and pain.” There are numerous invocations of the twilight of life, such as “I can see for myself that the sun is sinking” and “No man, no woman knows / The hour that sorrow will come / In the dark I hear the night birds call.” To some degree though, he doesn’t accept his own insights. He’s still the same Dylan, forever lusting after the flesh, forever wanting company of the beautiful girl. It’s just that now, she’s 40 years too young. It’s deep, and sad, to listen to.

I still love Bob Dylan, but I think the crush is over.