If you let go a little you a will have a little peace;
if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace;
if you let go completely you will have complete peace.
The Observing Soul: Bob Dylan, I’m Not There
Consciousness Beyond One Life: Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone
I used to wonder what constitutes the fascination of Bob Dylan songs. In my early 20s I used to sing and play songs at camp fires from time to time, more or less poorly. A couple of Dylan songs were among my favorites, including It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bringing It All Back Home, 1965). I felt like so many others: while I didn’t really “get” the song, it struck me as something magical.
Bob Dylan: Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts – A Spiritual Transformation
Dylan’s intriguing Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts lured in the background of my consciousness for a long time – now I feel it has matured enough to share my, certainly subjective, perspective of the song as a spiritual transformation. It is the second song of Dylan’s highly acclaimed 1975 album Blood on the Tracks, voted No. 9 in the Rolling Stone Magazine’s 2020 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of all time (and confirmed at that position in the 2023 update) covered here. The first song from this album on this blog was Shelter from the Storm (for a video see here).
Resist Giving Advice: Highwaymen, We’re All In Your Corner
Here’s another song that I feel deeply, again by The Highwaymen (see previous post about Highwaymen and Highwomen). To be honest, I don’t even find it too remarkable musically. But the lyrics touch something that I haven’t seen or heard expressed so beautifully anywhere else. Don’t we all love to give advice?
Highwaymen and Highwomen: Immortality and an Outstanding “Answer Song”
Ever since I discovered the Highwaymen, I love listening to them every once in a while. Their signature song, the title relating to their bandname, gives me joy particularly in the live version from Nassau Coliseum in 1990, with its hint at immortality:
Bob Dylan: The Philosophy of Modern Song
Dylan's The Philosophy of Modern Song contains some very insightful, powerful writing. Dylan can raise topics of everyday life to a higher level in an instant.
Bob Dylan’s Shelter from the Storm: Spiritual Interpretation in a Video
To me, Shelter from the Storm highlights the contrast between the material world with all its struggles and suffering, and the realm of the immortal soul. The latter invites us constantly to enter.
Bob Dylan: Abandoned Love – Relationship and Spiritual Process
I count Bob Dylan's Abandoned Love among his love songs that invite to a spiritual perspective. The love to be abandoned may be earthly ties and the ego.
Bob Dylan: Shelter from the Storm
Bob Dylan’s Shelter from the Storm, to me, signifies two fields of life: on the one hand, our well-known world of opposites, struggles, and desperation, and on the other hand the world of the living soul. I see a path described in the song from experiencing the borderline in our physical world up to a new state of being, based on the immortal soul.
Leonard Cohen’s Avalanche: Spiritual Interpretation in a Video
This video interpretation of Leonard Cohen's Avalanche sees the song as the Divine Soul within speaking to the human seeker.