You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

One look at me and most people would never guess that my choice for all-time greatest singer/songwriter would be Bob Dylan.  (I'm a little tightly-wound and just a wee bit on the conservative side). :)  However, he has remained my favorite musician for the past twelve years, and that is far longer than any other performer has held that honorific.

Truly, I have always been a fan of folk music, but Dylan was a different kind of folk; he was (and is) a different kind of everything, and honestly, I didn't really get him at first.  The voice. The obscure lyrics. The voice.  If you've heard him at all, you know what I mean.

However, I purchased a Dylan CD on a whim in 1999, and after listening to it over and over again, I fell in love with him. All of him. The voice. The obscure lyrics. The intriguing character of the man.  I realized, the voice is just who he is, and you're not necessarily supposed to understand the lyrics.  In my opinion, this is one of the things that makes him truly great.  He never pretended to be a good singer, just an artist, and the whiny, nasal sound eventually becomes a thing of beauty to the person willing to give him a chance.  The brilliance of the lyrics is that they can mean anything to anyone at any time in his or her life; they're fluid and their meaning shifts as the listener ages and grows in life experience.  

(He didn't try to make excuses for his sound.  He didn't [and doesn't] make excuses for anything.)

My first Dylan CD was his original "Greatest Hits."  I listened to it, excited to have a new folk master to add to my already-vast collection.  Unfortunately, I didn't love it.  I had always liked the songs "Just Like a Woman," "Blowing in the Wind" and "Like a Rolling Stone," but many of the other songs alluded me.  After listening to it a few times, however, I found a number of personal mood boosters among the tracks and soon discovered that hope, humor, fear, envy, rebellion and nostalgia found a home within the lyrics.  The whiny, beautiful voice simply became the vessel through which the soundtrack of my early twenties was delivered.  

It was a time in my life when I was trying to discover who I was, what I believed, who I wanted to love and how I wanted live.  In short, it was my personal version of the 1960s; I suppose Dylan's music was oddly appropriate for this child of the '80s.

Over the years, I have collected many, many Dylan albums, and as his style has changed over his multi-decade career, my appreciation of him has grown.  He can write war, hate, love, envy, religion, and a multitude of other themes in a way that earns him a spot in the pantheon of the greatest creative writers of all time.  When I taught American lit, I would bring in his music and copies of his lyrics to study alongside other great modern American poets. As a writer, he touches people on an emotional level, and his words mean something different to everyone who hears them.  And whether you "get him" or not, his work has withstood the test of time.  The same could be said for most of the great writers throughout the centuries, could it not?   

More than anything, I suppose his music represents something personal to me, a time in my life that I like to frequently revisit. For me, Dylan's music will always remind me of grad school, friends I don't see often enough, late nights, date nights, and a turning point in my way of thinking.  I am honored that he was along for my ride. He will truly "make me lonesome when he goes."

For the record, here are my favorite Dylan masterpieces:

1. "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go"
2. "Subterranean Homesick Blues" 
3.  "Just Like a Woman"  
4. "Forever Young"
5. "Shelter From the Storm"
   
6. "Things Have Changed"
7. "Hurricane"
8. "Brownsville Girl"
9. "Shooting Star"
10. "Not Dark Yet" 

My Weapon of Defense Against Reality

Those of you who know me well, know that I am not the most laid-back person in the world. In fact, I'd more likely be awarded the "Anal Retentive" prize, and I have the mouth ulcers and stomach problems to support that statement.  I can fret, wring my hands, and lose sleep at night with the most neurotic among us. However, I discovered something in high school that helps me decompress even better than a bubble bath, a good book or a glass of wine.   

I first watched The Dick Van Dyke Show on a snowy day at my grandmother's house when I was about ten-years-old.  The episode was "Talk to the Snail," which admittedly has a pretty silly plot.  I liked the show because even back then I thought Dick Van Dyke himself was pretty great (Mary Poppins was my favorite movie as a kid).  However, it didn't become the secret weapon in my self-help arsenal for several more years.  Once I finally discovered how great this show actually is,  I made it my mission to record every episode (on VHS, of course), so that I would have a complete collection to help me through the many stresses of life.  You think it sounds ridiculous, right?  Well, you're entitled to your opinion.  I, on the other hand, felt it was a necessary thing to do and I spent the next two years attempting to record all 157 episodes, which came on in the middle of the night on TV Land and programming was sporadic at best.  When I was finished, I had eleven VHS tapes filled with my favorite show and a typed list detailing which episodes were on which tape for ease in watchability. You think I'm kidding.  I assure you, I'm not.

I now have the complete series on DVD and I couldn't begin to tell you the number of times I've watched each episode.  I know most episodes by heart and I especially enjoy the ones that prominently feature Rob and Laura's next-door-neighbors, Jerry and Millie.  I'm not sure why this particular show has such a calming effect on me, but I came to rely on this show when I was in high school and college and fell in love with all of the characters (except maybe their son, Richie; he was a bad actor even by the standards set in the 1960s).

I have always thought the part Dick Van Dyke played on the show was perfect.  To me, he was the ideal man: a handsome, funny, talented writer who adored his sometimes-neurotic wife and always seemed to love her unconditionally, even when she royally screwed up.  Even as a teenager, I related strongly to Mary Tyler Moore's character, Laura Petrie, and hoped that one day I would marry a man who was a lot like her Rob.  I wanted that life, so it was easy to become lost in the simplicity of it.  I guess I still lose myself in the simplicity of it.  And even though I now have a wonderful husband (who actually is very much like Rob Petrie), beautiful kids and a nice home, life is just plain hard sometimes and being able to escape to an easier time is really quite a wonderful thing...especially when the problem can be solved in just 30 short minutes.  

For the record, here's a list of my very favorite episodes:

1. "My Blonde-Haired Brunette"
2. "The Curious Thing About Women"
3. "The Death of the Party"
4. "Never Bathe on Saturday"
5. "A Vigilante Ripped My Sports Coat"
6. "Punch Thy Neighbor"
7. "Coast-to-Coast Big Mouth"
8. "Who Owes Who What?"
9. "All About Eavesdropping?"
10. "It May Look Like a Walnut"
11. "I'm No Henry Walden"
12. "The Night the Roof Fell In"
13. "My Husband is Not a Drunk"
14. "The Life and Love of Joe Coogan"
15. "My Husband is the Best One"
16. "My Neighbor's Husband's Other Life"
17. "October Eve"
18. "The Plots Thicken"
19. "Long Night's Journey into Day"
20. "The Great Petrie Fortune"