A wise woman once told me, "There are two types of people in this world. Those who 'get' Dylan, and those who don't."

She couldn't have been more right. I spent my whole summer backpacking through Europe and then driving all over the US, immersing myself into different cultures and meeting many different sorts of ladies and gents. And I have to say, yeah, we're different on the outside, but still very much the same when you look past things. The only real way to divide us all up at the heart is not by sex or race or age or designer clothes or hair color. Instead, the most iconic yet enigmatic songwriter to grace a stage in the past century is the only real thing standing between us. Bob Dylan.

This became clear when I saw him play to a packed house in Bridgeport, Connecticut Sunday night. The crowd, as you might guess, was mostly a mess of jaded hippies from the 60s. And if they didn't look like hippies, you could tell they were at one point. They traded their long locks of greasy hair in for full time jobs and Polo shirts, but they haven't forgotten where they came from. These were people that lived and breathed Dylan throughout the 60s. And when he comes around on tour, they grow hungry with a taste of nostalgia in the back of their throats, buy themselves some tickets, and go check out "The Voice" of their generation. But many of these folks that show up complain and complain about Bob once they actually get there and hear him on stage.

"I love the music, but I can't make out a single word he's saying. He must have smoked himself stupid throughout the decades."

Surely you've heard this about his recent live shows. It's what everyone says, yet the people at the shows seem so surprised anyway. These people never 'got' Dylan in the first place. They latched onto a song or album of his, and it ended there. They aren't going to see Dylan, but trying to go back to the 60's. And you just can't do that, which is why Dylan has never pretended to still be something he used to be.

Whatever happened to "words will never hurt you"? Words are, afterall, just words. right?

What many criticizers of Dylan don't realize is THEY MADE DYLAN, piece by piece. You put a man in a box, and he'll wanna climb out of it, and go find his own box. Call a man of "The Voice" and he'll stop talking. Or start saying weird random things. Don't dissect something great, just embrace it. Call a guy like that a rockstar, and he'll start writing country music. You take a guy with limitless potential and cage him into something, and you essentially kill him on an artistic level. Dylan spent most of his life trying to dodge people from pegging and killing him as an artist.

And because of this, Dylan has become a little bit of all of us--young and old. He was a folk singer. He wrote some of the most poetic lyrics to ever fit against a rock n' roll backdrop. To call him a chameleon would be an understatement. He doesn't JUST blend in. He blends in, but also sticks out. He writes, he paints, he plays a whole array of instruments, he has sung in an endless string of styles. Tell him he shouldn't do something, and he'll do it because you think he can't. And THAT, my friends, IS the true unwavering spirit of rock n' roll. Most of us won't like everything Dylan has done, but I guarantee there is a Dylan song for everyone to get behind.

But as for his singing during live performances, these people are right. You CAN'T understand him. And maybe he does that on purpose, maybe he doesn't. It seems he doesn't want his songs to be anthems. Why can't songs just be songs? A painting doesn't have to be a masterpiece.

When Dylan and his incredibly tight cowboy rock band shoveled through older jams like "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat," he gargled through all the right lyrics but did so more like he was telling the song then singing the song. People can't sing along to that, and that's what sets these nostalgiasts a little beside themselves. But he CAN still sing fine. Last year's incredible release "Modern Times" proves that. He just does his own thing on stage, singing with pure unbridled emotion instead of actual words. And what's so bad about that? That's what sets music on fire--when you forget what key you SHOULD be singing in and just let it all rip right out of you. You should TRUST a musician that gets lost in his music, not spite him. You get it, or you don't.

Personally, I've spent the past year or so immersing myself in the music of Dylan. From "The Freewheelin" days to "Blonde On Blonde" to now. His autobiography, "Chronicles" is one of the most well written and detailed books I've ever read. But I don't think I TRULY 'got' Dylan until the encore of Sunday evening's show. He closed with the inevitable "Like A Rolling Stone" and the whole crowd rose to their toes to sing along, even though they couldn't sing right along with his dodging style of spoken-singing. His old dusty voice rasped through it his way, we all sang through it our way, the way we heard it in OUR heads. Thousands of voices all joining together in a single song, all of us singing it our own way, not worried about how everyone else--even Dylan--was singing it. And that's what Dylan is. He's not a songwriter. He's an old man who has done lots of awesome things, but mainly taught some of us in the world how to look at something through a rainbow, instead of just a single color. You get that, or you don't.

current listening: Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American
current watching: 300