"I Didn't Fail"

“I wrote it. I didn’t fail. It was straight”

— Bob Dylan, speaking of “Like a Rolling Stone”

“Like a Rolling Stone” is always…and always…and always…considered one of the five greatest songs of the rock era. It pretty much set the standard for great singer/songwriters that came after him. Bruce Springsteen claims the first time he heard Dylan was this song riding in car with him mom, who told him, “That guy can’t sing.” It is also worth debating whose live version is better — Dylan’s or Jimi’s. Always hard to eclipse the original, but Hendrix comes close.

“Once upon a time you dressed so fine
Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?
People call, say “Beware, doll, you’re bound to fall”
You thought they were all a-kiddin’ you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin’ out
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging your next meal

How does it feel?
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?”

— Bob Dylan, “Like a Rolling Stone”

This is the song of an angry man. Challenged, pushed to his limits, doubted and psychologically beaten…until he wasn’t, hence the quote that led off this essay. There is no obvious target for Dylan’s anger. Was he talking about himself? Some people think he is talking about Edie Sedgwick. Only Dylan knows for certain. But he is definitely angry

Personally, I prefer the interpretation he was flipping off all his old “folk” fans while enlisting The Band (then known as The Hawks) to “go electric.” Some of the live clips of him performing “Like a Rolling Stone” in 1966 and 1967 come across as a gigantic “fuck you” to many of his old fans. Helps to have Robbie Robertson on guitar. On a sidenote, having recently engaged in a pointless, weirdly personal debate on Facebook about The Band, I remain even more committed to the belief, also an incontrovertible fact, Robertson was a terribly underrated guitarist.

Watching Dylan perform in those clips is…inspiring. Barely controlled aggression, and his complete and total belief in himself is pretty cool to behold. It just took a fair amount of anger to lock it into place. He chose writing one of the great songs of all time to process it.

How do you process anger? And, at what stage do you begin to come to terms with it? I have been labeled “angry,” although I preferred “depressed,” and I have been described as both. I have thought “depressed” was the more accurate description, but maybe “angry” is really the answer.

My anger was focused in the past. Or, at the very least, it was focused on the wrong things. It is well-established by now that I cannot write songs. I barely understand music. Unlike Dylan, the more focused mine became, the greater the inertia developed. And it is easy for anger to calcify behaviors. It did mine. I did NOT have Robbie Robertson as a trusty sidekick. Processing anger was not something I ever considered. I was miserable and depressed and kind of a jerk. THAT is being psychologically beaten down.

“‘(Like a) Rolling Stone’ is the best song I wrote,” he said in an interview at the end of 1965. Why was it the best? Because he didn’t fail.

“I had a job in the great north woods
Working as a cook for a spell
But I never did like it all that much
And one day the ax just fell
So I drifted down to New Orleans
Where I lucky was to be employed
Working for a while on a fishing boat
Right outside of Delacroix
But all the while I was alone
The past was close behind”

— Bob Dylan, “Tangled Up in Blue”

There were jobs I know I would have hated which I applied for purely out of anger. Don’t ask because I cannot explain the rationality of applying for a job I would hate. The job I am beginning in a couple of weeks, though, I am fairly certain I will love. Deserved or not, there was an ominous sense of failure had I not been chosen for it. I am familiar with failures. I was not looking forward to another one. In this ONE regard, Bob Dylan and I are of the same mind, “I didn’t fail.”

Finding something that fits is tough. Whether it is a partner or a job or a pair of running shoes. Fit is everything. That is why this job feels like a fit. It includes a lot of writing and will help a lot of people – if I do it right.

“If I do it right…” ah, therein lies the crux of…well, everything. Dylan’s confidence and belief in himself were paramount to his success. As he said himself, “I didn’t fail.” The anger faded, the focus returned and he wrote ANOTHER seminal song with “Tangled Up in Blue” one in which he worked through so many more changes in his life, including divorce. He writes in the past and present, focused on relationships (one particular relationship) and aware the past is close behind. It is another heartbreaking moment of recognition that something else is in his view to process.

But the past IS close behind, maybe too close, and I am trying to figure out what to do with it. Last night I wrote that the past is not exactly my friend.

“Well, just don’t focus on the past…” is the common riposte I get when I say something similar to that preceding paragraph. Easier said than done. The past left scars – and not the cool kind – and they are unavoidable. It is akin to telling me to ignore the nose on my face when I look in the mirror.

“Millions of people swarming like flies ‘round
Waterloo underground
But Terry and Julie cross over the river
Where they feel safe and sound
And they don’t need no friends
As long as they gaze on Waterloo sunset
They are in paradise”

— The Kinks, “Waterloo Sunset”

The narrator in “Waterloo Sunset” finds solace in seeing a couple across the river, enjoying each other’s company. No, he isn’t a stalker, just someone who knows it does not necessarily take much to feel you occupy a place in paradise. Terry and Julie do not even have to be romantically tied together. Sometimes, having one (or two or three – Substack brought me lots of friends) friend who lets you exhale without worry is more valuable than gold.

Ray Davies would have been a great therapist.

I still have not answered my own question (proof it is not rhetorical), so I depend on you: How do YOU process your anger?