[00:00:00] Speaker A: This show is a part of the FM podcast network, the home of great music podcasts.
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[email protected] you are listening to the Dylan Taunts podcast.
Hey everyone, it's Jim Salvucci. The Dylan taunts and welcome to what is it about Bob Dylan? Today I'm speaking with my friend Bella Napolitano. She's a 19 year old from Baltimore and is currently a psychology major at Bard College in upstate New York, which happens to be my alma mater from back in the 19 hundreds. Bella is an aspiring child psychologist, loves creating visual art, enjoys going on long walks and is a live music enthusiast. I thought it would be fun to hear from an intelligent and thoughtful young woman whose experience with the music of Bob Dylan is new. She saw Dylan live for the first time in Baltimore on November 24, and we'll be talking about that experience. So Bella, welcome to the Dylan Taunts.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Glad you're here. So what is it about Bob Dylan?
[00:01:07] Speaker A: I have some nostalgic ties. I think that's a big part of I just because my dad's a big fan and so I used to listen to him when I was a kid, but I gained more of an appreciation for him when I got older, started listening to him on my own, away from queries with my dad. And he gave it a little bit more thought. But I turned to him a lot, I think. Always have. When there's something in my life that I'm trying to come to terms with. There's something about mainly his stuff from the. Because that's basically all I've listened to, really.
It's like the melancholy kind of tone to it.
It helps me come to terms with the fact that maybe I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing or where I'm going, but that'll work out somehow and I'll end up somewhere.
He makes me feel like that.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: So you enjoy Bob Dalper's ambiguity?
[00:02:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: Unbiased, said. You're always so vague.
Song diamond and rust all right, so what do you get from him exactly then?
[00:02:22] Speaker A: I get a lot of comfort.
I think that's mainly it.
The stuff I listen to is relatable.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: What do you mean relatable?
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Relatable in the sense that it's.
Damn, I don't know how to describe it. It's humble. It doesn't try to answer any questions.
Does that make sense?
[00:02:48] Speaker B: Yeah, makes perfect sense.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: It's like accepting the fact that there are no answers to a lot of questions. And I feel, and it feels irrelevant.
Just feels like being young and confused and maybe a little sad, but accepting of that.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: That's beautiful. That's actually very well put.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Oh, cool. Thank you.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Dylan's been called a man of questions because his first, most famous song, blown in the wind, he was singing how many roads? Right. He's asking questions, but not exactly. And he carries that through his career in many ways.
And one of his liner notes, he has a poem he wrote and it contains the line, I accept chaos, but I'm not sure chaos accepts me.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that's it.
Yeah.
I don't know how much longer I'm going to have to do this. Okay.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: Yeah. He's 82 and he's still doing it.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Yeah. I feel that being 19 and not knowing where I'm going to end up and not knowing really what I'm going to do or where I'm going to go. And that's scary a lot of the time. But listening to him makes me feel like that's okay, that it's scary and that there isn't an answer and that other people feel that way and that people have been feeling that way because he sang about it way before I was born.
It helps things make sense in the way that they don't make sense, but that's how it's supposed to be.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: Yeah. For the record, he sang about before I was born, too, so, yeah, he's been at it for quite a.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: Filming.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: That's right.
You knew about Dylan through your father. But what did you really know about Dylan before you went and saw him live for the first time in November?
[00:04:44] Speaker A: What did I know about him? Yeah, a lot.
I don't have my trivia down or anything.
Like, I know my favorite songs. I know that my favorite era of his, sixty s, seventy s, stuff like that. I've watched a couple documentaries also with my dad.
I watched that movie with you where Kate Blanchett killed it.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: I'm not.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yeah. So I knew the basics.
[00:05:16] Speaker B: So what are some of your favorite songs?
[00:05:18] Speaker A: My favorite songs are basic. They are the basic popular ones. But tangerine man is up there alone in the wind is up there like a rolling stone. I want you. I love that one so much I forget the name of a really good one.
Oh, my God.
Oh, yeah. From the free will and Bob Dylan. Free will. And don't think twice. It's all first. That's the earliest one I can remember, I think, other than the rolling stone, which my dad always played. But I remember hearing that in the car was mark when I was like ten. I was like, damn, this is beautiful. Yeah, I've always listened to it.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: Wow. What do you find so beautiful about it?
[00:06:13] Speaker A: It's that melancholy acceptance vibe again.
You could have done more and I could have done more.
Maybe things could have been better than they are, but they're not. And that's just how it is we talked about.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: I'm not there. What was your reaction to that movie?
[00:06:38] Speaker A: I thought it was beautiful, which is a basic thing to say, but I think it's important when media like that, or not media, but like films and cover the less ideal, more like human sides of icons. So it was cool that it covered the fact that his life was not flawless always. It wasn't always glamorous.
A lot of it was sad, and he was young and was cool. There had a thing we were just talking about where he is important to me because he doesn't really have answers to anything. And the theme in that movie was people asking him questions the whole time, and he was just like, I don't know why you expect me to know anything.
I haven't claimed to know anything ever like that about it.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And of course, none of those characters were him.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: A lot of things peeled directly from his life, including a lot of those interviews for Kate Blanchett was playing Jude Quinn. Those interviews were verbatim questions answer, interestingly enough, so Dylan's old enough to be your grandfather, maybe even your great grandfather, right?
And he doesn't do nostalgia, right. He doesn't do revival stuff. His latest tour, he's not playing like a rolling stone or blowing in the wind or Mr. Tambourine man or any of the super popular stuff.
He's not like Tony Bennett out on tour with Lady Gaga, trying to connect the generations in that way.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: So what is your perception? What's your experience? What's your reaction to this very old man who's still out there creating for the stage?
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Honestly, it's sad knowing that I missed out on the collection of his music. That really resonates with me because honestly, all respect to Bob, but his newer stuff, it doesn't hit me the same. It just doesn't. And I appreciate it. I respect it. But it's really different. It's really different.
I think it was an honor to have the opportunity to see him. And every time I got disappointed that I wasn't listening to his stuff that I really feel resonates with me, I was, like, overwhelmed with, you have to just be grateful because he's right there and he's still here. And what is he, 86, 80?
[00:09:24] Speaker B: Don't age him.
[00:09:28] Speaker A: But you have to just be grateful that he's still going.
I have that understanding or assumption, at least, that I caught him at the tail end of his career touring at least.
Yeah. It's disappointing because I know that getting to hear one of those iconic songs that I've listened to all the time since I was a kid would have been a crazy, wild, like, brain chemistry altering experience for me. I really would have.
But I can't blame him. He's been doing it forever. I'm not going to be pissed because he doesn't want to do it anymore. The fact that he's here on stage in a glittery suit in Baltimore City alone, I just have to be grateful.
Yeah.
As long as I got to hear him sing, I was happy.
That was definitely enough.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: When he does perform, even his more popular stuff, when he's done that, he's done that. As recently as 2019, he often performs very different versions, altering the tunes, the arrangements, sometimes lyrics, sometimes lyrics. From night to night, I see him plays two different. He sings two different lyrics to the same song. In 2019, he introduced a version of Rolling Stone for the first time that was very different from the one he recorded in 66. But it was gorgeous. It was moving. How do you think you would have dealt with hearing some of your favorite songs done in a completely different way?
[00:11:08] Speaker A: I don't think I would have been upset about that. I think it would have been cool. I probably would have had a little bit of the same disappointment, but also the same gratitude and balances.
Yeah.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: So I had given you in advance a playlist that had. It basically followed Dylan's current set list, but they were all the studio versions. I specifically did not give you any bootlegs. There's bootleg recordings of all those concerts.
[00:11:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: Listen to something from the concert you saw this morning on didn't. So what I did was I gave you the studio version so you could hear how even some of his very recent stuff, he's altered it already.
[00:11:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: Was that helpful to you or was that surprising in any way, having that set list beforehand?
[00:11:57] Speaker A: It was extremely helpful because I really didn't know what to expect at all.
Yeah. I didn't think to look it up. I don't know if I would have. But yeah, most of the songs on the set list I'd never heard before. So it was definitely helpful in the fact that I wanted to know what to expect. I think that was important to me. And it makes concerts more fun when you know the lyrics and maybe you can sing along a little bit and no one in there was singing along, so I didn't try to do that. That was not the vibe at all.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Sometimes you get people yelling, they'll yell a phrase out or something.
[00:12:35] Speaker A: Yeah, there were a couple, I love you, Bob. And he did not respond. He didn't care?
[00:12:40] Speaker B: No, he does not respond to that.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Next to my sister and went, dude, didn't even flinch on even a little bit.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: Sometimes you'll hear people yell out requests, which is very interesting.
Generally does not respond to that. There were times when he would, but not in many decades, as far as I know.
[00:12:58] Speaker A: I think everybody knew their place.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: As far as audience. There's not a sing along. When you go to a Bob Dylan, you're not seeing Pete Seeger or something like that, where there's a call and response. No way.
[00:13:12] Speaker A: Yeah. I wanted to know what I was going to be listening to, so that was definitely helpful. And I made my siblings listen to it, too. I did. I don't know how far they got, but I strongly encouraged.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: And so you were there with your siblings, your brother and your sister and your parents, right?
What was their response?
[00:13:31] Speaker A: I didn't get to sit with my parents. They got floor seats they deserve. And I was up far away in the back with my brother and my sister.
Yeah. I wish I could have seen my dad's face. I really wish I could have. But it's okay. I have an idea. Me and my dad went to.
He took me to a Pink Floyd cover band, like, two, three years ago. It's crazy. It's awesome. I have pictures of my dad. Even the COVID band, they sounded pretty good.
Could have cried. So happy. It was so beautiful. I love seeing my dad watch music like that.
It takes him right back. It's very cute. But no. I was with my 14 year old sister and my 17 year old brother, and I think I was definitely, until toot my own horn or anything, but. And I think I was definitely the most invested.
I was the biggest bob fan of the three of us. I was the only one who started bowling as soon as he started singing us. This is crazy. I punched my sister up and said, that's boptillity's right there.
Okay, Bella, please.
I calmed down a little bit after that. But no. My sister, 14, she's so smart. Smartest girl I have ever met. So she was very conscious of the fact that she was having a valuable experience and witnessing a very iconic man. She told me she was a little bit bored, but she knew what she was watching, so she didn't slouch once, sat up, nodded her head, was good about it. She grew up with the same dad, my brother. My brother's a big music enthusiast. He's mostly into, like, hardcore metal, punk stuff, though, so it's not really his vibe. But he's also a big appreciator. So they were very appreciative and very aware of the technicalities. But I think I might have been the only one who was having, like, an emotional moment, serious emotional second there.
[00:15:51] Speaker B: What do you mean by the technicalities?
[00:15:54] Speaker A: They could appreciate that it was well done, it was well executed.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: And they know him. They know what he sounds like.
They could connect with us. Okay. Yeah. I don't know how much of him they listen to, actually, at all.
My brother might, but I doubt it.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: So aside from seeing Dylan and bawling your eyes out when he came on stage, was there a highlight? Was there a low light? Was there anything that stood out, good or bad?
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
I think the only low moment I could point to is just about halfway where I admit I did get a little bit bored. I was like, oh, wow, there's a lot that I don't really know.
I mean, I knew some of the songs, but there was a lot that I didn't know. And I did feel I was. I got a little sad. I was like, man, this is not my era. This is not my Bob Dylan era. And it's a little sad, but I will never get to see that. Then I got a wave of, oh, but I'm so close. It's crazy that I got this close at all. And then I cheered up again. But the craziest part was he didn't whip out the harmonica until the last song. And I don't think we thought we were going to get to hear it. And then he did. And then I did cry again because that was wild.
So that was the best part.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: You ended the concert with tears.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: I did. I did begin and end tears a.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: Little, but you're lucky because there were many nights he did not whip out the harmonica.
[00:17:27] Speaker A: Really?
[00:17:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: I didn't know that.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: Including some reports of him picking one up and then putting it down and just not playing.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: That's actually hilarious.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: But the only time he played it, as far as I know, on this tour, was at the very end with every grain of sand.
It's in the studio version.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:47] Speaker B: He did a beautiful one on stage.
I would say you have an artist soul.
You definitely have a keen sense of irony, as I well appreciate.
And you talked about Dylan's ambiguity. But does Dylan resonate with you as an artist? Does Dylan resonate with you as an ironist?
[00:18:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess so.
Yeah.
He's got a little edge to him. He pokes the bear a little bit.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: Oh, a little bit.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
I appreciate that.
I'm going to have you elaborate on what you mean by ironic because I feel like, I don't know, I don't really know what I am. But I definitely have a hard time confronting things in real life that are in front of me. I have a great time picking them apart later and thinking about what I could have done or how I could have responded and what the correct thing would have been. But I only really have subtle sarcasms.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Okay, sarcasms, irony.
Notoriously difficult term to define. Yeah, but it always has a doubleness to it. Part of the doubleness is what you just described actually very well.
The idea of distancing and also, but at the same time having kind of an acute penetration of things.
Irony helps distance you, but it also helps you stab deeply. We'll say, yeah, you're the probe. Or to hurt. Yeah, I like that. I like the way you put that.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: I'm glad.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: What about as an artist? Does Dylan resonate with you as an artist? He's a very active artist, not just in music. He's also a sculptor and a painter.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I haven't really seen his paintings, but. So I'm not sure how similar they are on that level. But as an really, what I can say is that I focus a lot on portraits and I like capturing uncomfortable emotions. I like capturing weird faces.
Aren't like extremely ovals, but a little off putting.
Yeah. Can I show you something?
[00:20:38] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: My little drawings, I think that might help me explain it.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
Keeping in mind you're showing these to the world.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Oh, that's okay.
The world.
[00:20:49] Speaker B: A villain, that is.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: I'm okay with that.
One of the drawings I did in high school was this girl. I took it from a photograph or from like a punk show in England, but it's this girl.
Someone's shoulder. Can you see that?
[00:21:11] Speaker B: Yeah, very well.
[00:21:12] Speaker A: Bit of a moment. She reminds me of someone on a bad trip or maybe something like that. There's like a little bit of panic, but I didn't want to make it too obvious like that. Thank you.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Yeah, that's gorgeous.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: I appreciate that.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: Is that a drawing or a painting?
[00:21:31] Speaker A: It's oil pastel, so that's actually a little bit of a controversy, but in between. Yeah, I think it's a drawing to me, but a painting to others, right? Yeah.
[00:21:41] Speaker B: Oil pastels on my. Understand.
[00:21:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: I look at them a lot and are they paintings or drawings? I can't quite figure it.
No. That's great. I think Dylan's art, some of Dylan's art looks a little like that, actually, in the sense of the way the figures are drawn. A lot of his art is based on images from other places, photographs, scenes from films, which he does not identify or acknowledge in any way, shape or form. And sleuths have furred them out. So you'll see, someone will show a scene from a movie. Then you'll notice that Dylan actually took that frame and just painted it. And then some are scenes and things that I guess he's observed or whatever, but it's worth checking out. It's interesting. I'm not the biggest fan of his drawings and paintings. I think his sculptures are really amazing.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: Oh, cool.
[00:22:35] Speaker B: Entirely of cast off metal objects, like tools and things welded together.
Yeah. But it's all welded together to make something new. He's very much a conceptual artist in that sense. And it's the way he also creates a lot of his music. He takes scraps from other sources and cobbles them together into a new hole.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I like that stuff.
[00:23:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
You're 19 years old. You're at Bard College. I take it you're in your dorm room right now.
[00:23:10] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: You're a sophomore. Bard. And Bard's always had an affinity for Bob Dole. In fact, there was rumors that he spent time on campus there in the 60s because he was across the river in Woodstock.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: Pump that don't work because the vandals took the handle at the end of subterranean homesick blues. Was long rumored to be the pump that's on the edge of campus that is missing a handle and I believe is still there. Maybe.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: Yeah, it is.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: Hasn't had a handle for many decades. I can attest to that.
What do your friends and peers think of Dylan either at Bard or back in Baltimore?
[00:23:46] Speaker A: There are definitely more Bob Dylan fans here than in Baltimore.
Yeah. No, I know a few kids. Not a whole lot, but everybody has some knowledge of him. Everybody's aware, everybody's at least a little bit of a fan, I think. I've got a couple friends with huge Bob Dylan posters on their wall. We all have him smoking a say or like, playing his acoustic guitar. He is on the walls of the school, for sure. Yeah. One of my, really my best friends here at school. Her name's Elsa. She is from Minnesota, so she takes a lot of pride in being from the same home state as Dylan himself. She and I are big fans.
I think she's the only person, really, other than my father, who will sit down and listen to him with me, and we like to talk about him and stuff. She's the only person, when I told her I was going to see him, she was like, oh, my God, no way you're going to breathe the same air I'd have her. She gets me.
I feel like kids my age, not to sound arrogant and separate myself from kids. I'm very much also young.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: And it took you a long time.
[00:25:02] Speaker A: To get that way, to get young and dumb. Yes.
[00:25:06] Speaker B: Almost a Bob Dylan quote, by the way.
[00:25:12] Speaker A: He's up there with the Beatles, which are so far away that it's just, yeah, we all like the Beatles like they're the Beatles. He's like that. But not a lot of people are like, yes, we love the Beatles. It's the Beatles on 24/7 they like him like that. Which is completely fair.
Yeah. I don't know how many people I know actually sit down and listen to him when they need comfort.
[00:25:40] Speaker B: But you do.
[00:25:41] Speaker A: I definitely do, yeah.
[00:25:44] Speaker B: Then you're on the right podcast.
[00:25:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: So you like live music. What other concerts have you seen, man?
[00:25:55] Speaker A: I've seen a lot. I actually haven't seen a lot that I would consider concerts.
I think the biggest artist I've seen, other than Bob Dylan is the lumineers. I got to see them for my 16th birthday. Love them, too. But other than that, I go to a lot of shows. I go to what I can afford, which is like $30 tickets at the most.
I've seen a couple of bands that I really like that visit Baltimore and sell tickets for pretty cheap. They have a couple local places that I go to, like the auto bar and the metro. I don't know if you remember those. Probably, yeah.
When I was in high school, I got really big into the hardcore scene. I don't know if I told you about that, but it's a lot of hardcore metal punk stuff. Me and my friends would try and go to a couple like every weekend, which was intense. It was a lot of. We were there for the music, but also the mosh pits and kids punching each other in the face and like getting thrown on the ground and getting picked back up again and thrown at more people.
[00:27:06] Speaker B: You're describing my days in college.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
So I went to a lot of those.
I think it was funny compared to.
I've switched up a lot. I loved those because I was like, every teenager ever, like, angry all the time at everybody and everything. And I had that same sense of, I don't know what I'm doing or where I'm going, but I wasn't accepting of it. I was pissed off. It was very much, where the fuck am I? What is the world?
At age, like, 1516, you start to learn more, and you're like, this sucks. It sucks here. Everything sucks.
Everyone cares more about monies and people, and I can't afford college, and my teachers don't care if I pass my math midterm. Everything's so bad.
And I was just so angry. There wasn't really anything else that I was. There wasn't a lot else that I was feeling. So I'd go to these shows, and there would be people screaming and throwing shit and throwing each other, and that's what resonated with me, and that's all I wanted to do. Me and my brother, who I think has found a more beautiful connection to it now, he and I, we got into it at the same time. He's a couple of years younger than me, but he's been into it for a while, and I think he's found more of a loving community amongst those shows. But I was just there to punch it, really, and to listen to people scream.
That's what got to me.
But this past summer, I was home, and there was a lot going on.
I'm in between transferring, maybe, and I'd just gotten word over that summer that I definitely can't really afford contracts. And I was having a rough night. And I heard about this show that was happening, like, a 15 minutes walk from my house. It was just, like, acoustic guitar on a lawn. It was free to go. And I was like, yeah, that sounds nice. And I went and I got a drink, and I sat on the lawn. I took my shoes off, and I sat there until it got dark. Just listening to some people, like, strum their little guitars and sing slowly. And I was like, this is a lot nicer than getting punched in the face, actually, right now, I really like this a lot.
So I went to those all summer, that same lawn. They had shows there every Saturday, so I went every week. It was really soothing. Sometimes I would sit there, and they would make me really emotional, and I would just cry a little bit. Sit in the grass?
Yeah. And I'm still reckoning with the same feelings. I'm still scared and confused, but I'm trying to be less angry about it. So my taste in music has shifted a lot without my feelings shifting a lot. Does that make sense? I hope I'm explaining this well.
Yeah, I think as I get older, and I'm not that much older than I was when I was 16 at all, but trying to accept that things are less than ideal and just listening to other people instead of screaming, speaking about it and connecting over it has helped me a lot.
I have some very conflicting music tastes, but they help me in similar ways.
I really forget what question I was answering and I'm really sorry.
[00:30:50] Speaker B: We were just talking about what you've seen and your musical taste.
[00:30:54] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:30:54] Speaker B: Yeah, perfectly. Good answer.
But it's interesting. I'll make an observation with regard to Dylan, since this is the Dylan taunts. And so Dylan has always had a punk sensibility to him and you can look at some of his stuff and it seems very punk, maybe not in style, but certainly in sensibility. And he definitely had an influence over many types of music, including punk.
Another quick observation, as you bard college has a very interesting connection to hardcore punk because one of my classmates in the Adam galk of the Beastie boys and at that time they were a hardcore punk band before flipped over to ironic hip hop. We'll say. So there's all that. So all that's in the air around you is what I'm saying. Yeah, interesting perceive.
[00:31:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And absolutely no hate to the heart. I love a good hardcore show. I do.
I like my newfound balance.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: Okay.
But yeah, that's interesting. Your musical tastes are evolving, but maybe maturing.
Right. And there's a certain youthfulness to hardcore that people do tend to outgrow.
Dylan does tend to appeal to more mature taste than most, but there's definitely a youthful appeal to him too. So what do you think? That just leads us right into this question. What do you think your future relationship with Dylan obey with his music?
[00:32:31] Speaker A: I assume it'll be pretty steady, pretty much the same.
He's one of those artists that I don't really feel like I'll grow out of because he's just been such a constant in my life. If I was listening to him in the car with my dad when I was ten and I'm still listening to him, I don't see it changing. My connection with it hasn't changed much, I assume. Actually I don't know how much less confusion is going to be in my life the older I get, hopefully less. But I'm scared that may not be the case and that I'm still going to not really have ever a serious, realistic grasp on where exactly. I'm going to end up, ideally, one day. I have a place to live and a steady, reliable job and a good group of friends or a partner, a dog or something I can count on. And I can look back and think about being 19 and be like, she did end up somewhere.
Maybe that will happen, but maybe I will just be between jobs and apartments for the rest of my life. I don't know. Maybe I'll look back and be like, yeah, she is never going to figure it out. I've got no idea.
It'll be one of those.
But it'll always remind me of my childhood, which is nice.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: Yeah. But figuring it out is not always what all it's cracked out up to be, too.
We could talk about that another time.
So, with Dylan, how does Dylan fit into that?
[00:34:19] Speaker A: I don't know.
Could you elaborate?
[00:34:22] Speaker B: So this idea of. I'm trying to keep it on the Dylan theme here. This idea that you're looking for something. You're looking for some stability in your life, which most people are, to some extent.
[00:34:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:34] Speaker B: And Dylan's music has been something that's been with you pretty much your whole life, really. At the beginning, I said you were new to music, but that wasn't really true. I shouldn't have said that.
[00:34:42] Speaker A: I take that, listening to it.
[00:34:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess that's where I was coming from. But it's something that's been with you whole life. It's close to your father and you're close to your father. And how do you see that playing out in your life? If you're listening to Dylan right now? It affects you one way. Will it affect you a different way then?
[00:35:02] Speaker A: I assume it will have the same effect or, like, the same ability to keep me grounded emotionally. I don't see that changing.
I think the way that his lyrics have soothed me forever, I don't really see that changing. My life will definitely change, hopefully for the better, like I was talking about before.
But of course, I'm always going to be a little confused and a little upset about that and a little lost and disappointed. And he always helps me with that, particularly with that acceptance thing. I wish I had a different word for acceptance, but I don't.
Yeah. Not to talk more about myself and less about the music, but I am also a naturally, deeply anxious girl. I am an anxious person, and I have a lot of worst case scenarios in my mind pretty much all the time. And he is one of those people that I listen to help soothe anxiety, which is big. It's not easy to do soothe me when I'm anxious, but it's that thing where it's okay, we don't know what's going to happen and nothing is that perfect.
Just keep going. It's okay. Listen to this harmonica and work out somehow or it won't.
Yeah, I see that remaining in my future. I think I'll keep turning to him for stuff like that.
[00:36:48] Speaker B: Yeah. It's an interesting observation about anxiety and Dylan, because Dylan's a. I don't know if the word anxious is the right word, but restless would be at 82. He's still creating.
[00:36:59] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good word.
[00:37:00] Speaker B: Yeah. He's still up on stage making new stuff, taking songs that he put out in 2020 and altering them and going out and performing them. And that level of creativity is just. And his restless thinking, too.
Way he's evolved over time, is a subject of much discussion and speculation on what that means artistically. So maybe there's something there in terms of his restlessness that sort of speaks to your restless mind.
[00:37:28] Speaker A: That definitely makes sense.
Yeah.
[00:37:32] Speaker B: Bell, let's end it here. This has been a wonderful conversation. I've really enjoyed this.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Of me, too.
[00:37:38] Speaker B: Thank you for being on the Dillantans.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: Thank you for asking me. It was great.
[00:37:44] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the Dillon Tantz podcast. Be sure to subscribe to have the Dillon Tant sent directly to your inbox and share the Dillon tants on social media.
