On B on B - Dylan’s poetry reaches its zenith on this album - no doubt helped along by some illegal substances - but still the words and the images are epic.
On Dylan’s politics. As we watch our country transformed into some unholy montage of George Orwell meets Lewis Carroll meets Franz Kafka, I repeatedly wondered “what would Dylan think?”. How would he put this whole picture together, and deal with its insanity?
If he’s gotten into the Kool-aid line along with the rest of the Hollywood and music crowd, then that’s a pretty sad statement.
If what they said about him in the 60s is still true, and I have no reason to think it has changed he is pretty indifferent. The protest songs weren’t coming from any deeply held beliefs as much as wanting to be like his hero Woody Guthrie. Once he grew out of that he never returned to that kind of music, and he was never at the protests with the other folkies.
I would imagine that he remains indifferent on most political issues. Or he is for the most part at least too smart to really push his politics on anyone. I still remember Jann Wenner’s interview with Bob from a few years back. Wenner wanted him to say something for lefty politics and he wouldn’t. The most clear one was about global warming and Bob replied he didn’t know about that it was cold as hell where he was.