Netflix

Tonight the Graduate Assistant couldn't work so I'm stuck at the Liberry until midnight. That's ok, because I got to watch the first half of Martin Scorcese's American Masters Dylan doc this afternoon, and it's really really fucking great. Bob looks and sounds good in the new interview segments, his visage chiseled as a butte in Montana, his perspective absolutely unique. This is more than a portrait of an essential cultural icon, it's an encapsulation of a strange and fertile time in the USA, when people thought the world was doomed and at the same time had enough hope to agitate for change. I love the way he describes listening to music on the radio late at night in rural Minnesota: "Some of that music made me feel like I was somebody else, like I was born in the wrong place." People who know at such a young age what they were meant to do are always fascinating--I'd recommend this documentary even to people who dislike Bob's music, and they are (*alas!*) legion. Watching it made me pick up my guitar, which is what listening to songs like A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall and The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carol did for me 20 years ago; I taught myself how to fingerpick because of those tunes. I've heard many of his songs 100 times, and some of them still make me cry. Can't wait for part two.