his shows are getting better and better every year since 2002, at least they are not going worse and if you don’t like it just leave them alone

As I recall, Bob Dylan singing “Brown Sugar” in Seattle 2002 was awarded the best live song of the year by Rolling Stone magazine. I was there, and he also sang some Warren Zevon songs that I could not identify. It´s only when he throws in a random cover that I can´t identify a song, or when he does something unusual like playing the mystery blues instrumental at the recent Chicago show I attended. If you´ve ever been up close and seen the buckets of sweat that pour off that man as he plays at the piano, it would humble you to count yourself lucky to witness such dedication to his art. What he does, says, or plays is not going to shake the world, but if you can see his soul in each of those things, you´re going to come away with a touch of the miracle of Bob Dylan.

I saw him with my two daughters at the Barclay’s Center on Wednesday, a mile or so from our house in Brooklyn. I’m 55, and have been a huge fan for over 40 years. He plays (as always) in part for himself, in part for / with his band, and in part for his audience. At 71, the dude’s energy and focus continue to amaze. I’ve seen him five times, at long intervals: in ’75 with Rolling Thunder (Niagara Falls Convention Center); in ’78 at Brendan Byrne Arena; in the ’90′s at Madison Square Garden with Tom Petty; in 2007 or ’08 at the Jones Beach Theater; and this past Wednesday. In some ways, this last time was the best. In ’75 I was in awe of him (and his retinue – Joni, Joan, McGuinn, I think Neil Young?) and he was magical. But this time he was inventing as I listened — improvising in his singing and on the piano and taking the band with him. What amazes me is that as his physical skills change, he continues to adapt his song interpretations, and in adapting he continues to “make them new” (thank you Ezra Pound). I was most moved by Visions of Johanna, for me as great a song as anyone has written. If I didn’t know the words so well I think I would have loved the sound, but perhaps would not have been so moved. But the fact is that I do know the words, and maybe that’s part of what he counts on – and the way his cracking, croaking 71 year old voice phrased them deepened the impact. When he was writing back in ’65-’66 (and at times still does today), he drove himself to address fundamental matters about the human condition. When he cries out near the end of the song “…while my conscience explodes,” it’s a naked cry, and if we open to it, it can sound the depths of our own hearts. His anguished confession can awaken our own aching conscience — making our own anguished confession possible, at least inwardly — or maybe his confession becomes ours. The song dignifies our lives by taking common human experience so seriously. The otherwise mundane coughing of old heating pipes, flickering lights in factory loft spaces, a transistor radio are rendered with such accuracy and, yes, love that they resonate with a sort of revelation. The singer pretends to be on mocking personal terms with “the night” but he’s really mocking himself and his pretensions. We’re in that loft with him, it’s maybe 3 am and he begins by sketching for us the great beauty of the ordinary. But he’s also struggling with a terrible loneliness, and “stranded” in the very same place that we’re all stranded – our mysterious human lives – which seems to drive him to question whether there can be such a thing as “salvation” or “infinity”. He hasn’t given up on looking for meaning, though, and as he sits in his dark loft and imagines his way through what seems to be a fundamental reckoning with his own flawed soul, through his generosity of expression, he manages to make his soul a proxy for our own. The power of this song runs so much deeper than what can be articulated along the surface of the words; he’s a suffering person, his suffering somehow soothes our own, dignifying our own encounters with aching consciences and longings. Hearing him perform that song on Wednesday took me into all of those places in a new way that had nothing at all to do with nostalgia. The experience was heart-level and immediate. At 71 he’s found yet another sort of energy and command – and retains his magnetic presence – and he prods and pushes his band to wonderful new places. You feel him working his musical intuition and intelligence, probing for freshness — working first to surprise himself, second his band, and only third his audience. But he doesn’t forget his audience — he throws us plenty of gifts (harmonica riffs, those transcendent songs, a window into his living creative process). In a way, I think every Dylan performance has become a rehearsal — and I’d bet that every rehearsal has become a performance. He retains the power to shock, excite, hypnotize, exhilarate, and unquestionably to disappoint. But art is so much about trial and error, so yes, buyer beware: I know there are nights when he comes up empty and can’t find the elusive thread (I recall feeling that way back at Brendan Byrne). On the other hand, on nights like last Wednesday, if you’re willing to listen very closely (and I think he’s earned that from us) he remains a transcendent artist who can enrich the spirit and teach us things (and I suspect teach himself) that are just beyond the reach of language (even his own). So please don’t question his commitment, or issue foolish judgments — no artist alive radiates more of a sense of being called to his art than Bob Dylan, 50 years after his first record. If you can’t hear him anymore, stop going to his concerts — but don’t tell yourself that because you can’t hear it, whatever he’s doing now is worthless – don’t con yourself into thinking that you alone know the score, the rest of us (including Bob) are fools, and you have the right to tell Bob Dylan when it’s time to quit. Parts of his earliest audiences arrogated that right to themselves back in ’61; the folk purists did it again in ’64; the rock purists in ’67; the rock critics in ’70, and ’78, and ’79, and on and on and on. He’ll always — always — be ahead of us, even when he makes lousy music, because he’s always learning. We’re dealing with a level of genius that he himself doesn’t seem to understand, and can’t really control, but thankfully is committed to. He’ll always be capable of blowing our minds again — I don’t care if he’s 95 and can hardly whisper. Whatever he does now is a gift, and the only thing that’s certain is that the gifts will stop coming if he stops trying. You may hate Tempest, but for me most of those songs are yet another set of fresh, strange wonders. The dogs will bark, but you gotta roll on, Bob, roll on!