It Ain’t Me

I never got Bob Dylan much. He’s good, but I didn’t get the adulation. I guess he staved off glam rock for a few years, but apart from that I always though he was over-rated.

Some songs he does are great though. I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight and Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right are good. I like the way they are easy to play and Blowing In The Wind was the first song I learned on guitar. And here’s the thing – I still can’t play it.

I mean I can PLAY it. Jeez. Sure. What? Three chords? Please…

But I can’t play it.

I was up till early hours this morning playing Don’t Think Twice and even though I was doing the picking and the chords and hammering on and palm muting and lots of other things that make me sound accomplished, it sounded like me. That’s something I’ve grown comfortable being, but I wanted to sound like Bob this once.

And maybe that’s it. People like him because it’s nothing but himself. It’s the style over substance thing again. It’s the way that he does it rather than what he does.

Like when you’re on holiday and you have a marguerita. Its tastes amazing the way they make it. Then when you get home you look up how to make them and you get your techila and limes, salt and everything else, but while the sun may shine, the marguerita’s not doing it for you.

And because the simplest things can bring out the biggest differences in how we do things. It’ll get lost in the complicated stuff, too.

But the basics: our first waking moment of a day, the sound of a soft vowel from our mouths, the way you get up out of a chair, picking up a guitar and, yes, especially your margueritas – it’ll bring it out of you and don’t hope for anything too far from what you get, because that’s yourself right there.

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Three Word Story
“You don’t understand your power over the common man,” said Alistair Campbell.

The words seemed to echo endlessly around their cell. Digging a tunnel had proved fruitless