‘I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred’
When I heard those words from ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna fall’ the first time. I presumed Bob Dylan was talking about me. I do not care what he means, I know what I felt. I was the same guy wounded in love and wounded in hatred. Only he made my melancholy bearable. He showed me how to live with pain, or perhaps eschew it in the best ways possible.
I could cry my blues listening to Dylan.
When I heard ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, it was me fighting my plight in life. It was me who had supposedly fallen from grace. And it was me when I felt the sympathy. It felt as if I were in a middle of a train wreck, and I had died and was alive one more time.
I could endure heartbreaks because of you.
I could withstand hardship because of your songs.
I could take in stride the loss of life around me.
I could live to see another day because of what you wrote, and how you sang and in the end how you made me feel.
The man who saved my life more than I would like to admit.
Many times, you have saved my life, and you saved it from me. A part of me loves you for that, and the sardonic part of hates you for that. In the end, me and myself, are better humans.
In the hour of my deepest needs, you were around, and you would be around long after you are gone.
I know they gave you the honor for literature, and that is a wonderful thing.
But to me you gave more than your music, songs and lyrics. You gave me peace.