Every year, on this day, I remember two people who were responsible for introducing me to Bob Dylan. The first time I heard Dylan was by chance. My mother's journalist friend came over to our house and left behind an audio cassette by mistake, one young lover's gift to another.
This was possibly the year 2000, I was thirteen and in the middle of mending my forever sullen teenage heart. So I decided to play the tape. 'Don't think twice, it's all right' was the first song which I heard. And I instantly knew this can't possibly be a very nice man to know.
But something told me that through the numerous wear and tear my heart was going to go through in my life later, this voice will always keep me company; if only to remind me that it's going to be all right. I kept the tape. The lovers who it originally belonged to, separated.
Now I see their pictures online, immersed in their own lives with other people. I'm sure they too must still listen to this song sometimes. And are reminded that they too are going to be all right. Each of us have our own work to do in this world, at eighty this is still Dylan's.
One of my favourite Dylan performances was at the Newport Folk Festival (1964), where Joan Baez had introduced an awkward, smiling, earnest, and yet complex Bob Dylan. This is where he had first found an audience who were willing to invest in him. Watch.
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If and when this ends, all I want to do is go to some of the bookstores around the world which I've always wanted to visit but didn't manage to yet. So naturally thinking about the one dream bookshop that I actually got to visit in 2019 — the iconic Libreria Acqua Alta in Venice.
Where you're welcomed by its valorous guard who inspects every visitor with her deep liquid eyes before letting them in. It's a haven for used book lovers in which an old gondola filled with books sits at the centre of the store.
The name of the shop literally means “Book Store of High Water”, thanks to Venice's constant flooding. My favourite part of the store which calls itself “the most beautiful bookstore in the world” was however the fire escape, which is simply a door leading out to a canal.
How are we to make sense of our hearts when we can’t make any sense of the world outside our window which has altered and, that too, all so suddenly? We are a generation raised on targets and goals, but the empty office spaces and football stadiums and cinema theatres...
...that we once so freely inhabited have thrown many of us into a state of limbo that has spiralled beyond our control. But it’s okay. It’s okay if you’re not being productive, it’s okay if you’re not creating, it’s okay if you’re not using this time ‘wisely’...
...it’s okay if you’re just being... surviving, surrendering, reflecting. It is okay, it is okay... it is really okay. Because this isn’t a vacation or a writer’s retreat, and we are not all right, no matter what we tell ourselves.