Bob Dylan: The ext Candidate To Have A Religion Named After Him?

Well, I'd worship at the Church of Dylan. Okay, maybe not, but Dylan's lyrics are more poetic than anything this side of Shakespeare...and his guitar playing is better than Bill, too.

Okay, so what's my big fascination? I'm in a Dylan phase once again since starting his autobiography, "Chronicle: Volume 1."

There are a ton of places where I've had to stop and say, "Wow, well put, Bob." One of these was the idea how he was going to break into the folks scene in The Village in the early 60s. He'd look around at the various artists doing their thing, trying to come up with some sorta "schtick"...a gimmick...whatever he could do to get attention.

Yet, the more he thought of gimmicks, the more he disliked the idea. After all, he thought, the music was what he was all about. He wasn't willing to compromise the purity of the songs to achieve fame. Instead, he knew that if he played the songs with all his energy and passion, the rest would fall into line. Thus, we have what Dylan was, became and still remains: a folk singer.

This reminds me of some of the meetings of the National Speakers Association. 've been a member of NSA for over seven years now and have had the chance to learn from some of the best. I've also met a lot of cheeseballs.

The biggest question at an NSA convention is, "What do you speak on?" This is sometimes adapted to, "What's your expertise?" Frankly, I ask the former. Why? Because I don't know if the person has any expertise or not. I say this from experience. Too often, I've heard someone reply, "Well, I want to speak, but I just don't know what my subject is yet."

Beg pardon? You don't have a subject, you are not a speaker. If there isn't a topic eating it's way out of your soul, you have no business speaking. If you, like I've seen many do, look around to see who's making biig bucks and follow their lead, again, what's the point?

Dylan would not have said, "Well, I want to be famous, but I don't know how." Instead, he played the songs to the best of his ability, began to observe the human condition and write his own music, never changing for anyone. And what did that give us? The purest American folk singer the world has ever(and probably will ever) know.