was with the
friend I met at
Anxiety Club.
It wasn’t really called that.
The name is perhaps not immaterial
but forgotten.
Something less confronting
no doubt, focussed more on the
wellness than the illness.
Some of the songs were almost
unrecognisable but I didn’t hold that
against him.
George Harrison had been dead for 17 years,
Roy Orbison for 30, a lifetime for me
at that point. But Dylan was still going.
A relic, a recluse,
a window into my parent’s youth.
A chance to be in the same room
with somebody not of my time.
Like one of those odd historical titbits.
Marilyn Monroe was born
in the same year as Queen Elizabeth II.
Only 66 years separated the first
airplane flight and the moon landing.
The second time I saw Bob Dylan in concert
Donald Trump was in the Oval Office,
and Anxiety Club had disbanded due to a lack of funding,
which seemed about as bad as things could get.
Of course, a year later a gunman would
shoot up a mosque,
an island would erupt,
and the concert venue would close
as all concert venues would close.
I was not long born when Dylan began his
schedule of shows dubbed the Never Ending Tour.
A Swedish researcher calculated
he passed 3,000 shows
before the world locked down,
then picked up right where he left off.
A precedented presence
in unprecedented times.