Idiot wind
By 
Amusing/disturbing story (gift link) about a Bob Dylan super fan turned combination Dylan stalker and cabalistic interpreter:
At a recent showing of “A Complete Unknown,” the new Bob Dylan biopic, a cheerful group of young women settled in to watch the delicately handsome Timothée Chalamet impersonate the singer.
They barely noticed the 80-year-old man sitting next to them, armored in a winter coat and hat that he never removed. Then, the film began.
“This is all made up,” the man brayed at the screen.
“It’s not what you think it is.”
“You’re scum!”
And so A.J. Weberman’s full-throated annotation of the film continued for 2 hours and 20 minutes, replete with dark interpretations of lyrics and references to how Dylan and the film intersected with such things as communism, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the C.I.A. and Barry Goldwater.
The group of women exchanged confused glances, but said nothing.
For more than half a century, the lives of Weberman and Dylan have been intertwined — though it is Weberman who has done most of the intertwining.
FWIW my favorite Dylan album is Blood On The Tracks, which as far as I can tell contains zero political commentary of any kind, although on the other hand I’m no cryptographer:
“That song’s about me,” he said. “Look at how it starts: ‘Someone’s got it in for me, they’re planting stories in the press.’”
There are days when it feels like “the Sixties” have never really ended. Certainly the social movements that have put Trump in the White House twice now can be understood as a kind of multi-decade freakout in response to everything the counterculture represented.
Remember the all but openly fascistic op-ed from Tom Cotton that ended up costing James Bennet his job?
This week, rioters have plunged many American cities into anarchy, recalling the widespread violence of the 1960s. . . . Some elites have excused this orgy of violence in the spirit of radical chic, calling it an understandable response to the wrongful death of George Floyd.
Blowing through the dust upon our shelves.