Bob Dylan’s Groovy Creative Wisdom
Bob Dylan simply has the look of a tried-and-true creative spirit. Photo from his album Nashville Skyline.
When once asked about creativity, Bob Dylan called it a funny thing. “When we’re inventing something, we’re more vulnerable than we’ll ever be,” he said. “Eating and sleeping mean nothing…. To be creative you’ve got to be unsociable and tight-assed. Not necessarily violent and ugly, just unfriendly and distracted. You’re self-sufficient and you stay focused.”
The guy does know how to turn a phrase, even if he doesn’t have all the answers (they’re often blowing in the wind).
Now 83, Dylan seems like one of those creative legends whose age is lost in time. He’s eternally young and groovy, and has caught on with a whole new generation thanks to his new film. Here, we share 10 bits of creative wisdom from Dylan and his book Chronicles, on everything from how he works (always in motion), the ingredients for a fertile creative mind, and why night time is the best time to imagine new possibilities.
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1. “I did everything fast. Thought fast, ate fast, talked fast and walked fast. I even sang my songs fast. I needed to slow my mind down if I was going to be a composer with anything to say.”
2. “Creativity has much to do with experience, observation and imagination, and if any one of those key elements is missing, it doesn't work.”
3. “Things grow at night. My imagination is available to me at night. All my preconceptions of things go away. Sometimes you could be looking for heaven in the wrong places. Sometimes it could be under your feet. Or in your bed.”
4. “You can write a song anywhere, in a railroad compartment, on a boat, on horseback — it helps to be moving. Sometimes people who have the greatest talent for writing songs never write any because they are not moving.”
5. “If you have to lie, you should do it quickly and as well as you can.”
6. “I'd come from a long ways off and had started a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else.”
7. “The road ahead had always been encumbered with shadowy forms that had to be dealt with in one way or another.”
8. “I had no songs in my repertoire for commercial radio anyway. Songs about debauched bootleggers, mothers that drowned their own children, Cadillacs that only got five miles to the gallon, floods, union hall fires, darkness and cadavers at the bottom of rivers weren’t for radiophiles. There was nothing easygoing about the folk songs I sang. They weren’t friendly or ripe with mellowness. They didn’t come gently to the shore. I guess you could say they weren’t commercial.”
9. “It’s a crazy, mixed up world and you have to look it right in the eye.”
10. “Be groovy or leave, man.”
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