on a cd purchase

one day this week i was in a particularly foul mood caused by a foul day at work. foolishly, i went into circuit city for a little retail therapy. since i cannot buy books for three months due to my own personally-enforced economic sanction, i have begun to buy more cds (thus negating the whole purpose of the sanction to begin with, really.) when i went into the store, i went straight to the "D's," for none other than--you guessed it--a Dylan cd.

i walked out of the store with a 3 for 1 set of Dylan albums. i was torn between this and the Bootleg series Vol. 6, Live at Carnegie Hall 1964. it was a set of Dylan's later cd's: Oh Mercy, Time Out of Mind, and Love & Theft.

these cds are far different than his earlier albums and it will take me a long time to truly enjoy them. but i had motive. i wanted Oh Mercy because a chapter of his memoirs are devoted to the recording of this album in the now-ravaged city of New Orleans. i wanted Time Out of Mind because of the Newsweek article i read about Dylan's memoir that mentioned that this 1997 album is what established him as a vital contemporary artist. and i wanted Love & Theft because of the personal recommendation of Seth Harshman.

right now i'm listening to Oh Mercy, and i'm already starting to enjoy it more. i'm really beginning to believe what Dylan said in No Direction Home: "An artist is always in the state of becoming." it's similar to something else i read in an article w/ Sufjan Stevens, that he appreciates that people like his music and at the time he is successful, but the success is not what matters to him--what matters is that he makes music that he enjoys.

"the rest is not our business." -T.S. Eliot.