it’s “Idiot Wind” by Bob Dylan. The alternate take. The slow, acoustic, sparse version with just him and an acoustic guitar. It’s almost nine minutes long, and every time I listen to it I wish it were longer. There’s just something (pretty much everything, actually) that appeals to me. It’s much more solemn than the original. There’s resignation in his voice and in the chords coming out of his guitar. It’s peaceful. It feels like the calm you experience right after the seventy-thousandth and final argument with a lover you realize was never meant for you. You aren’t content, you aren’t satisfied, and things are horrible, but a strange part of you feels a tremendous weight off your shoulders because it’s over. The fact that this feeling signifies so much to me is probably a sign of how fucked I am, but oh well.
It represents staying up until 5 in the morning, alone, chain-smoking — and that’s what I’m doing right now. The song makes me incredibly nostalgic. It affects me so deeply and intensely that I’m writing about it. A year or so (probably more) ago I had just somewhat got my heart broken, and I drove across the country twice in a row. There isn’t a damn thing in the entire world that could compare to the peace I felt then. Think about all of your emotional, social, and mental problems, and imagine being able to run from them. Imagine being able to escape from them at a great distance. That is what I did. I ran, and as unhealthy as that may have been, I’m glad I did it. I’ve had many low points in my life, but these were the best because I didn’t experience them sitting in my apartment. I didn’t experience them around my friends (and subsequently didn’t have to feel bad for exposing my sadness to them). I experienced them in totally new environments, in a time of change and self-renewal and in a sea of mountains and badlands and open plains and farmland, moving. No sadness has ever come close to feeling as right as this sadness.
Something about being surrounded by gorgeous mountains totally alone makes your emotional difficulties seem totally irrelevant. I was so sad, and it was like life smacked me across the face and said “look how pointless it is to feel how you do, none of your experiences or feelings actually affect anything around you” — it’s ten times harder to feel sorry for yourself when you’re engulfed in pure beauty. It’s ten times harder when you don’t know what part of the country you’ll be in in 8 hours. It’s ten times harder when you’re able to see all these strangers in these towns around you carrying on with their lives, totally swallowed by their own existences. And nothing is more inspiring to me. Nothing makes me feel more human, more alive, and more real.
Anyway, I’ve run out of things to say, so I’m going to bed. Things have gotten much better, and I’ve become much more stable, and the horizon doesn’t look so bleak, and that’s good enough for me. Things will be shitty, and all I can do is realize how lucky I am to experience everything — the good and the bad. All I can do is move forward and try to make the decisions that feel correct and hope for the best. And if it doesn’t work out, at least I can write about it, and later remember how intense it was and how it morphed me into whoever I am. All I can do is make the best of what’s in front of me and do my damndest to appreciate everything I have and everything that’s sure to come. That’s all I can do. All I can do is live the best I can, and that’s what I’m doing, and that’s what I’ll continue to do. And right now I’m very optimistic.
