Tarmac Meditations #110: Roll on You Rollin’ River

There are days when my running is not about running at all. I went out this morning to listen to Dylan’s new album, Tempest. I really only listen to music intently when I run, especially if the music is new to me. In one song, “…In silence there he waited for/Time and space to intervene…” A little further along, “The orchestra was playing/songs of faded love…” Me and Mr. Dylan gettin’ our mileage before sunrise…been doing that for a very long time; we’re gonna keep at it for a while longer on account of “I ain’t dead yet my bell still rings/I keep my fingers crossed like the early Roman kings.” ( I get some part of that..the rest just sounds good.) The real thing is, some people who write go to read Keats, or Kesey, or Mailer, or Doctorow or Atwood in order to get their directions to their own private stash of personal words…inspiration is part of it but so too is being surrounded by the rhythms and constructions that made the reader want to be a writer. For me it is Dylan, and Van Morrison, Lyle Lovett and Guy Clark, John Lennon and Marvin Gaye. So I light out, put the headphones on and go to the river of words that will take me where the takin’ needs to go. Roll on you rollin’ river. Roll on.

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Photo is © Michael Lebowitz – All Rights Reserved