Thought Flash

I had a ‘thought flash’ the other day which got me thinking about my youth and possible influences I was exposed to without really searching them out. Age 13 up to age 16 seems, to me, to be a time when young people start making their own choices about the music they listen to, the books they read and how they perceive art. My awareness years were between 1966 and 1969. The three people that caught my attention during this period were Bob Dylan, Gunter Grass and Andy Warhol. One wonders whether the impressions these three made upon me at that young age have remained intact throughout the years till this present day. A question that will probably be left unanswered because as we mature and begin to mix socially, we are constantly being swayed, and sometimes not, by others’ thoughts, beliefs and opinions. As we grow physically, mentally and spiritually and become one with our own thinking self we can only look back to those first days when we experimented with the influences of musicians, artists, writers and poets. Some of us will make use of what we learned from them, good or bad, and some of us won’t.

And as for life itself?

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind…
-Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

"Destiny is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you're about will come true. It's a kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self, because it's a fragile feeling, and you put it out there, then someone will kill it. It's best to keep that all inside." - Bob Dylan (The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, 1956-1966)

“May you grow up to be righteous, may you grow up to be true. May you always know the truth and see the lights surrounding you. May you always be courageous, stand upright and be strong. May you stay forever young.”- Bob Dylan


"I was lingering out on the pavement. There was a missing person inside of myself and I needed to find him . . . I felt done for, an empty burned-out wreck . . . Wherever I am, I'm a "60's troubadour, a folk-rock relic, a wordsmith from bygone days, a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows." - Bob Dylan (Chronicles: Volume One)

Gunter Grass

Where man had been, in every place he left, garbage remained. Even in his pursuit of the ultimate truth and quest for his God, he produced garbage. By his garbage, which lay stratum upon stratum, he could always -- one had only to dig -- be known. For more long-lived than man is his refuse. Garbage alone lives after him. -Gunter Grass (The Rat)

Today I know that everything watches, that nothing goes unseen, and that even wallpaper has a better memory than ours. It isn't God in His Heaven that sees all. A kitchen chair, a coat-hanger, a half-filled ash tray, or the wooden replica of a woman named Niobe, can perfectly well serve as an unforgetting witness to every one of our acts. - Gunter Grass (The Tin Drum)

What does a river like the Vistula carry away with it? Everything that goes to pieces: wood, glass, pencils, pacts ... chairs, bones, and sunsets too. What had long been forgotten rose to memory, floating on its back or stomach, with the help of the Vistula. - Gunter Grass (Dog Years)

Andy Warhol

Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. - Andy Warhol


When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can't make them change if they don't want to, just like when they do want to, you can't stop them. - Andy Warhol

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. - Andy Warhol