Dylan on Wind and Dust

Photo by Kunj Parekh on Unsplash

I recently came across an interview with Bob Dylan from 1977, when the singer-songwriter was 36. Dylan is usually more profound in his song lyrics than his interviews. But something he said this time struck me: “We’re all wind and dust anyway.”

 I think he was saying that much about us is elemental, as in formed of elements—earth, wind, maybe fire. And there is something fleeting and fragile about life, captured in imagery of something small and particle-like and wind-blown.

But sometimes wind is more than the mere movement of molecules. Its currents can carry pollen or dry out swamps or send along rain clouds.

And dust can be compounded into clay or porcelain. Or assembled into infinitely complex biochemical linkages to become a living thing.

Here Dylan maybe was hinting at more than he knew. If we are wind and dust we are also more. One of the Bible’s favorite words for wind can also be translated breath. It even goes so far as to talk about God’s breath. As though God’s moving was more than air currents. What is more intimate than being close enough to someone to feel their breath?

And that strikes me most of all when I think about Dylan’s twin images. For the breath of God, blowing across the scenes of our lives—can it not breathe vitality into the dust of a life that seems parched, animating what lacks movement or seems stagnant? Can’t God transform simple material bits into flesh and bone and soul?