The Mountain Goats - “Woke Up New”
This song always breaks my heart. When I hear it, it always makes me think of how lost and sad and horrified I’d be with my life were anything to happen to Harper. My life had no purpose before I met her, and I cannot imagine how adrift and lonely I’d be without her. John Darnielle is Bob Dylan to me.
No, wait. That’s not right. Mike Watt is Bob Dylan to me.
John Darnielle is John Lennon to me. Which I guess makes John Lennon Louis Armstrong to me, which would make Louis Armstrong Scott Joplin. Scott Joplin? He’s a nameless 19th century troubadour to me, singing songs by a fire in the wilderness that break my heart and ease the tension and tedium and utter fear of our long journey on the Oregon Trail, away from the old, moribund life we used to know in the inopportune East as we dream of a better tomorrow cut out of the American frontier. Of course, none of this does anything to answer the question of who Bob Dylan is to me, but I think you know. I think you know.
