Yesterday I walked into a Cape Cod golf shop that had music playing in the background. Not just any music, but the song "Positively 4th Street" by Bob Dylan. The song first appeared in 1965, and I've been in awe of it for more than 40 years. It is an anti-love song, venomous in its resentment of the unidentified person it attacks. It is the voice of an angry young man, directed at the target of its rage and pulling no punches. Yet like so much of Dylan's writing, it surprises by taking familiar words or phrases and turning them into something new and, in this case, startling. (As I write this, a silly Dylan phrase, "the sun isn't yellow, it's chicken," comes to mind.) Nowhere does Dylan accomplish this turn of phrase more effectively than in the last two stanzas: I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes. And just for that one moment, I could be you. Yes I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes. Y
Meditations on Law and Life