That singer-songwriter who for Bob Dylan is “indefinable”

Bob Dylan he doesn’t look like someone who loses his balance so easily. But try asking him to draw a profile of Willie Nelson and you will hear him exaggerate in exaggerated praise. The “New Yorker” tried and, in response, Dylan dug deep to find the right words, poetic and touching as usual, to define the Red-Headed Strangerthe “red-haired stranger”.

Dylan opened his response with what writer Alex Abramovich called “a warning”: “It’s hard to talk about Willie without saying something stupid or irrelevant, he’s so much of everything.” In fact, Dylan gives him all sorts of labels, from “Old Viking Soul” to “Moonlight Philosopher” to “cowboy apparition (who) writes songs with holes you can crawl through to escape something.”

How can you capture its essence? How would you define the indefinable or the unfathomable? What is there to say? An Ancient Viking Soul? A Master Builder of the Impossible? A poet patron of people who never quite fit in and who don’t care? A Moonlight Philosopher? A Tumbleweed singer with a doctorate? A troubadour with a red bandana, braids like twin ropes lassoing eternity? What would you say about a guy playing a beat up old guitar who you treat like he’s the last loyal dog in the universe? A cowboy apparition, he writes songs with holes you can crawl through to escape something. A voice like a warm porch light left on for wanderers who said goodbye too soon or stayed too long. I guess you can say all that. But it doesn’t really tell you much or explain anything about Willie. Personally, I have always known him as kind, generous, tolerant and understanding of human weaknesses, a benefactor, a father and a friend. It’s like invisible air. It’s tall and short. It is in harmony with nature. And that’s what makes him Willie.