The Usual Odd Sequence

I don't guess there is much in my life that doesn't arise due to some odd or unexpected sequence. It's not very often that an idea or pursuit springs full-blown into my mind. A few weeks ago, I was aimlessly surfing the tv channels when I came across a taped version of the Johnny Cash Visionary Award (from 2006) being presented to Kris Kristofferson. I'm not even sure who chose him, but the award was being presented by Johnny Cash's musician daughter Roseanne. Kris was a friend of Cash's for some decades, so it was an emotional event for all concerned. He teased Roseanne Cash that she better not cry or he'd start crying, too. He then gave an acceptance speech which was mostly praise of Johnny Cash and the pleasure he'd had in becoming friends with one of his idols. I thought it was odd how he ended it by remarking that "Bob Dylan said it the best. He said that John was like the North Star: You could guide your ship by him."

Later, I ran across an article on the Internet which described that event and that quote and I got curious as to where or when Dylan made that remark. Or was it a lyric to some song? Dylan only has a million or so songs, you never know when you might have missed one. So I Googled "Dylan Cash north", but I didn't turn up that quote. Instead I found a Youtube version of the two of them singing Dylan's "Girl From The North Country". Nice, and I'd never heard it. In fact I then found a seemingly endless list of Youtube recordings of them either singing or conversing together. Some were well-done, some weren't, but it made me wonder why there wasn't more effort to make a "real" album. Dunno. In any case, I listened to them and to some of Dylan's very old "bootleg" or "unreleased" recordings until my mind turned to mush. Maybe I'll listen some more later, but for now I'm wasted.

I find most of Youtube a vast wasteland, and even when I found something I was especially interested in, the Youtube quality only sometimes exceeds shitty. But it did reveal a segment of things I hadn't considered, which is simply that a great deal of what's been rejected when it was first recorded may now seem like Gold or at least matters of interest to fans whose idols are fading or dead. So maybe Youtube is not the waste of time I'd been thinking, though it did distract me from finding out about that damn quote I started out searching the web for! It just doesn't "Google", I guess.