In high school - that's when I first fell in love with his music

The words of Todd Haynes, “In high school — that’s when I first fell in love with his music and his voice. ‘Blonde on Blonde’ above everything. I vaguely remember ‘Desire’ coming out. I definitely remember ‘Street Legal’ and ‘Slow Train Coming.’ The first time I saw Dylan was on that tour: ’79 in L.A.,” are not merely the recollections of a filmmaker speaking of an artist; they are a hymn to the mysterious power of influence, that sacred thread by which one soul awakens another. In these words, Haynes does not speak of fandom, but of transformation — of that divine encounter between youth and art that changes the course of a life. His tone carries the reverence of discovery, the awe of first hearing a voice that seemed to speak from beyond time, and the gratitude of knowing that one’s inner world had found its mirror in the music of another.

The origin of this quote lies in Haynes’ lifelong fascination with Bob Dylan, the poet-troubadour whose music defied boundaries and whose shifting identities reflected the restless heart of the twentieth century. Haynes, who would later direct I’m Not There, a film that reimagines Dylan’s life through multiple personas, traces his creative awakening back to those high school years when he first encountered Dylan’s albums. Each title he names — “Blonde on Blonde,” “Desire,” “Street Legal,” “Slow Train Coming” — marks a chapter in Dylan’s evolution, from the electric prophet of the 1960s to the spiritual seeker of the 1970s. Haynes’s memory of that 1979 concert in Los Angeles, during Dylan’s gospel period, is not merely nostalgia; it is the record of a revelation, when sound became symbol and performance became pilgrimage.

To love an artist deeply, especially in youth, is to discover the self through another’s creation. For Haynes, Dylan’s voice was more than melody — it was prophecy, imperfection, and truth entwined. His raspy, unpolished tone carried the rawness of experience, the poetry of the streets, and the ache of being alive. In those notes, the young Haynes must have heard not just songs, but possibility — the realization that art could transcend beauty and reach into the soul’s most turbulent depths. This is the moment every creator longs for: the first awakening of artistic consciousness, the spark that whispers, “You too may shape the world through imagination.” Dylan’s music, for Haynes, became both compass and catalyst, teaching him that identity itself could be art — mutable, mysterious, and endlessly reborn.

The ancients understood this kind of inspiration as divine possession — the muse descending upon the mortal mind. The poet Hesiod wrote of being touched by the Muses upon the sacred mountain, his voice forever changed thereafter. So too did Todd Haynes experience his mountain, though it came not in Greece but through the crackle of vinyl records spinning in a teenager’s room. What Dylan gave him was not doctrine, but permission: the freedom to experiment, to question, to reinvent. In Dylan’s ever-changing personas — folk prophet, electric rebel, Christian pilgrim — Haynes saw the very essence of the artist’s calling: to remain true not to the world’s expectations, but to the flux of one’s own becoming.

When Haynes recalls Dylan’s albums — “Blonde on Blonde” above all — he speaks with the tone of reverence reserved for scripture. For that record, with its surreal poetry and boundless sound, was itself a monument to artistic freedom. It stood at the crossroads of rock and poetry, where meaning danced with mystery. To the young Haynes, it must have felt like discovering a new language — a way of feeling that had never before been named. And later albums like “Slow Train Coming”, with their gospel fervor and spiritual fire, revealed another lesson: that even the most rebellious soul must one day wrestle with faith, doubt, and redemption. Dylan’s journey through sound became, in Haynes’s eyes, a mirror of life’s journey through change and self-reinvention.

From this devotion, Haynes would build his own temple of storytelling. In I’m Not There, he would fragment Dylan into six incarnations — a child outlaw, a poet, a lover, a preacher, a recluse, and a woman — showing that identity is never singular but a chorus of selves. The seed planted in that Los Angeles concert would grow into a vision of cinema where truth lies not in likeness, but in emotion. In honoring Dylan, Haynes honored the ancient belief that art’s highest purpose is not imitation, but illumination — to make visible the unseen patterns of the human heart.

Let the wisdom of Todd Haynes’s reflection be passed on to those who seek their own voice: follow the sound that awakens your soul, no matter where it leads. The artist who stirs your heart is not merely an idol, but a teacher sent to remind you of what is possible. Listen not just with your ears, but with your spirit, for in every song that moves you, there is a message meant for your becoming. As Bob Dylan once sang, “He not busy being born is busy dying.” And as Todd Haynes reminds us through memory and devotion, to fall in love with art — truly, deeply — is to begin that eternal rebirth.