DYLAN'S MISS LONELY

Did you know of Edie Sedgwick?

Nor me.

But for much of my life I may have known that she “threw the bums a dime” when she was in her prime.

I’d been listening to Bob Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone and wondered who he had been singing about. A quick internet search suggested it might have been Edie Sedgwick. Another search told me she was a protégé of Andy Warhol, “the ultimate it girl”, and had been in love with Dylan when he went off and married someone else.

It doesn’t really matter – and Dylan isn’t saying.

What he did is take observations of character, and the emotions inspired by them, mixed them in with thoughts on others (commentators suggest some of the lines talk about Dylan himself), and created the character of Miss Lonely.

Dylan claims the screed of prose that eventually became lyrics was written in a mood or revenge – and several of the examples used seem too real, too specific, to be fiction – but there’s also a feeling of some sympathy in the mix.

He takes the emotions, hints at the events, and leaves out all the specifics. So, for decades afterwards, people have wondered who, or thought they knew, or saw themselves in the mix.

Leonard Cohen did something similar with Suzanne. Carly Simon did the same with You’re So Vain. Although both later revealed who the songs were about.

Try describing an interesting real-life character by the effects they have/had and the emotions they inspire/d. Write them from a point of view that suggests you are, in some unstated way, involved and not simply an observer.