Reading: Invisible Republic by Greil Marcus.

"More than thirty years ago, when a world now most often spoken of as an error of history was taking shape and form--and when far older worlds were reappearing like ghosts that had yet to make up their minds, cruel and paradisiac worlds that in 1965 felt at once present and impossibly distant--Bob Dylan seemed less to occupy a turning point in cultural space and time than to be that turning point. As if culture would turn according to his wishes or even his whim; the fact was, for a long moment it did"

This is a much more eloquent form of the statement I've been making for some time now - that it's difficult to foresee a time ever again that any artist will hold the world so enthralled.