The "I" in "You" or "Me"

So I quite enjoy the music of Mr. Bob Dylan and, as I wrote about last time we met, I’m going through this book series covering a number of influential albums. I’m almost done with the book on Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and it is funny how certain quirks from artists can come out over the course of a career. In this case, the quirk is that of obfuscation. This comes out in a quote from Bob on who the inspiration is of the songs from the album. Here’s Bob’s answer and it’s classic Dylan:

“Sometimes the ‘you’ in my songs is me talking to me. Other times I can be talking to somebody else. If I’m talking to me in a song, I’m not going to drop everything and say, alright, now I’m talking to you. It’s up to you to figure out who’s who. A lot of times it’s ‘you’ talking to ‘you.’ The ‘I,’ like in ‘I and I,’ also changes. It could be I, or it could be the ‘I’ who created me. And also, it could be another person who’s saying ‘I.’ When I say ‘I’ right now, I don’t know who I’m talking about.”

There you go everybody. Now that that’s cleared up, let’s move on…