I like very much your androgynous Turk “weeding out all the cultural gossip.” Bob Dylan is supremely literal: from geranium kisses to silver bells, he traffics always in whatever it is he sees and feels to be real at that moment. There’s not a disingenuous syllable anywhere on Christmas in the Heart, Go ahead and hate this, if you wish to, but don’t get up a sophisticated, disingenuous story about sources and intentions in this record. Please toss it because you think it’s tripe from soup to nuts. Or take it as Bob Dylan sings it–straight, starlit, and liquorish.

I also like the idea of imagining how this record would sound to a Neptunian. In fact, this is what I do when writing about a Dylan song–except I (arbitrarily) imagine a young Turkish singer-songwriter wannabe–sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl, depending on the song–I find it’s a quick way to weed out all the cultural gossip that has attached itself to Dylan’s songs.