I asked Bob Dylan how he writes his songs and now I need to make a few things clear.

I know why the songs didn't come to me. Do you know that you're a bit of a jerk?

“You know, people ask where the songs come from, but they don’t really want to know where the songs come from. They want to know why the songs didn’t come to them.” - A Complete Unknown

Hi, Bob. It’s me, your accountant, Marty. Let’s have a quick chat.

I heard what you said about me, or at least what you said about people like me who ask you where you get your songs from. Look, man, I was just making small talk. You write songs so I ask you about how the songwriting is going. It’s just the polite way to talk to people. You ask people questions about themselves and then listen when they tell you things. You don’t just make stuff up in your head about them and then start believing it like it’s gospel. I do the books for a guy who manages a quarry. I ask him about his work, too. Do you think I’m jealous of rocks?

I’m not. I’m not jealous of rocks. I don’t wonder why rocks didn’t come to me. I don’t wonder why the songs didn’t come to me either. I know why the songs didn’t come to me. Because I’m not a songwriter, I’m an accountant, Bob.

Not everybody in the world can be a songwriter, Bob. How would we eat if all the farmers decided to stop farming and that they were going to just sit around writing songs all day? Would you feel safe flying above the clouds in an airplane if the pilot was in the cockpit strumming on a banjo thinking about metaphors? How would people know how much money they need to send the government if it weren’t for accountants like me? What would you do, just send the government a big box of money and hope they send back whatever they don’t need? The world doesn’t work that way, Bob. Somebody needs to keep accounts! That somebody is me, Marty, your accountant.

I’m a damn good accountant too. I saved you a heck of a lot of money last year, didn’t I? You didn’t even know you could write off guitar picks as a business expense. Do you think when you come in here with your hot mess of paperwork and ask about how much taxes you owe the government I go home to my wife and say “Bobby Dylan asked me how much taxes he owes but what he really wants to know is why he didn’t know how much taxes he owes himself” like some kind of an asshole? I do not.

I could talk like that about you. I happen to think doing taxes is very easy. It comes quite naturally to me like I’m sure songwriting comes quite naturally to you. I actually find numbers to be quite musical. That’s all music is anyways, math. Did you know that, Bob? That music is math? What you do and what I do are like cousins of sorts. But you think what you do is special and something other people are envious of while what I do is boring and plain. But they’re cousins, and they’re close cousins too not even cousins that would be allowed to marry each other. If music and math tried to get married the courts would say “No! Your kids would be too weird!”

So, you find the music in music and I find the music in math. I’m sure a baker finds the music in baking as well. The tinny rhythm of the sifter as it softens his flour fine as snow. The bass of the dough as it thumps on his workbench, heavy in his hands but nothing against their strength. The strength built through years of kneading and pulling and rolling and shaping and perfecting a craft that is just as important as yours. Next time you ask for bread take a moment to wonder why you must go to bread and why the bread didn’t come to you.

And since we’ve come this far, I’ll ask you this — isn’t finding the music in math or bread more musical than finding music in music itself? Isn’t finding the music in music a little…on the nose? Anyone can find the music in music. It is music. But finding music in math is magic.

You may think you are the magician, Bob, but you are not the magician. Marty the accountant is the magician. How does that feel?