Very perceptive comments, Peter. I still stand by my original point, but I also agree with what you are saying. There are definitely some creative people who mature into the fullness of their craft as you so eloquently put it...

"you need to develop a taste for the bittersweet, like scotch; life and love..."

"The great artists get past the muddles of middledom, and burn with a late simple fire"

Oh yeah! You are so right, Peter. It happens with a few great artists and writers. It is the product of wisdom, and of a great deal of love. And with those come humility and compassion.

Dylan has managed it now and then, sporadically, it comes creeping through with songs like "Blind Willie McTell", "Jokerman", "Sweetheart Like You", "Every Grain of Sand"...with the whole album "Blood On The Tracks"...but he seems to then fall back into that odd passivity you speak of, and for long periods. Perhaps it is wisdom that he's lacking. Perhaps he lacks the energy to focus. Maybe his mind is getting clouded by alcohol or something. I don't know.

I do know that his recent book "Chronicles" has some utterly marvelous passages in it.

Leonard Cohen, by the way, is a songwriter whom I would say just kept getting better and better as he got older. And he was darned good when he started. Ian Tyson is another who has done wonderful writing later in life, with those cowboy songs he wrote (in the 80's or 90's?). They sit realer on him than most of the folk-pop stuff he wrote when he was young.