role model:
a person whose behavior, example, or success is or can be emulated by others, esp. by younger people.
Role models are good in my book. Obviously, you gotta pick one that is going to bring positive influence to your life for it to be a good thing. I’ve had a few different role models over the years. Whether it had to do with their intelligence, talent, spirituality, popularity or leadership abilities, I wanted to be like them in some way. It’s amazing to me what kind of power one person can have in someone else’s life, simply by the way they live theirs.
I am the oldest of 3 sisters. (I should note, however, that I do have a brother who is 10 and a half years older than me… half-bro who I love dearly, but he was out of the house when we were all young, so I still took on the ‘eldest child’ role). I learned at a very early age that my younger sisters looked up to me no matter what kind of example I was setting, good or bad. I was the leader. The ice-breaker. The trend-setter. I was an instant role model due to birth order.
Being a musician with a platform (literally), I’ve had some parents tell me how much their children, especially little girls, look up to me. I was even the person one child wrote about for her school project. (Ha!) This is beyond humbling.
BUT, the point of this post is not to prove myself as a role model. It’s to say that even the GREATS have role models who they admired, studied, and mimicked themselves after. I was reading some in a biography of Bob Dylan and saw that even he, a brilliant songwriter that will be remembered forever, had a role model. And I’m not talking about being kind of interested in this person’s music… he was OBSESSED. Bob Dylan had a fixation with the great, Woody Guthrie, and it shaped him into the colorful artist he soon became.
It was Guthrie’s music, of course, that was most important. The songs that are among the truest writing in American folk music, including ‘This Land Is Your Land’, ‘Pastures of Plenty’, and ‘Deportee’. But Bob also latched on to the hero he saw in Guthrie and began to model himself after him. He would put on an old hat and pretend that he was Woody Guthrie. It was partially a joke at first, but Bob took it quite a long way. His old girlfriend said, ‘if you didn’t call him Woody, he wouldn’t answer’. Crazy. And kind of weird.
Guthrie eventually died at the age of 55 from Huntington’s disease. Before his illness set in, he played a harmonica using a homemade wire harmonica rack he wore around his neck. This allowed him to play guitar and harmonica at the same time, since he didn’t have to use his hands to hold the harmonica. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, another American folk artist of that time, copied the idea from Guthrie, and Bob Dylan did the same. Where did you think that brilliant multi-tasking idea came from?
During Guthrie’s last years, Bob tracked him down as a long-term patient at Greystone Park Hospital in Morris Plains, NJ. Bob called and visited with Guthrie often, and Woody Guthrie, the man Bob Dylan so looked up to and admired, became a friend and mentor to him before he died.
Everybody looks up to somebody, whether we say it out loud and admit it to ourselves or not. We all want to be good at what we do. Whether it’s music, teaching, researching, learning, friendships, parenthood, politics, marriage, sports, writing, love, communication, etc. etc…. we want to be successful. I guess sometimes our pride or ignorance gets in the way and we think we have to do it all by ourselves. Why not surround yourself with people who are like-minded and can mentor and encourage you so that you can be the best at whatever you’re trying to accomplish? Maybe I’ll try giving Patty Griffin or Emmylou Harris a call…..
