Today, May 24, is the birthday of Bob Dylan. He is 84 years old and perhaps the most important American poet and performer of his lifetime.
Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. In his required lecture, Dylan speaks of the influence of three books, Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville (1851), All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque (1929), and the Odyssey by Homer (c. 750 BCE).
The recent movie “A Complete Unknown” tells the story of Dylan arriving in New York City in 1961 to join the folk music scene in Greenwich Village. The four years covered by the film describe Dylan’s creative disruption of the musical status quo, singing his own songs (as opposed to merely re-singing the traditional folk songs) and, later, adding electrified instruments (as opposed to relying solely on acoustic sounds).
Both of these create a double meaning to the chorus to what is perhaps his most famous and influential song, “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”
Dylan released the song in 1964 at the height of both the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, two of the most socially disruptive events in post-war American history. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll intensified the dramatic impact of all that was happening.
I was 14 years old and a silent witness to all of it, my experience shaped by the pulpit rhetoric of preachers and the serious reporting of the evening news. But even I felt the force of what Dylan described:
The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast
The slow one now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’
Sixty years later, this song is once again a gift to the world. Climate change, Artificial Intelligence, and Project 2025 coalesce to pull us into the cauldron of social change. Once again, I find myself a witness, not so silent this time, to all that is swirling around me… and you and all of us.
According to many, Dylan’s most significant song is the one that provided the title to the recent movie, with its powerful chorus:
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.
Among other messages, this speaks to the experience of social dislocation, of not knowing what happened to the sights and smells of home, of familiar territory, of the way things have been, or even of the way we wish things might be.
But it is another Dylan song that I now play again and again. Not that I know what it means; but I know how it makes me feel, I know what it makes me think, and sometimes, but not always, I surely don’t know why it makes me pray.
Ten times the chorus comes; any one of the verses will do, but today I lay out for you only the first and last.
‘Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form
Come in, she said
I’ll give ya shelter from the storm
Well, I’m livin’ in a foreign country, but I’m bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor’s edge, someday I’ll make it mine
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born
Come in, she said
I’ll give ya shelter from the storm
Thank you, Bob, and Happy Birthday. Keep writing and singing and pulling us along.
Subscribe to Dr. Moody’s weekly column at themeetinghouse.net
Watch Dr. Moody’s broadcast SUNDAY IN THE HOUSE at www.youtube.com/@dwightamoody
Today, May 24, is the birthday of Bob Dylan. He is 84 years old and perhaps the most important American poet and performer of his lifetime.
Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. In his required lecture, Dylan speaks of the influence of three books, Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville (1851), All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque (1929), and the Odyssey by Homer (c. 750 BCE).
The recent movie “A Complete Unknown” tells the story of Dylan arriving in New York City in 1961 to join the folk music scene in Greenwich Village. The four years covered by the film describe Dylan’s creative disruption of the musical status quo, singing his own songs (as opposed to merely re-singing the traditional folk songs) and, later, adding electrified instruments (as opposed to relying solely on acoustic sounds).
Both of these create a double meaning to the chorus to what is perhaps his most famous and influential song, “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”
Dylan released the song in 1964 at the height of both the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, two of the most socially disruptive events in post-war American history. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll intensified the dramatic impact of all that was happening.
I was 14 years old and a silent witness to all of it, my experience shaped by the pulpit rhetoric of preachers and the serious reporting of the evening news. But even I felt the force of what Dylan described:
The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast
The slow one now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’
Sixty years later, this song is once again a gift to the world. Climate change, Artificial Intelligence, and Project 2025 coalesce to pull us into the cauldron of social change. Once again, I find myself a witness, not so silent this time, to all that is swirling around me… and you and all of us.
According to many, Dylan’s most significant song is the one that provided the title to the recent movie, with its powerful chorus:
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.
Among other messages, this speaks to the experience of social dislocation, of not knowing what happened to the sights and smells of home, of familiar territory, of the way things have been, or even of the way we wish things might be.
But it is another Dylan song that I now play again and again. Not that I know what it means; but I know how it makes me feel, I know what it makes me think, and sometimes, but not always, I surely don’t know why it makes me pray.
Ten times the chorus comes; any one of the verses will do, but today I lay out for you only the first and last.
‘Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form
Come in, she said
I’ll give ya shelter from the storm
Well, I’m livin’ in a foreign country, but I’m bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor’s edge, someday I’ll make it mine
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born
Come in, she said
I’ll give ya shelter from the storm
Thank you, Bob, and Happy Birthday. Keep writing and singing and pulling us along.
Subscribe to Dr. Moody’s weekly column at themeetinghouse.net
Watch Dr. Moody’s broadcast SUNDAY IN THE HOUSE at www.youtube.com/@dwightamoody
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