RevolutionZ
RevolutionZ
Ep 338 Dear Bruce Via Bobby
Ep 338 of RevolutionZ seeks to speak to Bruce Springsteen in light of his recent warranted and eloquent outcry against Trump and Trump's retaliatory threats, and also to Bobby Dylan, a Master of Words, with his own words, and, well, to anyone who would like to relate to these times in light of past and future times. Authoritarianism, military spectacle, and resistance. How do we survive is one sensible question. How do we overcome is a still better question. Is our time to us worth saving?
This episode offers some of Dylan's words as both mirror and motivation. You've heard them? You haven't heard them? If I can recite them in turmoil and thanks after a million hearings, perhaps you can hear them usefully, even again, too. Can we crawl out our window? Can we know our song well before we start singing? Can we dance on the graves of war-makers? Is it alright ma? Is hard rain falling already? Can we tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it, and reflect it from the mountains so all souls can see it? And can we avoid becoming puppets repelling who we ought to be hearing?
Revisit or discover some of Dylan's lyrics here. For words, music, and voice, perhaps start with the trilogy that changed everything: "Bringing It All Back Home," "Highway 61 Revisited," and "Blonde on Blonde," or earlier or later. I hope his words can do for you what they do for me: help fuel your resistance and enflame your desires to make real your own chimes of freedom.
Hello, my name is Michael Albert and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. First for today, hey, bruce, I hope you hear this. Somehow Donald is pissed at you Not surprising, given how you rightly and righteously raked him at your UK events. But actually I think Trump is no dummy about you. He knows there are plenty of MAGA allies of his who love you justifiably, even more than their confused love for him. Uh-oh, you're dangerous for him. So what now? Well, can your resistance take another step, even a big step, beyond the already quite effective stage message? And given that De Niro went at Trump at least equally aggressively recently at cons, what do you both think about you two getting together, hand in hand, in the streets of Washington DC June 14th, maybe with some of your buddies and peers too? Hell, joan and Bobby, kendrick and Tom, maybe even Taylor? I don't like the term privilege much, but this one time you guys do have something like privilege, not that you should renounce, but that we should all have, that is. I doubt the military parade troopers will shoot you or run you over with their tanks if you take a seat, strike a pose in their path. I think maybe you could help a lot of other folks who go to DC as well. Maybe cover their court costs later. Also, one lawyer for everyone, too bad. Kunstler is gone, but there has to be someone out there ready to sign on for the defense, don't you think? So what do you say? I wrote a book, no Bosses. Well, this is one time I'd like to salute a boss. Boss.
Speaker 1:Next on the rumination docket, for today it isn't just Bruce and Robert. Now there is a whole lot of shaking Trump going on, but while the verbal and text assaults are excellent mine too, I suppose, though mine are minor league by contrast are excellent. Mine too, I suppose, though mine are minor league. By contrast, june 14th does offer everyone a momentous opportunity, I think, for them and for us. Donald is not messing around. He is competing full tilt to win his own accolades, not cons, but a Washington prize, a Hitler prize for most damage inflicted on justice and compassion. I wouldn't be surprised if Trump declares June 14th, and thus his birthday, a joint national holiday. So, bruce, remember when you inimitably covered. Santa Claus is coming to town.
Speaker 1:How about cover a song for Donald? Perhaps Masters of War, Moving on, but having brought up a song by him and having addressed one singer-songwriter. How about addressing another one for the rest of this episode's rumination, even at risk of repeating myself? So, bobby, I know it's noisy out there, I know the sky is erupting, but I also know that you know your songs well and thankfully is erupting, but I also know that you know your songs well and thankfully there are no puppets so far on our side, or very few at any rate, heaving rocks. So how about it, bobby? How about one more about-face to go back to being so much younger? Not glory days, but very valid days. So how about it? Before the hard rain gets still harder, I imagine you singing Masters of War right to Trump's face and his military display. If you are able and I hope beyond reason that, at what 84 you are, how about coming back from where it is quiet? Or if appearing June 14th would overextend your legs, no problem, how about give us a new song? Or maybe Zimmy and the Walrus can get together?
Speaker 1:And now, for a second time, I'd like to spend the rest of this episode offering your lyrics to Revolution Z's audience. Why do I do that? Because I want to say the words again out loud. It does me good and because I think some of the audience. Hearing them again and others perhaps hearing them for the first time, may be a good thing for you all too, and thus not just for me. Indeed, it may cause some of you to listen to Dylan's music as he intended it, especially the younger ones among you.
Speaker 1:While presenting Bob's lyrics, I hesitate to interject comments with them, but as I read them now again aloud, I suspect I may at times be unable to stop myself. If my comments help a little, great, if not, ignore my small part but take some time for Dylan's large part. And if I get a little choked up here and there, what can I say other than thank you, bobby. Up here and there, what can I say other than thank you, bobby. To start, how about a quick foray into some of Dylan's version of what is so ubiquitous nowadays? Four of his relationship songs, though with worldly edge, I think Taylor hasn't yet delved into, it turns out Dylan is not only an observant troubadour, he is also a human First.
Speaker 1:Consider Girl from the North Country which goes like this Well, if you're traveling in the North Country fair, where the winds hit heavy on the borderline, remember me to the one who lives there. She once was a true love of mine. Well, if you go when the snowflakes storm, when the rivers freeze and summer ends, please see if she's wearing a coat so warm to keep her from the howling winds. Please see for me if her hair hangs long, if it rolls and flows all down her breast. Please see for me if her hair hangs long. That's the way I remember her best. That's the way I remember her best. I'm a-wondering if she remembers me at all Many times. I've often prayed in the darkness of my night, in the brightness of my day. So if you're traveling in the North Country fair, where the winds hit heavy on the borderline, remember me to one who lives there. She once was a true love of mine.
Speaker 1:Not overly complex lyrics, not mind-bending metaphors and images no need to interject, but still he can write already. Next, consider All I Really Want to Do a song about him and a her, whoever that might have been, and imagine that you heard it as a teenager, before feminism got your attention, in fact, before anything much got your attention. That would be like me. I ain't looking to compete with you. Beat or cheat or mistreat you, simplify you, classify you, deny, defy or crucify you. All I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you. No, and I ain't looking to fight with you, frighten you or tighten you, drag you down or drain you down, chain you down or bring you down. All I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you. I ain't looking to block you up, shock or knock or lock you up, analyze you, categorize you, finalize you or advertise you. All I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you. I don't want to straight face you, race or chase, track or trace you or disgrace you or displace you or define you or confine you. All I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you. I don't want to meet your kin, make you spin or do you in or select you or dissect you or inspect you or reject you. All I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you. I don't want to fake you out, take or shake or forsake you out. I ain't looking for you to feel like me, see like me or be like me. All I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you. Again, there is nothing hard to fathom in that song, and yet the sentiments, so succinct, are also so relevant and, for some, maybe even so emulatable. I want to do two more relationship songs, if you will, since even some old folks like me may not know the next one, and then I have to do one that everyone knows or knew. First, here is a song you most likely have never heard, titled Can you Please Crawl Out your Window. If you perhaps think I was over the top putting the word feminism in the same sentence as his song, all I Really Want to Do Listen to this song from just before feminism freed countless minds. Indeed, from before my generation had, by and large, heard a feminist word. It was sung to a particular woman, I assume, but perhaps also to many women, and I would say to all men, I assume, but perhaps also to many women, and I would say to all men. That is how I heard it anyway. So Can you Please Crawl Out your Window? Goes like this he sits in your room, his tomb with a fistful of tacks, preoccupied with his vengeance, cursing the dead that can't answer him back. You know that he has no intentions of looking your way, unless it's to say that he needs you to test his inventions. I will interject. I heard that and well, I wondered is that fair? Are we men really that gross. Then came the chorus hey, crawl out your window, come on, don't say it will ruin you, come on, don't say he will haunt you. You can go back to him anytime you want to. I interject. Think about abused women not easily moving on. The song continues. He looks so truthful. Is this how he feels? Trying to peel the moon and expose it With his business-like anger and his bloodhounds that kneel. If he needs a third eye, he just grows it. He just needs you to talk or to hand him his chalk or to pick it up after he throws it. I have to interject. Was there a more militant then current critique of sexism that I missed? Caustic Dylan was very caustic indeed, but this is not mansplaining. How long did it take me before I could even really hear what he sang in this one? Surely not as a senior in high school, but maybe it planted some seeds. I have to wonder if Dylan himself heard this one, or maybe he just conveyed it from out of the skies. So tell me, do you not think this broad assessment of male misogyny, even with all the gains against such ways that have occurred over the years, still resonates? Is the image you get listening to this, much different than your picture of Trump and Musk. The song goes on hey, crawl out your window, come on, don't say it will ruin you, come on, don't say he will haunt you. You can go back to him anytime you want to. Why does he look so righteous while your face is so changed? Are you frightened of the box? You keep him in While his genocide fools and his friends rearrange their religion of little tin women To back up their views? But your face is so bruised. Come on out, the dark is beginning. Their views, but your face is so bruised, come on out, the dark is beginning. I interject. I think perhaps it isn't surprising that this song is barely known at all Genocide fools. Indeed, it ends ah, come on out your window, come on, don't say it will ruin you. Come on, don't say he will haunt you. You can go back to him anytime you want to. Of course, the women who shortly later rebirthed feminism didn't need and probably never heard Dylan cajoling involvement, but I did and I have to admit I wonder about the women who voted for Trump. Might they hear this before too long, as we heard it back then. Note if it wasn't already clear Dylan's relationship songs are in no way about narrow relationships, even if they ostensibly mainly aim to address just those. Is that true today too? And now comes Dylan's most famous song, like a Rolling Stone, which is the one that most immediately, most proximately, changed the whole industry. And this time his words are somewhat more complex. He piles images on images, and multiple listenings can yield new takes. This song and the choice to go in your face, electric, at the time, were deal-breaking. This time it is a wealthy, even a rich woman, or maybe all materially rich women, or maybe everyone who is materially rich, that Dylan is singing to and about. I'm not going to repeatedly include the chorus, save for one time. Once upon a time you dressed so fine, threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you? People call, say beware, doll, you're bound to fall. You thought they were all a kid in you. You used to laugh about everybody that was hanging out. Now you don't talk so loud, now you don't seem so proud about having to be scrounging your next meal. And now the chorus how does it feel, how does it feel to be without a home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone? I interject, as with all the lyrics. I will offer. Listening to his voice and the music greatly augments the power, should you have time for it. The song continues Ah, you've gone to the finest schools. All right, miss Lonely, but you know you only used to get juiced in it. Nobody's ever taught you how to live out on the streets, but you know you only used to get juiced in it. Nobody's ever taught you how to live out on the streets and now you're going to have to get used to it. You say you never compromised with the mystery tramp, but now you realize he's not selling any alibis as you stare into the vacuum of his eyes and say do you want to make a deal? I interject Look up, get juiced in it. Which of three or four meetings do you think Dylan meant to evoke? Or all of them about the finest schools? Or perhaps from another song where he talks about the old folks home with the college, a phrase I often quote. Back to the song Ah, you never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns when they all did tricks for you. You never understood that it ain't no good. You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you. You used to ride on a chrome horse, with your diplomat who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat. Ain't it hard when you discovered that he really wasn't where it's at, after he took from you everything he could steal? I can't not interject. Here. We have men again, a rich one whiting on a motorcycle, not throwing chalk, but still not where it's at. Ah, princess, on a steeple, and all the pretty people. They're all drinking, thinking they've got it made, exchanging all precious gifts. But you better take your diamond ring. You better pawn it, babe. You used to be so amused at Napoleon and rags and the language that he used. Go to him. Now he calls you. You can't refuse. When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose. You're invisible. Now you got no secrets to conceal. Okay, like a rolling stone in hand. It's time to go back a few years to directly consider society, to go back to what he called his finger-pointing songs. And I have to wonder would a young person listening to the following offering now, with Trump in the societal saddle and with us needing to do something about it, hear these songs? Not exactly, but at least somewhat like how I and others heard them sixty years ago? For us, there had been beatniks, there was hippies, revolution was in the air First. Consider blowing in the wind. How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? Yes. And how many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand? Yes. And how many times must the cannonballs fly before they're forever banned? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind. How many years can a mountain exist before it's washed to the sea? Yes. And how many years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free? Yes. And how many times can a man turn his head, pretending he just doesn't see? The answer my friend is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind. How many times must a man look up before he can see the sky? Yes. And how many years must one man have before he can hear people cry? Yes. And how many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died? The answer, my friend, is blown in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind. No need to interject, no confusion, finger pointed, unambiguously. Next, we have, with god Our Side, a song certainly sung to my generation oh, my name, it ain't nothing. My age, it means less. The country I come from is called the Midwest. I was taught and brought up there the laws to abide, and that the land that I live in has God on its side. Oh, the history books tell it. They tell it so well. The cavalry's charged, the Indians fell. The cavalry's charged, the Indians died. Oh, the country was young, with God on its side. The Spanish-American War had its day and the Civil War too was soon laid away, and the names of the heroes I was made to memorize. With guns in their hands and God on their side, the First World War boys. It came and it went. The reason for fighting I never did get, but I learned to accept it. Accept it with pride, for you don't count the dead when God's on your side. The Second World War came to an end. We forgave the Germans and then we were friends, though they murdered six million in the ovens they fried. The Germans, now too, have God on their side. I learned to hate the Russians all through my whole life. If another war comes, it's them. We must fight To hate them and fear them, to run and to hide and accept it all bravely, with God on my side. But now we've got weapons of chemical dust. If fire them, we're forced to then fire them. We must. One push of the button and they shot the world wide. And you never ask questions when God's on your side. Though many dark hour I've been thinking about this, that Jesus Christ was betrayed by a kiss, but I can't think for you. You'll have to decide whether Judas Iscariot had God on his side. So now as I'm leaving, I'm weary as hell. The confusion I'm feeling ain't no tongue can tell. The words fill my head and they fall to the floor that if God's on our side, he'll stop the next war. That was early 60s. The civil rights movement was quite real, but the anti-war movement was just getting up to speed. Dylan was finger-pointing. So what should we have felt? Heading off to school or off to war? Some of us did. What about now? Do you know the Langston Hughes poem? What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun or fester like a sore and then run? Does it stink like rotten meat or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load, or does it explode? We exploded, and now what? Now? The next song for our survey, still very straightforward is Masters of War, which revealed quite graphically and unsubtly what Dylan then felt in Me Too. On June 14th, trump is going to want endless bowing and scraping. Imagine someone singing for him instead this Come you, masters of war, you that build the big guns, you that build the death planes, you that build all the bombs. Instead this you play with my world like it's your little toy. You put a gun in my hand and you hide from my eyes and you turn and run farther when the fast bullets fly. Like Judas of old, you lie and deceive. A world war can be won. You want me to relieve, but I see through your eyes and I see through your brain, like I see through the water that runs down my drain. You fasten all the triggers for the others to fire. Then you sit back and watch when the death count gets higher. You hide in your mansion while the young people's blood flows out of their bodies and is buried in the mud. You've thrown the worst fear that can ever be hurled fear to bring children into the world, for threatening my baby, unborn and unnamed. You ain't worth the blood that runs in your veins. How much do I know? To talk out of turn. You might say that I'm young, you might say I'm unlearned, but there's one thing I know, though I'm younger than you, that even Jesus would never forgive what you do. Let me ask you one question Is your money that good? Will it buy you forgiveness? Do you think that it could? I think you will find when your death takes its toll. All the money you made will never buy back your soul, and I hope that you die, and your death will come soon. I'll follow your casket by the pale afternoon and I'll watch while you're lowered down to your deathbed and I'll stand over your grave till I'm sure that you're dead. Take that Trump. Imagine you listened to that repeatedly and then you went off to college or to work or to wherever. What might happen next for you as the bombs blasted into China or, today, gaza? Would you sag like a heavy load or would you explode? I first got into Dylan, however, as did a great many people, via a song of his well, part of it anyhow sung by a group called the Birds, mr Tambourine man. So I think maybe why not include it? Choosing among so much, what to convey here is really taxing. How can I not include Maggie's farm? She says sing while you slave, and I just get bored, me too. Or when the ship comes in and subterranean homesick blues Ah, get born, keep warm, short pants. Romance, learn to dance, get dressed, get blessed. Try to be a success. Please her, please him, buy gifts, don't steal, don't lift 20 years of schooling and they put you on the day shift. You out there, listening, you in college or working at McDonald's. Does this ring familiar? Ah, get born, keep warm, short pants. Romance, learn to dance, get dressed, get blessed, try to be a success. Please her, please him, buy gifts, don't steal, don't lift 20 years of schooling and they put you on the day shift. I heard him sing the next one in Newport. Not finger-pointing, not political. Yet everything is, isn't it? Hey, mr Tambourine man, play a song for me. I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to. Hey, mr Tambourine man, play a song for me In the jingle jangle morning. I'll come following you, though I know that evening's empire has returned into sand, vanished from my hand, left me blindly here to stand, but still not sleeping. My weariness amazes me. I'm branded on my feet, I have no one to meet, and the ancient empty streets too dead for dreaming. And now the chorus which I won't keep repeating. Hey, mr Tambourine man, play a song for me. I'm not sleepy and there's no place I'm going to. Hey, mr Tambourine man, play a song for me. In the jingle jangle morning, I'll come following you In the jingle jangle morning, I'll come following you. Take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship. My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip my toes, too numb to step. Wait only for my boot heels to be wandering. I'm ready to go anywhere. I'm ready for to fade into my own parade. Cast your dance and spell my way. I promise to go under it. Though you might hear laughing, spinning, swinging madly across the sun, it's not aimed at anyone. It's just escaping on the run. And but for the sky there are no fences facing. And if you hear vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme to your tambourine in time, it's just a ragged clown behind. I wouldn't pay it any mind. It's just a shadow. You're seeing that he's chasing and take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind, down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves, the haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach, far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow. Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky, with one hand waving free, silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands, with all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves. Let me forget about today until tomorrow. Hey, mr Tambourine man, play a song for me. I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to. Hey, Mr Tambourine man, play a song for me In the jingle jangle morning, I'll come following you. I won't burden you with how I thought about that one after feeling its verses to my bones, except to say that, as best I could estimate, you can't play a song on a tambourine, and so I thought the ancient empty streets, too dead for dreaming, were Dylan's mind at that moment, or at any rate the mind of the part of him that whispered the words of the song to the rest of him and that his own parade referred to his funeral. But then again, perhaps not. He is after all still alive and his meanings abound. Now I'd like to offer two in-between songs I guess you might call them in between explicit finger-pointing and going way more poetic. Note though that to not really finger-point and to even ridicule finger-pointing certainly didn't mean Dylan was not taking on the world. Actually, it didn't. Even Dylan was not taking on the world. Actually, it didn't even mean no more fingers were going to aim where he wanted. First there was a hard rains are going to fall. At this point I think he had in mind a nuclear rain as a metaphor, and it works if you take it that way now, but it also works having in mind global storms, you know, high water rising and fascism prowling or really whatever calamitous social crises you want to insert. Even though, again, it was 60 years ago that he wrote this. And yet, even with the quite monumental changes since it could also have been written 10 minutes ago, which is both amazing and rather sad, hard Rain went and goes like this Aware have you been my blue-eyed son? Aware have you been my darling young one? I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains. I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways. I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests. I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans and sad forests. I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans. I've been 10,000 miles in the mouth of a graveyard, and it's a hard and it's a hard, it's a hard and it's a hard and it's a hard. Rains are going to fall. Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son? Oh what did you see, my darling young one? I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it. I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it. I saw a black branch with blood that kept dripping. I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleeding. I saw a white ladder all covered with water. I saw 10,000 talkers whose tongues were all broken. I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children. And it's a hard and it's a hard. It's children and it's a hard and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard and it's a hard. Rains are going to fall. And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son? And what did you hear, my darling young one? I heard the sound of a thunder. It roared out a warning. Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world. Heard 100 drummers whose hands were a-blazing. Heard 10,000 whispering and nobody listening. Heard one person starve. I heard many people laughing. Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter. Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley. And it's a hard and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard and it's a hard. Rains are gonna fall. Oh, who did you meet my blue-eyed son? Who did you meet my darling young one? I met a young child beside a dead pony. I met a white man who walked a black dog. I met a young woman whose body was burning. I met a young girl. She gave me a rainbow. I met one man who was wounded in love. I met another man who was wounded with hatred. And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard. Rains are going to fall. What do you do now, my blue-eyed son? What do you do now, my darling young one? I'm going back out before the rain starts a-falling. I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest, where the people are many and their hands are all empty, where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters, where the home in the valley meets the damp, dirty prison, where the executioner's face is always well hidden, where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten, where black is the color, where none is the number. And I'll tell it and think it, and speak it, and breathe it, and reflect it from the mountains so all souls can see it. Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinking, but I'll know my song well before I start singing. And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard. Rains are going to fall. Not bad to know our song well and reach out widely with it, or so it seemed to me, albeit quite a long time after it seemed that way to him. Dwell in his images for a time. Once you do, it may be hard to leave them. Next up is a song I find my mind sending lines from to my typing fingers over and over, right up to now. Image piled on images again. It is, it's all right, ma, I'm only bleeding. And it goes like this. Darkness at the break of noon, shadows. Even the silver spoon, the handmade blade, the child's balloon eclipses both the sun and moon. To understand, you know too soon. There is no sense in trying. Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn. Suicide remarks are torn From the fool's gold mouthpiece. The hollow horn Plays wasted words. Proves to warn that he, not busy being born, is busy dying. Temptations page flies out the door. You follow, find yourself at war Watch waterfalls of pity roar. You feel to moan but, unlike before, you discover that you'd just be one more person crying. So don't fear if you hear a foreign sound to your ear. It's all right, ma. I'm only sighing as some mourn victory, some downfall. Private reasons, great or small, can be seen in the eyes of those that call to make all that should be killed to crawl, while others say don't hate, nothing at all except hatred. Disillusioned words like bullets bark as human gods aim for their mark, make everything from toy guns that spark to flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark. It's easy to see without looking too far that not much is really sacred. While preachers preach of evil fates, teachers teach that knowledge waits can lead to hundred-dollar plates, and goodness hides behind its gates. But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked. And though the rules of the road have been lodged, it's only people's games that you got to dodge. And it's all right, Ma, I can make it Advertising signs that con you into thinking you're the one that can do what's never been done, that can win what's never been won. Meantime, life outside goes on all around you. You lose yourself, you reappear. You suddenly find you got nothing to fear. Alone, you stand with nobody near when a trembling, distant voice, unclear, startles your sleeping ears to hear that somebody thinks they really found you. A question in your nerves is lit, yet you know there is no answer fit To satisfy. Ensure you not to quit, to keep it in your mind and not forget that it is not he or she, or them or it that you belong to. But though the masters make the rules for the wise men and the fools, I got nothing, ma, to live up to. For them that must obey authority that they do not respect in any degree. For them that must obey authority that they do not respect in any degree, who despise their jobs, their destiny, speak jealously of them, that are free, do what they do, just to be nothing more than something they invest in. While some, on principles, baptize to strict party platform ties, social clubs in drag disguise outsiders they can, can freely criticize Till nothing, except who to idolize and say God bless him. While one who sings with his tongue on fire Gargles in the rat race, choir Bent out of shape from society's pliers, cares not to come up any higher but rather get you down in the hole that he's in. But I mean no harm, nor put fault on anyone that lives in a vault. But it's all right, ma, if I can't please him. Old lady judges watch people in pairs limited in sex. They dare to push fake morals, insult and stare. While money doesn't talk, it swears Obscenity who really cares? Propaganda, all is phony, while them that defend what they cannot see with a killer's pride. Security, it blows the minds most bitterly For them that think death's honesty won't fall upon them. Naturally, life sometimes must get lonely. My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards, false goals. I scoff at pettiness which plays so rough, walk upside down inside handcuffs, kick my legs to crash it off, say okay, I've had enough. What else can you show me? And if my thought dreams could be seen, they'd probably put my head in a guillotine. But it's all right, ma, it's life and life. Only Jeez Ma during that. After that, I can't find my own voice. But I feel a great need to find my way. All of life in one song with an edge. And what about your thought dreams Then? Now can we implement them? It turns out that in the 50 to 60 years since All About, dylan has written hundreds more songs for dozens of albums, and who knows how many he can sign to a wastebasket. I say that just to make evident that if you consider all this and do get interested. There is more to explore. One of the more recent songs was in the 90s and it is next. One of the more recent songs was in the 90s and it is next. After that there is one from still more recently 2001 I think that I never heard until preparing for this and that I never even knew existed. And yet he got an Oscar for it as best song in a movie First Dignity. Fat man looking in a blade of steel. Thin man looking at his last meal. Hollow man looking in a cotton field. For dignity. Wise man looking in a blade of grass. Young man looking in the shadows that pass. Poor man looking through a painted glass. For dignity. Somebody got murdered on New Year's Eve. Somebody said dignity was the first to leave. I went into the city, went into the town, went into the land of the midnight sun, searching high, searching low, searching everywhere I know, asking the cops wherever I go. Have you seen dignity? Blind man breaking out of a trance, puts both his hands in the pockets of chance, hoping to find one circumstance of dignity. I went to the wedding of Mary Lou. She said I don't want nobody to see me talking to you. Said she could get killed if she told me what she knew about dignity. I went down where the vultures feed. I would have gone deeper, but there wasn't any need. Heard the tongues of angels and the tongues of men Wasn't any difference to me. Chilly wind, sharp as a razor blade, house on fire, debts unpaid. Gonna stand in the window gonna ask the maid have you seen? Dignity Drinking man listens to the voice he hears in a crowded room full of covered up mirrors, looking into the lost, forgotten years. For dignity Met Prince Phillips at the home of the blues. Said he'd give me information if his name wasn't used. He wanted money up front, said he was abused by dignity Footprints running across the silver sand Steps going down into tattoo land. I met the sons of darkness and the sons of light in the border towns of despair. Got no place to fade, got no coat. I'm on the rolling river in a jerking boat trying to read a note somebody wrote about dignity. Sick man looking for the doctor's cure, looking at his hands for the lines that were, and into every masterpiece of literature. For dignity. Englishman stranded in the black heart wind combing his hair back. His future looks thin, bites the bullet and he looks within. For dignity. Someone showed me a picture and I just laughed. Dignity never been photographed. I went into the red, went into the black, into the valley of dry bone dreams. So many roads, so much at stake, so many dead ends. I'm at the edge of the lake. Sometimes I wonder what it's going to take to find dignity. Isn't seeking dignity even more in play now than then Hell? Part of what MAGA runs on is giving a sense of efficacy, dignity, however warped and false, to people hungry for it. Dylan wrote what I think was perhaps the most scathing, devastating attack songs. I guess you might call them, along with everything else he wrote Try Idiot Wind, for example, and this next one written to the folk set who turned on him for going electric, though I suspect most of them saw the light before too long passed. It was called Positively Fourth Street. You've got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend. When I was down you just stood there grinning. You've got a lot of nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend. You just want to be on the side. That's winning. You say I let you down. You know it's not like that. If you're so hurt, why then don't you show it? You say you've lost your faith, but that's not where it's at. You have no faith to lose, and you know it. I know the reason that you talk behind my back. I used to be among the crowd you're in with. Do you take me for such a fool to think I'd make contact with the one who tries to hide what he don't know to begin with? I'd make contact with the one who tries to hide what he don't know to begin with. You see me on the street. You always act surprised. You say how are you? Good luck. But you don't mean it when you know as well as me, you'd rather see me paralyzed. Why don't you just come out once and scream it? No, I do not feel that good when I see the heartbreaks you embrace. If I was a master thief, perhaps I'd rob them. And though I know you're dissatisfied with your position and your place, don't you understand? It's not my problem. I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes and just for that one moment I could be you. Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes. You'd know what a drag it is to see you. So that was Dylan saying goodbye to the folk music community, or at least the part of it, so utterly sectarian in their tastes that they attacked his using electric. Next, in a song titled Farewell Angelina, he says goodbye to Joan Baez, I think, and as well to the then radical activist Lesk community. Notice, there was nothing about Baez that repelled him. Rather, it was something about the times, about our community, that repelled him. I think we should have listened to Dylan, not only when he said what we like to hear, but also when he said what he tried to convey here, when he said what he could no longer immerse himself in, what he had to escape. Farewell Angelina. The bells of the crown are being stolen by bandits. I must follow the sound. The triangle tingles and the trumpets pay slow. Farewell Angelina, the sky is on fire and I must go. There's no need for anger, there's no need for blame, there's nothing to prove. Everything's still the same, just a table standing empty at the edge of the sea. Farewell Angelina, the sky is trembling and I must leave. The Jacks and the Queens have forsaken the courtyard. Fifty-two gypsies now file past the guards In the space where the deuce and the ace once ran wild. Farewell Angelina, the sky is folding. I'll see you in a while. See the cross-eyed pirates sitting perched in the sun shooting tin cans with a sawed-off shotgun, and the neighbors. They clap and they cheer with with each blast. Farewell Angelina. The skies change in color and I must leave fast King Kong. Little elves. On the rooftops they dance Valentino-type tangos while the makeup man's hands shut the eyes of the dead not to embarrass anyone. Farewell Angelina. The sky is embarrassed and I must be gone. The machine guns are roaring, the puppets heave rocks, the fiends nail time bombs to the hands of the clocks. Call me any name you like, I will never deny it. Farewell Angelina. The sky is erupting and I must go where it's quiet. And so he did. And not only Baez but also the movement lost Dylan, at least as someone intimately immersed in it and singing for it. It was not her fault at all, I think, but instead the movement's fault, as we shot tin cans and heaved rocks. And I say again that I think we should have heard Dylan not only when he sang for us what we were ourselves learning and trying to teach, but also when he sang about our not always wonderful effects on others. Next, having mentioned her name, here is one song, not from Dylan, but from Baez to him. Well, after their split, dylan wasn't the only one who could write. It's called Diamonds and Rust. Well, I'll be damned. Here comes your ghost again. But that's not unusual. It's just that the moon is full and you happen to call. And here I sit, hand on the telephone, hearing a voice I'd known a couple of light years ago, heading straight for a fall. As I remember, your eyes were bluer than robin's eggs. My poetry was lousy. You said when are you calling? From A booth in the Midwest, ten years ago, I bought you some cufflinks. You brought me something we both know what memories can bring. They bring diamonds and rust. Well, you burst on the scene. Already a legend, the unwashed phenomenon, the original vagabond. You strayed into my arms and there you stayed, temporarily lost at sea. The Madonna was yours for free. Yes, the girl on the half-shell could keep you unharmed. Now I see you standing with brown leaves falling all around. It's snowing your hair. Now you're smiling out the window of that crummy hotel over Washington Square. Our breath comes out. White clouds mingles and hangs in the air, speaking strictly for me. We both could have died then and there. Now you're telling me you're not nostalgic, then give me another word for it, you who are so good with words and are keeping things vague Because I need some of that vagueness now. It's all come back too clearly. Yes, I loved you dearly. "'and if you're offering me diamonds and rust, "'i've already paid. "'come on, bobby, acknowledge that Joan stayed. "'and come on back to the streets. "'one last time to sing to Donald and us all. "'much as I am conveying. "'i don't see how I can end this without the next song. "'it is Much as I am conveying. I don't see how I can end this without the next song. It is called Chimes of Freedom. It's on the album titled Another Side of Bob Dylan from 1964. Dylan was born in 1941, six years before me, so he was at most 23 when he wrote this. Like I said at the beginning, he was differently different. Are you 23 out there, or 20? Or 20? Or 30?, 50? Whatever? We felt this. For that matter, bruce felt it too. He covered it. In fact, I believe he has been ending his sets in England, where he is tongue-lashing Trump with it. But much as I appreciate the boss, if you have a chance, please listen to the original. You will feel it too. The song goes like this Far, between sundown's finish and midnight's broken toll. We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing as majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sound, seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing, flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight, flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight and for each and every underdog soldier in the night. And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing In the city's melted furnace, unexpectedly. We watched with faces hidden, while the walls were tightening as the echo of the wedding bells before the blown rain dissolved into the bells of the lightning Tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake, tolling for the luckless, the abandoned and forsaked, tolling for the outcast burning constantly at stake. And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing Through the mad, mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail. The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder that the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze, leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder striking for the gentle, striking for the kind, striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind, for the guardians and protectors of the mind and the unpawned painter behind beyond his rightful time. And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing Through the wild cathedral evening, the rain unraveled tails for the disrobed, faceless forms of no position. Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts all down and taken for granted situations. Tolling for the deaf and blind. Tolling for the mute. Tolling for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute, for the misdemeanor outlaw chased and cheated by pursuit. And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing. Even though a cloud's white curtain in a far-off corner flashed and the hypnotic, spattered mist was slowly lifting, electric lights still struck, like arrows fired. But for the ones condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting. Tolling for the searching ones on their speechless seeking trail, for the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale and for each unharmed gentle soul misplaced inside a jail. And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing, starry-eyed and laughing, as I recall when we were caught, trapped by no track of hours, for they hanged, suspended, as we listened one last time and we watched, with one last look, spellbound and swallowed, till the tolling ended. Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed, for the countless confused, accused, misused, strung out ones and worse, and for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe. And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing. When the pundits and critics called Dylan the voice of my generation, I think the song that they had in mind wasn't any of those I've cribbed above. It was instead the times they are changing, so surely I have to offer that one too. Come, gather round people wherever you roam and admit that the waters around you have grown and accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone if your time to you is worth saving, and you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone. For the times they are a-changing. Come, writers and critics who prophesize with your pen and keep your eyes wide. The chance won't come again. And don't speak too soon, for the wheels stillin' spin and there's no tellin' who that it's namin', for the loser now will be later to win, for the times they are a-changin'. Come, senators, congressmen, please heed the call. Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall, for he that gets hurt will be he who is stalled. The battle outside raging will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls, for the times they are changing. Come, mothers and fathers, throughout the land, and don't criticize what you can't understand. Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. Your old road is rapidly aging. Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand for the times they are changing. The line 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 fading and the first one now will later be last, for the times they are changing. We still have to make Dylan's observation real, don't we? So that's it. I hope the words will cause you to try some albums. The music and his voice really do add to the brew. Bringing it All Back Home. Highway 61, revisited, and Blonde on Blonde were three albums done back-to-back-to-back and they're as good as any. Three consecutive artistic interventions, at least in my mind, as ever, can be found, and then some, but at any rate are as good a place as any to start navigating Dylan, unless, of course, you start earlier or later. So by all means lend him your ear, but do so, please, only to accompany and hope fuel, giving Trump migraines and worse. Who knows, maybe we'll see Bruce and Robert, bobby and Joan and of course, bernie and AOC stare down the tanks, literally or metaphorically, among millions of grassroots resistors demonstrating all over the US as well, on June 14th and all that said this is Michael Albert signing off until next time for Revolution Z.