An ode to Bob Dylan and the relationship between music and God
His music refocuses the simple choice of faith. Our lives are either placed in service to a transcendent truth or they are placed in service to a narcissistic lie. We either know that God is bigger than us or we make ourselves into a god. To say that is wonderful, but to sing it is sublime.
His best song (no, there is no debating this) is, "Like a Rolling Stone" which first appeared in his 1965 album, "Highway 61 Revisited."
Rolling Stone magazine, in choosing it as the greatest rock and roll song of all time, revealed that the phrase "like a rolling stone" came from an old Hank Williams country song "Lost Highway," which begins, "I'm a rolling stone, I'm alone and lost/For a life of sin I've paid the cost." The root meaning of the root metaphor of the song is not getting drugs or getting love or getting money. It is a song about the perils of living a life of sin and separation from the truth.
Follow me through some of the song as it informs and indicts us,
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You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.
You said you'd never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?
You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain't it hard when you discover that
He really wasn't where it's at
After he took from you everything he could steal.
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These are real truths not because Dylan says so. They are the core critique of deep faith over secular culture that promotes greed over service, self-adornment over self-abnegation and cruelty over charity. The real truth of the song and modern culture and Dylan's best instincts is that without God's love we are indeed all alone.
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You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.
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?
So I am reading the 23rd Psalm while listening to Dylan playing loudly in the background, or is it in the foreground. Today it is hard to know the difference.
Mazal Tov to you, Bobby Zimmerman.
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