2023

SAMENESS

Bob Dylan, singer and songwriter in a recent (and rare) interview appearing in the Wall Street Journal:

“There’s a sameness to everything nowadays. We seem to be in a vacuum. Everything’s become too smooth and painless. We jumped into the mainstream, the big river, with all the industrial waste, chemical debris, rocks, and mudflow, along with Brian Wilson and his brothers, Soupy Sales, and Tennessee Ernie Ford. The earth could vomit up its dead, and it could be raining blood, and we’d shrug it off, cool as cucumbers. Everything’s too easy. Just one stroke of the ring finger, middle finger, one little click, that’s all it takes, and we’re there. We’ve dropped the coin right into the slot. We’re pill poppers, cube heads and day trippers, hanging in, hanging out, gobbling blue devils, black mollies, anything we can get our hands on. Not to mention the nose candy and ganga grass. It’s all too easy, too democratic. You need a solar X-ray detector just to find somebody’s heart, see if they still have one.”
(The Wall Street Journal, December 19, 2022)

The 81-year-old singer, songwriter, and prophetic mystery of Dylan are as he has always been: predictably unpredictable… but also usually very accurate to the season and situation.

It seems to me that his opening line: ‘There’s a sameness to everything nowadays. We seem to be in a vacuum. Everything’s become too smooth and painless’ is a very accurate description of our culture both physical and spiritual. Lord, help us find our hearts without the aid of a ‘solar X-ray detector.’

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” Jesus