Garrett Kennedy: A warning from the past

Bob Dylan played in Philadelphia on Friday. No longer the young revolutionary with the fiery eyes and brown hair, but rather a bit hobbled and bow legged, the hair gray and wispy, the formerly lively facial complexion drawn and wrinkled. A full band playing behind Dylan as old folk tunes are rearranged into pieces of multi-instrumental music. The lyrics, the true strength of Dylan, moved somewhere behind a barrage of relatively dense musical texture and muddled through the cragged voice of Dylan, at times sounding nearly incomprehensible.

From the beginning, Dylan has always been known for his lyrics. They were more than just words to music; they were poetry. Often political, he became the sub-culture voice of a generation. As Hunter S. Thompson said, "Dylan moved on to become the voice of an anguished and half-desperate generation. Or at least that part of a generation that saw itself as doomed and useless in terms of the status-quo, business-as-usual kind of atmosphere that prevailed in the country...."

So that Dylan's words were garbled beyond belief and hidden behind what had changed from the simple folk act to a full band, leaving his lyrical mastery for a more complex yet not-overly-compelling sound is in essence a microcosm for the ideals that Dylan represented.

Gone are the revolutionary ideals, the hope for change and political overhaul. The lyrics to the night's encore, "All Along the Watchtower," represent this change; the irony can't be lost as today's businessmen sing the lyrics "businessmen, they drink my wine." Thompson's "anguished and half-desperate generation" has lost its anguish over the status quo, and has just accepted it.

The 1960s and early 1970s are now romanticized as a brief glimpse of some sort of social revolution in the United States. The idea that is presented is that of a movement, primarily of the youth, spawned largely from the Vietnam War and a progression from the conservative time of the post-war 1950s. It was a fluid movement from the status quo to something more enlightened, more understanding, more compassionate and, most importantly, more free. A capitalist free environment, a place where all had an equal stake in life, socially speaking, and where the rudiments of money didn't really have any foothold. And, to an extent, at the center of it all was music, and Bob Dylan.

So 30-some odd years later, standing among a few thousand people, staring at this icon who had epitomized so much of this movement, who in so many ways stood as a symbol of that past era, it's hard not to notice the way that Dylan's music has changed with the times. His voice is distorted and lost behind music. That voice which carried with it the fundamental beliefs of that "half-desperate" generation no longer is so desperate; that "anguished" generation is no longer so anguished, but rather epitomizing what 30 years ago, they had sung against.

The times, they are a' changin'. This is inevitable. But, with the recent election results and impending war, some type of parallel can be made to the conservative government of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and a similar war conducted on an under-developed country, a war that took the lives of countless individuals, on both sides, who wanted no part in the violence.

It is clear that memory is short term, ideals shorter. There is a rough reality that is quite good at destroying ideals and succinctly replacing them with the doldrums of the everyday grind -- the status quo, that world so easy to accept because it is so readily available and at our fingertips.

The status quo is simple attainment. The figures silhouetted by the flashing lights on the floor of the First Union Center gawking at the aged Dylan are evidence of this, as time has replaced the glowing ideals of a peaceful, new and different future with acceptance of what has always been. Belief in change, ideals, they are all things often attributed to the naivete of youth. And maybe they're some truth to this.

When the voice of a generation becomes silent, garbled and aged, or maybe just tired of trying to sell his point of view to people too quick to forget, it's clear that ideals are something hard to hold onto, slippery and elusive through their enigmatic and shifting properties. But right now, we're in a troubled world that seems to be heading in some awkward downward spiral and in desperate need of some type of change, some type of idealism, before we, our generation, meekly accepts the status quo.

Garret Kennedy is a senior Anthropology major from Wayne, Pa.

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