Things Have Changed

A blurb on the Internet says of this song "...released for the film Wonder Boys and winning an Academy Award for Best Original Song, it captures a sense of disillusionment and resignation in the face of a world that feels both strange and out of control." À propos, I think, because 26 years after the song's release people are crazier and times are stranger than ever before. And the older I get the more I wonder if and when a strong solid majority of the country may take an oath to live by reality as it presents itself, rather than reality as their ego would prefer it to be. For the most part all I see is people trying hard to impress other people who don't even appeal to them. Pick a current event and see if you can find a rational explanation for it other than some form of crazy: ego or jealousy or lust or ambition or all of the above. Wisdom and power these days seem to cancel each other out like matter and antimatter; being in possession of one voids the possibility of holding the other. And as much as I feel hopeful about people most of the time, I'm starting to think I'm just naive. "All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie," sings Dylan in the fourth and final verse, but he seems less perturbed by this than one would think. Perhaps he's come to be at peace with the fact that the times they have a-changed. Here's hoping we can do the same.