Highway 61 Revisited Revisited

      Bob Dylan’s sixth studio album—his burst into full-on rock ‘n’ roll and thinking that he got it made—was released sixty years ago Saturday. That album, Highway 61 Revisited—is a strong candidate for best album of all time.

I saw Dylan in person a month ago. Since he performs a lot nowadays, that can be very easily done. And that evening at Jones Beach, Dylan treated the audience to the song “Highway 61 Revisited” from the album Highway 61 Revisited:

       The album Highway 61 Revisited now is a relic of a once upon a time when we dressed, if not so fine, at least kinda hip. It is, therefore, a reminder of how old and sedentary and stodgily dressed we now must be—of how much moss we have gathered, of how we no longer laugh about much we used to laugh about.

Dylan was 24 when he recorded it. He is 84 now.     

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      And most of us now (current presidents excepted) don’t talk so loud. We leave restaurants nowadays if the music is playing too loud. And most of us now indeed don’t seem so proud (especially about the current state of our country).

      And something, no doubt, is happening here—in these AI-but-anti-science, globalized-but-tariffied, happily diverse-but-terrifyingly-anti-diversity, law-and-order-but-masked-thugs-on-the-streets times. And we don’t know quite what it is. But it has taken our voice and left us howling at the moon.
       Like Mr. Jones we try so hard. But we don’t understand:

      And no, nobody has any respect
      And yes, they already expect you
      To just give a check
      To tax-deductible charity organizations.

      There is certainly no arguing with the fact that we senior citizens—unless our checkbooks are open—are invisible now. And certainly, we’re still capable of being tired of our selves and all of our creations.

      And our gravity fails with such frequency we might as well be in orbit. And negativity not only won’t pull us through; it estranges us further.

       I suspect many of us have connected with someone we don’t have to speak to. But I’m not sure that is entirely a healthy development.

      For, at this point, we certainly can’t buy a thrill.

      And we are perhaps even more sick than we used to be of all this repetition.

      And the joke was indeed on us.

      And there is indeed nobody even there to call our bluff.

      And we do believe we’ve had enough.

      At this point what secrets could there be left to conceal—save the great secret invariably kept from the dead: the something that will be happening here after they are no longer here, when they can no longer know what it is.

      Yeah, it is impossible to ease and cool and cease the pain of that unavailable, if perhaps useless and pointless, knowledge. The “Tombstone Blues” indeed!

      And sometimes, if you read between the lines, it does seem as if all our letters lately—okay, all our text messages—are sent from Desolation Row.

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      Dylan sang another song from Highway 61 Revisited that night a month ago—one I’d never seen him perform before: “Desolation Row.”