My Back Pages
Crimson flames’ tide through my ears
Rolled high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
“We’ll meet on edges, soon,” said I
Proud ‘neath heated brow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now.
Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
“Rip down all hate,” I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now.
Girls’ faces formed the forward path
From phony jealousies
To memorizing politics
Of ancient histories
Flung down by corpse evangelists
Unthought of, though, somehow–
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now.
A self-ordained professor’s tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
“Equality”– I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now.
In a soldier’s stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not that I’d become my enemy
In the instant that I preached
My pathway led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now.
Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I defined these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow–
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now.
-Bob Dylan, “My Back Pages”
Maybe. No. Not really.
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I bet you were popular when you were young, right, with all your instant blank verse, pointing out people’s grammar and whoring around. You didn’t really do any whoring, did you.
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It took me a long time to figure out what this song means, Dylan’s abandoning the political left.
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Being “smart” is pretty fucking relative. and the foolproof way to tell someone isn’t well read is that they think fucked up kids on diary sites are fine writers.
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Okay, THANKS. Will that do?
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Do you read anything that isn’t fantasy/Biblical/classical-based? You know, anything good? Why did crazy Violet call you a whore? I’m still trying to work it out.
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Murikami. Auster. Philip K Dick. Vonnegut. Heller. Nabokov. Joe Simpson. Thompson. Angela Carter. Orwell. Ted Hughes. J T Leroy. Rushdie. Stuff like that. I’ve read some old poetry and that. Not much in the way of classics though. Anything anyone online or my old boss from the bookshop recommends. I started reading nonfiction last year. Mostly history, science, maths.
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It comes only behind smoking in the list of things that keep me sane…
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