'There must be someway out of here..'

..... ... ' said the Joker to the Thief'
Bob Dylan won the nobel prize for Literature, a controversial decision, based on his lifetime of lyrics to his songs.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/apr/02/bob-dylan-finally-accepts-nobel-prize-in-literature-at-private-ceremony-in-Stockholm

'There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.'

Too much confusion, seems to get the mood, the theme, the reality. I am thinking this morning about what is needed for the Planet to find some Peace... To achieve a 'sustainable' groove... and I put the quotes around sustainable because someone might tell me that we are on a 'sustainable' path right now. Maybe I need a little more faith in Technology as it stretches out in leaps and bounds. The momentum of blindness.

Maybe.

I recall and maybe some day I will find the quote from Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World Revisited'
a 1957 look back on his work from the 1930's, the world of over-population, the world of a hidden war against hidden enemies... the gist of his point was that the Planet would invariably be faced with Totalitarianism AKA 'gradual reduction in Freedoms' as long as we had never ending Population Growth and with it it's removal of people from 'the Land'.

 As far as I can see from the Kindergarten kindness Law Creation of Progressives to the Harsh enforcements of law of Conservatives.. we get the same thing,  a world designed to so protect us all from the 'dangers of the unknown'. In the meantime the consolidation of the Planet's wealth, by the Corporate system goes on unabated.

 'Businessmen they drink my wine, plowman dig my Earth, none of them up and down the line know what it is worth.'

  What can we do? Try to live it, it seems. Live 'It' ? Does any of us have an Idea what it is worth? If the value of what we are losing is of such a magnitude, if we are invariably, undeniably, connected to the future we cannot even experience, by the acts of Love and having Children we are compelled, we are bound by duty of some kind that knows no actual authority but some Higher Calling ... 'Highest Duty' as Captain Sullenberger called it... To land the plane striving with all one's powers, knowing that the failure of the landing is our impending disaster to humanity. 'But who'll stop the Rain' but that is another song. The Nobel laureate's song continues...

  'No reason to get excited, the thief he kindly spoke.
  'There are many here among us who think that life is but a joke.'

  The actors in the play of consciousness as Dylan describes it, a joker and a thief. The Thief tells the Joker... reminds the Joker that he is part of the cynical world. How long have we been cynical? Perhaps an ongoing historical heritage, likely based on every day life through the ages, the rise and fall of Kingdoms, the cruel loss of lives the suffering, cynicism gives some protection from being 'taken' from giving oneself to some great cause only to watch it shimsham, flim flam it's way, fractally flow Yin to Yang and back again. Out of our grasps the slogans fade away.. What is built to Last?

  But you and I have been through that and that is not our fate,
  So let us not be talking falsely now the hour is getting late.'

  So here the Thief and the Joker, not the highest level of humanity are confronting the essential conditions of this Trap of our world. Calling on each other to not speak falsely, knowing or maybe ignorant of their own shortcomings, their own shaky ground from which to judge the world. Feeling an impending crisis... perhaps in some existential anxiety of awareness not unlike our own.

   We say goodbye to the Joker and the Thief in this little song written back 50 years ago, by the young but already aged (is that a way to describe the process) Bob Dylan...

   

Background[edit]

Following a motorcycle accident in July 1966, Dylan spent the next 18 months recuperating at his home in Woodstock and writing songs.^[3] According to Clinton Heylin, all the songs for John Wesley Harding were written and recorded during a six-week period at the end of 1967.^[4] With one child born in early 1966 and another in mid-1967, Dylan had settled into family life.

The third verse says goodbye to the Joker and the Thief... or does it?

 

All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants, too

Outside in the distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
The wind began to howl
 


In the booklet accompanying his Biograph album, Dylan said: "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way... Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

 Interesting in the last verse it hadn't occurred to me that the two riders who were approaching might be the Joker and the Thief. What can they tell the Princes? Who knows.


 'Every step helps...' said a young man in a very beat up VW Bug a couple of days ago upon picking me up hitchhiking, me with a portable battery charger and extension cord out in Inverness. He was just getting me up a short distance down the road.



All Along the Watchtower

 

There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth

No reason to get excited
The thief he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
The hour is getting late

All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants, too

Outside in the distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
The wind began to howl