While websurfing the other night, I came across the song lyric in this thread's title. It was penned by Bob Dylan and appeared in his 1964 song "My Back Pages." (And later recorded and released by the Byrds, and others).
It's easy to be intrigued by the cryptic nature of this strange lyric, by the contradiction it presents from a logical point of view, but also by the uplifting, positive feeling it may bring from an emotional interpretation of it.
The song and that, its chief lyric, do have a power to them. So much so that even some of the giants of the rock music world saw fit to come together once and perform a rendition of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgeimcwob3uThe sheer magic of all that talent on that one stage at that one time, performing that song together! Marvelous!
Roger McGuinn
Tom Petty
Neil Young
Eric Clapton
Bob Dylan
George Harrison
all together, and each singing one verse of the song's lyrics, in that order. Oh my!
There is a literary critique on the meaning of the song and that lyric that has become generally accepted as the truth, especially since it was confirmed by Bob Dylan himself in later interviews.
Dylan said that he had come to realize that his earlier songs decrying injustice in the world had been too simplistic, that the world's problems that he had been attacking musically were much more complicated than he had initially realized, and that as a result of that he had sung "Lies that life is black and white," as one of the song's lyrics goes, as an attempt to correct his earlier, naive view.
And that it was now time for him to make a new, fresh start in his songwriting, to abandon his "older," uninformed approach, and to present a more reasonable and balanced new one, a fresher and "younger" one, in singing about
the world's problems.
However, I would like to suggest that there's also a
deep thought here, regarding that lyric, something beyond what Dylan had initally intended.
And that is that this curious lyric can actually have a different but significant meaning for all of us here, as people who have known and survived cancer. It's a thought that occurred to me as I read and re-read that lyric.
That, in having had and overcome, or being in the process of overcoming, cancer, we have beaten an "older," troubled, stage of our lives, of ourselves, and that we are now, after successful treatment, reborn in a way into a "younger," stronger version of ourselves, ready to go on with our lives.
So we were "so much older then," when we first faced the debilitating spectre of this disease. But we're "younger than that now," as, following treatment, we now get a fresh, hopeful restart to go on with living.
"We were so much older then, we're younger than that now."
Musings on a Friday morning.
Have a nice weekend, everyone!