John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was killed on November 22, 1963. The picture above, I am pretty sure, has captured him just shortly before his death. A Bob Dylan song, "Not Dark Yet," written in 1997, thirty-four years later, makes no explicit reference to Kennedy's assassination, but the following lyrics from Dylan's song always bring it to my mind:
I was born here and I’ll die here against my will
I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standing still
Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb
I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from
Don’t even hear a murmur of a prayer
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there
I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standing still
Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb
I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from
Don’t even hear a murmur of a prayer
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there
In 2020, fifty-seven years after the year that Kennedy was killed, Dylan wrote another song, a song that is all about the Kennedy assassination. In that song, "Murder Most Foul," Dylan has this to say:
The day that they killed him, someone said to me, “Son,
The age of the anti-Christ has just only begun.”
Apparently, some members of the United States armed forces, and perhaps even including the guy who currently heads up the Defense Department (which he wants to call the "War Department") are making explicit reference to Armageddon, as they pursue an unauthorized war against Iran, killing the nation's leaders, and almost two hundred young women students, as they do so.
Every timeline does come to some sort of an end, and while I have a lot of respect for Bob Dylan's perceptions and predictions, I am not yet willing to stipulate that the anti-Christ is actually now on the scene, and that the final curtain is about to drop.
It's getting there, I know, but let's remember the first statement in that 1997 song: "It's Not Dark Yet..."
Is that still true? Or, will the blazing illumination of political possibility, captured in inspiring words by our Declaration of Independence, sputter out into darkness this year, along with the world entire, brought to an end by a war that the current president of the United States began?
That's possible, of course. Let's not deny the perils that we face. But... I'd like to suggest that we remember that "not yet" advisory! Think about Minnesota (and listen to what another great songwriter, Bruce Springsteen, has to say about what happened there, on the Streets of Minneapolis). Action by ordinary people, carried out together, created a new reality that overcame and displaced what was expected.
Let's remember the title of another one of those Dylan songs, too. It's a song that helps carry me forward through life. It's called, "Up To Me."
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