The lyrics of Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changing are no gentle, but rude and somehow cruel. They are changing the times and that means that nothing from the Ancien Regime must survive, not a chance: "the waters around you have grown", "you'll sink like a stone", "for he that gets hurt", "there is a battle outside and it's ragin'", "it'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls", "don't criticize what you can't understand", "your sons (...) are beyond your command", "your old road is rapidly agin'", "please get out of the new one (...)", "the line it is drawn", "and the curse it is cast"... What can I say?... Lovely kid.
The air is Marxist, right? At a certain point, the lyrics mention: "don't speak too soon / for the wheel is still in spin". The moment is yet to come. Paul Johnson described Marx as "an eschatological writer from start to finish". As a youngster, Marx was a poet of "savagery", with lively images of a world at the edge of hell and on the verge of collapse. Its features, Johnson says: "intense pessimism about the human condition, hatred, fascination with corruption and violence, suicide pacts and pacts with the devil". Marx wrote, the historian reports: "We are chained, shattered, empty, frightened / Eternally chained to this marble block of being". And, more: "I shall howl gigantic curses at mankind". The current course of events carries the seed of destruction and eradication.
However, again: the soul and purpose of Dylan's song do not match the scenes of domestic peace in the BBC documentary I mentioned in the previous post. The chaos of the sound does not hold the order of the images. So here it is my vision: a small, genuine, personal choice against the smashing wheel of universal disaster; the anonymous life at one's own risk against the super big, universal tragedy impose to everyone. What a massive virus born from a small jewel of tenderness and liberty!
***
It is nevertheless surprising to realize how readily some accomplished people fail to recognize this important difference. Or how easily they are ready to ignore it.
A couple of weeks ago, the founder of the charity Emergency, Gino Strada, and the dear British journalist, Giles Duley (http://gilesduley.com), met the audience in the Baptist Church at the top of Shaftesbury Avenue in London. I have to say that my admiration for both Gino and Giles is enormous. During their intervention, it immediately stroke my understanding that their work, testimony and spirit are only possible and admirable because of their personal sacrifice. For sure these two gentlemen have given in a few comforts and followed and irresistible something, Giles' case being clamorous -he lost both legs and one arm in the course of his work. It is precisely their personal choice what led them to change the lives of individuals, being children or adults. The pictures that Giles showed shone with smiles of girls and boys alive because of Gino's work devotion. Girls and boys smiling, touched in their wounds and heart. A pure blessing.
However, the questions of the audience were centered in politics, the military and the always viscous substance of the moral. Gino's main concerns, indeed, seemed to be more the elucidation of the stand and responsibility of Westerners and, further in the horizon, the eradication of war. The tone was lugubrious, certainly, but it is this tone that we tend to relish in this kind of gatherings, isn't it? Once, again, "the pessimism about the human condition" is set surrounding a titanic and impractical effort to wash off the current world... .
Again, my admiration goes to the tenacity of people like Gino and Giles who, after seeing the most atrocious corners of our condition, keep yearning to their original utopias, maturing and aging and fading towards them. However, all I am saying is this: they should focus their vision -the best they can do and the best they do is making people smile... What is Paradise but an ocean of flourished smiles? A Paradise aware of every one of them, one by one -the livestock farmer knows all his sheep. A dump will always nest disease, but daisies can grow beyond consent, multiply and overflow color.
And do it -the smile creation- giving in oneself... . To me, this small heaven is Heaven.
The air is Marxist, right? At a certain point, the lyrics mention: "don't speak too soon / for the wheel is still in spin". The moment is yet to come. Paul Johnson described Marx as "an eschatological writer from start to finish". As a youngster, Marx was a poet of "savagery", with lively images of a world at the edge of hell and on the verge of collapse. Its features, Johnson says: "intense pessimism about the human condition, hatred, fascination with corruption and violence, suicide pacts and pacts with the devil". Marx wrote, the historian reports: "We are chained, shattered, empty, frightened / Eternally chained to this marble block of being". And, more: "I shall howl gigantic curses at mankind". The current course of events carries the seed of destruction and eradication.
However, again: the soul and purpose of Dylan's song do not match the scenes of domestic peace in the BBC documentary I mentioned in the previous post. The chaos of the sound does not hold the order of the images. So here it is my vision: a small, genuine, personal choice against the smashing wheel of universal disaster; the anonymous life at one's own risk against the super big, universal tragedy impose to everyone. What a massive virus born from a small jewel of tenderness and liberty!
***
It is nevertheless surprising to realize how readily some accomplished people fail to recognize this important difference. Or how easily they are ready to ignore it.
A couple of weeks ago, the founder of the charity Emergency, Gino Strada, and the dear British journalist, Giles Duley (http://gilesduley.com), met the audience in the Baptist Church at the top of Shaftesbury Avenue in London. I have to say that my admiration for both Gino and Giles is enormous. During their intervention, it immediately stroke my understanding that their work, testimony and spirit are only possible and admirable because of their personal sacrifice. For sure these two gentlemen have given in a few comforts and followed and irresistible something, Giles' case being clamorous -he lost both legs and one arm in the course of his work. It is precisely their personal choice what led them to change the lives of individuals, being children or adults. The pictures that Giles showed shone with smiles of girls and boys alive because of Gino's work devotion. Girls and boys smiling, touched in their wounds and heart. A pure blessing.
However, the questions of the audience were centered in politics, the military and the always viscous substance of the moral. Gino's main concerns, indeed, seemed to be more the elucidation of the stand and responsibility of Westerners and, further in the horizon, the eradication of war. The tone was lugubrious, certainly, but it is this tone that we tend to relish in this kind of gatherings, isn't it? Once, again, "the pessimism about the human condition" is set surrounding a titanic and impractical effort to wash off the current world... .
Again, my admiration goes to the tenacity of people like Gino and Giles who, after seeing the most atrocious corners of our condition, keep yearning to their original utopias, maturing and aging and fading towards them. However, all I am saying is this: they should focus their vision -the best they can do and the best they do is making people smile... What is Paradise but an ocean of flourished smiles? A Paradise aware of every one of them, one by one -the livestock farmer knows all his sheep. A dump will always nest disease, but daisies can grow beyond consent, multiply and overflow color.
And do it -the smile creation- giving in oneself... . To me, this small heaven is Heaven.
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