Dylan's journey through our times

Bob Dylan's life more or less spans what we think of as the modern era, the time of the greatest advancements in science, technology and human progress ever known to man.

It is perhaps a bit surprising then that his new album, "Modern Times," is a denunciation of all things modern - or, to be more accurate, all things contemporary. To the philosophers, you see, modern times ended about the time Bob Dylan was born in 1940, and we are living in post-modern times today.

That sort of fits in with the name, music and packaging of Dylan's new album, which are all nostalgic in tone. The title harks back to Charlie Chaplin's classic 1936 film of the same name, which was a look at the dehumanizing influence of technology and bureaucracy on the individual. But of course the era that produced Chaplin was a golden era of individuality compared to the mass-media-dominated 21st century, where market surveys herd us all down the consumer aisle like lambs on the way to slaughter.

And Dylan draws on the music of the 1920s and '30s as well as the sensibility of his own youth to draw a sharp line between the current mayhem of the post-millennial two-step and the eternal verities of the heart. In addition to the reference to Chaplin and the music itself - which sounds more like ballads and blues from the turn of the last century than rock and roll - there is also the nostalgic packaging of the CD as if it were a 78 rpm album from 1956, complete with a brown sleeve for the "record" (and an accompanying DVD if you bought the bonus album).

But Dylan, who not coincidentally was compared to Chaplin's Little Tramp in 1961 in the first major review of his career in the New York Times, has always been an uncomfortable fit in the era first of Peter, Paul and Mary and later of the Bay City Rollers. He pretended to be an old bluesman on his first album 45 years ago, and today he really is one - gruff, grizzled and gray, just playing his music for another day.

More often than not, he's been deemed an oddball or an eccentric. But he never cared what we thought - he was going where the spirit led him, from folk to rock, from rock to country, from country to poetry, from poetry to scripture, from scripture to doggerel, and from doggerel to the sublime mature work of his last three albums, which are comparable to the final pastoral plays of Shakespeare for their marriage of complexity and simplicity as the songwriter takes a measure of the world as his own life approaches finality.

"In the still of the night, in the world's ancient light

Where wisdom grows up in strife

My bewildered brain, toils in vain

Through the darkness on the pathways of life

Each invisible prayer is like a cloud in the air

Tomorrow keeps turning around

We live and we die, we know not why

But I'll be with you when the deal goes down."

That summation from "When the Deal Goes Down" captures perfectly the tension in Dylan's new album between the sacred and the profane. He writes repeatedly about human failings, the tendency toward violence, sexual exploitation, the seduction of power - all that "disappointment and pain" that flesh is heir to. You get the sense that Dylan is a man who has fully lived his life, and has come to the conclusion that in this world, selfishness, ignorance and arrogance are bumping up against each other like horses on a race to destruction.

But the good news is that there is another world that co-exists with the world of death and power. It is a world of salvation and silence. It is a world that was discovered by the Buddha beneath a tree along a river. It is a world that was discovered by the disciples in the quiet company of a man who used parables as his lever to move men's hearts. It is a world where death still comes, but so does acceptance.

Beneath all the worldly woes of "Modern Times," Dylan thus embraces the eternal:

"Beyond the horizon, behind the sun

At the end of the rainbow, life has only begun

In the long hours of twilight 'neath the stardust above

Beyond the horizon it is easy to love…

Beyond the horizon, in the Springtime or Fall

Love waits forever, for one and for all."

I remember how shocked people were in 1979 when Bob Dylan started preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ from the stage of rock and roll. I remember how hated and vilified he was by people who preached tolerance and understanding as long as it meant they could do whatever they wanted. I remember thinking that Jesus had said, "Those who have ears, let them hear." It seemed like a pretty open invitation, since ears were in abundance then as now, but most people just seemed to cock their heads in confusion and mutter "Eh? What's that?" to both Dylan and his Master.

I happen to have been lucky enough to be living in Tucson, Ariz., from 1978 to 1981, when Dylan made the unlikely conversion from rock star to prophet, so I had kind of a front-row seat (in the balcony at least) when the post-modern world collided head-on with the Word of God in Dylan's soul. It was a sight to behold.

First, in 1978, there was Dylan's "Street Legal" tour when he wore more makeup than Little Richard and was rumored to be energetically exercising his privileges as the king of rock and roll by freely partaking of sex, drugs and drink. His marriage had collapsed once and for all, and it looked like there would be hell to pay. The "Street Legal" album in fact was rather apocalyptic, with its references to Eden burning, the lion lying down with the lamb, Armageddon, Christ overturning the tables in the temple, forbidden fruit, and the anthem about the "Changing of the Guards." But it was a stubborn rejection of any help, a last testament of self-will run riot. The whole album - like the concert - displayed a man at the end of his rope, at the jumping off point, absolutely the master of all things material, and yet aware of a higher calling which he had heard but preferred not to heed.

"I feel displaced, I got a low-down feeling," the singer lamented. But then he told himself, "You don't have to yearn for love, you don't have to be alone. Somewheres in this universe there's a place that you can call home." In the album's concluding song, he told us, "The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure, to live it you have to explode."

And sometime during that tour the explosion happened. Dylan surrendered his despair and put on the clothes of salvation. The next song he released was the original Christian anthem, "Gotta Serve Somebody," which included this denunciation of his own hubris and lifestyle - "You might be a rock 'n' roll addict prancing on the stage, you might have drugs at your command, women in a cage… But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed, You're gonna have to serve somebody. Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve somebody."

From that point on, everything was different. Dylan was a convert, a changed man - a penitent, or repentant soul, one who had rethought his relationship with God and come to the conclusion that his own heart was the battlefield of a spiritual warfare that was as old as time.

"You either got faith or you got unbelief and there ain't no neutral ground," he said in a challenge to his fans and friends, most of whom thought Dylan had committed artistic suicide. But Dylan didn't look back, and though he eventually assimilated his Christian beliefs into his life and music, so they no longer were quite so "in your face," they never disappeared either.

On this new album, he confesses:

"It's dark and it's dreary

I've been pleading in vain

I'm wounded, I'm weary

My repentance is plain."

The battle for salvation that Dylan has bravely waged in public is one that all of us who live in the modern (or post-modern) world should pay attention to. We can't escape our own struggles with sin and redemption, but we can learn (if we are mindful) from one who has been down that road before:

"If it keep on rainin', the levee gonna break

If it keep on rainin', the levee gonna break

Some people still sleepin', some people are wide awake."

The spiritual warfare which Dylan has recorded so masterfully here and throughout his career reminds us that we should not get so caught up in the drama of politics, relationships or ambition that we fail to heed the clarion call of God. What seems most important to us when we are wrapped up in the world will be of no importance when we are dead and gone, or as Dylan says: "Everything I've ever known to be right has been proven wrong."