The Rising Tide
I fear that I may become insufferable and that my friends and wife may soon seek a court order for my incarceration. You see, I can’t get this tune out of my head – and on any given day, after reading the polls -- whether I am at home or walking to my office from the parking lot -- I am apt to break into song:
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.
My poor wife and children have to listen to me singing like a banshee – and never more frequently than today, when I learned that John Raese has opened up a modest lead in the West Virginia Senate race, that two polls show Linda McMahon closing on Richard Blumenthal in the Connecticut Senate race, and that the latest poll suggests that Dino Rossi is about to overtake Patty Murray in the Senate race in the state of Washington.
Someone should suggest to the Republican candidates that they should adopt this song as their anthem – for it won’t be over, folks, ’til old Bob Dylan sings. If I had a cell phone, I know what I would use for the ring tone.
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Comments :
Aug '10
Re: The Rising Tide
Benedictus maximae.
Jun '10
Re: The Rising Tide
"Democracy"
It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that this ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming through a crack in the wall;
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Jun '10
Re: The Rising Tide
Forgive me, I forgot to credit Leonard Cohen above.
May '10
Re: The Rising Tide
See, here's the thing. Reciting song lyrics incessantly will often provoke a woman to shut you up. It's quite the failsafe romantic ploy. Surely you've figgered that out.
But there is certainly a seismic shift coming. Where was that article titled "Bob Dylan, Tea-Partier?"
Jul '10
Re: The Rising Tide
I'm more of a "Tooth and Nail by Dokken" kind of guy myself.
May '10
Re: The Rising Tide
So you do a pretty convincing Dylan impression, I take it?
Bob Dylan has written some great songs, but how he got off the ground as a singer I'll never understand!
May '10
Re: The Rising Tide
About 10 years ago Dylan did another song whose refrain seemed to answer his earlier one, and which also seems apt: "I used to care, but things have changed."