Now that Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, I find myself listening again to his music. In 1964 he wrote a song titled “My Back Pages.” In 1967 it became the Byrds’ last top-40 hit.
It was also a watershed moment in Dylan’s career, for it’s said this song was a protest against his earlier protest songs! Although still young, he had become less sure of himself, perhaps less overconfident than he had been when he was even younger. He had seen the world in black and white, them and us. “Good and bad I defined these terms / quite clear, no doubt, somehow. / Ah, but I was so much older then, / I’m younger than that now.”
After “My Back Pages,” Dylan continued to perform some of his old protest songs, but he never wrote any new ones. Yes, it’s important to take a stand for what we believe is right. At the same time, let’s be suspicious of overconfidence and of accusations that the other side is purely evil. In this political year, I recommend listening to “My Back Pages.”
The Rev. J. Mark Worth, interim minister
Harvard Unitarian Universalist Church
