Sundays are Bob Dylan days.
Growing up my Dad had a rule: “On Sundays, you have to play a certain kind of music.” The music had to capture an unspoken vibe that calmed you before the coming week began. For my Dad, it was usually Bob Marley, Ray Charles, Otis Redding or Sam Cooke – maybe Aaron Neville if he fit the day. If Mom got to pick, it was Rod Stewart.
But I prefer Bob Dylan. I need to listen to something with a roguish wit and a touch of grit on Sundays. He taps into a groove that encapsulates the mourning of another weekend gone with the optimism of a fresh week ahead.
What strikes me about Dylan is that for over 45 years, he has remained at the forefront of modern music, chastising the politicians who deserve it and celebrating the moments of life that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
If anything can be said for Dylan it is that he has spent his life combatting apathy. Apathy is a recurring problem in our country, especially among people our age. We are notoriously bad at turning out to vote in political elections. Just look at the embarrassingly low turnout in Student Government elections to see how little we care about politics of any kind. We rarely bat an eye when the University imposes policies that are unfair or at least questionable. Here in South Louisiana, we face massive wetland loss and salt water encroachment so relentless that several parishes may be swallowed by the Gulf of Mexico forever. Yet we do nothing.
We can’t even fill the student section at football games anymore.
When Dylan got started writing, getting involved in the community or voicing opinions about how the country was running itself was hip. It was important.
These days, however, we seem to care more about whether Sanjaya made it to the next round of American Idol than how many people were killed in Iraq this morning.
I got into an argument with an old reporter earlier this week about what truly constitutes “news.” He asked me what made the results of Britney Spears’ divorce settlement less important than a race for governor or the effects of global warming.
While I respect this reporter, I have to say he is dead wrong. The reason “real news” matters more than celebrity gossip and other such nonsense is that we all have a moral responsibility to leave the world in a better place than it was when we entered it.
There is an old wilderness adage that a hiker must “leave no footprints.” We have the same responsibility for the world at large. And the only way to improve things is to pay attention to issues of substance rather than wasting our time with frivolous inanities. We should approach the world with a healthy cynicism and question facts that don’t appear to make sense.
It would have been easy for Bob Dylan or any other cultural leader to take the path of least resistance, but then we would never remember their names, would we?
Today is Monday. It is the start of a new week. It is the first chance we have to make a change since yesterday.
While Mondays seem to regularly suck a great deal, they don’t have to remain a day where the joy of the weekend seeps out of you like helium from a week-old party balloon. They are the start of opportunity, and that opportunity need not be neglected.
Take a chance. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. Take the road less traveled. Rage against the dying of the light.
But most of all, get involved in the world.
It is easy to become idealistic when writing about the problems of the world, but there has to be a standard by which the world may be judged. We have to be held accountable for our actions – and our inactions.
We really can make a difference in the world. We just have to be willing to roll with the punches while readying a right hook of our own.
So, to slightly paraphrase a line of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” let’s not forget about today until tomorrow.
—-Contact Jeff Jeffrey at jjeffrey@lsureveille.com