“A Complete Unknown,” James Mangold’s current biopic movie about Bob Dylan, starring Timothee Chalamet (also star of Dune), has arrived at a perfectly disturbed and disturbing moment. The period of history this film chronicles from 60 years ago signalled that “change is a comin’”’ for several generations at once.
On 25 July 1965, “Dylan went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival, breaking out of the kumbaya era of traditional folk music to inject electric rock ‘n’ roll into the midst of the earnest acoustic officiandos. There was outrage! But you couldn’t get the music out of your head. Dylan’s insistent crying voice, his cheeky penny whistle, Al Kooper on the mind-blowing electric organ, and the brilliant Mike Bloomfield on manic lead guitar. It all blurted “Wake up!”
Right now, too, while we’re all feeling worn out and weary from decades of what Grace Blakeley has dubbed “Vulture Capitalism” (Bloomsbury, London 2024), the re-emergence of Donald Trump is another “Wake Up!” moment.
Something’s definitely “Blown’ in the Wind” again. Only it feels much more ominous than it was then, even though that was just shortly after the 1963 Cuban Missile Crisis, which had well and truly cranked up the Cold War dial. America has been waging nonstop wars ever since, but today an eerie cloud hangs over us all, stretching from Gaza and Ukraine all around the globe.
But… Back to the mid-60s. Once the shock of Dylan’s electrification of folk into folk rock had settled down, there were three history making albums in the record store bins, which Dylan had recorded in a creative frenzy between 1965-66 (Bringing it all back home; Highway 61 revisited; and Blonde on Blonde). These volumes shifted music from the era of “the single” heard on car radios and kitchen bench transistors, to the “LP (long playing) album”, listened to intently, at length, in bedrooms and living rooms all over the world, demanding thoughtful reflection.
Together these creative expressions painted a picture of the post WWII and ongoing Vietnam War madness, which was now well and truly woven into the fabric of the world’s greatest consumer, consuming and war-making culture. One that 60 years later is back out on Highway 61, armed to the teeth, with bad attitude and careering towards “Desolation Row” (the 11-minute concluding apocalyptic acoustic track on the Highway 61 album, that Dylan recorded in New York in two sessions, split by his folk festival live electric wake-up call to the world).
Here’s where our two Nobel Prize winners bump into each other – “out on Highway 61”. Milton Friedman’s neoliberal economic rationalist madness gets its own portrait painted by the poet laureate of the past 60 years.
Yeah, God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe said, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
God said, “No”, Abe said, “What?”
God said, “You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’ you better run”
Abe said, “Where do you want this killin’ done?”
God say “Out on Highway 61”…
Well, Mack the Finger said to Louie the King
“I got 40 red white and blue shoe strings
And a thousand telephones that don’t ring
Do you know where I can possibly get rid of these things?”
Louie said, “Yes, I think it can be very easily done.
They don’t take it on the city, son,
Put it out on Highway 61.”
Gold bible anyone? MAGA Cap, Personal bitcoin, or sneakers? Coming to you directly by mail order from POTUS himself (President of the United States) Donald Trump. The finest grade product of the degradation of the Common Good that 40+ years of trickle down economics and culture capitalism could create. Thanks Uncle Milton, and “the Market”’and “the Masters of War”. Uncle Bob’s been watching closely all these years.
What is needed now is some way forward, away from this neoliberal entrapped mess, where the population has lost all faith in democratic due process, and decided to try out the snake oil selling oligarchs instead.
It’s “no more mister nice guy” time, from the voters. They’re fed up with traditional political spin and impression management. So they might as well drift over to shysterville, as what’s been happening so far hasn’t been working – industries closed down, wages in the basement, housing out of reach, and bad attitude the order of the day.
Somewhere here the domination of what Professor Iain McGilchrist calls “Left Brain, Mechanical, Reductionist Thinking” (The Master & His Emissary: The divided brain and the making of the western world, Yale Uni Press 2009) running our world, in cahoots with “the Market”, has left the population stranded in an atomised, isolated, cul de sac, where “Consume, Be Silent, Die” is the permanent Muzak playlist.
But wait! Help may be at hand! Bob Stake and Merel Visse have reminded us that COVID-19 poked a hole in this Handmaid’s Tale movie set. People can care, and people do care – if you create the local moments and contexts that make caring accessible again.
It definitely feels like what’s missing most in our hollowed out, market-serving society, is the Commonweal. That old fashioned notion of everyone contributing to the well-being of us all, by each believing in the kind of paradigm of care that has been proudly upheld in local communities for centuries – the common good. Rather than just looking out for number one.
So, we end up “coming back home” to each other for the source of hope. Which was also interestingly shared on the world stage in 1965, exactly the same year that “Dylan went electric”, by Roger McGuinn and The Byrds, singing Pete Seeger’s reworking of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8:
To everything, turn, turn, turn
There is a season, turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under heaven
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
To everything, turn, turn, turn
There is a season, turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose, under heaven
A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones
A time to gather stones together
To everything, turn, turn, turn
There is a season, turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under heaven
A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace
A time to refrain from embracing
To everything, turn, turn, turn
There is a season, turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under heaven
A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time for love, a time for hate
A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late
(The Byrds, 1965; Written by Pete Seeger)
In this ongoing series we will keep turning back to the common good for signposts to the way out of this mess.
This is part four of a six-part series Replacing neoliberal entrapment with a paradigm of care
Read the earlier articles:
X-raying the architecture of empire and removing some tumours
Neoliberal learning: Horses for courses and donkeys in the paddock
Dr Robbie Lloyd has been a national journalist, public affairs director, education and community health reformer for over 50 years. He works with First People and those with Lived Experience of mental health challenges, disability, alcohol and other drugs, DFV, ageing and trauma. Robbie now works in community wellbeing reform.