Tall Tales / Stories That Could Be True / "... the circus is in town ...) / All the light

We phantoms are assembled at the end of the Rolling Thunder tour.

We started out trying to recover America.

We discovered a certain amount of truth about ourselves.

Old friends who thought their loves had been lost were able to get together and, uh, face each other eye to eye and sing over an electrical microphone to please the desires of myriad young yearners who had been seeking some kind of union and community and saw therein an image of that community.

…

You who saw it all or saw flashes or fragments, take from us some example, try and get yourselves together, clean up your act, find your community, pick up on some kind of redemption of your own consciousness, become more mindful of your own friends, your own work, your own proper meditation, your own proper art, your own beauty. Go out and make it for your own eternity.

(am's note: Allen Ginsberg is shown speaking these words at the end of the film.  He then bows in the Buddhist manner)

Click to read this:

Dylan is confronting us with the difference between the stated idea of America and the present reality of it, in the process asking why, after 200 years, we still haven’t gotten our shit together. The question stands.

(am's note:  Now, in 2019, it's 243 years since 1776. My income doesn't allow for me to subscribe to Netflix.  I am grateful to a friend who made it possible for me to watch "Rolling Thunder Revue:  A Bob Dylan Story")

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

BY William E. Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

A view of our beautiful earth and our beautiful sky from my porch, and then there is:

"All The Light We Cannot See."