The Evolution of Song Truth

Have you ever noticed that some songs are only a bit true when first written and released?

But then the song seems to grow into mega-truth as "time keeps on slippin' slippin' slippin' into the future"?

What is really happening is that the song was more prescient than the songwriter knew at the time?

At least in the sense that events in the changing world afterward seem to conform to the words of the song?

At least more so than it would have seemed to the songwriter at the time the song was written?

For example, recall an old but not so old song that says:

I get the news I need on the weather report.
I can gather all the news I need on the weather report.

...

Half of the time we're gone but we don't know where,
And we don't know where.

Here I am..........

Half of the time we're gone but we don't know where,
And we don't know where.

(Only Living Boy In New York, Simon & Garfunkel). Anyone watching the weather channel knows killer floods are happening everywhere in the world.

At the same time there are fire epidemics, recently in California, Russia, and Australia, but now those places are flooding.

Some observers call it global weirding, as scientists tell us this is only the tiny beginning, and as people fight the reality with the global weirding of denial.

You can easily get all the news you need to know about the direction the world is taking itself (by polluting the once healthy weather cycles) by getting that news "on the weather report".

Another song rings true concerning the evolution from left to right:

...
A poor little baby child is born

In the ghetto
... he'll grow to be an angry young man some day
...
Do we simply turn our heads
And look the other way
... his hunger burns
... Then one night in desperation
... Face down on the street with a gun in his hand
... young man dies
... Another little baby child is born
In the ghetto

(In the ghetto, Elvis). The song was originally called "The Vicious Circle", indicating that the author saw something evolving and replicating itself.

We can look around and see people of all colors and creeds beginning these last few years to experience the phenomenon (think foreclosure, job loss, bankruptcy, homelessness).

In fact, the congress is thinking of modifying the bankruptcy code to allow states to file for bankruptcy, even as financial experts begin to expect a flood of municipality bankruptcies (Chap. 9) in the USA.

This brings to mind a Dylan song:

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?
People’d call, say, “Beware doll, you’re bound to fall”
You thought they were all kiddin’ you

(Like a Rolling Stone, Dylan). Our "doll" MOMCOM will become a bum with the desperation of the young child in the ghetto, to eventually die face down like the power mad empires that went before.

Finally, think about the lyric in another Dylan tune that rings true to those who can envision what is coming, and what would happen to their children if they were to engender children:

You’ve thrown the worst fear

That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins

(Masters of War, Dylan). Knowledge brings people to the brink of reality forcing us to believe the science or believe the amygdala, then act accordingly.

Song truth keeps on ringing in our ears as floods damage a nuclear power plant in the USA like what a tsunami has already done to Fukushima in Japan.

The next post in this series is here.