All Along the Watchtower

All Along the Watchtower, the 1968 Bob Dylan strikes an alarming chord with myself these days. Jimi Hendrix's rendition being is probably the most prominently known version of it. As a representation of how the end is the beginning, and the beginning is the end it sure can make a man blue. I cannot see what my own future will hold. My endeavors seem fruitless daily; oddly though there seems to be some point hidden in the basket case that is called life. My move back home, my return to college, my decision to study music, practicing various instruments, reading daily; yet my increasing apathy towards actually performing. The world seems like an absurdist painting, I just can't see the point of it yet, I just know there's a joke in there somewhere and once I figure it out, I'll have a great laugh.  My personality was once the joker particularly in my twenties, whiney, alienated, crying like the perennial victim about both the businessmen and the plowmen. But since I've hit my thirties more and more of thief personality has taken over. I've come to accept that despite my cynicism, my isolationism, there is a point to all this madness. That in my youth I was talking falsely. Granted it's not easy to explain this new found view. It's not exactly belief in any collectivized system, such as government, religion, or even my fellow man. It is a growing belief in my identity; my individuality is what keeps me going. I realize that life is but a joke but am no longer frightened by this thought, hell I kinda like it. I'm growing more and more aware of what the joke is. I'm just ready to laugh at it. The final lines of the song All Along the Watchtower, Princes kept a view come directly from the Old Testament. Isaiah Chapter 21 Verse 5-9. In the Bible it's the two riders announce the fall of Babylon; the great imperial power of its day. I can't help but think that Dylan's song is predicting the end of the United States of America; the great imperial(which is my home) of the modern day. Never the less the song's ending is clear; it's not an ending nor a beginning. History and life moves in cycles of repetition. This is a universal truth, everything evolves yet it repeats. Always. Perhaps that is the actual joke. Not certain if that's intended to be the joke or not. But in a strange way I feel like it is. Now that's funny!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY
"There must be some way out of here" said the joker to the thief

"There's too much confusion", I can't get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.

"No reason to get excited", the thief he kindly spoke
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late".

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.