Trixie Cruz: Pied Pipers

by Rose Beatrix C. Angeles (Trixie Cruz-Angeles)

Original post on July 18, 2008

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,

I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,

In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Mr. Tambourine Man

By Bob Dylan

I caught a video on YouTube of a touchingly young Bob Dylan, looking frail and shy. In it, he is singing Mr. Tambourine Man at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964. To date, he has been performing for over thirty years and his genius is undiminished. The song, now a classic, is vintage Dylan.

Many speculate that it is about the dependence of a druggie on his dealer since it speaks of being taken "disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind, Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves, The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach, Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow." But to think so would be to buttonhole the universality of message that is characteristic of Dylan.

Its theme is far broader than that. It speaks of the relationship between a follower and any leader who holds out promises - quite often illusory ones, and how the follower often cannot help but be taken in by these promises. Or, more importantly, how the follower often knows the lack of substance of the promises and yet is compelled to follow, because it is so much more fun to be fooled this way than to be told the hard truths. So, "cast your dancing spell my way, I promise to go under it."

Too often we think that if we just had the right leaders, our country would be well again. That we would all be transformed into a clean, First World Country and we would all be happy. But that puts too much faith and work on the leader alone.

Even worse, when things become uncertain, we refuse to challenge our leaders and their hard-selling empty visions because a promise of stability and economic growth is better than the truth spoken by the dissident that we must work and work hard to regain our lost resources, to rebuild a more just society. That we must do away with many of our crutches like the "turn the other cheek" morality insisted upon by an ever more un-influential Church. Or even the crutch we call the Constitution.

Yes, sometimes even the constitution is a crutch - an illusion of justice that cannot be imposed in the frail and flawed judicial system we have. Even worse, it cannot be imposed upon a people who have not ingrained it into their culture because the values of communality directly contrast with the enshrinement of individual rights, (more on this in a subsequent column). But we rely on it anyway, insist on its study and recite it chapter and verse, thinking that the more we study it, we may somehow achieve justice. And yet the Constitution as it stands would not be so enshrined if it did not protect the status quo and all other vested interests that prevent real equality, real justice.

Though more often, even if we realize that "evenin's empire has returned into sand, Vanished from my hand," we still follow our leaders and observe the status quo, on and on and on. Even if our pied pipers lead us into destruction, we go to it "to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free"

(Source: Trixie Cruz-Angeles - ©2008 pilipino.org.ph)
To know more about Trixie Cruz Angeles, check out: I AM TRIXIE CRUZ