I listen to 'Gonna Change My Way of Thinking' a lot.
It's a diamond set on the dusty road through Bob Dylan's conversion to Christianity.
It's a repudiation of the power games, cravenness, violence, persecution, hypocrisy, alienation, self-hatred, and apathy that we meet in this world.
The original version, from 1979's landmark record 'Slow Train Coming', is written and sung by a person who's found the courage to say: the game is rigged: things are not right.
He revisited the song again in 2003 - as a sketch and duet with gospel legend Mavis Staples. The lyrics are almost completely rewritten as a personal, pastoral shouting blues, backed by a crack band laying out without reservation.
There's spine-tingling determination in every note: I'm breaking the trance, not gonna be hypnotized anymore. Not by the world outside (1979), and not by my own mind and heart (2003).
Gonna change my way of thinking. Make myself a different set of rules.
Gonna put my good foot forward,
Stop being influenced by fools.
Many ridiculed him during this 'Christian period'. But whether or not you believe (I happen to), his fearlessness is bracing.
Anyway, it's hardly an emotion exclusive to Christian belief - or to belief at all: across the denominations, and outside of them, there is wisdom meant to wake us up to what's really happening, in our lives and in the world.
For me the song is a challenge to my smugness in the high times, and a sign of hope when I'm foundering in the shadows.
It's a repudiation of the power games, cravenness, violence, persecution, hypocrisy, alienation, self-hatred, and apathy that we meet in this world.
The original version, from 1979's landmark record 'Slow Train Coming', is written and sung by a person who's found the courage to say: the game is rigged: things are not right.
He revisited the song again in 2003 - as a sketch and duet with gospel legend Mavis Staples. The lyrics are almost completely rewritten as a personal, pastoral shouting blues, backed by a crack band laying out without reservation.
There's spine-tingling determination in every note: I'm breaking the trance, not gonna be hypnotized anymore. Not by the world outside (1979), and not by my own mind and heart (2003).
Gonna change my way of thinking. Make myself a different set of rules.
Gonna put my good foot forward,
Stop being influenced by fools.
Many ridiculed him during this 'Christian period'. But whether or not you believe (I happen to), his fearlessness is bracing.
Anyway, it's hardly an emotion exclusive to Christian belief - or to belief at all: across the denominations, and outside of them, there is wisdom meant to wake us up to what's really happening, in our lives and in the world.
For me the song is a challenge to my smugness in the high times, and a sign of hope when I'm foundering in the shadows.
It expresses the constant newness available to us if we're willing to believe in - and act for - peace, justice, love, possibility, non-judgment, generosity, reverence for life, and a love of the natural world in which we live.
Constant, radical renewal. Gonna change my way of thinking.
You can do it as many times as you want. Every time you press play.
You can do it as many times as you want. Every time you press play.
Every time you realize you've forgotten.
Every time something sneaks up on you, falls on you, drops out from under you.
And every time is the perfect time to do it. Changing it all again today.
