Summary
- Dylan contributed to an opinion piece linked to Donald Trump’s 80th birthday and shared his reflections on aging and the passage of time.
- Dylan wrote in the New York Times that one of the worst parts of turning 80 is “that you find, at last, you’ve got an understanding of something that might have altered everything in the past, had it come at a time when something could still be altered.” It is the kind of line that sounds like wisdom but lands like a quiet verdict.
- Dylan also turned his attention to how time itself shifts as you get older.
Bob Dylan has never been the kind of artist to say things plainly, and his latest piece of writing is no different. The 85-year-old music legend recently contributed to an opinion essay tied to Donald Trump’s 80th birthday, and while he never once mentioned the US President by name, the internet has been reading between the lines ever since.
Dylan contributed to an opinion piece linked to Donald Trump’s 80th birthday and shared his reflections on aging and the passage of time. On the surface, it reads as a meditation on what it means to grow old. Look a little closer, though, and the words carry a sharper edge.
Dylan wrote in the New York Times that one of the worst parts of turning 80 is “that you find, at last, you’ve got an understanding of something that might have altered everything in the past, had it come at a time when something could still be altered.” It is the kind of line that sounds like wisdom but lands like a quiet verdict.
He also touched on the strange relationship between age and surprise. “The old fire in your heart still tells you to do this and that, but your body says we already did it. Also, nothing surprises you. It sounds like a luxury but it’s not, and also you’ve run out of illusions,” he wrote. There is something both freeing and sobering in that idea, the notion that a life fully lived eventually strips away every comfortable story we tell ourselves.
Dylan also turned his attention to how time itself shifts as you get older. “When you’re young you think that time moves forward. At 80 you know that it doesn’t, it stands still. We’re the ones that move,” he reflected. It is a line that would not feel out of place in one of his songs, and that is exactly what makes it so striking in prose form.
But it was his closing thought that truly caught people’s attention. “The best thing about being 80 is that you outlive the clocks that have been chasing you,” he wrote, before adding, “You don’t chase the parade anymore. You’re an old king from some vanished country. You’re harder to programme.”
hat last phrase, “an old king from some vanished country,” is the one people are still talking about. Whether Dylan intended it as a direct jab at Trump or simply as a broader observation on power and irrelevance, it landed with unmistakable force.
That is the thing about Bob Dylan. He has always known how to say everything without saying anything at all.
