My Back Pages

The BackBlast:

Today, we did the following (in addition to listening to my old music):

8 Warm up exercises

Stairway to the top level of Target deck.

4 more warm up exercises

 

Divide into 4 groups so we can use all 4 stairways and spread out (2 circuits, each using 2 stairwells) and do the following 3x:

10 Burpees, run down the stairway to level 2, run across the deck on level 2, ascend the stairway to the top and do 10 Mike Tysons. Repeat 2 more times.

 

Next: A different exercise for each corner of the top level: do set of 10 of 1 exercise at each corner, come to the middle and do 5 Burpees, then to the next corner for a different exercise. Etc:

Merkins, Imperial Walkers, Knee-ups, Peter Parker. 2X

 

Descend the stairs to the rails and do:

10 outboard, 10 Derkins, 9 Outboard, 9 Derkins, etc.

 

Back to the start for 3 minutes of stretching exercises.

 

I usually bring my way-back music which has a mix of Hank Williams, Sr., Roy Orbison, Beatles, The Byrds, Motown, etc. By the way, “Walk Away Renee” was done by the Left Bank (among others) (Thanks Hollywood).

 

You can find great wisdom in rock lyrics. “My Back Pages” was sung by The Byrds and written by Bob Dylan. The Byrds released their version in 1967. Here’s a couple verses (or should I say versus?)

 

“Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth

Rip down all hate, I screamed

Lies that life is black and white

Spoke from my skull I dreamed

Romantic facts of musketeers

Foundationed deep, somehow

Ah, but I was so much older then

I’m younger than that now

 

In a soldier’s stance, I aimed my hand

At the mongrel dogs who teach

Fearing not that I’d become my enemy

In the instant that I preach

My pathway led by confusion boats

Mutiny from stern to bow

Ah, but I was so much older then

I’m younger than that now”

 

I know that many can interpret these words differently that I do.

 

“Lies that life is black and white”: The lyrics imply that this was something he thought when he was “older”, before he became “younger than that now”. Perhaps the “older” Dylan was challenging the conventional wisdom of his time. Given the timeframe, maybe he saw people questioning whether the Soviet Union was really the bad guys and the US the good guys.

 

Conversely, the thought that life is ‘black and white’, is something you think when you are younger and more certain that you possess the ‘truth’. But life is complex. None of us sees the whole picture.

 

The rest of the lyrics say to me that he now questions the certainty that he once, but no longer, possesses. And that he possessed so strongly, without hesitance or fear that he might be wrong.

 

“Ah, but I was so much older then

I’m younger than that now”

 

Instead of aging, Dylan had become younger. And younger people don’t know as much.

 

When I listen to what so many social critics and politicians are saying today, I think of this song. They believe that only they possess the truth. And they are more than happy to impose it on the rest of us.

 

I’ll end with a quote from Thomas Sowell (by the way, he was born in Gastonia): “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”