And Uncle Remus can't tell you and neither can Santa Claus

"I never knew it was gonna be this way
Why didn't they tell me the day I was born"
-- Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie

Yesterday, on the NPR show, Fresh Air, I heard an interview with Todd Haynes regarding his new movie, I'm Not There. In the movie, multiple actors play different personas of Bob Dylan.

I can remember the jolt at the rock and roll on Bringing It All Back Home and the country tunes on his post-motorcycle-accident John Wesley Harding. It was, as noted in a later Dilbert cartoon, paradigm shifting without a clutch. Dylan rarely bothered to try to make any connection between what went on before and what he is presenting now. If we wanted to try follow the threads, we were welcome to do so, but he wasn't going out of his way to help us. He was too busy with what's next.

Adam's 20th high school reunion is this weekend. Some months ago, he and I were talking about how difficult it is to make connections between who we were in high school and who we are now. There are pictures of teenagers that we hide from others and, often, even from ourselves. The chronology of events includes a bunch of sudden breakpoints where the energy jumps like a spark across the gap rather than moving in a steady flow. That's fine. The energy gets there; you just have to handle it a bit more carefully is all.