Bob Dylan, Faith, and the Language of Darkness

I was looking at two songs by Bob Dylan. The first is "Gotta Serve Somebody" from his 1979 album Slow Train Coming, which was one of 3 (I believe) issued during a time when he committed himself to a belief in Jesus Christ, in a charismatic, evangelical environment, and so made that leap of faith known to Bible believing Christians.  

Gotta Serve Somebody https://share.google/qdKHTmB00Y348j3hk

The second is Not Dark Yet from his 1997 album Time Out of Mind. Looking at the lyrics of these two songs, and also understanding from later interviews that Bob Dylan is still a man of faith, I thought I might explore the differences in the language and themes of these two songs, and think about Bob Dylan's development and use of lyrics in those intervening years, which might also reveal changes in his approach to his faith. This is what emerged.

Not Dark Yet https://share.google/npqK5oXCa3ujm09Bx 

Gotta Serve Somebody  is direct, declarative and prophetic. Its message is clear: every human being ultimately serves either God or the devil. The lyric proceeds with the certainty of a sermon. Social distinctions are stripped away, and the listener is confronted with a spiritual choice. The voice is authoritative, reflecting the confidence of a recent convert who believes he has discovered a fundamental truth about existence.

Nearly twenty years later, Not Dark Yet presents a very different voice. Here there is no proclamation, no doctrine, and no explicit reference to Christ or salvation. Instead, the song inhabits a mood of weariness and mortality. The famous refrain, "It's not dark yet, but it's getting there," evokes aging, decline, and the approach of death. Rather than offering answers, the lyric dwells within a state of consciousness.

Some Christian listeners have viewed this change as evidence of a weakening of faith. From an evangelical perspective, life "in Christ" brings assurance, hope and spiritual renewal. The New Testament proclaims victory over death and despair through Christ's resurrection. If this is so, why should a believer continue to speak in the language of darkness? Why contemplate suffering rather than transcend it through prayer and trust in God?

This objection seems to me to raise an important question, which can only be answered by highlighting the distinction between faith and art. Faith seeks to proclaim truths and offers answers, and indeed lives within them. Art often seeks to describe experience in all its complexity, even when no resolution is immediately apparent.

Going down the route of art, we find for example the literary critic Christopher Ricks who draws attention to the affinities between Not Dark Yet and John Keats's Ode to a Nightingale. Both works explore weariness, mortality, and the attraction of release from suffering. Neither arrives at a final conclusion. Instead, each remains suspended between life and death, hope and uncertainty. The power of Dylan's lyric lies partly in this refusal to define precisely what the approaching darkness means.

At the same time, Not Dark Yet can be understood within a religious tradition older and broader than post-Lutheran evangelicalism or the preoccupations of the English Romantic poets. The voices of Job, Ecclesiastes and the Psalms all find expression in darkness, lament and questioning. These texts are not records of unbelief but of faith wrestling with the realities of human existence. They remind us that religious life has always contained both confidence and anguish.

What emerges, is not necessarily a contrast between faith and doubt, but rather a contrast between two modes of spiritual expression. One mode emphasises certainty, redemption and proclamation. The other emphasises contemplation, mystery and the honest acknowledgement of suffering. The first finds its natural home in preaching and testimony. The second often finds its home in poetry and song.

This distinction helps explain why Not Dark Yet continues to resonate with listeners of many beliefs. The song does not argue for a doctrine. It gives shape to a universal human experience. In doing so, it occupies a space shared by biblical wisdom literature, Romantic poetry, and modern existential reflection.

The journey from Gotta Serve Somebody to Not Dark Yet may therefore be understood not as a movement away from spiritual concerns, but as a movement from proclamation to meditation. The 1979 Dylan speaks as a witness. The 1997 Dylan speaks as a poet. One announces a truth; the other explores what it feels like to live in the shadow of mortality.

Whether one views this development as a loss of certainty, a deepening of wisdom, or simply an evolution of artistic voice will depend largely on one's own understanding of faith. Yet the enduring fascination of these songs lies precisely in their ability to sustain a meaningful contemplation, inviting us to consider whether faith abolishes darkness or teaches us how to live within it.

Voyages Through Time: Rose of Nevada

 

Today I caught up with the movie Rose of Nevada.  I came away with that familiar feeling  with movies of this genre,  that a coherent meaning was obscured  from view. As  a consequence it was difficult to find sympathy for the characters and their relationships in each time frame. Without some kind of signpost we find ourselves using much of our mental and emotional resources just to piece together and grasp a narrative. 

I found myself finally able to accept this technique, but by then my feeling was disinterested detachment from character, and I looked more at the surface techniques, including the extraordinary realism around the storm. It is the kind of movie, such as Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer or Memento, where time slicing is a vital part of the narrative. So, a second viewing becomes more enlightening and the experience becomes richer.

Such  films that fragment time ask us  to do significant intellectual work, but there is usually an emotional anchor that keeps us invested while we solve the puzzle.

 In Memento, it is Leonard's desperate search for meaning; in Oppenheimer, it is Oppenheimer's moral and psychological journey. Even when the chronology is fragmented, the emotional trajectory remains relatively clear.

Rose of Nevada seems less interested in such emotional identification. It works around atmosphere, memory and place. The characters often feel like discrete, disconnected figures in a folk tale or legend rather than fully developed psychological individuals. That may be intentional, but it comes at a cost. We expend  energy simply trying to establish "where" and "when" they are. For me at least, not a lot left over for  empathy.

So, "disinterested detachment" sums up my initial response. Maybe this mirrors the way the film is crafted?  I have learned after viewing (I tend not to read reviews before seeing a movie)  that the movie was shot without sound, and all the sounds – voices as well as all else, were dubbed in afterwards. Oddly distant dialogue, the slightly unreal soundscape, and the fragmented timescales all placed  a layer of distance between me and what was in front of me.

The storm sequence is perhaps the clearest exception to this direction of trvel in the film. Here, narrative uncertainty becomes irrelevant in these isolated action snapshots. The sea, the boat, the weather, the physical peril—these are immediate and comprehensible. Here, the technique adds to  the experience rather than obscuring it. I found these sequences, and the business of catching, gutting and storing the fish,  among the most compelling for exactly that reason.

So yes, a second viewing of Rose of Nevada  is for the best, though I think there is an important distinction with Rose of Nevada compared, say, to a  second viewing of Memento. Here, a second viewing (I haven’t tried it yet) should reveal how meticulously the narrative has been constructed. We expect the  puzzle pieces to click together, because that is the story, and the story lose ambiguity and brings a clarity by its end. With Rose of Nevada, I am not entirely sure that a second viewing would lead to that kind of resolution. Rather, it would just help me to stop worrying about the puzzle and attend to other things: the imagery, the sound design, the symbolism, the sense of Cornwall as a place haunted by its own past. And all that.

So , thinking on awhile, Rose of Nevada  has something in  common with modernist literature than with puzzle-box cinema. For example, reading The Waste Land for a second time – or even umpteen times -  does not necessarily “solve” it; instead, once we are  less anxious about understanding every reference, we begin to notice patterns, echoes and moods. The experience deepens without becoming entirely transparent.

That raises the question of what kind of satisfaction a film owes its audience. I suppose over these years of looking at  traditions around  modernism through art cinema and modernist poetry, we know that ambiguity and uncertainty are watchwords. But for me anyway,  ambiguity works best when there is still something solid to hold onto—character, emotion, theme, image, or story.

So for me,  Rose of Nevada is too ambiguous. It asks  too much of the audience before it has earned an emotional investment. It’s not just me saying  "I didn't understand it."  The film’s  artistic method and  ambitions compete with, rather than support, its human drama.

I will see it again: I am confident my opinion will shift, like those gutted fish on the trawler's deck!

 

Ambling in Clanfield

I spent most of the day today, from early morning until lunchtime taking a wander around the village of Clanfield. I had recently discovered a campervan service, repair and conversion business tucked away at the end of the long track-like road called Mill Lane. A fascinating find. 

One might call it an industrial estate, though unlike any I have ever visited. At the end of the lane, and into the complex, I was met with the extraordinary sight of several beat-up, half-cannibalised cars, all, or mostly, of high-end branding - Mercedes, BMW and the like. And in a large covered area, a multitude of Rolls Royces, including the classic 'Silver Cloud', all in various states of repair and disrepair. Cars such as these were built to defy time, yet here they were, reflecting time's passing with the same quiet dignity as old barns or weathered gravestones

My reason to visit was less exotically interesting - I was here to get a repair done on my campervan. The campervan business was across a small wooden bridge over the stream called Broadwell Brook, among other enterprises including upholstery, welding, guttering and the like - a busy place more or less in the middle of nowhere.

I was met by Paul, an engaging guy who filled me with every confidence that the pop-top roof repair on my van was nothing like the terminally problematic issue I had feared. After a quick check on some details, Paul gave me a 3 hour window of opportunity to take a wander back along Mill Lane to  the main village of Clanfield, whilst he did the necessary work.

I enjoyed the 20 minute walk , and sought out the church, as is my wont when coming to any village. And as always with such church visits, St. Stephen's did not disappoint - it offered, as all churches do, the unusual and unique embedded in the familiar styles and layouts of these ancient buildings. 

St. Stephen Statue, Clanfield Church

Immediately engaging was a very eye-catching large figure carved in an angled niche in a corner of the tower. This was St. Stephen, carrying a pile of stones and maybe a book. Walking up to the South door entrance, I was met by a friendly lady who introduced herself as Ros, and she immediately alerted me to a pile of plaster on the entrance floor - the result of water damage finally doing its worst. Not easy to dawdle and enjoy the Romanesque tympanum over that South door! But my chat with Ros convinced me that another visit would be a good idea...there is much to see and enjoy in St. Stephen's. 

I learned from her that she was just tidying up after a group of Zen Buddhists had enjoyed a night's sleep on the church floor - using carefully-arranged kneelers as mattresses. It seems this is not an unusual occurrence for such folk on their spiritual treks along the Thames path and environs. 

My chat with Ros led me to share some local history knowledge, and she told me about a unique character called William Tayler, who hailed from the hamlet of Grafton, close to Clanfield. He went to London and entered into service in a household in Marylebone, London in Victorian times, and kept a diary which is published as The Diary of William Tayler (1837). This journal offers a candid look at the daily routines, gossip and hardships of a 19th century servant. It offers local historians a picture of the contrasting lives of the rural working class poverty in the Clanfield and Grafton area with the structured reality of the rhythms of urban domestic service.

Ros's parting gift to me apart from a gratis copy of an old leaflet describing the highlights of the church, was the recommendation to visit Blake's Kitchen in the village, and enjoy one of their signature cinnamon buns! 

And so I wandered along to Blake's and enjoyed a coffee and bun as recommended. A fine place, with outdoor and indoor space, an on-site post office, and a friendly atmosphere. An excellent way to await the call from Paul, which duly came to let me know that the job was complete on my van. It was time to wander back along Mill Lane, check the job, grab the invoice and say my grateful goodbyes.

Blake's Cinnamon Buns

What to say about this visit? And why, really, have I narrated these details? In simple terms, I guess I might say the walk was a pilgrimage of sorts. This village, which yes, I've driven to through a few times, but which until this day I have never explored, was the birthplace of my father in August 1920. 

He was the 7th child of my grandparents, who went on to produce 3 more offspring. My grandfather was a cowman/farmworker, and by all accounts did not settle for long in each place where he found employment. By serendipity, the campervan business was here in the village, and I was glad to be drawn here for an enforced couple of hours. 

Here I was able to absorb the  contrasts and a sense of a place known by the likes of William Tayler. Here was a place which had not substantially changed in the 100 years between his time in Grafton, and the time of itinerant farmworkers in the early 20th century. And I was able to reflect on how those workers' cottages have now become desirable Cotswolds residences for folk with leisure time to enjoy coffee and genteel socialising. And how Zen Buddhists and the grandson of one such worker are blessed with the time to wander free and comfortable among the pathways his ancestors trod in a whole other world.

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Postscript ( June 9th 2026)

A review of the 1921 Census tells me that in that year:

Edwin ( b. Hatherop, Glos ) worked at Northcourt Farm

The Farm manager was a Mr F Bowden

His co-workers were:

•             Alfred Benfield  b. Grafton
•             George Shayler b. "Oxfordshire"
•             William Temple b. Clanfield
•             William Parrott b. Clanfield

Edwin lived at The Green in Clanfield. No house number/name is recorded.

He lived there with his wife Mary and children:

•                         Edwin Jesse b. 1910 "Oxfordshire"
•                         Pam   b. 1911 Hampton Gay
•                         Rupert b. 1913 Hampton Gay
•                         Alice b. 1914 "Oxfordshire"
•                         Percy b. 1916 Kencot
•                         Hector b. 1919 Bampton
•                         Kenneth b. 1920 Clanfield

... and the story continues.

Restored workers' cottages 2026 , The Green , Clanfield

The Green, Clanfield 2026

Northcourt Farm for Sale 2026: PDF Here (May 2026)