“The Times They Are A-Changin’”

Two months before the world was subjected to the shocking live coverage of the merciless, bloodthirsty and public daylight murder of JFK in Nov. 1963, Bob Dylan sat down to write a song… He had a particular idea in mind, which he recorded mere weeks before Kennedy’s tragic Assassination. Dylan had already achieved stratospheric acclaim from his treasure-producing workmanship and poetic abilities. He had already jacked up the bar of songwriting to an untouchable level. He also became a reluctant prophet, which can be quite an occupational hazard…Yet he remained himself while dodging all manner of con artists, bloodsuckers, angles, arrows, ignorance, injustices, and scrutinization of his life. His intentions remained pure. So he sat down and wrote the gold standard of protest songs, the seminal and most significant, mind boggling and staggeringly poetic, prophetic protest song the world will ever know: “The Times They Are A-Changin’”. Dylan’s song applies to Covid-19, it also, very strongly applies to the life altering image of George Floyd, forever seared to our brains… For me, it applies to the moment we are in, it applies to the moment they were in in 1963, it applies to everything before and everything since and everything that will be.
I chose to perform this song live, for my friend @drbarbarasturm Covid benefit several weeks ago… I didn’t really know how to play it, but I figured I’d give it a shot, as it seemed to apply so well. And it applies now, more than ever. It was performed a couple of weeks before our collective paralysis was rendered complete by the images of our fellow human George Floyd being cruelly and brutally tortured to death on live TV.

Let us take a moment to remember the sacrificial hero George Floyd and look with hope towards the changes that his tragic death will cause. And let’s salute the reluctant prophet Bob Dylan and the dream of change he inspired then, now, and onwards… His impact is that of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Hunter Thompson, Marlon Brando, Woody Guthrie, William Blake, Picasso, Bach and Mozart.
Dylan’s song is to be kept near you, AT ALL TIMES!!! All love and respect,
JD

@killermike Speaks

As the majority of American people, our global community and our extended family of humans helplessly watched a man die on television… I too, was exposed to the atrocity of blatant barbarism,  ruthless cruelty and unmitigated lack of humanity.  A handcuffed man, pleading for his life lay prone with the full weight of a man sworn to defend the peace on his neck. The victim of this heinous act of cowardice, George Floyd, told the officers that he could not breathe. As he called for his dead mother, how could our collective hearts not break as his face was ground and mashed firmly into the pavement by those sworn to protect him, and all of us? Justice, I desperately hope, will address the horror of Officer Chauvin’s nonchalance and indifference to his participation in the agony, suffering and ultimately the murder of our fellow traveler George Floyd in a grotesque illustration of the abuse of power!!!
There is no way to make sense of what is senseless. There is no way to restore a life that has been taken. Just as there is no way to un-break a heart that is broken.
What we can do is make a vow to ourselves that racism and the ignorance inherent in such judgmental ugliness that it gives birth to, is NO LONGER AN OPTION!!! THERE MUST BE A CHANGE!!! DEMAND IT!!!! My dear friend and brother, Killer Mike - (Run The Jewels), is a brilliant musician, artist, activist for social justice and the son of an Atlanta Policeman. He is also, one of the kindest, most caring and loving human beings that I’ve ever had the pleasure and honor to know!!! I beg everyone to listen to the remarks of this true statesman. True statesmen have never been so needed, and they’ve never been in such short supply.
With All Love,
JD

It’s odd, the things that we once gave such pure, intense focus and devotion to for months on end. Then suddenly the wind shifts and off we go on a new tack. And for far too long, these earlier interests or passions sadly fall by the wayside and recede into the vast recesses of some hoarder’s crawlspace in the brain cloaked in heaps of the other things that my skull had no room for…until recently.
I found this painting, which I had started in 2006 … for 14 years I’d never touched the painting – the occasional glance, at best. Yet it somehow always lingered in my mind, this piece of unfinished business.

Sending you all my love

and thank you for staying on this long road with me. JD