Robert Lowery

Seeing Things is the title of the most recent album released by Jakob Dylan, the son of Bob Dylan.  It is an album that will make his father proud.  Dylan is the lead singer of the Grammy-winning band The Wallflowers.  Seeing Things is a solo effort by Jakob, and a magnificent one at that, at least in my opinion.

The opening song, “Evil is Alive and Well,” gets your attention (hear a sample by clicking the widget below):

It doesn’t always have a shape
Almost never does it have a name
It maybe has a pitchfork maybe a tail,
But evil is alive and well.
May be too humble to want to speak
May have a blood soaked bird in its teeth
Smoke filled skies and bees in the well
Evil is alive and well.
May be in a palace it may be in the streets
May be here among us on a crowded beach
May be asleep in a roadside motel
But evil is alive and well. 
Evil is alive
Evil is well
Evil is alive
Evil is well
On your feet to the tower and yell
Evil is alive and well. 
It’s well
Down in every ditch
Up on every hill
It’s well
I’ve got my radio on
Drowning the bells.
When midnight’s done and the day won’t start
And all I ever gave you was a broken heart
It’s hard to admit but it’s easy to tell
That evil is alive and well. 

Now I don’t know much about Dylan’s spiritual leanings, but he is reminding us all of the power of evil in all its seductiveness, a seductiveness often cloaked in anonymity and a seductiveness that is revealed on the universal, communal, and individual levels.

Jakob Dylan and John the Seer are in agreement:  Evil was and is alive and well on planet earth.  Evil can be found in institutions as well as individuals . . . It can be named or it may be anonymous . . . It can be seen on both corporate and personal levels. . . It can be experienced in the palaces of power or in ravaged neighborhoods in the inner city and in rural towns . . .  

Despite the title’s sentiment being obvious, Dylan describes pure unadulterated evil as a shapeless, nameless, carnivorous beast that hides in plain sight waiting to strike.  Weaving allusions to Beelzebub and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Dylan dramatically shifts from atrocities done on a global scale to the petty crimes that we willingly do to each other.

Dylan tells us that he sees things.  And so does John the Seer. 

John the Seer  moves from the cosmic to the communal and reveals that Evil will attempt to take over any institution and use any individual to accomplish its and its Master’s–the Dragon–purposes.  Evil is seen in Jezebel, the nameless apathetic disciples of Jesus in Laodicea, and the two beasts representing anti-Christian government and religion, and even the cowardly Christians who left their post in the midst of battle.  Evil makes use of economic and educational structures and dresses up in alluring garments and speaks velvet words.  Evil offers us what we want but not what we truly need. 

But John the Seer reminds us that Evil is doomed. And Jakob’s song does not tell us about the Victory that is to come and even the victories that are given to us daily by God’s grace:  ”To the one who overcomes!”  Even though Evil is often found in the church and in other religious communities (yes, even those associated with Judaism or Islamism), and even though Evil is found in both communistic and capitalistic structures, and even though it often appears that Evil is winning, John proclaims from the mountain top that God will have the final word.  He always has and always will.

Both Jakob and John are calling us to see things as they really are:  Keep your eyes open for Evil lurks: 

On your feet to the tower and yell
Evil is alive and well 
It’s hard to admit but it’s easy to tell
That evil is alive and well

I would add the lines for disciples of Jesus: 

On your feet to the tower and yell
Evil and its allies are doomed to hell.