Don't Let It Bring You Down by Neil Young

I was listening to my iPod on shuffle this morning and heard Don't Let It Bring You Down by Neil Young. It's a track off of his third solo album, After The Gold Rush, released  August 31, 1970. Recording began in the summer of 1969 and ended in June of 1970. 

It doesn't take much to understand the times in which this music emerged. The Vietnam War was raging. The country was in the midst of social tremors and significant cultural shifts. The civil rights movement led to violence in the streets of the south. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated the prior year. The youth of America rose in protest with a call for peace and love. The streets of Chicago were filled with rioting, tear gas, and violence, during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Pollution in the air and water was a growing concern. The plight of the poor was always apparent, but with less compassion compared to former eras of this great country. This is the world in which Neil Young was offering his encouragement, "Don't let it bring you down."

The lyrical content is abstract, much like some of Bob Dylan and John Lennon's writing. The words paint an abstract picture of ideas and emotions. If there is a consistent message tot eh song it is "Don't let the world, with its obvious inequities and injustices, drag you down emotionally." In other words, don't let the brokenness of this world rob you of hope. Do not fall into despair because of the things in this world that are not as they should be.

Here's the song. Give it a listen.  http://youtu.be/F7letrMf_nE

Don't Let It Bring You Down 

Songwriter: Neil Young

Old man lying
by the side of the road
With the lorries rolling by,
Blue moon sinking
from the weight of the load
And the building scrape the sky,
Cold wind ripping
down the alley at dawn
And the morning paper flies,
Dead man lying
by the side of the road
With the daylight in his eyes.

Don't let it bring you down
It's only castles burning,
Find someone who's turning
And you will come around.

Blind man running
through the light
of the night
With an answer in his hand,
Come on down
to the river of sight
And you can really understand,
Red lights flashing
through the window
in the rain,
Can you hear the sirens moan?
White cane lying
in a gutter in the lane,
If you're walking home alone.

Don't let it bring you down
It's only castles burning,
Just find someone who's turning
And you will come around.

Don't let it bring you down
It's only castles burning,
Just find someone who's turning
And you will come around.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There's no shortage of opinions on what Neil Young meant when he wrote the song. I don't have access today to Neil's thoughts. What really matters, however, is not what Young meant, but what it means to the listener today. All pop music belongs to the consumer. Music means what meaning the listener places upon a song. The interpretation reveals more about the listener, and where he or she is at, than it does the songwriter.

I see snapshots of things that bring you down emotionally, things that are wrong with my world. Here's some of the snapshots Young provides in the lyrics.

1. invisible people, like hobos and the homeless
2. urban blight - skyscrapers obscuring natural beauty, filth, litter, crime, busy highways
3. the silencing of prophetic voices who bring real understanding

The singer feels the weight of this unnatural world that seems to dehumanize people and run past their circumstance without a second thought. The blue moon which sinks from the weight represents mood. It's the singer who is feeling sad or blue. He sees lost people as he rides the tour bus to the next gig, seeing them in city after city. He sees the old men thumbing rides or begging alone the roads of America. He knows of homeless people dying in the cold of a city that does not see them. He looks up at the beauty of the moon, only to see it obscured by the buildings that tower over him. He longs for the purity of nature, but the city chokes it out. 

In such a world, there are those who envision a culture change. There are those crying out to the people to open their eyes and see what we are doing to ourselves and to the environment. We are supposed to be the land of opportunity, but we are missing the mark. But just like the man sitting on the side of the road, these modern day prophets are largely ignored. 

The church could be represented by the blind man, who thinks he holds the answer in his hand. The church, when it validates society's inequities is blind. The church talks a lot about changing the world, but what change has come as a result of religious institutions? One could argue quite a lot of change has come, but most cannot connect the dots so easily. 

The 19th century was a high water mark in America for social transformation through the ministry of the church. Hospitals were built, universities opened, and orphanages created.  It was the church who took upon itself to meet these social ills. Most do not see that history or respect it. Instead they may look today and say, "What good is the church?" We live in a time where more and more think that the church is evil. Religion is bad. Organized religion is blind, some might say. That was certainly true of the hippy movement. They rejected the church, for the most part.

Another way to read the blind man with the answer is to interpret him as the awakened young people of America carrying the answer of peace and love to the rest of the indoctrinated (blind) culture. They demonstrated. They dropped out, tuned in, and turned on. They were pointing to another way to live life in this country that embraced a simpler existence. Many moved into communes, experimental communities where they lived by standards like free love. There was no personal property or personal rights to an individual through marriage. Everything and every body was enjoyed by the community.

Like the white cane in the gutter, the blind man was killed as he was walking home alone. There wasn't enough support to make the new vision for life a reality. The blind man, the hippy movement, was alone against the establishment.

I think my latter interpretation doesn't hold up when you look at the encouragement in the chorus. 

Don't let it bring you down
It's only castles burning,
Just find someone who's turning
And you will come around.

The castles burning is the hippy movement's victory over the establishment. The castle burning is the people rising up in force against the landlord. Those in power are being toppled. In truth, a lot of what happened in the 1960's did change America forever. The old establishment went down in flames as the decades rolled by. The dreams and visions of the recently awakened began to to find some level of tangible rootedness in society. The women's liberation movement, the American Disabilities Act, The Equal Opportunity Act, racial desegregation, and the like are examples.

So instead of getting down over what is wrong, team up with fellow travelers who have turned from the dogma of the establishment and embraced the new vision of personal freedom and simple living. That is how I am reading Neil Young's song, Don't Let It Bring You Down.

The interesting thing about Neil Young is that he has been a proponent and a critic of the hippy movement. He has been anti-war (Vietnam) and pro-war (post 9/11). In 1986, disillusioned by the new embrace of greed and warmongering, Young released Hippy Dream, on the Landing On Water album. (Listen here: http://youtu.be/400nQvEfwb4) 

Young was watching heroes of the hippy movement dying of overdoses, capsized in excess. He claims that the dream might be over for you, but it isn't for him. The 60's was a victory of the heart, if it wasn't a victory of social transformation.

This all leads me to asking if the hippy dream failed because we all want what the establishment is selling. We respond to all the marketing and have become good little consumers, fuel for the graft machines of Wall Street. For that matter, has the mission of the church failed for the same reasons?

The mission of the church is to make disciples (followers) of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. If the world were truly under God's rule, what would life on earth be like? The vision of John's Revelation gives us an answer.

"Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” 

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” (Rev 21:3b-5a)

One of Jesus' parables says that in the new age, when this one has passed, there will be no evildoers or causes of evil. (Mat 13:41) Can you imagine a life with no evil, not even temptation to do evil? The early church, drawing upon the promises of the Hebrew prophets did imagine such a time in our future.

I think until we decide we want that dream more than the new car, clothes, gadgets, the trophy spouse and such, the dream will always be a hope that drives us, but never reaches us. Until human hearts are set free from the idols of the land, we will remain blind with the answer in our hands.

Jesus, you opened the eyes of the blind. Lay your healing hands upon us and open our eyes, the eyes of our spirits, that we may see and believe that treasure in heaven outshines the stuff they're shipping down the road. Amen