Royalty gives its gold to a commoner.

I love it when opposite sides of a culture not only come together, but they find love for each other.  I know that God always loves that.  It is a recurring theme in the bible.  Jew and gentile, man and woman, freeman and slave, royalty and common man. 

I have been very interested in a rare thing that happened this year.  In October the Nobel Prize Committee announced their decisions for 2016.  For literature they selected Bob Dylan.  On December 10 they awarded the prizes.  As was expected, Dylan did not attend.  It wasn’t because he was snubbing the NPC, he just doesn’t do events like this.  If you pay attention to his music, you know.  He points out irony, injustice, and pain. He lifts the curtain on the reality of life of struggling people.  He doesn’t try to make it beautiful with beautiful music.  His music has never been described as beautiful.  It is as rugged as those about whom he sings.  

And that is what made this choice so controversial.  Certainly his music, his voice, his performance acumen were not up to Nobel Prize standards.  But his prize was for his “poetry”.  Is that what it is?  Much criticism ensued about that, too.  Even poetry has rules and he obviously knows none of them. So over the past 2 months as the controversy swirled, people of dignity actually introduced themselves to Bob Dylan’s poetry.  By the time the awards event happened, more knew it was a long overdue choice. 

Dylan had folk singer Patti Smith accept the award for him.  The following video is absolutely amazing.   Nobel Prize award ceremonies are not like our Hollywood award ceremonies.  It is ROYALTY.  The diamonds are real.  It is European upper-crust, which means it is western civilization upper-crust.   In a very humble performance, Patti Smith sang Dylan’s ballad “Hard Rain”.  I was mesmerized by the video.  You have to understand, “Hard Rain” unveils humanity at a raw level.  That is something many of these people have never encountered.  What happened?  They were mesmerized.  Some openly wept.  They all got to view humanity from the opposite side.  It is worth watching the whole video.