Bob Dylan's 'Mr. Tambourine Man'

          Dylan's 'Mr Tambourine Man' (also covered by The Byrds), written and performed in the 1960's, tells the story of a young man wandering lonely city streets on sleepless nights dodging in and out of insanity. The contrast between the main character's external circumstance to his internal indifference draws attention to a disconnect that exists between him and his environment, which in this case is society.
          If 'insanity' can be termed by repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome then it can be confirmed that the character in 'Mr Tambourine Man' is insane. Assuming that the tambourine man symbolizes entertainment of any form, drinking, 'partying', music and other art forms, the character then is really attempting to find fulfillment through similar outlets every time he says:

Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

The activities he partakes in however, only send him further and further away from contentment. As each stanza only serves to emphasize his isolation.

First Stanza:

My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet
I have no one to meet

Second Stanza:

 I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way
I promise to go under it.

Third Stanza:

  Though you might hear laughin', spinnin' swingin' madly across the sun
It's not aimed at anyone, it's just escapin' on the run

           Though throughout the poem the character is supposedly walking around the city at night, in the final stanza he goes on to describe sights not usually seen on a midnight stroll. The speaker describes a diamond sky over top of a seaside circus, insinuating he desires to be some place else, if not physically then mentally. He reiterates this idea in his closing line. "With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow."

 

The Sunset Limited Perspective

A video explaining how our minds 'trick' us into believing some pretty unbelievable things.
           If someone walks in on their spouse cheating on them, but doesn't want to be aware of such an occurrence he or she could justify the situation by saying something like "They were just watching a movie." or "She probably spilled spaghetti sauce on her shirt and took it off to wash it and tripped coming out of the bathroom and fell on top of my husband." People can manipulate their surroundings to better fit their ideal reality, no matter how insane it sounds. Some of the most 'out there' theories come from humans, mortal beings, trying to explain immortality, or the afterlife. In a movie written by Cormac McCarthy The Sunset Limited two men get into a heated discussion about faith versus reason. Each character relies on his sole perception of world events to defend his ideals.
           There is a white man, who works as a professor of English. The white man's history is one reliant on education, denying some of life's other aspects such as compassion or empathy. A story is shared of a time when the white man's father was dying of cancer and he never went to visit his deathbed. Not soon after this the white man criticizes the black man for trying to help 'junkies' claiming that people don't change and some simply cannot be helped. It becomes obvious, rather quickly, that the white man is jaded by his use of facts and dependence on scientific thinking. His opinion that nothing comes after death is a direct result of his life occurrences, that ultimately molded his pessimistic perception.
            On the other end of the conversation is a black man, whose shaggy apartment sets the background for the entire movie. He tells stories of fights and arguments he was a part of while in prison. The contrast between his dark past and his present, where he works in some factory and leads an honest simple life at home, may attribute to his strong faith in God. Whereas the white man never encountered a significant change, that the audience is aware of, the black man is able to trust in the good rather than the bad because the 'good' is what personally saved him.