Member-only story
THE REBEL RE-EMERGES
Rate-a-Record: Lost on the Highway, Lost at Sea
A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss
The proverb “A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss” was first documented in 1023, yet it was not until 500 years later that it began to gain popularity.
That it remains a cultural touch point today is testament to its power.
What does it mean?
Cat Stevens has been in the news lately and for this reason Father and Son drifted across my mind yesterday. It lays out the competing impulses of humanity. The desire to settle down, seek security and meet your responsibilities against that natural urge, often manifested in youth, to seek out excitement, pleasure and adventure.
It’s the paradox of Bob Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone. He asks how it feels to be a rolling stone, and for those who have lived a life of comfort and security it is perhaps the most terrifying thing of all, to lose that luxury and to be cast as a nobody.
Did Paul McCartney answer how it feels on You Never Give Me Your Money when he sings about the magic feeling of having nowhere to go? That delicious taste of freedom when one has finally cast aside the millstone.
Yet Paul, as possibly the richest musician alive today, presents a different…
