Music: Dylan: Once Again, It's Alright Ma

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A higher reality was at hand, but like a burst of light in a dark room, it proved to be illusory. Poverty programs, free universities and Camelot gave way to Kent State, Cambodia and urban terrorism. The toll of death and deterioration set in: The Kennedys, King, Dak To, Khe Sanh, Watergate. The clenched fist replaced the V sign as idealists turned cynical. Dylan and his followers withdrew into a more personal and private world. After a near-fatal motorcycle accident in 1966, Dylan moved to his home in Woodstock, N.Y., and switched from participant to observer to chronicle the halcyon days of "the movement" in songs like Time Passes Slowly.

Time passes slowly up here in the mountains, We sit beside bridges and walk beside fountains, Catch the wild fishes that float through the stream, Time passes slowly when you 're lost in a dream.

A generation of activists grew apathetic: the old spirit of Dylan and Joan Baez seemed to have evaporated. The stage was taken over by a capering rearguard of glitter rockers, demonists and hip vaudevillians.

Now, in Dylan's return, illuminated by the slow flicker of thousands of matches, the old spirit seems to emerge anew. At each concert, the hush of anticipation, the buzz of uncertainty and the applause of recognition are extensions of young people again listening to his words and looking for their meaning. Arms linked together, swaying in unison, chanting in time to the psychic current, a generation's anthem— learned in adolescence, sung in protest but not finally understood until periods of adult crisis—is being sung once more:

How does it feel, How does it feel To be on your own With no direction home Like a complete unknown Like a rolling stone?