my thoughts and my words.
Viewing entries tagged
Bruce Springsteen
Thump thump.
Thump thump.
Thump THUMP…
You have to give the man credit. He’d performed for two straight hours – just him, a guitar, a piano, and his wits – but then he stood on the tip of the stage and lightly but methodically pounded the wood of his guitar with an open palm. The sound reverberated around the circumference of the theatre mimicking a heartbeat, my heartbeat.
When it comes to a bedroom, my general rule is that I slumber far more effectively when I can theoretically see my breath. I’m not entirely sure where this preference comes from or even recall how long it’s been a habit, but my guess is all of those years spent tucked under the covers inside of dank and steamy cabins at sleepaway camp probably contributed to my current hope that I’ll see frost forming on my windowpanes in the height of summer.
Sometimes, though, manmade chilliness does not quite go as planned. It was a few months ago when I crawled into a bed in someone else’s home and fell into what initially was a blissfully heavy sleep. I woke up less than an hour later due to a miserable combination of factors: a puppy exploring a bed she’s not used to, some Netflix show about gangsters blaring at some ungodly volume, and an air conditioner that was apparently made by NASA to approximate what Pluto feels like. I tried snuggling further under the covers. I thought about that Barbados heat wave I’d once sweat straight through. I nestled into the person completely passed out beside me who clearly wasn’t impacted in the least by everything in that room that was causing me total misery. I considered getting up to turn down the air, but I was afraid Tallulah would think it was morning because, while she’s a very wise puppy, she has yet to master distinctions in time when she gets excited. I finally realized my only real option was to undress the guy next to me. I figured the best-case scenario was I could put on his clothing to warm up, but should he misread anything, sex might work to thaw the frostbite, too.
I did not end up putting on his clothing. And my clothing didn’t stay on either.
The other night I saw God and it turns out he looks exactly like Bruce Springsteen.
I haven't completely figured out if there's a poetic meaning behind it all, but my 30th Springsteen concert was part of The River Tour, meaning he would be playing the entire iconic double album straight through before launching into another full set. I'd missed the original River Tour. I was too young to go to a show, a fact that didn't comfort me in the least when my parents and my sister left the house and promised to bring me back a tee shirt. No joke: I remember almost nothing from the earliest part of my life – and when it comes to the night I had to miss the Bruce show, I can vividly recall the name of my babysitter and that the feety pajamas I was wearing were yellow.
I still have the shirt they brought me. It fits now. I've been to many shows since and I feel nothing but blessed for all of those perfect nights, but still – the River Tour was always the one that got away.
Then December came. Springsteen released The Ties That Bind, a collection of outtakes from The River. Soon after, he announced that he and the band were heading back on the road for a mini tour and they'd be making two stops at The Garden. Pretending for a moment that I'd actually internalized anything from that time I secretly read The Secret, I entered the date of the show in the calendar of my phone before tickets even went on sale. (I think the pretend-gurus call this action "visualization.") The thing is, I knew I'd end up with tickets somehow. If 29 concerts had taught me anything, it's that I would happily trudge through gigantic cold parking lots looking for scalpers or suck it up and just pay far too much on Stubhub to gain entrance to a cathedral where holy music was played on a black electric guitar.
It was my first stop on the Let's-See-How-Much-I'll-Pay-This-Time ride, but I didn't really expect to come away from Ticketmaster victoriously. So many times I've frozen when it's time to type in that weird computerized security code and then a terrible message pops up to coldly inform me that all the tickets are gone. I think there's also a pop-up that appears that tells me my hair looks shitty at the moment, but my devastation might just be causing momentary hallucinations. This time – for this tour – I got tickets immediately. They weren't the best seats in the place, but it was a sure thing: all these years later, I was going to hear one of my favorite albums of all time played from side to side (to side to side). It could only be better and more memory-inducing if The Garden's floor was covered in a rust shag carpet for the evening.
I can hardly remember the first song he played, so dumbstruck I was rendered the minute he walked onstage and I realized that I was in the same room as someone whose words have defined my entire life. So yeah, the first verse of Meet Me in the City is a little fuzzy, but I recovered quickly and the night was magical. It was almost a little bit bizarre – but in a beautiful, hazy way – to hear all those songs that once played on a loop in my den as I built forts with my sister. Images came rushing back like a wave and the water was warm and still. As we all went along on Bruce's River journey, I found myself going on my own memory tour and I began to understand my past just a little bit more clearly.
There's a real gratitude I feel when words someone assembled and then crafted into a sentence moves everything inside of me. I think that one of my biggest goals is to write that one line that resonates so powerfully within somebody else. It's the dream of sharing that kind of lyrical collective consciousness that I guess I find so damn interesting and during the show, I thought that dream just might come true.
I mention all this because I'm imagining the act of seeing Erika Jayne perform live brings upon the same kind of emotional peace. Sure, the guy's been famous since before I was born, but I'm pretty sure nobody's ever called Springsteen "an enigma wrapped in cash." No, Erika Jayne is the real legend and I'm guessing that watching her hump that stage will finally convince all of us that real art does exist and I know that she will dazzle me to such a degree that I'll have the immediate desire to leave her show – while she's still singing – go home, and bedazzle everything I own.
Maybe it’s because The Real Housewives of Orange County all but devolved into a terrifying trip to a haunted church camp this past week and my mind is still trying to recover from being thrust soul-first into choruses of Amazing Grace that were harmonized by scummy women who clearly value liposuction more than they value the Lord, but I can’t seem to get prayer out of my head.
I can’t quite qualify myself as someone who prays regularly, but that’s been changing a bit. I do pray – though it’s more to the universe at large than to a particular God – and I seem to be partaking in those very personal moments more than usual these days. Obviously, some of what I bandy about late in my bed at night to the powers that cannot be seen is rather personal, but since I get to fully control what it is I share here, allow me to tell you about some of the conversations I’ve been having lately with a universe that I dearly hope is not hard of hearing. Sure, some of my prayers might strike you as superficial and perhaps others might strike you as though they were generated inside the mind of someone who is mildly psychotic, but since one of the things I pray for consistently is the continued ability not to give a shit about what other people think about me, I’m gonna forge ahead:
Dear Universe,
Please allow me to believe that there is no bottom to the reservoir of compassion, talent, forgiveness, and drive that I rely upon more often than I do air. Do not ever allow me to embrace the idea that I have been depleted of goodness or of the capacity to generate the levels of energy I need to secure for myself all it is that I desire.
There are those perfect sounds – those heart-stopping, universe-bending, sweepingly melodious sounds – that I would love to hear again and again. Like the time I was in a seat that was basically located in the rafters at the back of the stage of Madison Square Garden and Springsteen played For You, a song written before I was born, a song I hadn’t heard him play in any of the twenty-seven concerts I’d trekked to before that one magical night. Or the time my niece, who would always toddle out and greet me when I arrived at her house but would never actually say a word, finally walked over to me when she was about two years old and smiled big and wide and bellowed, “Hi, Nell!” She said my name with a southern accent, like she had actually been born in a place like Alabama, and it was hilarious and weird and unexpected and she’s never ever said it like that since. And then there was the night when a guy I loved twined his fingers through my hair near my scalp and raked them right down to the ends and whispered that I had the softest and most beautiful hair he has ever touched. Or the moment I stood by the shore of the ocean in whatever time of day comes after twilight with some of my closest friends in the entire world and we didn’t say much of anything as we stared at the horizon and listened to the waves break against the shoreline and realized how tremendously fortunate we were to have one another and this perfect night.
If I could hear any of those sounds again I would be incredibly grateful, but alas, the recurring sound that manages to invade my ear canal continuously these days is neither melodic nor is it magical. No, the sound I keep hearing is that of a fifty-something year old grandmother gagging back vomit, and this kind of repulsive sound byte has made me move forward in my quest to lead a coalition whose main goal is to leave Vicki Gunvalson stranded somewhere on that tropical island. I feel very badly that the locals will have to be stuck with her, but I’m guessing that if Donald Trump becomes President, he’ll totally back my plan because I’m sure he’s not attracted to the OG of the OC and I think Trump’s main platform – besides building walls along our borders and pretending that he is sane – might very well be to eliminate all women from this great nation that he’d never want to have to look at and I’m pretty sure that Vicki falls into that category.
Look at me! I’m a Republican now!
