Tag: darkness on the edge of town
Bruce is more than music, he is a medicine for the soul.
My dad is the culprit of my Springsteen obsession, year by year he slowly increased the dosage of exposure to us children and before you knew it I was hooked.
My father fell in love with Bruce Springsteen while he was in high school, he was ironing his shirt for school when Bruce Springsteen came on the music channel and from that day Springsteen has never left his side.
My dad is quite the fanatic so I suppose it was only natural one of his three children would be aswell. From as young as I can remember, Bruce Springsteen was always around, he wasn’t unfamiliar he was part of the family.
When I was about 5 years old I found myself listening to the Born in the USA album and flipping through the lyric book, there’s an image of Bruce on is toes holding his jacket… I was mesmerized by it.
As years went on there was a stage where my siblings and I felt that we were bombarded 24/7 with Bruce Springsteen. My dad would be so excited when a new album came out that it would be played over and over again in the car, oh and let me tell you if there was a lyric that he fell in love with he would rewind it so we could hear that line a few times, to appreciate its beauty..
Someone asked about what kind of music my dad and I like from Bruce Springsteen and if our Tastes in albums are similar. We both love Darkness. It’s a hard question to answer because I have a new favourite each week, I think it depends on how you feel at the time. I know dad loves Cover me when it’s performed live, and Adam raised a Cain is a favourite. He loves when Bruce does his guitar solos.
I was exposed to most of Bruce Springsteens music because of my dad and also the solo works of Patti Scialfa and Little Steven. Although it wasn’t until I got a little older and started to experience things through life did I start to go on a personal journey with his music.
Being a teenage girl isn’t as simple as it may seem, society has so many high expectations, combine this with a rough childhood and before you know it you find yourself in a rough place.
That one thought snowballs and although it was just a thought you end up finding yourself consumed by darkness. You tell yourself you aren’t good enough, you’re not thin enough, you’re not pretty enough, you’re not smart enough and every negative comment someone says sticks with you in your mind forever. You end up hating yourself, putting yourself down , despising everything that you do or see in that mirror.
Bruce Springsteens music was my escape, after a long hard day of beating and knocking myself down his music was that little bit of hope that maybe someday everything would be okay and maybe someday I would be able to tolerate myself.
Bruce saved me from this depression, he took me way from hating everything about life and taught me that after a storm if you just look hard enough you might just see that rainbow. It’s not worth thinking about giving up, you have to get back up on your feet and find a reason to believe in yourself again.
As Bruce said himself from small things mamma, big things one day come.. And they did for me. Something so small as being exposed to his music as a child snowballed and has become a major part of my life and who I am as a person today.
Bruce is more than music, he is a medicine for the soul.
Here’s a picture of me and my daddy at a Bruce’s show 🙂
Factory
I went to my first Bruce’s show with my father, who at that time worked driving around as a boiler maintenance man. I did not know the song Factory yet, and my father did not work in a factory anymore. Still, I knew he raised from bed early in the morning, way before me, and that he came back in the evening when I was already showered at the end of my school day and the table was already set.
Later on in my life, during one of those nights out we used to have together sometimes, he would have asked me How are you? and how’s grandma? Are you studying? girlfriend, is she still that girl you used to date? and then You are not that young anymore, you have to get your head together, understand?
And then he would have asked me about music, “Did you see some good show? But, you know… was it good like the Springsteen’s one we saw together? remember? Jesus, that was amazing, the best”.
Some other years passed by, and I’m watching Springsteen and I, the part where the English guy after years of night shifts and hard work was able to afford a “Springsteen vacation” in New York for the Madison Square Garden shows in 2000. And while he speaks there’s Factory as a soundtrack, and he begins to tell how he won the lottery with the Men in black who gave him a front row ticket, and meanwhile those words are flowing, through the mansions of fear, through the mansions of pain, I see my daddy walking through them factory gates in the rain; factory takes his hearing, factory gives him life. It’s the working, the working, just the working life.
And here you have Bruce talking about his old man, and my old man, and he doesn’t even know me, but he gets it. The struggles, and the respect, and what their life had been, this morning drive to the factory, every morning, for another gloomy day, trying not to bring home to your kids your rage, your angst. He understands what was that kept our fathers going through all the painful days and nights of hard work in the factory, what kept that English man goin’ on, what will keep me going on, eventually. We’re just all trying to find our way through it, already knowing that some of us will not come to a successful end. But you still do, because that’s what’s life is all about.
Prove it all day, every day.
I think that everyone here agrees on saying that Bruce’s music helps us to get through the struggles of every day life that we all face. He’s here for good times, and bad times, and that’s ok. Yesterday I went through some thoughts scattered on FB in the last six months, nothing big, you know… Just a simple life. With Bruce’s songs in the background.
“I took a time off morning from work, I absolutely had to do something for that pile of laundry to be ironed. The heat was killing me but it had to be done. So I took Houston ’78 and put it on… That Promised land is sensational…Prove it all night has no words to be qualified…Racing in the streets… I keep ironing and folding… Jungleland. My husband comes rushing from the other room at the first notes. The fever, Fire… Well, I’ve finished, the laundry chest is empty, I didn’t even notice… That was a great way to spend a morning!”
“This is for my son, who decided to take his Thunder road. He’s leaving in a month for New Zealand, a whole year without him, so happy for him…But it hurts so much, staying here, working hard, trying to build a better world for him too. But it’s right, you take your Thunder road, son. Spread your wings and fly.”
“I’ve just made my husband listen to Kitty’s back in Rome… and now I’m fobbing him off with the studio version, just under the pretense of catching the differences, you know… Me thinks he’ll not think straight at the end of all this!”
“It’s 8am and already I’m saying Today also will end. That’s a bad feeling, just want to run away from everything and stay alone! I prepare for work, today is bad. I know this too shall pass, it always will, but sometimes it’s like being dead inside. Put my earphones on, switch on my Ipod, the music starts, the volume is high, I want to be completely isolated. I get on my bike, I start pedaling, off to my work place… Bruce is alive out there, the anxiety begins to unravel, maybe it will not be a bad day, maybe even something good could happen. I can do this!”
“I know, I’m probably tedious and dull, but I just can’t help it. Everytime I stop, I’m thinking about my son, and of when his Long walk home will begin. He’ll come back, right? Tomorrow it’ll be 16 months…more or less 920 since I’ve hugged him.”
“Today I have to hit the road with a collection of samples for some customers, traveling with my aunt who accidentally is also my partner. What do you think, do I fire off all Brisbane 2014 at the highest possible volume? That’s a way to travel, dont’ you think? And a good day to all of you people!”
Springsteen and Us 