Bruce (digging into the soundtrack of my life).
credit: luisa
As I recently wrote in a tweet, I’m reading the awesome book “Bruce“, by Peter A. Carlin; A reading that’s shaking my soul, because it’s like digging into the soundtrack of my entire life.
Springsteen is simply Bruce for me too: a friend, a companion, an alter ego, the voice of the “beaten up and the fairs”. He’s surely not the Boss, a nickname that he obviously hates too: furthermore, isn’t the boss usually a synonymous of despicable?
Bruce came into my life with The River, on a smooth highway getting goose bumps. I heard – and saw in Betamax, those big old videotapes – dozens of versions, all of them. But one, in particular, thrilled me: the long spoken intro version that made him cry too when performing it live. I don’t know if you ever listened to it, wanna try? don’t forget tissues.
I then followed Bruce for my entire life and he, I like thinking so, did the same, hiding behind some weird coincidences. I always deeply loved him and besides many music crushes – the biggest for the Cure – I never cheated on him.
Because at full volume or in background, he’ve been always the one who played in my life. Especially when I fell down. “Come on rise up”. And I got up. “If I should fall behind wait for me”. And somebody stopped waiting for me. “I wish I were blind when I see you with your man” and even the worst delusion would turn into poetry.
In 2004, like Ames, I tried to find him closely too. A trip to New York inevitably turned into an unforgettable tour of his New Jersey. That’s why I walked on the wood boardwalk of Atlantic City and Asbury Park, the city of his famous postcard record cover; that I touched the white and blue Madame Marie’s cabin on the beach; that I set my foot on the atrium of the Stone Pony sacred temple; that I moved in circle through the streets of Freehold, trying to grab the scent of the Springsteen; that I really ate a pizza at Federici’s, with my eyes glued not on the mozzarella but on the myriad of Bruce pictures hung up on the walls of this legendary pizzeria.
Than I came back home – meaning my life – but without closing the door behind, in order to better listen to his invitations that I always forward to myself many times: “Mary climb in, it’s a town full of losers and I’m pulling out of here to win”.